Curses, Foiled Again

Federal authorities charged Gregory Giusti, 48, with making at least 48 threatening phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a seven-week period. According to an affidavit supporting the charges, Giusti used an Internet phone service called Magic Jack to make the calls, declaring during one to Pelosi’s San Francisco district office that “the number I’m calling from is untraceable, so if you’re trying to trace it, have fun.” Authorities promptly traced the call to Giusti.

Following his initial court appearance, during which he wept but made no statement, Giusti’s mother, Eleanor Giusti, 83, blamed Fox News for radicalizing her son, whose criminal record includes evading train fare. (Talking Points Memo, San Francisco’s KGO-TV News)

Shot in the Dark

When a light is turned on at night, even briefly, it triggers cellular changes that might lead to cancer, according to researchers in the United Kingdom and Israel. Writing in the journal Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics, Dr. Rachel Ben-Shlomo of the University of Haifa recommended, “If you want to get up to go to the toilet, you should avoid reaching for the light switch. (Britain’s Daily Mail)

Eighth-Amendment Follies

After a Nevada judge sentenced Michelle Lyn Taylor, 34, to life in prison for forcing a 13-year-old boy to touch her breasts, public defender Alina Kilpatrick pointed out, “She is getting a greater penalty for having a boy touch her breast than if she killed him.” (Elko Daily Free Press)

Watching the Defectives

An inspector general’s report that high-ranking employees in the Security and Exchange Commission violated SEC rules “by viewing pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images using government computer resources and official time” cited as one example a staff accountant who tried to access pornographic web sites nearly 1,800 times in a two-week period, using her SEC laptop, and had some 600 pornographic images saved on her laptop hard drive. The report also said a senior attorney admitted to spending up to eight hours a day downloading pornography to his government computer, so much pornography, in fact, “that he exhausted the available space on the computer hard drive and downloaded pornography to CDs or DVDs that he accumulated in boxes in his office.” (CNN)

Not-So-Great Escape

Sheriff’s deputies who went to a farm in Albion, Ind., to arrest Thomas Hovis Jr., 52, on drug charges, said that when they arrived, Hovis ran from the house to a small outbuilding. They used tear gas to try to flush him from the building, but he remained inside. Finally they entered the building, where they found him neck deep in a pit filled with hog and dog feces. Chief Deputy Doug Harp said Hovis stood in the manure pit for at least an hour and had to be treated for hypothermia. (Fort Wayne’s WANE-TV News) 

Privatization Follies

Italian contractors helping train Afghan police recruits solved the mystery of why the trainees couldn’t shoot straight while being taught by U.S. government contractors. The Italians noticed the Americans, who were paid $6 billion to train the Afghans, had never adjusted the sights on their AK-47s and M-16s. During the eight years contractors from DynCorp International were allegedly training recruits, the death rate for Afghan police officers rose from about two dozen a month to around 125. “We’re paying somebody to teach these people to shoot these weapons, and nobody ever bothered to check their sights?” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo, who chaired Senate committee investigating contractor oversights. “It is an unbelievable, incompetent story.” (McClatchy Newspapers)

Bum Bomb

A California Highway Patrol officer who questioned Steven Ferrini, 60, for parking illegally at 4:30 a.m. found drugs and arrested him. A subsequent search found “a suspicious wire, with an on-off switch” in the man’s front pocket leading to his anal cavity, according to a police report. When “the subject began to explain his knowledge of explosives and bomb-making,” officers called the El Dorado County Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team and evacuated the South Lake Tahoe office. The bomb squad determined the device was not a bomb but an anal vibrator. (Tahoe Daily Tribune)

Problem Solved

The Japanese automation firm Super Faiths has developed recycling machines that turn used diapers, mostly those used by incontinent adults, into fuel for biomass boilers and stoves. The SFD Recycle System machines can handle up to 1,102 pounds of diapers a day. They automatically shred, dry and sterilize used disposable diapers and turn them into bacteria-free material for making fuel pellets, which can be used to help heat roads, homes or water. (CNET)

 Obvious Choice

Authorities said the executive director of the Chicago area’s commuter rail service committed suicide by stepping in front of one of his agency’s trains. Phil Pagano, 60, who headed Metra for 20 years, was on paid administrative leave at the time because of allegations he received an unapproved $56,000 bonus. McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren said a train engineer saw Pagano on the tracks facing the train and applied the emergency brakes but wasn’t able to stop in time. (Associated Press)

Rule Britannia

The coastguard had to rescue a man intending to sail along the coast of southern England after his motorboat ran out of fuel. He was well short of his goal, having spent eight days circling a 36-square-mile island a short distance from where he set off. The man, who had no nautical charts and only a roadmap, told authorities he was trying to navigate by keeping the coastline on his right, but he “somehow lost his bearings and ended up traveling around the Isle of Sheppey,” said Robin Castle, a member of the lifeboat rescue station. (Reuters)

Blessing of the Week

A Louisiana House committee approved a bill allowing concealed weapons to be carried in churches and temples, but the measure fell short of passage in the full House by eight votes. Rep. Harry Burns, who introduced the bill, said he would reintroduce it. Rep. Walker Hines, who amended the bill to prohibit the carrying of a firearm at a church on a school campus, said he would not want to see Burns’ bill apply to “cults and fringe groups.” (New Orleans’s The Times Picayune)

Little Things Mean a Lot

Authorities in Indonesia’s Papua announced that applicants to join the police or military would be rejected if they’ve had their organs artificially enhanced. Papua police chief Bekto Suprapto said that unnaturally large penises cause “hindrance during training.” A sexologist quoted by The Jakarta Globe said Papuans often wrap their penis with leaves from the gatal-gatal (itchy) tree so that it swells up “like it has been stung by a bee.” (Reuters)

To Serve Man

An Australian publisher had to destroy copies of a cookbook because a recipe called for “salt and freshly ground black people” instead of black pepper. “When it comes to the proofreader, of course they should have picked it up,” Bob Sessions of Penguin Group Australia said, “but proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task.” (BBC News)

Fetishes on Parade

Police who arrested Sherwin Shayegan on a drug warrant in Tualatin, Ore., said the convicted felon had befriended student athletes and offered them money to give him piggyback rides. “We received communication from several schools that this individual had talked his way into their locker room, had pictures taken, had a ball autographed, had gone out to the parking lot and got piggyback rides from some of the players,” said Tom Welter, executive director of the Oregon School Activities Association. Detectives in Bonney Lake, Wash., said Shayegan also made friends with a football player there, “gave him a manila envelope full of odd amounts of money, then jumped on his back and told him he wanted a piggyback ride.” (Portland’s KGW-TV News)

A 27-year-old Oklahoma City man told police he was sexually assaulted by a man he met online while seeking a “friend” who shares his “fetish for flatulence.” After exchanging phone numbers and text messages with graphic sexual questions, the victim said he agreed to meet the man because he agreed to “fart for me.” (The Oklahoman)

News and Blues is compiled from the nation’s press. To contribute, submit original clippings, citing date and source, to Roland Sweet in care of The New Times.