FISHKILL, N.Y. (AP) - Police said two men were injured after they became trapped under a golf car at a country club in suburban New York when their vehicle flipped over during a "weird little wind event."

Police say strong winds were to blame for the mishap at the Beekman Country club in East Fishkill, about 66 miles north of Manhattan. Both men suffered head injuries and abrasions, but refused treatment.

Police Sgt. Kevin Keefe says the two golfers and witnesses reported seeing a funnel cloud. He says, "What we had was a weird little wind event."

National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Villani said the dry, sunny conditions could have led to the formation of a "dust devil." He said they can

SYDNEY (AP) - A pet dog swept off a sailboat in choppy seas off Australia was found alive four months later on a remote island - and returned to her family, who'd thought she was dead. The 4-year-old blue heeler, named Sophie Tucker, was captured by rangers last week on St. Bees Island in northern Queensland state, nearly 6 miles from where she was washed off the sailboat in November, owner Jan Griffith said.

Rangers initially thought they'd captured a wild dog, but friends who heard about the canine contacted Griffith and suggested it might be Sophie.

Last Tuesday, Griffith and her husband met the rangers' boat as it arrived back on the mainland and were shocked to find their long-lost pet on board.

"We called the dog and she started whimpering and banging the cage and they let her out and she just about flattened us," Griffith told Monday's Daily Mercury newspaper. "She wriggled around like a mad thing."

The dog had been spotted by several people on both St. Bees and nearby Keswick Island, leading Griffith to believe she swam back and forth between the two, which are separated by a narrow channel.

Queensland wildlife official Steve Fisher said three rangers trapped Sophie in a cage, using dog food as bait.

"The day Sophie was trapped she was nervous because she'd been separated from human contact," Fisher said. "But after a while she settled down."

Sophie appeared to have survived by eating goats, as rangers found several baby goat carcasses around the island, Griffith said. This week, the plucky pup was back to her usual diet of ground meat and dog biscuits.

CHILTON, Wis. (AP) - A man faces an arson charge after telling authorities he wasn't thinking when he decided to use gasoline for cleaning up his apartment, and then tossed a lit cigarette into a pile of gas-soaked cushions and clothes. A criminal complaint filed Monday quoted a 47-year-old man as saying he knew gasoline is flammable and never should have used it.

The complaint said that when the fire began Friday, he didn't pull the fire alarm but instead shouted "fire" a couple times and walked to the Menasha police department for an ambulance to take him to the hospital where he was treated for burns.

Firefighters said the blaze extensively damaged the apartment and caused heavy smoke damage throughout the building, putting tenants of 11 other units out of their homes.

NEW YORK (AP) - He's lucky she said yes - and he's also lucky the diamond engagement ring he dropped on the Brooklyn Bridge didn't end up in the river.

Don Walling fumbled the ring as he proposed to his girlfriend on the pedestrian walkway of the New York City bridge. But he valiantly shimmied down to the lower span - where car traffic travels - and found the bauble. It was slightly bent, but the diamonds were still in place.

A police van that patrols the bridge stopped traffic to let him retrieve it.

The Coram resident and girlfriend Gina Pellicani plan to get married on April 24, 2010, the anniversary of the day they started dating four years ago.

ALLENDALE, S.C. (AP) - James Hines was a giant - a 6-foot-7, 300-pound preacher and funk musician so big that after he died in 2004, a macabre rumor began circulating in this small town that the undertaker had to cut off his legs to fit him in the coffin.

This week, after years of whispers, Hines' body was exhumed, and the gruesome story appeared to be all too true.

The coroner's office said only that it had found "undesirable evidence," and a criminal investigation has been opened. But Hines' widow said investigators told her that his legs had been cut off between the ankle and calf, and his feet had been placed inside the casket.

"It's just like pulling the scab off an old sore. I was kind of like smoothing things out. But now it's like starting all over again," Ann Hines said Thursday, two days after investigators pulled the casket from the ground, lifted the lid, photographed the contents and returned it to the earth, all without leaving the graveyard.

Under South Carolina law, destroying or desecrating human remains is punishable by one to 10 years in prison.

Reached this week, a man who identified himself as the owner of Cave Funeral Home, which handled the funeral, declined to comment.

The allegations were so startling that funeral directors around the country are talking about the case.

"You hear old wives' tales about this around the turn of the century, but, no, this was a shock to me," said Doggett Whitaker, a past president of the National Funeral Directors Association.

Ann Hines said that she and her family went to the funeral home after her husband's death to make the final arrangements, and she picked out a standard-size casket. At the funeral, only the top half of the lid was open, showing Hines from the chest up, she said. She said nobody ever suggested a bigger box.

Funeral directors sometimes pull up the knees or shift the padding in the coffin to make sure the body fits. But the best solution is usually a longer casket, Whitaker said, adding: "Just being upfront and honest with the family is the best path to take."

He said bodies are usually measured and families told where a corpse's head will rest in the casket. Longer caskets are routinely manufactured, though they cost more than standard ones.

Duffie Stone, the county prosecutor, would not comment on the investigation.

Around town, Hines was an unforgettable figure, and not just because of his size. An albino black man, he performed for decades as a soul and funk guitarist.

His group, J. Hines and the Boys, never hit it big but filled clubs and auditoriums in the Southeast, and small radio stations played some of its recordings, including "Funky Funk" and "Can't Think of Nothing (Blank Mind)."

He gave up what he called his instrument of sin when he found God in the early 1990s. But his pastor had heard Hines' recordings and, convinced that Hines should share his gift, took him to buy a new guitar.

Eventually, Hines became a minister in Allendale, about 75 miles southwest of the capital, Columbia. He played his guitar during services at the church he built and on a nearby Christian radio station until his death from skin cancer at 60.

At his funeral, several people, including one of Hines' five children, said the casket looked too small. Hines was about 79 inches tall in his bare feet, according to his family.

The interior length of a standard coffin is about 80 inches but can vary by a few inches, depending on the padding, the thickness of the walls and other features, said Scott Jones, chief executive of Service Casket Co., a casket distributor in Columbus, Ga.

After the funeral, the rumors began - started, some say, by a former funeral home worker - and it seemed as if all 3,700 people in town were talking about the burial.

Ann Hines said she threatened to sue Cave Funeral Home and the business agreed to settle out of court as long as she did not tell anyone how much she received. She said workers at the funeral home never told her exactly what happened. She said she accepted the deal and tried to forget about the whole thing and stop wondering why nobody even apologized.

Eventually, someone called the South Carolina Board of Funeral Service, and the coroner and an investigator with the agency received the widow's permission to dig up the grave.