AP - PITTSBURGH - Change for a million? That’s what a man was seeking Saturday when he handed a $1 million bill to a cashier at a Pittsburgh supermarket. But when the Giant Eagle employee refused and a manager confiscated the bogus bill, the man flew into a rage, police said.

The man slammed an electronic funds-transfer machine into the counter and reached for a scanner gun, police said.

Police arrested the man, who was not carrying identification and has refused to give his name to authorities. He is being held in the Allegheny County Jail.

Since 1969, the $100 bill is the largest note in circulation.

Police believe the $1 million note seized at the supermarket may have originated at a Dallas-based ministry. Last year, the ministry distributed thousands of religious pamphlets with a picture of President Grover Cleveland on a $1 million bill.

jay: there are too many angles on this story, so i’ll stick with a single question: grover cleveland? really? also, i like that there was rage.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Music, books and Hollywood films… China can now add testimonies of regret by corrupt officials to its exhaustive list of copyright violations.

Zhang Shaocang, former Communist Party chief of state-owned power company Anhui Province Energy Group Co Ltd, wept as he read a four-page “letter of apology” during his corruption trial at a court in Fuyang, Anhui, according to a Procuratorial Daily report reproduced in Wednesday’s Beijing News.

But Zhang’s sentiments were later found to be strikingly similar to those of Zhu Fuzhong, a disgraced former party chief of Tongan village in southwestern Sichuan province, whose apology letter was printed in the Procuratorial Daily less than two weeks before.

“Before working, I never gave much thought to money and regarded achievement as the starting point and end result of my work,” the paper quoted both of the letters as saying.

“I gradually lost my bearings and the scope of my position,” Zhang said at his trial, an exact copy of Fu’s own wording.

Apart from using whole sentences word for word, Zhang also — more craftily — made “slight changes” in other areas.

The Procuratorial Daily, the official paper of China’s top prosecutions office, is distributed as reading material at many “supervision venues,” the paper said, referring to the often secret locations where Communist Party officials are held for questioning.

It was possible that Zhang, while being investigated for charges of bribe-taking, had drawn inspiration from Zhu’s apology in the hope of gaining leniency from the court, the paper said.

“Because of this, Zhang’s apology was dismissed as ’show-boating,’” the paper said.

rob: i’m not sure how “crafty” the subtle word changes were in the context of entire sentences being lifted intact, but still: bonus points for weeping.

Monroe, La. (AP) — While Wal-Mart is known for dropping its prices, one West Monroe man took the ad campaign seriously when he dropped the price of a plasma television from $984 to $4.88. Police arrested Chandon L. Simms, 23, on Tuesday at the retail store on a charge of felony theft.

According to police reports, Simms carried a 42-inch Sanyo Plasma TV to a self-checkout aisle after switching the original price tag of $984 with one for only $4.88. Wal-Mart Loss Prevention officers witnessed the alleged transaction and called police.

When the store officers stopped Simms on his way out the door, he produced a receipt for a television purchased at the West Monroe Wal-Mart, authorities said.

Simms told officers that he purchased a TV from the West Monroe store and planned to returrn that one and keep the one he purchased for only $4.88 from the Monroe store. He was then arrested and booked into the Ouachita Correctional Center.

jay: $4.88 seems optimistic. i mean, if you’re gonna drop the price on your own and hope to get away with it, how about dropping it to $99.95? something that would seem like a good deal but not unreasonable. $4.88? come on, dude.

Brendan Montague
Times Online
A pensioner aged 102 has been granted a 25-year mortgage despite the fact he would have to live until 127 to pay the loan back.

The property investor from East Sussex has taken out an interest-only £200,000 mortgage and hopes to meet the £958 monthly repayments with income from rent as he joins a growing army of retired people hoping to cash in on buy-to-let schemes.

Most lenders set a limit at 75 years for mortgage applicants but a handful, including Woolwich, and Bristol & West, have no such restrictions. This has led to a rush of applications from older investors.

rob: and they hassled emma and me for months about being freelancers when we applied for our mortgage. months!

dan: rob, it says right there in the story that this guy is part of an army. a growing army, of people with nothing better to do than practice kicking ass. are you gonna tell him he can’t buy a house?