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Slowest police pursuit ever 

BETHLEHEM, Pa.— It wasn’t your typical stolen vehicle — and it definitely wasn’t a textbook police pursuit. 

An officer on his way to work at 6:30 a.m. Monday was startled to see a 30-year-old man cruising down the shoulder of the street on a child’s Fisher Price Power Wheels car. 

The 180-pound rider was about 10 times the recommended age for the battery-operated car, which nonetheless held up under his weight, plugging along at 3 mph, police said. 

Police eventually stopped the man after perhaps the slowest chase on record. 

The officer sounded his car horn and showed his badge to the driver, who ignored him. So the officer got out on foot and walked up to the culprit. 

Police said the driver smelled of alcohol and stumbled as he tried to get up. He told police he was going to his uncle’s home, but didn’t say why he was using a toy to get there. 

The officer took the man to police headquarters and released him after he sobered up, police said. A woman who called police to report that her son’s toy car had been stolen opted not to press charges, but police charged the man with public drunkenness. 

No more bad vibes, OK dude? 

TELLURIDE, Colo. — A Town Council known for nasty squabbling called in a shaman to rid its meeting hall of bad vibes. 

Christopher Beaver conducted a “smudging ceremony” in the Telluride Town Council chambers earlier this summer after he declared the basement room full of negative energy. 

Members of the council say they’ve been in agreement more lately, but they’re reluctant to attribute that to the ceremony, which included burning imported menthol. But they say it opened their minds. 

“I’m not saying there is a connection,” said Mayor John Steel, a 67-year-old, cowboy-hat-wearing attorney. “What it really did maybe was to focus people’s minds on trying to seek higher ground.”