MUSTANG-CAMARO RIVALRY
DETROIT (AP) - Gentlemen -- start your engines. And ladies too, because the muscle car wars are heating up again. You might think it's the late 1960's as the Mustang and Camaro go wheel-to-wheel. Ford will introduce a 305-horsepower V-6 engine for the 2011 Mustang at the Los Angeles Auto Show this week. That's one horse more than the Chevy Camaro's V-6. The revived Camaro went on sale in the spring and has been burning rubber getting out of showrooms. Camaro might even outsell Mustang this year, something that hasn't happened since 1985.

GOLD COIN DONATION
YORK, Pa. (AP) - The Salvation Army got a big surprise wrapped in a buck. A gold coin inside a folded $1 bill was dropped into a collection kettle at a Kmart in south-central Pennsylvania. The South African gold Krugerrand was discovered while the Salvation Army was counting the collections. It's worth more than $1,000. Salvation Army officials in York, Pa., say it's a big morale booster for the bell ringers. It's been two years since the local Salvation Army has received a gold coin donation.

BRITAIN-BAD SEX AWARD
LONDON (AP) - Jonathan Littell wins the bad sex award -- Britain's Bad Sex in Fiction Prize. The American author was cited by the Literary Review magazine for his "The Kindly Ones," a 900-page novel narrated by a fictional Nazi officer. The bad sex judges noted a passage which compares a sexual encounter to battle with a mythological cyclops monster. Littell describes a sexual act as "a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg." No comment yet from the bad sex author. But the Literary Review says his editor has accepted the prize.

$979,000 CLASS PAPER
ROCHESTER, Mich. (AP) - One Michigan grad student is getting more than an "A" for her paper -- she's getting nearly $980,000. Oakland University student Bernice Kerner wrote a grant proposal as part of a class project. Her idea is to help older laid-off workers find new jobs. Kerner submitted her proposal to the U.S. Labor Department and landed a three-year grant. Kerner is in the school's master of public administration program.

TOO LATE ROBBER
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) - It can be frustrating getting to the bank just after it closes -- especially if you want to rob it. Police in Waukesha, Wis., report a would-be bandit arrived at the Guardian Credit Union six minutes after closing. Security video shows a man wearing a ski mask entering the first set of doors. But the man, who was carrying a gun, couldn't get through a second set of locked doors. Bank employees called police, but the frustrated crook had already taken off by the time officers arrived. Investigators are reviewing the security tape trying to I-D the man.

EXTREME BEER
BOSTON (AP) - It's Sam Adams with quite a punch -- and a price to match. The new brew from Samuel Adams has the highest alcohol content of any beer on the market, 27 percent. It's also banned in 13 states because of the alcohol. It's called Utopias and it sells for about 150 bucks a bottle. It has a cognac-like hit and is served at room temperature. Jim Koch, founder and owner of the Boston Beer Co., says they're trying to push the envelope. He says the Utopias are aged for 15 years and should be sipped like champagne.

by Jamie Friar

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)