Calif. high school band girl beats off muggers with marching baton

A 17-year-old high school marching band student of Quartz Hill, Calif., beat up two assailants who tried to mug her while she walked to school, sheriff’s officials said Tuesday. The girl punched one of the men in the nose, kicked the other in the groin and beat both with her large baton before she ran away on Friday morning, officials said. "The moral to this story is don’t mess with the marching band girls, or you just might get what you deserve," said Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Michael Rust, adding that two men approached the girl from behind, grabbed her coat and demanded money. Deputies searched near Quartz Hill High School for the muggers, looking for a man who was holding his bloodied nose and the other limping. No arrests have been made.

A 76-year-old man claimed that he needed oranges in his suitcase to keep up his vitamin C level, but Italian police soon realized the "C" stood for cocaine. Customs officers in Rome arrested the Dutch man for trying to smuggle in more than 13 pounds of cocaine packed into oranges that had been emptied of their pulp on Thursday. He was arrested on international drug trafficking charges at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport after he arrived from Buenos Aires, Argentina and said he was on his way back to the Netherlands following a vacation. Police at the airport said the drugs would have had a street value of $6.6 million.