Etc...

Is something wrong, officer?

Can you picture the athletes on your favorite team – say it's in baseball – having to stop practice while police run onto the field to arrest them all? Probably not. But that's essentially what happened one day last week in Ukraine. In this case, the sport wasn't baseball; it was rowing. According to reports, the national team of neighboring Belarus was training for the world championships on Lake Kuchurgan in the breakaway region of Transdniester – at the invitation of separatists there – because ice on the waters in its own republic hadn't thawed yet. Now, Belarus is skilled at the sport, having won Olympic medals in two of the three summer Games in which it has participated. But it was a windy day and, after a while, eight sculls strayed or were pushed by the current into Ukrainian territory, where border police spotted them and called the Coast Guard. Soon, a cutter showed up and the Bela-russians were intercepted and taken to jail. Since they'd all left their passports back on shore and couldn't prove who they were, they were charged with trespassing . At last word, the team members were back in Transdniester, but it's not clear whether they recovered their expensive equipment. Ukraine is known for confiscating valuable property in criminal cases, and its rowers are competitive, too.