Oddly enough

Boy makes 49 calls to 911 from Texas school

ROUND ROCK, Texas -- Police in this Austin suburb were stumped for hours by the 49 emergency calls that kept coming in from an unregistered cell phone. The caller would say nothing before hanging up, sometimes after a brief giggle. Eventually, though, police found their man, er, child: a 7-year-old calling from his elementary school classroom just for kicks. "He was just doing it for fun because he had a cell phone," said Eric Poteet, spokesman for the Round Rock police "The only number that would work was 911." During one of the calls, dispatchers heard classroom chatter in the background and decided to check out the elementary school. Once they found the boy, the officers confiscated the phone and called his parents, Poteet said. Although making silent or abusive calls to 911 is a class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, the boy was not charged because of his age, Poteet said.

Midnight Zamboni run prompts firings

BOISE, Idaho -- Two employees of the city's ice skating rink have been fired for making a midnight fast-food run in a pair of Zambonis. An anonymous tipster reported seeing the two big ice-resurfacing machines chug through a Burger King drive-through and return to the rink around 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 10. The squat, rubber-tired vehicles, which have a top speed of about 5 mph, drove 1 1/2 miles in all. The Zamboni operators were both temporary city employees whose names were not released by Parks and Recreation Department. "They were fired immediately," said Parks Department director Jim Hall.

Hong Kong considers green 'eco' coffins

HONG KONG -- They're presentable, environmentally friendly and burn faster: cardboard "eco-coffins" may just be the solution to long lines at Hong Kong's busy crematoriums, officials say. Health officials want to introduce the green coffins -- made of corrugated cardboard and said to speed up the cremation process from two and a half hours to an hour -- to alleviate traffic at crematoriums, the government said Tuesday. Cremating the dead is more common and affordable than burials in land-scarce Hong Kong.

-- From wire reports