Cops mistake coconut candy for crack cocaine, and more

last updated 8 January 2015

Cops mistake coconut candy for crack cocaine

Two New York plumbers were arrested and jailed for days after police caught them with a bag of candy. José Pena and Cesar Rodriguez went into a store to buy their favorite coconut candy; when they came out, two officers asked to search their van. “I said, ‘Go search,’” Rodriguez said. “I even opened the door.” When one of the cops found a sandwich bag with a crumbled, shiny substance inside, he shouted, “Bingo!” For days, the men languished in jail until a test revealed that the substance was coconut candy, not crack cocaine.

Subscribe to The Week

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

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Michael Douglas thanks erectile-dysfunction drugs for helping him bridge the 25-year age gap with wife Catherine Zeta-Jones. Douglas, 65, has two children with the Welsh actress, and tells AARP: The Magazine that the age difference is not a problem. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” Douglas said. “Some wonderful enhancements have happened in the last few years—Viagra, Cialis—that can make us all feel younger.”

German actor spices up performance with the real thing

German theater officials have told a prominent method actor to stop drinking real vodka during his stage performances. Actor Marc Schulze, 36, plays a drunk in the current Frankfurt production of the Russian play Moscow-Petushki, and for one recent performance he tried to enhance the realism of his performance by replacing the water in his vodka bottle with the real thing. “I was amazed at how good his drunken staggering was,” said one theatergoer, but “then he just collapsed.”