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It may not smell like a rose but a New York City sewage plant is offering tours for lovers on Valentine's Day. The tour host and superintendent of the Newtown Creek Wastewater treatment plant in Brooklyn tells the Daily News (http://nydn.us/xEFu6I ) it'll be a unique date, and one that special someone will never forget.

A suspect in an auto theft was arrested Thursday after a bizarre five-hour standoff on the rooftops of a Westwood neighborhood. Police SWAT members finally climbed the roof of a home and peppered the man with bean-bag ammunition. That persuaded him to scramble over to a truck-mounted ramp, and he was lowered to the ground and handcuffed, Officer Karen Rayner said.

A California woman has her gold necklace back months after she accidentally flushed it down her toilet. San Rafael sanitation district employees were performing routine cleaning work on a pipeline last month when they came across Ann Aulakh's necklace.

Remember the pig hidden within the decal on the doors of some Vermont State Police cruisers? There's now a movement under way to keep it there. But it turns out there was more wrong with that image than just the white pig hidden as a splotch on the cow, made to resemble one of Vermont's ubiquitous Holsteins.

Qasim Khan waged the unlikeliest of battles with Pakistani authorities Thursday over the right to charge hundreds of curious visitors the equivalent of 22 cents each to see a roughly 40-foot whale shark he bought from a fisherman.

The former mayor of a Los Angeles suburb has pleaded guilty to stealing a commercial food mixer from the local school district so he could make dough for his home pizza oven. Los Angeles County prosecutors say Larry Guidi entered the plea Wednesday to a felony count of grand theft.

A spat over forgetting to wish his wife a happy birthday landed a South Florida man in jail on domestic violence charges. When Judge "Jay" Hurley heard the circumstances that brought 47-year-old Joseph Bray to bond court Tuesday, he issued a unique ruling.

The Washington State Patrol says an irate driver apparently whacked a man in the shoulder with a small sledge hammer in a road rage dispute. Trooper Julie Startup says authorities responded early Tuesday to a report of a two-car collision on State Route 167 in the Renton area.

Authorities in Alaska say a man threatened to teach "crackheads" how to make "electromagnetic distortion devices" unless the state paid him $85,000. Stanislaus Grzeskowiak, of North Pole, is charged with felony extortion and threatening harm.

A Butte man who told officers he instigated a police chase because he always wanted to try it, found out it'll cost him a $1,000 fine to go with his tire damage. The Montana Standard in Butte reports (http://bit.ly/xZW1B4) 55-year-old John C.

Authorities say a helicopter encountered mechanical problems before making an emergency landing at an elementary school playground in a Modesto, Calif., neighborhood. Neighborhood resident Susanna Ballard tells The Modesto Bee (http://bit.

A Chicago college is offering a class on the Occupy movement. Thirty-two undergraduate students are enrolled at Roosevelt University's "Occupy Everywhere" class. It's a three-credit political science course that looks at the movement that started last summer near New York City's Wall Street and spread nationwide.

Competitive-eating champ Takeru Kobayashi (tah-kah-roo koh-bee-yah-shee) conquered Philadelphia's annual gustatory gorge-fest by eating 337 chicken wings in a half-hour before a crowd of nearly 20,000 at Wing Bowl XX. The Japanese phenom demolished the record of 255 set last year by Jonathan "Super" Squibb.

Champis the bunny doesn't only hop — he also knows how to herd his masters' flock of sheep, possibly having picked up the skill after watching trained dogs do the job. The 5-year-old pet rabbit from the small village of Kal in northern Sweden shot to online fame last week, having garnered more than 700,000 YouTube hits so far, after a clip of his sheep herding skills surfaced on a blog.

A woman who called the wrong number when she suffered a stroke still found help a couple of time zones away. Loretta Smith, of Cuyahoga Falls near Akron, felt her right side go numb and fell to the floor at her home last weekend.

A runaway elk can't go home to Pennsylvania, even if it wanted to. More than a year after the 3-year-old elk escaped from his paddock, he's being denied re-entry to the state from West Virginia. George and Sharon Richter want the animal back but state officials say they're worried it could be infected with chronic wasting disease, a highly contagious and fatal neurological disease.

A 250-pound man with a history of jumping on the backs of student athletes in the Pacific Northwest has pleaded guilty to assault. The Independent Record (http://bit.ly/zS4tib) reports 28-year-old Sherwin Shayegan acknowledged in court Wednesday that he hopped on two players at a soccer tournament in Helena in October.

A 55-year-old Montana man who says he "always wanted" to be part of a police chase can check that off his bucket list. The Montana Standard (http://bit.ly/xPc9Yc) reports John C. Hughes followed a patrol car for seven blocks early Thursday before pulling his SUV around and taking off at speeds of up to 70 mph.

A prison inmate who makes stationery and license plates pulled a fast one on state police by adding the image of a pig to the state decal on their cruisers. On the 16-inch car door decals, made by prisoners in Windsor, one of the spots on a cow in a scene with mountains and a pine tree has been changed to the shape of a pig, a derogatory term for police.

With 120 lions, tigers and other big cats on the grounds, the owner of a Colorado refuge didn't think he needed a security system. Nick Sculac says he changed his mind after two January break-ins at Serenity Springs Wildlife Center, 20 miles east of Colorado Springs.

A woman who appeared to not have any teeth in surveillance photos from a bank robbery last month has confessed, apologized and told police she planned the heist because she needed the money for dentures. Evelyn Marie Fuller, 49, remained in a jail Wednesday unable to post bond on bank robbery and other charges filed a day earlier by police in Waynesburg, in western Pennsylvania, where she's accused of robbing the First National Bank on Jan.

A woman's speeding got her a warning from an Ohio state trooper but wasn't enough to keep her grandchild from being born in her car. Donna Richmond got pulled over on Tuesday morning as she was trying to rush her daughter to a Columbus hospital.

A large seabird found in the back of a pickup truck in Los Angeles has been released to begin its long flight home across the Pacific. The Los Angeles Times reports (http://lat.ms/yVM1yL ) the Laysan Albatross that normally nests on remote islands was released Tuesday from a boat off San Pedro.

The mountaintop Jesus can stay at a northwest Montana ski resort — for now. The religious statue, which has been on federal land since 1955, was allowed to remain in place for at least 10 more years after the U.S. Forest Service reversed its eviction order Tuesday.

A homeless man who was stuck in thick mud near the Rio Grande river in Albuquerque for three days was rescued Saturday after some high school students on a field trip heard him yelling for help, authorities said. However, the man's newfound freedom wasn't going to last.