FERGUS FALLS, Minn. (AP) – A former employee who attempted to burglarize a restaurant apparently didn’t know any good hiding places.

Police responded to a burglary alarm at the Speedway Restaurant early Monday and surrounded the building.

When officers entered, they discovered that the burglar had tried to hide in the ceiling. He fell through and tried hiding in an oven instead.

“The guy was only half-baked when he was picked up,” joked Police Capt. Hugo McPhee.

Mark of devil is work of state

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (AP) – Ken Hasenmueller and his wife have been feeling a little uncomfortable while in the family car.

The car itself – a 1996 cherry red Oldsmobile Cutlass – is fine. It’s the license plate that’s the problem. They were randomly assigned 666-KEN.

“Initially, I thought it was interesting,” Ken Hasenmueller said of the pairing of his first name with the numeric symbol for the Antichrist. “But then I thought that people might think I was Satanist.”

Hasenmueller said he was worried others would assume he requested the devilish plates. He plans to trade them in for new ones.

“I wouldn’t want people thinking I was interested in that sort of thing,” Hasenmueller said. “You don’t want this sort of thing on your car.”

“We are a very strong Christian family,” added his wife, Jean.

Glowing meat

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) – An Australian food agency is trying to quell fears about glow-in-the-dark meats.

In a statement released Wednesday, the New South Wales state Food Authority said the glowing phenomenon is caused by a harmless light-emitting bacteria that is naturally present in most meats and fish.

“While most of us would understandably be shocked to see our food glowing, it is important to remember that the microorganism responsible for the glow is not known to cause food poisoning,” the authority’s director general, George Davey, said in the statement.

The Food Authority receives around two phone calls each month from nervous consumers who have discovered glowing meats in their iceboxes. It issued the statement to allay fears about possible radioactivity in Australia’s meat supply.

“There has been some speculation in the media that glowing food might have been irradiated, and I can assure consumers that this is definitely not the case,” Davey said.

A ghost story

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Here’s an out-of-this-world reason you can’t be denied unemployment benefits in Des Moines: seeing ghosts on the job.

The issue ended up in court when security guard Wade Gallegos alerted his supervisor at Neighborhood Patrol in September that ghosts were haunting a neighborhood he was guarding.

The supervisor arrived at the scene and Gallegos showed him where the ghosts were still apparently standing. The supervisor claimed he saw nothing and fired Gallegos five hours later.

The company found no signs of drug use or alcohol.

When Gallegos applied for unemployment benefits, Neighborhood Patrol refused, arguing that he was guilty of misconduct.

This month, Judge G. Ken Renegar disagreed. While he acknowledged that “such beliefs do render the claimant unfit to act as a security guard,” Renegar ruled that seeing ghosts is not the type of misconduct that can disqualify Gallegos from receiving benefits.

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