ODDLY ENOUGH | Police: Pittsburgh man stole taxidermy show items

ODDLY ENOUGH

Police: Pittsburgh man stole taxidermy show items

CHAMPION, Pa.

State police say a Pittsburgh man stole a mounted deer head, animal pelts and other items worth about $2,700 from the 32nd annual Pennsylvania State Taxidermy & Wildlife Art Championship, Convention and Trade Show earlier this month.

Online court records don’t list an attorney for 57-year-old David Bobeck, and a woman who answered his listed home phone Friday says he doesn’t want to comment.

Bobeck faces a preliminary hearing Tuesday on theft and receiving stolen property charges filed earlier this week. But state police say the charges relate to an incident March 3 during the convention at Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Somerset County.

The Tribune-Democrat of Johnstown says police found the deer head; fox, mountain lion and bobcat pelts; a deer skull and some mounted fish in Bobeck’s car.

Mongol warrior’s tooth tips wins odd-book prize

LONDON

A book urging dentists to learn from a fearsome Mongol warrior has won Britain’s quirkiest literary award, the Diagram Prize for the year’s oddest book title.

“Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way” by Michael R. Young won the not-always-coveted prize on Friday.

It beat finalists including “8th International Friction Stir Welding Symposium Proceedings” and romance novel “The Italian’s One-Night Love Child.”

Organizers said the winning book took more than half the votes in an online ballot.

The prize, run by trade magazine The Bookseller, was founded in 1978.

Its rules say the books must be serious and their titles not merely a gimmick.

Previous champions include “Living With Crazy Buttocks” and “Bombproof Your Horse.”

Court will allow lawsuit over ’fat slob’ remark

LOUISVILLE, Ky.

A federal appeals court is allowing a free- speech lawsuit to go ahead after a Kentucky man was arrested when he called a police officer a “fat slob.”

The man, Kevin O. Kennedy, was angry over permits to expand a strip mall near his home in 2005 and called Joseph Schutzman, who is also a building inspector, a fat slob. Schutzman arrested Kennedy on a charge of disturbing the peace.

The charge later was dropped, but Kennedy sued the city of Villa Hills near Cincinnati, and the officer.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that Kennedy’s lawsuit over wrongful arrest and First Amendment violations can go forward.

Associated Press