OSLO, Norway -- A 4-year-old boy caused chaos at a Norwegian airport when he crawled on a luggage conveyor belt and rode it like a merry-go-round.
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Ingvild Aakervik was checking in at the Vigra airport near the western town of Aalesund on Monday, when her son, Ole Tobias, wandered off by himself.
Unnoticed by airport staff or passengers, he managed to crawl onto a luggage carousel next to an unmanned check-in counter.
Surrounded by bags and suitcases, the boy rode the entire length of the belt, passing through an X-ray scanner in the process.
The ride came to a sudden end when staffers saw the youngster on the carousel and stopped it by pressing an alarm button.
"It was just a moment of inattention and Ole Tobias disappeared," Aakervik told state NRK radio. "I panicked and made the entire airport search for him."
The four-year-old wasn't hurt and his mother said he seemed to enjoy the ride.
Operations manager Bent Helge Sjursen said security procedures at the airport would be reviewed to ensure it doesn't happen again.
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SAN BENITO, Texas -- A teenager says she found a partially smoked, quarter-inch long marijuana cigarette in her frozen yogurt parfait at a McDonald's in South Texas.
Valerie Valle, 16, of Round Rock and seven other family members were returning home last week from a vacation on South Padre Island when they stopped for breakfast.
Valle said she waited in line Thursday to return the parfait and replied "no thanks" when asked if she wanted another one. The restaurant refunded the money.
According to a San Benito police report, only two McDonald's employees made parfaits that morning. Restaurant management told police the employees take drug tests. No charges have been filed.
"We're conducting our own internal investigation into this incident," said Joe Magliolo, operations manager for the company that owns the McDonald's franchise. "Obviously, it would be inappropriate to come to any conclusions as to what did or did not happen until all the facts are known."
Chief Building Inspector Joe Avila said the McDonald's passed a city health inspection Friday morning. Avila said the restaurant's management requested a city health inspection for the building following the incident.
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BREWSTER, Mass. -- Five teens from here have hopped, skipped and jumped their way into the record books.
Last Sunday, they took first place in a jump rope competition in Brisbane, Australia, where more than 600 athletes from 15 countries gathered for the World Rope Skipping Championships.
The four skippers and an alternate - Sara Douglass, Jessica Anderson, Kelsey Gilmore, all 18, and Danielle "Dee" Orman and Sarah Capparelli, both 17 - won first place in one of eight competitions. Their 70-second routine included 30 different tricks, combining gymnastics with nonstop jump roping.
The teens are part of the Brewster Bayside Skippers, a program started a decade ago by Stony Brook Elementary School gym teacher Paul Mullin.
Mullin said that when he started the jump-roping program, parents and children didn't foresee how big - and successful - it would become. There are about 80 youngsters in the program today.
"It feels pretty good," said Orman. "To know we have the best routine in the world is really satisfying, knowing those years of hard work have paid off."
Upon hearing the news, the parents of the Brewster champions recalled 10 years of raising money, carpooling, judging competitions and shepherding their children to competitions.
"I screamed," said Sara's mother Jane Douglass, on her reaction to the news.
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SEELYVILLE, Pa. -- Talk about snail mail: A woman vacationing in New Jersey 37 years ago popped a postcard into the mail and it just arrived at her mother's house in Pennsylvania.
Dorothy Orth, of Seelyville in northeastern Pennsylvania, baffled her daughter when she called Saturday to thank her for the card.
"What card?" Janet Richards, of Port Jervis, N.Y., asked.
When her mother said it was from Asbury Park, N.J., she remembered.
"I sent that postcard in August 1967, when my husband, Larry, and I were on our fifth wedding anniversary," she said. Orth received it July 17, almost 37 years later.
In addition to the 4-cent stamp a 23-cent stamp was affixed, and the 18431 zip code was penciled in. The card was postmarked Aug. 19, 1967, at the Asbury Park post office, and July 14, 2004, in New York City's Brooklyn borough.
"A lot of credit goes to the Brooklyn post office and whoever got the postcard to me," Orth said.
That was Ernesto Perry, of the U.S. Post Office undelivered mail unit in Brooklyn.
The postcard was behind a machine that was recently moved, Perry said. He said he added the zip code and the 23 cent stamp and sent it on its way.
"We always try to send back mail whenever possible, it doesn't matter how long it has been lost or misplaced," he said.
