It started with a tweet from an earnest citizen, a tweet that inspired our Twitter-addicted mayor to fire off a concerned late-night tweet of his own. Apparently, the city's statue of former Mayor Vera Katz is missing from its pedestal! Naturally that got the Oregonian's night cops reporter interested, and then there was this story. Time to panic? Not really. The O made the call Sam Adams probably should have made before going public, and learned from the parks bureau rather early this morning that the statue wasn't missing at all. It had been collected for, um, routine cleaning. So .. yawn.

Sometimes bad rumors spread on Twitter, according to this "crabby" Broadway actor who's filed a defamation suit over tweets alleging a certain kind of insect infestation in a certain special place.

Rumors of a TriMet "sickout" among bus and train operators, allegedly to strike back at the agency after it demanded they pay more for their health insurance, appear to have been exaggerated. Buses and trains ran on time, and there were no mass complaints among riders. Seems highly possible that exaggeration was the point all along. Drivers still got everyone talking about the issue, but with none of the ill will that thousands of deep-sixed morning commutes would have engendered.

It felt like the whole world was watching, and it mostly was, as rescue crews spent hours methodically and carefully plucking each of the 33 trapped Chilean miners to freedom through a narrow, half-mile-long shaft. The final miner, Mario Gómez, emerged last night amid a torrent of rejoicing in Chile and everywhere else where people were watching on computers, TVs and cell phones. What's more, except for Gómez, who had pneumonia, they were all mostly healthy. It's being hailed as a triumph of technology. But really (he says, stepping on the soapbox), it should be a wake-up call for improved regulation and safety rules.

She couldn't name a recent Supreme Court decision she has a beef with, even though she'd ostensibly be asked to vet the court's next member. Instead, Christine O'Donnell, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Delaware, was forced to grin and smear her way through the first debate in that race yesterday. But if you call her stupid, or ill-informed, or whatever, then remember: You're just an "elitist."

So how is the Pentagon responding to a judge's order suspending enforcement "don't ask, don't tell"? Turns out, it's not. Not yet at least. Military brass have yet to issue any policies or guidance on how to proceed, and everyone's waiting for the White House to decide whether it will file an appeal.

Hey, look! It's a pair of assholes! Seriously, Michiganders Scott and Jennifer Petkov, waging war with a neighbor family, are possibly some of the shittiest people ever. They took to Facebook to taunt a terminally ill 7-year-old girl. And after that girl's mother died last year of the same disease, they drove past the family's house with a coffin on their truck, honking the horn. You might ask what this other family did to deserve all this. Did they kill the Petkov's cat? Parents? Burn down their house? Not quite. Their neighbors didn't respond fast enough to a text message asking about a birthday party invitation.

Wal-Mart really does give a shit about local businesses. In a move aimed, undoubtedly, at softening some of the vigorous backlash directed its way, the Evil Retail Empire says it will double the amount of local produce it provides in its grocery stores. That's potentially a big deal, because Wal-Mart has become the planet's largest grocer.

Rapper T.I. saves a man from suicide! The rapper, aka Clifford Brown, apparently talked a man in Atlanta out of jumping from a high-rise building. He happened upon the scene by accident but offered his services to police, telling the man he "can make it through anything."

Everyone's talking about the dollar's troubles these days. Apparently we should all make like Mr. T and not only invest all our assets gold, but then sell that gold to shady companies that melt it down and give you a pissant check in return. Also, Mr. T just wants to "stay humble."