BERLIN, Germany - October 15, 2010 - A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters.

Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs - by producing them in China, importing them as "small heating devices" and selling them as "heatballs."

PORTLAND, Oregon - October 11, 2010 - It's crunch-time for many municipalities across the United States, but for one county in Oregon, that means a little more than in most.

The district attorney in Multnomah County, the state's most populous area with over 710,000 residents, announced recently that it can no longer prosecute dozens of crimes thanks to an ever-shrinking budget.

SYDNEY, Australia - October 11, 2010 - Ragbir Bhathal, an astrophysicist at the University of Western Sydney, claims the light pulses he detected in December 2008 are from the region of space where the extrasolar planet Gliese 581g orbits a red dwarf star.

Recently, Gliese 581g was declared 100% certain to have life. Now the question has been raised, is it intelligent life?

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania - October 8, 2010 - A state lawmaker claims Philadelphia police officers "began yelling profanities, obscenities and making threats of physical harm" to him when he stopped to watch them "roughly frisking" an older man, who also is black.

State Rep. Jewell Williams claims the officers took money from the older man's pockets and were letting it blow away, and abused him when he told bystanders to "leave the man's money alone."

NEW YORK - October 4, 2010 - Four billboard trucks bearing the message “Stop the Liberal Bias, Tell the Truth!” began circling the Manhattan headquarters of ABC, CBS, NBC, and the New York Times on Friday. The trucks will do so for eight hours every weekday for the next four weeks as part of a campaign run by the Media Research Center, a watchdog group that analyzes the media for liberal bias.

WASHINGTON (PNN) - October 1, 2010 - Most of his contemporaries have mellowed with age, but as he approaches his 70th birthday, Bob Dylan remains splendidly reluctant to embrace efforts to turn him into part of the fusty establishment against which he once railed.

That, at least, is the experience of illegitimate President Barack Obama, who revealed that he was given what amounts to the bum's rush by the musician when he visited the White House to perform at a concert celebrating the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

DOUGLAS COUNTY, Georgia - September 29, 2010 - A team of federal agents stopped tractor-trailers on Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta, inspecting each truck as it passed through a weigh station, and Channel 2 has learned its part of a counter-terrorism operation.

Channel 2's Linda Stouffer reported a flashing sign on the interstate directed the trucks to pull into a state-owned inspection station near Lee Road in Douglas County at the height of the evening commute.

Channel 2 Action News confirmed that agents from several federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, and the Transportation Security Administration were involved. The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office assisted in the exercise.

LONDON, England - October 5, 2010 - Anyone who owns a laptop computer can now fight crime from the safety of their home and win cash prizes for catching thieves red-handed, under a new British monitoring scheme that went live this week.

The service works by employing an army of registered armchair snoopers who watch hours of CCTV footage from cameras in stores and high street venues across the country.

ARLINGTON, Massachusetts - September 26, 2010 - For the first time in 40 years, high-school students in Arlington, Massachusetts are able to recite, in a school environment, those familiar words: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance is the result of the work of Arlington High School senior Sean Harrington, who spent three years trying to get his town's school committee to restore the pledge at the start of each school day.

NEW YORK - September 16, 2010 - Smart phones do many things these days: surf the Internet, send e-mail, take photos and video, and send and receive calls. But one thing they can do that phone companies don't advertise is spy on you.

As long as you don't leave home without your phone, that handy gadget keeps a record of everywhere you go - a record the government can then get from your telephone company.