King Elvis Won’t Play the Palace

--All rock ‘n’ roll fans know Elvis Presley as the king. But there soon will be another King Elvis who has no connection to the music world. Elvis Johnson-Idan, 36, who heads the Parks Department in the north London borough of Brent, has learned that elders of the Fanti kingdom of coastal Ghana have determined from family lineages that he is next in line for the throne vacated by a king’s death earlier this year. “It’s beginning to sink in, but we still have to adjust to the reality of it all,” said the future King Elvis, as he will be known to his 10,000 subjects. Johnson-Idan said he and his wife, Elizabeth, a switchboard operator who will become a queen, will fly to Ghana for the Dec. 24 coronation. He said the king is given “a mud palace--just an ordinary house that is designated as a chief’s house. We’re a very, very poor tribe. All we’ve got is our culture, and it’s important that we keep that intact.” Johnson-Idan, who left Ghana 10 years ago, said he does not plan to return permanently to his kingdom. “I’m doing a very important job here and I like it very much.”

--Grant Martell’s fifth-grade students in Idaho Falls, Ida., scrambled to complete their class assignment and did not crack under the pressure. The teacher at A. H. Bush Elementary School assigned his students the task of building a package that would protect an egg from breaking when it was dropped 30 feet. “What we’re trying to accomplish is to get the kids to work together as a team and really experiment with the scientific process,” Martell said. Some of the packages dropped from the school’s roof fell with resounding thuds and crunches, but without damaging their cargo. Another floated to the ground with the aid of a parachute. Only one of the 15 eggs broke. Multiple layers of cardboard, tin, plastic foam chips and bubble plastic in a package designed by John David Lea and Jamie Bobof, both 10, failed to protect their egg. “I don’t think we put enough cushion in it,” Lea said.

--Minneapolis officials are making a list and people planning to make a move in the city may want to check it twice to avoid bothersome neighbors. In compiling a list of worst neighbors to reduce police visits to trouble spots and improve neighborhood life, the city will ask each of its 14 departments to rank the 10 properties that cause the most trouble. Then officials will select up to 50 addresses for the final listing. A house could be included for repeated criminal activity, health violations, housing code transgressions, noisy parties or a combination of offenses. “There are folks who are chronic offenders, whose behavior doesn’t comport with the life styles of the rest of the neighborhood,” City Councilman Steve Cramer said.