At least now he has an excuse for being tardy.

A 16-year-old pulled over by cops for going 142 mph in a 55 mph zone over the weekend told them he was late getting home and didn’t want his parents angry at him.

The Valparaiso, Ind., teen faces reckless-endangerment charges and a license suspension – making it that much easier for his parents to ground him.

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Two men armed with a .50-caliber rifle buggy-jacked an upstate Amish teen.

Levi Hershberger, 19, was driving his buggy on County Road 15 in Dekalb on Monday when the two men pulled up in a car and ransacked his carriage, after telling him they were undercover state troopers.

All they got was a pipe, some tobacco and a flashlight. Both men were caught and charged with robbery, weapons possession and impersonating an officer.

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Two crooks who broke into a Romanian woman’s apartment found she was already so broke, they had to take pity on her.

The two masked men left Filofteia Stefan, 86, the equivalent of about $2 after rummaging through her apartment in Constanta and finding less than a dollar in her wallet.

They gave her all their loose change and left without taking anything.

Stefan gave the money to cops for fingerprint analysis.

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A bank robber in Austria was nabbed because he left his ATM card at a branch where he’d just checked his balance before holding it up.

The knife-wielding robber was identified as a 32-year-old former policeman from Serbia after a clerk who witnessed the heist found the plastic card in the branch shortly afterward.

Police arrested the man after he tried to deposit some of his loot in his account.

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It’s really a “blow” pop.

Spanish police yesterday foiled a plot to smuggle “nose candy” – Colombian cocaine – into the country by concealing it in suckers.

Gang members in Colombia packed the drug into 55 lollipops and sent them by air mail via Madrid’s Barajas Airport, officials said.