Good week, Bad week

Good week for:

Packing earphones, after Ryanair, the no-frills British airline, said it was considering a plan to let passengers watch pornography in-flight on handheld devices.

Potholes, after a Cincinnati woman driving her choking 8-year-old daughter to the hospital hit a deep rut, dislodging the locket stuck in the girl’s throat and saving her life. “Oh Mom, I feel better. I don’t feel it anymore,” said Laci Davis, after the locket dropped down to her stomach.

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Beer drinkers, after researchers in Italy found that drinking one to two pints of beer per day has the same cardiovascular benefits as red wine, which can lower the risk of heart disease by 31 percent.

Bad week for:

Abraham Lincoln, after a copper sword held by the statue of a Civil War soldier atop Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield, Ill., was stolen, and likely sold for scrap. The cemetery recently eliminated its overnight security guard because of budget cuts.

Anthropomorphizing, after a South African man was savagely chewed to death by a 2,400-pound hippopotamus he kept as a pet. “Humphrey’s like a son to me, he’s just like a human,” Marius Els, 40, had insisted.

Whoever sold the van, after Charles Preston of San Jose, Calif., discovered $500,000 worth of cocaine hidden in a used minivan he purchased for $14,000 last year. He quickly called police, who told him, “You’re so lucky—you’d be in jail for the rest of your life if you got searched in a traffic stop and they found this.”