Status updates, and more

last updated 8 January 2015

Good week for:

Status updates, after 19-year-old Rodney Bradford of Brooklyn, N.Y., convinced police to drop charges that he committed a robbery at 11:50 a.m. by proving he’d updated his Facebook page at 11:49 a.m. It’s the first criminal case in which a Facebook entry has provided alibi evidence.

Persistence, after 26-year-old James Ng from Burton, Ohio, and his fiancée spent seven days searching the woods before finding the 1-carat diamond engagement ring he’d dropped from a hot air balloon just before proposing. “We ran up to it … and we’re like, ‘Yes!’” said Ng, after finding the ring.

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Horse owners, after Florida’s Brevard County voted to exclude horses from its pooper-scooper law. “To stop a 1,000-pound animal, get off, hold it while you try and put the poop in a bag is just not a good idea,” horse owner Wanetta Dyer told commissioners.

Bad week for:

The furniture in Berkeley, Calif., after the City Council there voted unanimously to ban the declawing of cats. “It’s a complex and painful procedure, and it’s only for the benefit of the owner,” said Councilmember Jesse Arreguin.

Visitors to the St. Louis Zoo, after the zoo responded to the death of several polar bears by installing a family of electronic polar bears in its empty polar bear display.

Andy Lee House of Lufkin, Texas, who accidentally drove his $2 million Bugatti Veyron into a marsh. The French-built Veyron is among the world’s fastest and most expensive production cars. House, 34, told police he was distracted by a low-flying pelican, which caused him to drop his cell phone and veer off the road.