LOCKED STORE
WINDHAM, N.H. (AP) - A New Hampshire convenience store is changing its "open door" policy after getting robbed three times in the last year. Customers at the Windham Neighborhood Variety store now find the door locked and have to be approved by owner Jignesh Patel before they're let in. Patel says 90 percent of his customers are regulars and are allowed in quickly. Other times, he's refused to let in people whose faces he couldn't see clearly through the glass doors. Patel says losing money is one thing, but he's more worried about protecting himself and making sure he can care for his wife and four-year-old son.

BRAZIL-SUNDAY IN RIO
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - The Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro has had a scheduling problem. Four groups wanted to hold separate events on Copacabana beach yesterday, including participants in a gay pride parade, worshippers celebrating Brazil's patron saint, runners competing in a half marathon, and families taking part in Children's Day activities. The solution? Precise timing. The day started with a procession of hundreds of thousands of people lugging heavy wooden crosses and saintly images to honor the saint. By midmorning, participants in the World Half Marathon Championship zipped along the beachfront. Then around noon, parents took their young ones to Children's Day events by the sea. At nightfall, the raucous gay pride parade had taken over, with go-go boys dancing to electronic music on top of 20 trucks. One worshipper who participated in the religious procession says she thinks there's space for everyone.

WIFE CARRYING CHAMPIONSHIP
NEWRY, Maine (AP) - Two friends from New Hampshire are the winners of the ninth annual North American Wife-Carrying Championship. Even though they're not married, they almost won the contest last year and returned to Maine this year for redemption. Ri Fahnestock and Sarah Silverberg were awarded Silverberg's weight in beer, which comes to five cases. They also won five times her weight in cash, or $610. And they qualified for the World Wife-Carrying Championship in Finland. Forty-three teams signed up to run the 278-yard course, which featured a 39-inch-high wooden hurdle, a long pit of waist-deep water, and a mound of earth.

Pizza-Eating Contest
NEW YORK (AP) - The reigning Coney Island hot-dog eating champ is branching out to more food groups. Joey Chestnut chowed down 45 slices of pizza in 10 minutes to win the first Famiglia World Pizza Eating Championship yesterday in New York's Times Square. He says he fasted for more than a day to prepare for the contest, and he folded and squeezed the slices to make them easier to swallow. The 24-year-old Californian won Coney Island's July Fourth hot-dog eating contest in 2007 and took the title again this summer by gulping down 59 dogs in 10 minutes. Last month, he consumed 93 Krystal hamburgers in eight minutes to win a contest in Chattanooga, Tenn.

BORROWING AN AIRPLANE
RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. (AP) - A prosecutor has agreed to drop charges against an Arkansas airport commissioner accused of taking someone else's airplane and allowing a student to crash it into power lines. Phillip Cowger had faced a misdemeanor count of unauthorized use of a vehicle. But the prosecutor says all sides involved in the crash have come to terms. Cowger reportedly took the keys to the plane and flew it to another town to give a student pilot a lesson. He told investigators that the owner had told him he could use the plane "anytime." A Federal Aviation Administration report says Cowger told investigators the student used up too much runway and lifted off the ground without enough power. The landing gear clipped some power lines, sending it into a nearby field and destroying it. Both Cowger and the student pilot
escaped with only minor injuries.

ESCAPE SENTENCE
TEXARKANA, Ark. (AP) - A prisoner who walked away from the recreation yard at an Arkansas correctional center was captured less than a block away, and now has two years added to his jail sentence. James Reid had seven months left of a two-year sentence when he walked away in July. He pleaded guilty to an escape charge. A spokeswoman for the Department of Community Correction says the center where Reid was "is like a last chance before being placed in a prison." She says a lot of inmates there "take that last chance to improve their lives. Some do not."

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)