Columbia University: where you can almost taste the class conflict lapping at the edge of campus. According to a credulity-straining (fictional?) report in The Morningside Post, Columbia student Jane Watkins was hurrying up 114th on her way to class when she was rudely mugged. By very polite muggers!

Betsy Morgan, the former CEO of The Huffington Post, has taken a job running Glenn Beck's website. Hmm. Isn't there something troubling about leaping from one ideological organization to an opposite one so quickly? Morgan has a compelling explanation.

Peru's jovial but hugely unpopular president, Alan Garcia has come up with a great excuse for his 34 percent approval rating, saying Peruvians are "sad, distrustful ... we have a natural lack of trust." That, or he's a shitty president?

Former BP chief Tony Hayward is back! Speaking for the first time since his resignation, he said that all of those pesky reporters were part of an unjust media "feeding frenzy" and that he'd definitely go sailing mid-spill again, too.

Asked how her daughter went from cherubic medical anomaly to cold-blooded killer, the mother of 'Hiccup Girl' Jennifer Mee mused, "Where things went wrong I do not know." But she believes the "curse of the hiccups" is where it began.

A new study indicates that French people have pretty terrible sex lives, with more than three-quarters of respondents saying that sexual problems were causing relationship problems. But what about every stereotype of French people, ever?

California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman reported for jury duty, and made it into the pool for a trial. Asked whether anyone had scheduling conflicts, the eBay billionaire said she was busy running for governor. She was neither selected nor excused.

Paris Hilton was busted for felony cocaine possession last night in Vegas. Her defense: The purse with the coke wasn't hers. She used the same excuse when she was busted for pot in South Africa. It worked, that time.

There are plenty of believable excuses for missing work, but pulling out the not-actually-dead dead relative story is always a bad idea. It worked at first for one Bronx school staffer, until she was spotted bowling with her "dead" mom.

Jeremy Piven Is Still Desperately Clinging to the 'Sushi Defense' [Gawker.TV]

A Colorado woman says she drove her car into a canal because she was startled by a vampire. The vampire... of bad driving! No, actually, a real vampire. She said she crashed, because of a vampire. [KVDR]

Why did 42-year-old Darin Badami of Omaha, Nebraska, grow marijuana? "Adolph Hitler made me grow it," Mr. Badami told police. This is called the "Nuremberg Defense," and it didn't work for the Nazis. But good luck, Darin! [WOWT via BullfightsOnAcid]

Last month, rumor was Lohan was sleeping with celebrity photographer Indrani. Now Lindsay's Twitter-fighting Indrani (and her Bravo reality show) for making her astoundingly late to a televised photo shoot. Lindsay says it was a "set-up" for "ratings."

US Border Patrol says the 15-year-old Mexican boy they killed has ties to a human trafficking ring.

A rookie NYPD officer, who was fired after testing positive for cocaine use, says he drank coca tea but was "unaware of the tea's connection with cocaine." His girlfriend's mom gave him the Mate de Coca. [NYDN]

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, will appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show today to explain why she tried to sell access to ex-husband Prince Andrew for $724,000: She was totally blotto, and the cash was "for a friend."

A retired Italian Bishop thinks the Catholic Church's pedophilia scandal is a "Zionist attack." Of course! The Jews dressed up as young boys and were abused by priests, and then dressed up as the Pope and ignored it! [Guardian]

Four titans of the financial world—including Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein—are testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today, and boy are they sophisticated in their exegeses about how they almost killed us all.

Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, and Citigroup chairman Dick Parsons were all supposed to be in Washington yesterday to meet with President Obama at the White House. But then a tiny patch of fog materialized in the skies overhead and they had to retreat to their offices, victims of a force even more powerful than Wall Street's mightiest: Mother Nature. So how did that go down in Washington?

The Washington Post, as we all know, has the worst opinion section in America. The people who run it don't understand all the fuss about them running an op-ed by Sarah Palin on climate change!