Look alike gets offers

Saddam Hussein Back in the News: (1) Mohamed Bishr, an Egyptian man bearing a remarkable resemblance to the late Iraqi dictator, claimed in October that he had been briefly kidnapped after spurning an offer to portray Saddam in a porn video. Bishr's adult sons told the al-Ahram newspaper in Alexandria that their father had been offered the equivalent of $330,000. (In 2002, according to a 2010 Washington Post report, the CIA briefly contemplated using a Saddam impersonator in a porn video as a tool to publicly embarrass Saddam into relinquishing power prior to the U.S. invasion.) (2) In October, former British soldier Nigel Ely offered at auction in Derby, England, a two-foot-square piece of metal that he said came from the iconic Baghdad statue of Saddam toppled by U.S. Marines in April 2003. Ely said he had grabbed the piece indiscriminately, but remembers that it was a portion of Saddam's buttocks.

Apparently, officials at the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport felt the need for professional guidance on rebranding their facility to (as one put it) "carry it into the modern era," and so hired the creative talents of Big Communications of Birmingham, Ala., to help. Big's suggested name for the airport, announced to great fanfare in September: "Chattanooga Airport."

Elsie Pawlow, a senior citizen of Edmonton, Alberta, filed a $100,000 lawsuit in September against Kraft Canada Inc., parent company of the makers of Stride Gum, which brags that it is "ridiculously long-lasting." Pawlow complained that she had to scrub down her dentures after using Stride, to "dig out" specks of gum - a condition that caused her to experience "depression for approximately 10 minutes."

Colleen O'Neal filed a lawsuit recently against United/Continental airlines over the "post traumatic stress disorder" she said she has suffered since a 20-minute flight in October 2009 - in which, during turbulent weather, the plane "banked" from side to side and lost altitude.

In August, a state court in Frankfurt, Germany, awarded 3,000 euros (about $4,200) to Magnus Gaefgen, 36, on his claim that during a 2002 police interrogation, officers "threatened violence" against him if he did not disclose what he knew about a missing 11-year-old boy who was later found dead. In 2003, Gaefgen was convicted of the boy's murder and is serving a life sentence, but the court nevertheless thought he should be compensated for his "pain and suffering."

In Charlotte, N.C., in October, a female motorist was arrested for ramming another woman's car after that woman said "Good morning" to the motorist's boyfriend as the women dropped kids off at school.

In Arbutus, Md., in October, a woman was arrested for throwing bleach and disinfectant at another woman in a Walmart (an incident in which at least 19 bystanders sought medical assistance).