NOT TICKLED PINK

Prisoners returning to a jail damaged in a failed breakout attempt will find a radically new decor - pink with blue teddy bear accents. The Dallas County Sheriff said he decided on the colour scheme as part of extensive repairs necessary after inmates set a fire and vandalized the interior in October last year. ‘Basically, if they are going to act like children and commit a childish act, then we’ll make a childish atmosphere.’

CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY NOT

A fed-up mother in South Carolina had her 12-year-old son arrested for allegedly rummaging through his great-grandmother’s things and playing with his Christmas present early. The mother called police after learning her son had disobeyed orders and repeatedly taken a Game Boy from its hiding place at his grandmother’s house next door and played with it. He was arrested on petty larceny charges, taken to the local police station in handcuffs, and held until his mother picked him up after church.

ONE BOY, BOY FOR $ALE

Not since Mr Bumble’s song in Oliver! has anyone actually tried it so blatantly or so it seems until now. A 50-year old father in California embroiled in a custody dispute posted a phony ad on the Internet offering to give away his five-year-old boy to make his wife look bad. The ad, written as if it were placed by the mother, listed the boy as ‘free to a good home’ on the popular Craigslist.org website. San Diego police say that the case has been referred to the Internet Crimes Against Children task force.

WHICH BABY?

Two Chinese families are suing a hospital 15 years after they took home the wrong newborn baby. A woman surnamed Lu, who gave birth at a hospital in Nanning in the southern province of Guangxi in 1991, suspected that the boy was not her biological son after a test in 2004 showed their blood types were incompatible. It has since been confirmed that a boy raised by a woman surnamed Liu who had given birth to a son on the same day was actually theirs, and that the boy they had raised was the son of Liu and a man surnamed Yao.