LA CROSSE, Wis. – It was the perfect gift for someone born on Feb. 29 – a Leap Day grandchild.

As Julie Austin of Galesville prepared to observe her Leap Year birthday on Friday, she was hoping to share the special day with the latest addition to her family.

And that’s what happened when her daughter, Melissa Boudreau, gave birth to a girl at 3:23 a.m. at Franciscan Skemp Medical Center. Adilyne Rejoyce weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces and was 20 inches long.

“I’m so thrilled,” said Austin, who was born Feb. 29, 1956.”I never thought we’d have two Leap Day babies in our family, and to have a granddaughter on my birthday is so special.” Feb. 29 only comes around every four years as a way of keeping the calendar in synch with the seasonal or astronomical year.

Detectives say man asked friend to shoot him in arm

PASCO, Wash. – What happened to faking a cough?

Sheriff’s detectives in Franklin County, Wash., say a man had his friend shoot him in the shoulder so he wouldn’t have to go to work.

When he first spoke with deputies, Daniel Kuch told them he’d been the victim of a drive-by shooting while he was jogging Thursday. But detectives told KONA radio that Kuch later acknowledged that he asked his friend to shoot him so he could get some time off work and avoid a drug test.

The friend has been arrested for investigation of reckless endangerment. Kuch is expected to be charged with false reporting. Detectives declined to say where Kuch works, or whether he still has a job. It wasn’t known if he had obtained a lawyer.

NYC childhood pals linked by ‘lifeline’ after transplant

NEW YORK – Two grade-school friends from New York City who are now connected by more than shared memories are recovering after one gave the other a kidney.

Recipient Ricardo Manier called donor Karl Celestin’s gift “a lifeline” at a news conference Friday. It came less than two weeks after the surgery at a Manhattan hospital.

The 21-year-old Manier has been hospitalized repeatedly with a kidney-scarring disease since he was 5. The illness forced him to put his premedical studies on hold last June. Celestin is studying for a medical degree in the Dominican Republic. Manier hopes to join him.

The two were classmates at Holy Family School in Queens. They reconnected last year through the social networking Web site Facebook.