Sept. 25 to Oct. 1 of 1998

(the best of the week)

BRAS D'OR, Nova Scotia (Reuters) - Jesus may be trying to send a message to night owls on their midnight doughnut binges. Or perhaps He just craves a cup of coffee.

Either way, hundreds of people are flocking to the Tim Horton's doughnut shop in the small Cape Breton Island town of Bras D'Or on Canada's Atlantic coast to see a Christ-like image that has inexplicably appeared on an outside wall.

The apparition first showed up Monday and was said to be clearly visible to staff at a restaurant across the road under the shop's floodlights.

``They removed the light yesterday ... but now apparently you can see it toward the side of the building, as if the image has moved,'' said a waitress at the nearby Lick-a-Chick restaurant.

``People are coming from far and wide to see it.''

The waitress, who did not want to be identified, said there is little to see in the daylight -- the image is clearest at night -- but there were traffic jams around the doughnut shop Thursday morning as the curious and credulous flocked to the site.

``Apparently, it's really, really busy up there already today. I guess the traffic is crazy and there's cars parked all around,'' said Diane Slopek, a spokeswoman for the Tim Horton's chain, which is owned by Wendy's International Inc.

``We're just puzzled by the whole situation.''

TORONTO, Sept. 24 (UPI) - A 59-year-old man who was locked in his room by his daughter for several days last year says he was starving and thought he was going to die.

William Spencer told The Toronto Sun newspaper his 33-year-old daughter Kimberley Spencer fed him a single ham roll a day and that he also ate some of the food provided for his cat, which shared the room with him.

Kimberly Spencer, his only child, has pleaded guilty to forcible confinement and assault. A Toronto court has given her a 12-month conditional sentence and two years' probation.

Prosecutor Mark Holmes told the court William Spencer had alcoholic dementia and was being cared for by his daughter.

He says when a friend of Spencer dropped by to see him, in June last year, he couldn't get in, and called the police.

Police found Spencer in a room, ``hungry, unfed and alone.'' He was unable to say how many days he had been locked in the room.

Holmes says the door had been sealed from the outside with a chain lock and a rope that was tied from his doorknob to another knob in the hall.

Holmes told the court Spencer's daughter took him out on a balcony once a day to eat a bun with ham and then locked him in the room again.

Asked what he thought of his daugher, Spencer told the newspaper, ``I hate her guts.''

Kimberly Spencer says she is happy she will ``never have to see him again as long as I live.''

BONN (Reuters) - Let's face it, if your surname happens to be Hittler and your parents christen you Adolf, life isn't going to be easy.

But a retired Austrian truck driver was quoted in a German newspaper on Sunday as saying he never changed his name out of respect for his mother and father.

``I often thought my life would have been a lot easier if I had had another name,'' 60-year-old Adolf Hittler told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

``No one ever believed that my name is Adolf Hittler. I get anonymous calls in the middle of the night from people who say 'Heil Hitler' or 'We have someone here for the gas chamber','' he said. ``But I never changed it because I am proud of my parents.''

Hittler was attending a conference ``for people with infamous names'' in Braunau, an Austrian town just across border from Germany and the birthplace of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

He said the name once cost him a construction job at a dam project in Austria. An engineer asked the workers what their names were.

``The first in line answered 'Tony Sailer', the same as the famous skier,'' Hittler said. ``The next answered 'Andreas Hofer', the same name as the Austrian freedom fighter. The engineer was growing annoyed because he thought they were pulling his leg.

``And when he got to me I tried to warn him about my name, but when I said 'I'm Adolf Hittler' he threw us all out.''

Hittler said his son had adopted his wife's surname.

``I accepted that but it still hurt me a little bit,'' Hittler said.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - A Finnish man has been charged with manslaughter after allegedly killing his mother when she interrupted his enjoyment of a Formula One race, afternoon daily Iltalehti reported on Wednesday.

The newspaper said the 42-year-old man strangled his 68-year-old mother in a fit of rage when she turned off the television in the middle of a Grand Prix in August. Court officials were not available for comment.

Over one million Finns, or one quarter of the population, are estimated to have watched the penultimate race of the Formula One season on Sunday. Compatriot Mika Hakkinen won the race and is now close to clinching his first title.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Margarita Sanchez's husband didn't speak to her for eight days. She thought he was angry, but he wasn't. He was dead.

Cayetano Sanchez, 83, died in bed more than a week ago, but his wife slept next to him every night for eight days before she realized it, the Mexican government news agency Notimex reported on Tuesday, citing police sources.

State Judicial Police in the town of Huatusco, in the gulf coastal state of Veracruz, reported finding Sanchez's partially decomposed body with the bed covers up to his neck, Notimex said.

``The wife told authorities her husband did not speak to her for eight days even though she tried to speak to him without realizing he was dead,'' Notimex said.

A preliminary investigation suggested Sanchez may have died of alcohol poisoning, Notimex said.

Margarita Sanchez was to be examined by mental health specialists.

 Man keeps mother's corpse for four months

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An Indian man watched over his mother's corpse in a house for four months in the hope that she might come back to life, Press Trust of India (PTI) said on Thursday.

PTI said the case had come to light when the sister of the dead woman reported to police in the western city of Jaipur that her 30-year-old nephew, Harpreet Singh, was behaving strangely.

``They later found the decaying body of Nirmal Kaur, rotting in a cot in Singh's house on the outskirts of the city,'' it said.

The unemployed youth had told his aunt, who was visiting Jaipur from New Delhi, that his mother had gone to the northern city of Chandigarh for work. But when her inquiries in Chandigarh proved fruitless, the aunt approached the police.

PTI quoted police as saying that Singh had stayed in his house since his mother died on May 29, with his only contacts to the outside world the local milk and newspaper sellers.