A Florida couple arrested for allegedly breaking into a home told officers they were looking for a place to “make out,” police said.

Becky Herrin, spokeswoman for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, said a neighbor of the vacant Key Largo home called 911 just after 9 p.m. Sunday to report two people breaking into the house, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Tuesday.

Herrin said deputies arrived to find a broken window, the door unlocked and Adrian Alonso and Iliu Gonzalez lying on the floor of the home.

The couple told police they broke in to “make out.” They were arrested and charged with criminal mischief.

Thanks UPI.

Dare I make a prediction?

Well, of course I’ll dare – to predict that on Thursday morning, Nov. 4, after final results are in and the House of Representatives goes back to a Republican majority:

Look for further Big News.

Hillary Clinton announces her resignation as secretary of state.

And – within one week – national news is dominated with reports of the opening of HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT campaign headquarters in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Texas and California – to begin with.

How Bill Clinton’s inner circle wielded vast power to discredit and destroy his former objects of desire: “Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine”

This campaign will not only emphasize that it is now about time (long since!) that the White House stop being dominated only by presidents from the nation’s minority gender. She will also enlist her (now well-behaved) spouse to explain in detail how much of his untouched-by-major-recession presidency was effectively advised by the first lady.

Consider the polls which show that Mrs. Clinton’s popularity is considerably better Mr. Obama’s.

Consider Mrs. Clinton’s virtual silence during the furious debate over Obamacare as well as close Hillary ally James Carville, and how he absolutely blasted the Obamaites for mishandling the unprecedentedly massive BP Gulf-of-Mexico-befouling gigantic oil spill.

Carville also released a poll result reporting that 55 percent of the U.S. believes Obama to be a socialist.

Anyone believing that Hillary will not run against the-president-who-appointed-her-to-the-top-post-in-his-Cabinet has forgotten how many states in their primaries voted for her and against Obama – including a number that are electoral-vote heavies.

All this should lead to a Democratic National Convention that is as fascinating as that one when renominated President Jimmy Carter pursued Sen. Ted Kennedy all over the stage in a disastrously unsuccessful attempt to appear together with Teddy.

That is, unless President Obama decides that one term is enough for him.

Thanks World Net Daily.

 A reported “mummified” body on an abandoned boat in the Florida Keys turned out to be a mannequin. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office says a young couple spotted what they thought was a dead body in an abandoned boat off Sugarloaf Key on Saturday night. They said it appeared to be mummified.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sent a boat to take deputies to the scene. They found only a mannequin on the boat – no human remains were on board.

Thanks My Way.

The man had apparently woken up when the buffalo head fell on his lap. The head was too heavy for him to lift, but the man was able to reach for his cell phone and call for help. He was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Thanks TBO.

A four-year-old boy had a lucky escape after falling from a 17th floor hotel balcony only to bounce off palm trees and land with minor injuries.

Cleanup and containment of a massive oil slick resumed Tuesday as winds eased in the Gulf of Mexico and people along beaches and bayous waited to find out just how badly it might damage the delicate coast.

So far only sheens have reached some coastal waters. The oil has lingered in the Gulf for two weeks, despite an uncapped seafloor gusher. The slow movement has given crews and volunteers time to lay boom in front of shorelines, an effort stymied by choppy seas over the weekend.

Rig operator BP PLC continued to try to cap one of the smaller of three leaks, which if successful, could make it easier to install a containment system over the well.

BP’s chief executive said a containment dome designed to cover the principal leak will be on the seabed Thursday, and will be hooked up to a drill ship over the weekend.

CEO Tony Hayward stressed to reporters in Washington that the procedure had never been done before at a depth of nearly a mile below the water’s surface.

“So we’ll undoubtedly encounter some issues as we go through that process,” he said. “But if that was a good outcome, then you would have the principal leak contained by the early part of next week. But there’s no guarantees.”

The plan is to cover the leak with a 98-ton concrete-and-metal box structure known as a cofferdam, and funnel the oil to the surface. Hayward also said that chemical dispersants being used on the oil have significantly reduced the amount of oil coming to the surface.

The uncertainty has been trying for people who live along a swath of the Gulf from Louisiana to Florida. The undersea well has been spewing 200,000 gallons a day since an April 20 explosion aboard the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 workers. The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd.

“The waiting is the hardest part,” said Dodie Vegas, 44, who rents rooms in her Bridge Side Cabins complex in Grand Isle, the southernmost tip of Louisiana.

She said 10 guests have already canceled their rooms, worried about the oil slick.

“I understand their point. You can’t be mean about it,” she said. “That’s their week off, and if they can’t get another week, they’ve got to decide where they’re going.”

BP has been unable to shut off the well, but crews have reported progress with a new method for cutting the amount of oil that reaches the surface. They’re using a remotely operated underwater vehicle to pump chemicals called dispersants into the oil as it pours from the well, to break it up before it rises. Results were encouraging but the approach is still being evaluated, BP and Coast Guard officials said.

The latest satellite image of the slick, taken Sunday night, indicates that it has shrunk since last week, but that only means some of the oil has gone underwater.

The new image found oil covering about 2,000 square miles, rather than the roughly 3,400 square miles observed last Thursday, said Hans Graber of the University of Miami.

Fishing has been shut down in federal waters from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle, leaving boats idle Monday in the middle of the prime spring season. A special season to allow boats to gather shrimp before it gets coated in oil will close Tuesday evening.

The effect on wildlife is still unclear. No oil was found on 29 dead endangered Kemp’s ridley turtles that were examined by experts after washing up on the beaches along the Mississippi coast over the past few days.

But Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, said tissue samples would be sent off to labs for further review. Experts have warned that just because no oil is found on the turtles that doesn’t mean they didn’t consume contaminated fish or come into contact with toxins.

A second bird was also found in the oil slick and was recovering at a rescue center in Louisiana, according to National Wildlife Federation president and CEO Larry Schweiger. The brown pelican, Louisiana’s state bird, was being cared for along with a northern gannet discovered several days ago.

Schweiger said there was no way to know how many birds have been oiled because the slick is so big and offshore.

Meanwhile, crews haven’t been able to activate a shutout valve underwater. Worse, it could take three months to drill sideways into the well and plug it with mud and concrete to stop the worst U.S. oil spill since the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska, leaking nearly 11 million gallons of crude.

BP said Monday it would compensate people for “legitimate and objectively verifiable” claims from the explosion and spill, but President Barack Obama and others pressed the company to explain exactly what that means.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist toured an Escambia County emergency operations center and said while the Panhandle would see the first impact from the spill, the entire state should be prepared.

“If and when it gets into the Gulf Stream, that will take it around the Gulf of Mexico potentially down to the Keys and up the Atlantic side. Now, I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I want to be a realist. And I just think we all need to be prepared to do whatever we can to protect our state. It’s precious.”

Dana Powell expects at least some lost business at the Paradise Inn in Pensacola Beach, Fla., and could see a different type of guest altogether: Instead of families boating, parasailing and fishing, workers on cleanup crews will probably be renting her rooms.

“They won’t be having as much fun,” she said, “but they might be buying more liquor at the bar, because they’ll be so depressed.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and other officials kept up their criticism of BP and the Coast Guard, saying they never provided plans to protect the Louisiana coast from an oil spill.

Jindal and Sen. David Vitter said local leaders have stepped in to come up with their own solutions and officials are waiting for the Coast Guard to approve the plans and BP to fund them.

“If it were up to the BP and the feds, we would not yet have plans,” Vitter said.

By all accounts, the disaster is certain to cost BP billions. But analysts said the company could handle it; BP is the world’s third-largest oil company and made more than $6 billion in the first three months of this year. The oil spill has drained $32 billion from BP’s stock market value.

Thanks Breitbart.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will likely bolt the Republican party and seek election to the U.S. Senate as an independent, a close confidante said Wednesday.

Crist will announce his plans at 5 p.m. Thursday in his hometown of St. Petersburg. The confidante, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement has not been made, cautioned that Crist can be unpredictable.

The announcement will end weeks of speculation about whether Crist will abandon the GOP after falling far behind former House Speaker and tea party favorite Marco Rubio in polls.

Crist has openly considered running without party affiliation. Top Republicans from former Vice President Dick Cheney to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney have encouraged him to stay in the primary or drop out rather than risking a split vote that could benefit likely Democratic nominee U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek.

Crist did not return calls for comment Wednesday, but told reporters at the Capitol that he was very close to making a decision.

Asked how he would explain running without a party when he had said he was going to run as a Republican, he replied: “I don’t know, number one, that I’m not, and number two, if I were to, I would say what I said the other day: Things change.”

Another possible sign of Crist’s intentions: His campaign website has been stripped of almost any mention of his Republican affiliation with one prominent exception, an endorsement from Sandy Yancey, a former GOP committeewoman, who says, “The Republican Party is being hijacked by ultra conservatives that have let compassion and logic fly out the window.” No mention of the GOP primary is apparent except for outdated press releases.

The most recent poll by Quinnipiac University had Rubio leading Crist by 23 points in the primary, but it suggested Crist could win a three-way race with him and Meek.

Meek could be the biggest beneficiary if Crist goes independent. Polls show him losing badly in a head-to-head race with either Rubio or Crist, but competitive in a three-way race if he can keep the Democratic base while Crist peels off some Republican votes from Rubio and picks up GOP-leaning independents.

If Crist runs as an independent, he will have a harder time raising money and will lose most of his campaign staff, who will likely be blacklisted from future Republican campaigns if they stick with him.

The state Republican Party has already warned county and state party executive committee members that they will be removed from their positions if they support an independent Crist campaign in any way. Members who have already said they will back Crist must rescind their support and ask to have their contributions refunded, although Crist does not have to give the money back.

The rift between the GOP and Crist seemed inconceivable less than 18 months ago, when he was a rising star in the party. He had a huge lead over Rubio in the polls when they entered race for the seat then-Sen. Mel Martinez left early.

Crist quickly earned endorsements from the Republican establishment in Washington, while Rubio had trouble raising money.

But then Crist made a political calculation that backfired, choosing to embrace President Barack Obama—literally—and his $787 billion federal stimulus plan at a Fort Myers rally in February 2009. At the time, Obama’s poll numbers were high, and Crist hoped the stimulus money for state government could prevent tough budget decisions for him and the Legislature.

Rubio used the image of “the hug” to his advantage. He hit rallies and events around the state criticizing the Obama agenda while Crist said little about the Senate race for months, focusing instead on raising money. Rubio’s conservative message about limited spending and relying on the free market rather than government to create jobs eventually caught on, first with tea party activists and then with mainstream Republicans.

Crist repeatedly attacked Rubio for using a GOP credit card for personal expenses and questioned budget items he sought as a lawmaker, trying to depict him as anything but the fiscal conservative he says he is. But Crist could not stop Rubio’s momentum.

Thanks Breitbart.

A 19-year-old Florida teen’s suicide broadcast Wednesday on Justin.tv was a result of an overdose of opiates and benzodiazepine, the Broward County Medical Examiner & Trauma Services Division said Friday.

The Pembroke Pines teen was pronounced dead about 6 p.m. on Wednesday, coroner spokeswoman Sherri Baker said in a telephone interview. She said benzodiazepine is used for depression and insomnia.

About 185 people were viewing the feed on the San Francisco-based live-streaming service. The teen had announced his pending suicide on a bodybuilding.com chat forum, which linked to the broadcast. He left an online suicide note. Viewers were seen egging him on.

The chat’s moderator called the authorities, Baker said, and police broke into the residence.

Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel said in an e-mail: “We regret that this has occurred and respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this time. We have policies in place to discourage the distribution of distressing content, and our community monitors the site accordingly. This content was flagged by our community, reviewed, and removed according to our terms of service.”

Public suicides are common; people jump from bridges and buildings. But the phenomenon is now encroaching on to the global arena offered by the internet. A British man suffered the same fate two years ago after being goaded to hang himself while in a webcam chatroom. And the net is also a known medium for organizing suicide pacts.

While online viewers watched  a police officer prodding the Florida teen to see if he was alive, their chat comments ranged from OMG to LOL.

Justin.tv is an open network of thousands of live streaming channels. The network, named after Justin Kan, its first star, has been the target of pranksters and hackers.

Soon after Justin.tv launched, viewers played a prank on Kan, calling the cops from his cellphone to report a stabbing. With guns drawn, the authorities broke into Kan’s apartment to the delight of viewers.

Thanks Wired.

Firefighters in Florida said they were called to a home to free a duck that had plunged down a dryer vent and become stuck.

Paul Smith, 56, of St. Petersburg, said he woke up Tuesday morning to the sound of quacking and he discovered a duck bill protruding from a dryer vent, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported Wednesday.

Smith said the duck apparently flew up to his roof and became trapped after crawling into the vent.

“Its head was just bobbing up and down,” Smith said. “I didn’t know whether they could bite or not. I wasn’t going to stick my hand up there.”

Smith called St. Petersburg Fire Rescue and firefighters arrived with tin snips to cut through the vent and free the water fowl.

Firefighters said the duck was not injured and was last seen waddling toward the nearby Crescent Lake.

Thanks UPI.

Nineopus. Novopus. Freak of nature.

Whatever you want to call it, the nine-legged octopus probably had a leg up on all the other creatures in the Gulf of Mexico – until it was caught and found its way to Hellas Bakery and Restaurant in Florida.

Head Chef Emmanuel Psomas says he was steaming the octopus Thursday when he discovered that it seemed, well, leggier than normal. Psomas says he’s cooked octopus for 40 years – it’s a Greek delicacy – and has never seen one with an extra leg.

He says he counted the legs three times in disbelief.

“I’m like, this can’t be,” Psomas said. “I’ve seen a lot of octopus.”

He’s keeping the octopus in his refrigerator for now, but he plans to enjoy it soon with a bit of vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil and herbs.

While unusual, marine experts say the extra leg on the octopus is likely due to genetic mutation.

Thanks AZ Central.

Not satisfied with living in Florida, Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey wants to move to Washington, D.C., to become the nation’s first vampire president.

Sharkey, 45, spent Friday on a Greyhound bus with his new fiancee, Audrianna Foster, a 19-year-old girl from Ohio he met online. She too believes she is a vampire, or vampyre.

“I haven’t dated a girl older than 19 since 2006,” said the Tampa man as his 19-year-old daughter and his 2-year-old grandson met him at the Greyhound station. “It’s good to be me.”

“The Impaler” claims he’s a direct descendent of Vlad II the Impaler, better known as Dracula.

He has scheduled a Monday news conference in Tampa to announce his plans to file paperwork to run for president of the United States in 2012. He recently switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican so he can run with the GOP.

He ran for governor of Minnesota in 2006 and also had short-lived bids for U.S. Senate in 2000, U.S. President in 2004, and U.S. President in 2008.

In an extended interview with WTSP-TV, Sharkey shared well-thought-out opinions on capital punishment, the abortion issue, and veterans issues. However, he also bragged about having numerous teen-age girlfriends in recent years.

The girls have also provided several skeletons in Sharkey’s closet.

- He’s accused of “brainwashing” a 16-year-old in Minnesota. The two were engaged until last month. Her family now has a restraining order against Sharkey and claims his texts to her violate it.

- He reportedly admitted to harassing another 16-year-old Minnesota girl online in 2009.

- He was arrested in Tennessee several years ago and is currently on probation from Indiana after he was found guilty in 2009 of intimidating a judge. He served six months in a Marion Co. jail before his release. Sources confirm the Secret Service has had to keep him on its radar, since he moves around the country.

Sharkey was once on the Executive Committee of the Hillsborough Co. Republican Party in the 1990s, but A.J. Matthews, HCRP State Committeeman, says he didn’t show any of the extreme behaviors he’s exhibiting now.

“He does believe in Republican values,” Matthews said. “Is he going to make a big splash with his current identification of being a vampire? That’s up to the voters to decide.”

Matthews said he’d help Sharkey with campaign basics, just like he would any Republican candidate. But he’s been trying to advise him to focus on mainstream issues and away from the extreme behaviors.

Sharkey, meanwhile, continues to develop a movie on his campaign, “The True Impaler.” You can read about the campaign on his Web site, www.TheImpalerForMNGovernor.us.

Thanks AZ Central.

The Florida Highway Patrol alleges a two-vehicle crash in Cudjoe Key, Fla., was caused by a female motorist trying to shave her private parts.

Trooper Gary Dunick alleges the woman, identified as Megan Mariah Barnes, was attempting to shave her bikini area while her former husband was holding the wheel when Barnes’ car crashed into the back of a pickup truck, the Key West (Fla.) Citizen reported Friday.

“She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ready for the visit,” Dunick alleges. “If I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Two female passengers in the pickup truck were treated for minor injuries after Tuesday’s accident.

Authorities said one day before the accident, Barnes was convicted of driving under the influence with a prior and driving with a suspended license, the Citizen reported. As a result of the conviction, her driver’s license was revoked for five years and her car was supposed to be impounded.

The Citizen said Barnes, 37, is facing charges of driving with a revoked license, reckless driving and driving with no insurance. She is also facing a charge of leaving the scene of a wreck with injuries for allegedly driving an additional half-mile after Tuesday’s crash.

Thanks UPI.