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--A Tulsa, Okla., copy editor thought it was a joke when he found the note in his car saying it had been “entered by elements of the vice presidential security team . . . after positive contact by an explosive detection canine team.” Then Bruce Honomichl noticed that the headlights had been left on in his 16-year-old car and that the battery was dead. The glove compartment had been broken open and the trunk popped up when he slammed the car door because the lock had been broken and the edges pried. It seems that the Secret Service had been checking the route to be followed by Vice President George Bush’s motorcade when a police dog indicated the presence of a bomb in the car, parked on the street while Honomichl was at work. The car was searched for half an hour but no bomb was found. The culprit may have been safety flares in the trunk, which contain some of the same elements as dynamite. The Secret Service has said it will make restitution.

--Singer Eddie Fisher had taken the plunge here once before, and he was willing to do it again. The occasion was ceremonies inaugurating a $30-million renovation project for Grossinger’s, the famed Catskills resort about 100 miles north of New York City, where the singer had made his debut 37 years ago. This time, Fisher was there to press the wrecker’s plunger and clear the way for new building at the 812-acre site, a favorite stop for entertainers, vacationers and conventioneers in the 1940s and 1950s. But the resort, opened by Austrian immigrants Selig and Mahlke Grossinger, had lost business over the years, especially to the Atlantic City casinos. A group of investors bought it last October, and Servico Inc., an owner and operator of hotels and resort inns, is handling the transformation, with the reopening scheduled for next Fourth of July.

--A seafood merchant trying to make a splash about conservation gave a 23-pound lobster his freedom as members of a string band dressed in shimmering fish outfits played “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Philadelphia merchant Bob Brecht bought the mammoth crustacean for $110 after it was caught off the coast of New England and turned down a $500 offer for it. After a parade in the lobster’s honor, it was flown by helicopter to a spot about five miles off the New Jersey coast and released. “Bob is kind of trying to make a statement about the need for conservation in the lobster industry,” said Bill Gardner, manager of the farmers market where the lobster had been kept. “The larger the lobster, the more eggs they put out. If it were possible to leave the larger lobsters, we would have more lobsters to eat.”