Pakistani Prisoners Use Turbans to Escape
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Maybe the jailers should have seen it coming.
The BBC reported Thursday that seven prisoners had escaped from a high-security prison in Pakistan by using their turbans as ropes.
The seven men, some of whom were convicted for murder, busted through a bathroom window in the hospital wing of the prison in Machh, 30 miles south of Quetta (search), the capital of Baluchistan province (search).
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}They then crawled out the window, unplugged an electric security fence and unrolled their turbans, tossing them over the prison's exterior wall and climbing up the lengths of cloth.
A prison official told the Associated Press the inmates were being held in the hospital because of overcrowding.
A search was under way in nearby villages.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}— Thanks to Out There reader Alireza Z.
Debt to Society Only Temporarily Paid Off
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A man released from prison Thursday after serving a three-year sentence allegedly stole a van just hours later and was soon back in custody.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Hector Zaragoza, 28, was arrested in Madisonville after leading police on a 25-mile pursuit in a service van authorities say he stole shortly after his release from the Huntsville Walls Unit (search).
Zaragoza had been imprisoned for driving while intoxicated and aggravated assault. He was being held Thursday night in the Walker County Jail, facing charges of felony theft of a vehicle, evading arrest and operating a vehicle with a revoked license.
Authorities said Zaragoza stole a van belonging to a Huntsville electric company that was repairing streetlights.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"My guys were up in a bucket truck, there were cones all around and there was a city truck there," McCaffety Electric Vice President Robert McCaffety said in Friday's editions of The Huntsville Item. "This guy jumps in the service van, hops the curb and hauls butt."
Zaragoza had no further obligation to the prison system when he was released, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said.
— Thanks to Out There reader Lois G.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Elderly Woman Busted for Packing Heat
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — She's 87, and "a nice lady."
She's also facing a weapons charge after trying to enter the Essex County Courthouse with a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson (search).
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Rebecca Solomon of Newark was running late for a hearing at landlord-tenant court, and said she forgot to take the gun — which was still in its original box — out of her handbag last Wednesday.
A metal detector at the courthouse flagged the weapon.
"I asked the guard if he could just keep it until I got back from court," Solomon told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Monday's newspapers. "He said, 'I can't do that — I'm afraid I'm going to have to call my supervisor.'"
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Although the senior has a permit to own the gun, she does not have one to carry it in public. She was charged with unlawful possession of a handgun.
"We had no choice," said Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura. "We felt bad about it. But there was nothing we can do."
The sheriff said he hopes the prosecutor's office examines the case and either downgrades the charges or dismisses them entirely.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"She didn't mean any harm," the sheriff said. "And she's such a nice lady."
Solomon said she bought the gun — and a box of bullets — for protection. Within the past year, her home has been broken into three times, she said.
"I know I made a mistake," she told the newspaper. "I just get forgetful sometimes."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Thieves Find Selves Paddling in Circles
OSLO, Norway (AP) — The two Norwegians thought they had the perfect escape vehicle for their heist — a rowboat.
They overlooked one thing: Neither knew how to row a boat.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Police said Thursday the men had broken into an ambulance boat near the small western town of Askvoll, and likely were looking for drugs or cash.
The boat's burglar alarm alerted the ambulance crewmembers, who quickly arrived and saw the two men trying to flee in the small rowboat just before midnight Wednesday.
Their paddling attempts were hopeless, police said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"They didn't have much of a chance," Deputy Sheriff Arnt Johnny Langeland said on the state radio network NRK. "They were rowing in opposite directions."
The ambulance boat then gave chase, turning its powerful spotlights on the pair rowing in tiny circles. A local ferry joined the slow-speed pursuit, beaming its spotlights on the rowboat as well.
The two men managed to get their rowboat to land, where they immediately were taken into police custody.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}They would likely face charges of breaking and entering, as well as theft, Langeland said, but he did not say if the two had managed to steal anything.
Tax Refund Check Fished Out of Trash
O'FALLON, Mo. (AP) — Proof that it does pay to recycle, a man who inadvertently cast his $4,296 federal income tax refund check into his home's recycling bin got lucky when a worker at a nearby recycling center happened upon it and returned it.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least," 28-year-old Charles Kulage of this St. Louis suburb said of being reunited with the refund check he didn't know ever came.
Kulage, a towboat pilot on the Mississippi River, mistakenly had believed the check merely had been delayed.
The fact was that it got mixed in with junk mail and wound up in Kulage's home recycling bin, then was picked up by trash collectors and taken to a recycling center in nearby St. Peters.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}There, a sorter spotted the check last Monday and plucked it from the pile.
"I had no idea it was even in the mail system, here, and then lost," Kulage said.
After finally getting the check, Kulage took no chances.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I went to the bank and deposited it immediately," he said.
Compiled by FOX News' Paul Wagenseil.
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