Elderly man scares off intruder with a mop, and more

Elderly man scares off intruder with a mop

An elderly South Carolina man fought off an armed intruder using a Swiffer WetJet. Philip Graham, 71, and his wife were cleaning the kitchen floor when an unknown man in a ski mask, brandishing what appeared to be a gun, came through the back door. Without thinking, Graham used the swivel-headed mop “like a cattle prod” and shoved the thief out the door, breaking off the mop head. “I hit him with the end of the pole where the Swiffer was and I just told him, ‘You better get out of my house, you sorry SOB, before I kill you.’” The man fled in terror. “Some of us are going to fight back,” said Graham.

The long shadow cast by Aniston's divorce

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

Jennifer Aniston would much rather be Sandra Bullock, says The National Enquirer. Aniston, 41, “hates that her personal life, especially her divorce from Brad Pitt, overshadows her film and TV work,” an insider told the newspaper. Aniston is very envious that Bullock went through her own high-profile divorce, yet emerged more popular than ever, won an Oscar and respect as a serious actress, and now has an adoptive son. “That should be me!” Aniston tells her friends.

Chinese university sets up a parents’ dormitory

A Chinese university has set up a separate dormitory for overprotective parents. Thanks in part to China’s one-child policy, Chinese parents often follow their only child to college, and “even sleep in their children’s dormitory with them,’’ said a spokesman for the university in Wuhan. The new parents’ dormitory, said the spokesman, would at least ensure that clingy parents have “a place to wash and eat.”