It must be true...

I read it in the tabloids

■■ The Texas Department of Public Safety sent out an Amber Alert advising that the horror movie doll Chucky from the Child’s Play series had kidnapped a 5-year-old named Glen. The alert stated the 28-year-old, 16-pound, 3-foot-1-inch tall suspect was last seen wearing “blue denim overalls” and “wielding a huge kitchen knife” at a home at a specific address in Henderson, Texas. Public safety officials apologized, attributing the phony warning to “a test malfunction.” A woman who answered the phone at the listed address curtly said, “Yes, I’m aware,” before hanging up.

■■ A Texas prosecutor surprised the judge at a pretrial Zoom hearing by appearing as a cat face. Rod Ponton didn’t realize he had the cat filter on the computer, and his usually sober face was replaced with that of a blue-eyed kitten. When the judge pointed it out, Ponton said, “I don’t know how to remove it.” He tried to press on, telling the judge and other lawyers,

“I’m prepared to go forward with it.” Ponton eventually removed the filter, saying, “I’m not a cat.”

■■ A toilet seat that once belonged to Adolf Hitler has sold for $18,750 at auction. The white wooden seat was taken from Hitler’s Bavarian retreat, the Berghof, by a soldier, Ragnvald Borch, at the end of the Second World War. The seat remained on display in the soldier’s basement for decades until his son decided to auction it. Bill Panagopulos of Alexander Historical Auctions said the toilet was “as close to a ‘throne’ as the dictator would ever get,” adding, “One can scarcely imagine the plotting the tyrant undertook while contemplating the world from atop this perch.”