I’ve seen a lot of photos of donkeys pulling carts or even old rusted out vehicles, but I’ve never seen a donkey riding in a car let along a taxi!

Is this a case of Donkey See, Donkey Do? Or maybe it’s just payback for all the hauling it’s had to do in it’s lifetime?

You’ve heard of families who’s children’s names all start with the same letter, and the occasional family where a child has the same birth date as the mother or father, but what about a family who’s children were all born on the same day in different years?

Jenna and William Cotton of Marysville have an easy time remembering the birthday of each of their children. All of their three children have been born on October 2nd. The latest addition to the family was little Kayla who was born on Tuesday Oct 2nd. Her brothers Ayden Cotton and Logan Cotton were born on Oct 2nd 2003 and October 2nd 2006 respectively.

Based on that history, the parents said they had a feeling their baby daughter would come a couple of days past her Sept. 30 due date. Sure enough, Jenna Cotton, 23, began having contractions early Tuesday, hours before a planned birthday party for the boys.

She had a doctor’s appointment scheduled later in the day and hung in for the party. Ayden, the 4-year-old, wanted to know if his new baby sister would make the festivities, Jenna Cotton said.

“He has been really excited about her coming,” she said. “He kept asking when she was going to come out.”

He wouldn’t have to wait long. His mother’s doctor sent her to a hospital, where 7-pound, 8-ounce Kayla was born at 7:07 p.m. Tuesday.

The odds of a family having three children born on the same date in different years are about 7.5 in 1 million, said Bill Notz, a statistics professor at Ohio State University.

The Cottons don’t plan to roll the dice on a fourth Oct. 2 baby, saying that’s it for them, as far as having children.

Believe it or not a woman was refused entry into a federal courthouse by security guards until she removed her bra.

The bra in question had underwire supports and naturally it kept triggering the alarm. Lori Plato and her husband were both stunned when asked by the U.S. Marshal Service employees to remove her bra.

Geez, don’t they know that most bras have underwire in them?

“I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn’t have a privacy screen and no women security officers were available,” Plato said Wednesday. “They said, ‘No.’

“I wasn’t carrying a shank in my bra. If it’s so dangerous, why did they give it back and let me put it on?”

The U.S. Marshal in Boise, Patrick McDonald, stated that the appropriate security protocols were followed during the September 20th incident. Apparently the guards had suggested that she simply remove her bra in her car outside or in a restaurant washroom.

“She’s inflating it,” McDonald said. “All of a sudden she just took it off. It wasn’t anything we wanted to happen and it wasn’t anything we asked for her to do. She did it so fast.”

Plato, of Bonners Ferry, said she was parked on a busy street and wasn’t familiar with downtown Coeur d’Alene businesses. So her husband held up his coat to shield her from the rest of the people in the courthouse lobby while she removed her bra underneath her shirt.

Generally, McDonald said, undergarments aren’t considered a danger to security.

“I don’t think they’re considered a weapon, really, the last time I looked,” he said.

He declined to discuss other ways the federal courthouse guards could have screened Plato for weapons.

Plato wants the Marshals Service to apologize and stop forcing women to disrobe.

“It was very humiliating,” her husband, Owen Plato, said. “They could have handled it with a much more professional attitude.”

Interesting. I guess I’d better tell the wife to either not wear a bra or to wear one that doesn’t use underwire when we travel to the US in a couple of weeks. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want to have to take off her bra at the security check in area!

We often hear news stories about those who’ve been wrongly convicted being freed from jail, sometimes after being incarcerated for many years. The newly freed often sue the legals system for wrongful confinement.

Three men in Birmingham, England who were recently freed after respectively spending 18, 18 and 11 years in prison for murder, were, in separate trials, awarded a total of 2.16 million British pounds.

Unfortunately for these men the Court of Appeal ruled in March that the mean will each have to give back 25% of their award to the government as compensation for their “room and board”. You know, those tiny cells they stayed in and the awful prison food that they were served for years.

Isn’t that outrageous!