The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)

Odds & Ends

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Ugliest dog

PETALUMA, CALIF. (AP) » Martha is big, ugly, lazy and gassy. And a world champion.

In a competitio­n annually dominated by the old, the tiny, and the hairless, the 3-year-old, 125-pound Neapolitan Mastiff used her lollygaggi­ng youth to win the 29th annual World’s Ugliest Dog Contest.

She was a favorite of the Northern California crowd from the start, often plopping down on her side on stage with her droopy face spread across the ground when she was supposed to be showing off. The judges didn’t even need to hear her signature snore to give her the award.

“Do you know you just won the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest?” asked Kerry Sanders of NBC News, one of three judges who gave Martha the crown. Her handler Shirley Zindler answered for her: “I’d gloat, but I need a nap.”

Martha lumbered away with $1,500, a flashy trophy and a trip to New York for media appearance­s, all things she could hardly care less about.

The dog, from nearby Sebastopol, was rescued when she was nearly blind from neglect by the Dogwood Animal Rescue Project in Sonoma County, where the contest was held. After several surgeries, she can now see again, Zindler said.

The only animal in this year’s contest too big to be held by her handler, Martha beat out 13 other dogs, most of them the kind of older, smaller dogs who win here.

Moe, a 16-year-old Brussels Griffon-pug mix from Santa Rosa, California, who was the oldest in the competitio­n, came in second.

He had lost his hearing and sight but his sense of smell is strong and he was enjoying all the smells at the Sonoma-Marin Fair where the contest is held, including funnel cakes and other fried goodies.

Chase, a 14-year-old Chinese Crested-Harke mix, came all the way from Neath, United Kingdom to take third place.

The contestant­s were judged on first impression­s, unusual attributes, personalit­y and audience reaction.

Many of the contestant­s were adopted. Monkey, a 6-year- old Brussels Griffon, and Icky, an 8-year-old unknown breed, were both rescued from the homes of hoarders.

These dogs — some with acne, others with tongues permanentl­y sticking out — are used to getting called ugly. But for their owners, it was love at first sight.

“He’s my sexy boy,” Vicky Adler, of Davis, California, said of her 8-year-old Chinese Crested named Zoomer.

Indian Trump village

MARODA, INDIA (AP) » A charity that provides toilets to poor Indians is leading an effort to rename a tiny northern village after President Donald Trump, saying the gesture is meant to honor relations with the U.S. and draw support for better sanitation in India.

The new name, Trump Sulabh Village, is not official, and so will not appear on maps. The charity’s name is Sulabh Internatio­nal after the Hindi word for “accessible,” which is meant to describe the simple pit toilets it builds for free across a country that has too few.

Many of the 400 villagers said they had no idea who Trump is.

But they are delighted that their village elders agreed to the promotiona­l gimmick because it also means they will receive free toilets in each of the village’s 60 or so mud-built houses. None of the funding for the new toilets is coming from Trump or the U.S.

“I don’t understand why they couldn’t name it after our own prime minister,” said constructi­on worker Sajid Hussain. Still, he’s happy for the toilet-building initiative and hopes it is followed with funding for education, electricit­y and other improvemen­ts.

For an inaugurati­on attended by media Friday, organizers coached villagers to shout “Zindabad!” which means “Long live!” each time they shouted Trump’s name. The ceremony was staged just before Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to Washington, D.C., for a sit-down with Trump.

The charity’s founder, Bindeshwar Pathak, acknowledg­ed that naming the village after Trump was a stunt aimed at drawing more attention — and hopefully funding — for their efforts to improve sanitation across India.

“Trump is the president of the leading nation in the world, so that’s why I chose him,” he said.

The fact that there are few toilets in the dusty village of Maroda, about 70 kilometers (44miles) north of New Delhi, is not unusual. More than 60 percent of the country’s 1.3 billion people still defecate in the open, and dysentery kills about half a million children around the world every year, according to the World Health Organizati­on.

Stolen news truck

ALBUQUERQU­E, N. M. (AP) » While a television news crew was gathering footage for a story about crime in the Albuquerqu­e downtown area, a thief drove off in the station’s SUV.

The Albuquerqu­e Journal reported the story Friday about the KOB-TV truck.

KOB News Director Michelle Donaldson says the vehicle was recovered within a half hour without police assistance by following the GPS tracking device that was on board.

She says the thief had fled the scene and the SUV was locked with the keys missing

The crew was in the area reporting on recent concerns about crime and safety.

Donaldson says it’s ironic that KOB became victims of a crime in exactly the area they were reporting about.

She says that violates the rule of never being the lead story of your own news cast.

Drive-thru kindness

SCOTTSBURG, IND. (AP) » A customer’s act of kindness at a southern Indiana McDonald’s sparked a chain reaction of niceness in its drive-thru line.

Hunter Hostetler is a cashier at a McDonald’s in Scottsburg, about 50 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. He says an older woman waiting in the restaurant’s drive-thru Sunday decided to pay for the big order of a man with four children in a van behind her.

Hostetler says she asked him to tell the man “Happy Father’s Day,” then drove away

The kind gesture prompted the man to pay for two cars behind him, and that generosity eventually spread to 167 cars by closing time.

Abby Smith was in one of those cars. She tells WDRBTV it’s wonderful knowing that there’s still “a lot of great people out there.”

 ?? TSERING TOPGYAL — ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? A photograph of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed at the entrance of Trump Sulabh Village in Maroda, India, Friday. A toilet charity is leading an effort to rename a tiny, north Indian village after President Donald Trump, saying the gesture is...
TSERING TOPGYAL — ASSOCIATED PRESS A photograph of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed at the entrance of Trump Sulabh Village in Maroda, India, Friday. A toilet charity is leading an effort to rename a tiny, north Indian village after President Donald Trump, saying the gesture is...
 ?? ERIC RISBERG — ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? Shirley Zindler raises the leg of Martha, a Neapolitan Mastiff, during the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair Friday, in Petaluma, Calif. Martha was named the winner of the contest.
ERIC RISBERG — ASSOCIATED PRESS Shirley Zindler raises the leg of Martha, a Neapolitan Mastiff, during the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair Friday, in Petaluma, Calif. Martha was named the winner of the contest.

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