Celebration with sarcasm

A Louisiana woman gave the road construction on her residential street a birthday party on March 16 to celebrate 12 straight months of street work outside her front door. The New Orleans woman, Natalie Harvey, tied up balloons, invited guests, and served cake to commemorate the occasion. Harvey said the construction has blocked her driveway for months at a time, and she wondered what was taking road crews so long. “As an example, they’ll work every day for a week, then there will be two to three weeks with nothing,” she told WKRG. “The work has definitely picked up in the last couple of weeks. But you never know when it’s going to stop and when it’s going to start back up again.” Harvey created a chocolate sponge cake for the party, topping it with peanut butter icing and a roadwork scene complete with miniature bulldozers.

Arctic interloper

An Irish 5-year-old made a surprising discovery during a seaside stroll on March 14. While walking with her father Alan Houlihan, the young girl spotted a walrus. How did the Arctic creature make its way to County Kerry in southern Ireland? According to Kevin Flannery of the local Dingle Oceanworld Aquarium, the young walrus likely floated atop a Greenland shelf iceberg that drifted across the Atlantic Ocean. While rare, walrus trips to Ireland also occurred in 1999 and 1987.

Hacking in to homecoming

A five-month investigation into a vote tampering scheme in Florida finally led to arrests on March 15. State officials took Laura Carroll, 50, and her 17-year-old daughter into custody for rigging the Oct. 30 homecoming court election at J.M. Tate High School near Pensacola. Authorities allege Carroll, an assistant principal at a local elementary school, allowed her daughter to use her login credentials to hack student accounts in the school’s system, including the online voting for the homecoming election. The daughter, police say, then used that access to cast at least 117 votes on her behalf for homecoming queen. Both Carroll and her daughter were charged with felonies for hacking into student accounts.

A drive to succeed

A Polish man has failed the nation’s driver’s license test for a 192nd time, according to state media outlet TVP. According to the broadcaster, the unnamed 50-year-old has tried to pass the written exam for 17 years to no avail, costing him an estimated $1,550 in fees in the process. History suggests the man should keep trying. In 2009, a 68-year-old South Korean woman passed her driver’s license exam after taking it more than 900 times.

Proscribed typeface

Officials for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit took an unusual step March 16 by virtually banning a font from the court’s docket. D.C. Circuit court clerk Mark J. Langer issued a notice saying the court officially now “discourages the use of Garamond,” saying judges and employees are having a hard time reading the popular if old-fashioned font. According to the court’s style guide, lawyers must submit briefs with a typeface size of 14 points or above. Seriffed fonts like Times New Roman are acceptable. Sans-serif fonts like Arial, a common default font on many word processing programs, are not.

Fun while it lasted

After kindly offering a video-game treat to her grandson, a Canadian woman said she now owes over $1,100 in charges to her credit card. Diana Liscoumb of Sutton, Ontario, said she gave her 13-year-old grandson her credit card so he could buy credits and digital “skins” for a PlayStation Network game. She expected him to spend about $12 on the game and was shocked when she got her credit card bill. “I spoke to my grandson, and he didn’t realize what he had done,” Liscoumb told CTV News Toronto. She contacted the PlayStation Network to reverse the charges, but the company declined. Liscoumb said her grandson has offered to get a job when he turns 14 to help pay off the debt.

Wheels of renovation

With construction at Belgium’s Palace of Justice stretching into its 37th year, the nation’s Public Buildings Administration announced in March the scaffolds outside the Brussels building need renovating. The government will spend nearly $1.8 million rebuilding the scaffolds that first went up in 1984 and have now become a safety hazard. The secretary of state for building management, Mathieu Michel, criticized the slow progress of the renovations. “It is not a good signal of coherent and efficient public management to leave scaffolding on a building for 40 years when the work has not even been done,” Michel said. “We really want a justice system that is not under construction.” The project is slated for completion by 2030.

Neighborhood flap

A North Dakota man says his condominium association has threatened him with heavy fines because the American flag affixed to his deck makes too much noise. Homeowner and Fargo, N.D., resident Andrew Almer said he always wanted to display an American flag once he bought a home. Almer told Fox News he got a letter from the condo board in January detailing the noise complaint. “You cannot tell me somebody is complaining about a flapping flag in the wind,” said Almer. A second letter from the condo association in early March warned that he’d face $200-per-day fines if he did not remove his flag. But Almer, who suspects his upstairs neighbor—who is also the condo board president—is behind the complaints, has no plans to comply. “If I need to, we’ll take it to court,” he said.

The enemy within

A merciless foe has infiltrated a $6 billion U.S. Navy nuclear-powered attack submarine. Sailors reported bedbugs on the USS Connecticut beginning in December, but it took until Feb. 19 for Navy experts to identify the pests conclusively. In the fight against the bedbugs, sailors have now moved to sleeping arrangements on dry land at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, where the Connecticut is moored. The Oregonian reported that the Navy was building a temporary structure to house the sailors away from the pests. The Connecticut also tangled with wildlife in 2003, when a polar bear attacked the submarine, chewing on her rudder after she popped through polar ice.