A 2-year-old boy with more than 40 sewing needles stuck in him is being airlifted to another hospital in northeastern Brazil because two of the needles are close to his heart, an official said Thursday. A police official, meanwhile, told The Associated Press the boy's stepfather had been arrested, that he had confessed to sticking the needles into the boy with the help of a woman and that authorities were investigating whether black magic was involved. Surgeons at a hospital in the town of Barreiras in Bahia state decided not to try to remove any needles after discovering that two were very near the boy's heart, said an official at Hospital do Oeste. She said that doctors had located 42 needles in the boy -- eight fewer than they had reported finding Wednesday. The boy was in intensive care but was in stable condition before being airlifted 240 miles (390 kilometers) to a hospital in the coastal city of Salvador with a special heart unit.
An 11-year-old North Carolina boy has found and returned a stolen purse with nearly $2,000 inside. The News & Record of Greensboro reported Wednesday that Edward Myers and his siblings were helping neighbors plant trees in a Greensboro park when he spotted a purse on the creek bank. The Boy Scout and his mother called the police, and the purse's owner showed up to collect. The owner told police her car was broken into on Thanksgiving. Police said the thief took $30 out of the main billfold but missed $1,900 in another compartment before flinging the purse into the creek. The owner rewarded Edward with one of the $100 bills. He gave $40 of it to his mother and spent the other $60 on a Carolina Panthers jersey.
A New Zealand teen who was flashing her breasts at passing cars has been found guilty of disorderly behavior for the prank, which ended with her in a hospital after a distracted driver ran into her. Cherelle May Dudfield, 18, pleaded guilty to the charge when she appeared in Invercargill District Court, the Southland Times newspaper reported Wednesday. Dudfield, egged on by her friends, was flashing passing motorists from a traffic island in the middle of a four-lane road in the southern city of Invercargill on Sept. 27. The alcohol-fueled prank went awry when one of the vehicles crashed into her as she tried to run to the side of the road, police Inspector Olaf Jensen said. Dudfield was fined $198.
A couple were charged in federal court in Sioux Falls, S.D., with faking the husband's death to collect on life insurance. A woman, 39, and her 45-year-old husband pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud. The wife was free on bond while the husband was being held without bond. Authorities said the woman claimed that her husband had died after eating bad oysters during a family vacation in Malaysia in 2003. She eventually settled the insurance case with two insurance companies for $2 million. FBI agents informed Sioux Falls-based Midland National Life about a year ago that the husband walked into the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, and asked to renew his passport. The man was arrested in Guam last month.
