News & Blues 12/9

Curses, Foiled Again

Police charged Brent Nathan Frick, 26,
with stealing a safe containing $69,000 in gold coins from a home in
Coopersburg, Pa., after a witness who knew Frick saw him bust open the
safe in a nearby parking lot. Allentown’s Morning Call reported
the witness noticed some of the papers in the safe had another person’s
name and notified police. State troopers found four more stolen safes
in Frick’s motel room.

Four thieves broke into 16 boats at a
marina in Cambridgeshire, England, and made off with luxury electronics
items, two electric generators, a large amount of alcohol and a
captain’s cap. The Daily Times attributed a quick arrest to
their attempting their getaway in a flat-bottomed punt boat with a top
speed of 3 mph. Police on the riverbank used night-vision goggles to
locate the pole-pushing pirates, aged 26 to 17.

Now Hear This

Japanese police arrested a 41-year-old
man they said stabbed a 21-year-old woman who worked at an ear-cleaning
salon in Tokyo after he had been banned from the salon. The attack
occurred at the woman’s home, where her grandmother was fatally stabbed
when she answered the front door. The Yomiuri newspaper
reported the suspect told police he had been having trouble with the
salon worker and prepared knives to kill her. Ear-cleaning salons are
common throughout Japan.

Odd Endings

An Alberta woman attempting to exit a
parking garage in downtown Calgary died after she became “entangled
between her car door and the body of the car,” fire department official
Jeff Budai told The Calgary Sun. He explained the woman
apparently leaned her torso out of the open driver’s door to reach the
ticket dispenser when the vehicle unexpectedly moved forward. The
vehicle then crashed into a post next to the ticket machine intended to
prevent people from running into the ticket booth, and the door closed
on her, crushing her torso. Budai called the accident “freaky.”

At least five people died to boost the ratings of the Brazilian television show Canal Livre,
according to police, who are investigating the show’s host, state
legislator Wallace Souza. The Associated Press reported that
authorities suspect Souza ordered the murders to prove his claim that
Brazil’s Amazon region is rife with violent crime. “The order to
execute always came from the legislator and his son, who then alerted
the TV crews to get to the scene before the police,” state police
intelligence chief Thomaz Vasconcelos charged, adding that the killings
“appear to have been committed to get rid of his rivals and increase
the audience of the TV show.”

Ken Kitamura, 19, a student at Japan’s
Osaka Institute of Technology, drowned in the Yodogawa River when the
concrete canoe he was testing for a school project capsized. Mainichi Japan reported Kitamura wasn’t wearing a life jacket. 

Energy Drain

The Energy Department wastes millions of
dollars a year by failing to use thermostats that automatically dial
back the temperature when nobody is around, according to an inspector
general’s audit of 55 buildings at four department sites. The report
said the department could save more than $11.5 million a year with
setback controls that adjust the heating and air conditioning at night
and on weekends. The New York Times noted that such thermostats
are already installed in most locations but aren’t being used. Cathy
Zoi, an assistant energy secretary, said that if the report could
motivate officials to start using the thermostats, “then it’s
fantastic.”

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Russell Gortzig, 13, was hospitalized
with multiple burns in Deltona, Fla., after imitating a YouTube posting
of a man in a banana suit lighting himself on fire. WESH.com reported
that a friend siphoned gasoline from a riding lawnmower and poured it
on Gortzig, who held a lighter away from him, but a combination of the
spark and fumes caught his shorts on fire. Linda McCrea said YouTube is
at least partially to blame for her son’s pain, although a
representative of the video-sharing Web site said it takes in 20 hours
of video every minute and is unable to screen postings in advance.

Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’

Authorities arrested a 22-year-old man
in Silverdale, Wash., who started a fight with five people by throwing
rocks at them. Kitsap County sheriff’s deputies said the suspect
explained he was training for the Ultimate Fighting Championship but
had never been in a fight before and told the men, ages 15 to 50, he
“needed practice getting knocked out so he could prepare.”

Parent-Teacher

Conference

Arizona’s Maricopa Unified School
District suspended middle school principal Stephanie Sharp, whom it
accused of engaging in “unprofessional and immoral conduct” by
routinely leaving school to carry on with the father of a student. The Arizona Republic
reported one incident when a woman called the school to say her husband
would be picking up their children at school and had a gun. Officials
locked down the school but couldn’t find Sharp. When she finally
answered her phone, she reportedly told staffers she was in a hotel
room with the woman’s husband.

Slippery Solution

Rather than spend $8,800 to repair their
broken surveillance system, managers of a residential property in
Xi’an, China, smeared 220 pounds of butter on the gas pipelines that
run outside the buildings, making them too slippery for burglars to
climb to sneak into apartments.

Render unto Caesar

After Chicago banker George Michael
claimed his $3 million mansion was really a church, the Illinois
Department of Revenue exempted him from his $80,000 yearly property-tax
bill. The Chicago Tribune reported that Michael’s evidence for
tax-exempt status consisted of a copy of the identification card he
received from the Internet-based Church of Spiritual Humanism by
clicking a button on the outfit’s web site that read “ORDAIN ME” and a
photograph of his church home depicting a cross on the exterior wall.
The village of Lake Bluff, where Michael’s mansion is located,
contested the exemption. Kenneth Galvin, an independent state
administrative law judge working for the revenue department, reversed
the exemption, calling Michael’s application “a sham.” He observed that
the cross “was drawn on the photograph with a marker and did not
physically exist.”

Hawaii’s new law requires residents to
pay taxes on any gambling winnings without being able to deduct losses.
Even gamblers who wind up net losers will still be taxed on any
pre-loss winnings, according to State Rep. Pono Chong, who sponsored
the measure to bring in additional revenue during “a significant and
possibly protracted economic downturn.” According to The Honolulu Advertiser, the Department of Taxation, which supported the bill, estimated the yearly revenue gain at $300,000.

After Jeanette Jamieson of Toccoa, Ga.,
paid off a lien for $45,000 in state taxes owed for 1998 to 2005,
Georgia authorities filed charges of tax evasion for the years 2006 and
2007. During all those years, Jamieson served in the state House of
Representatives and, The Toccoa Record reported, ran a tax return preparation business.

There’s an App for That

A new web site recommends convenient
points in movies currently showing in theaters to go to the bathroom
without missing anything substantial. Dan Florio, the creator of the
site, runpee.com, told The Los Angeles Times he has also developed a Runpee application for iPhones.

Hong Kong’s largest political party has
compiled a list of escalators where women are vulnerable to unwittingly
exposing themselves to peeping Toms. The South China Morning Post
reported the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of
Hong Kong released the study in response to the sharp increase in
people using cell phones to take indecent photos of women. Party
members went to the locations and took wide-angle pictures of
escalators with glass walls, reflective floors and railings with glass
walls. Elizabeth Quat, chair of the committee that led the research,
told reporters she wasn’t concerned the list would turn the areas into
hot spots for phone snappers because “those who want to peep would have
discovered them already.”

Keystone Kops

Six motorcycle cops crashed into each
other while escorting the family of one of the country’s largest
Harley-Davidson dealers to his funeral in Ormand Beach, Fla. A Florida
Highway Patrol official told the Daytona Beach News-Journal the lead rider slowed down, but the riders near the back of the group didn’t, causing the chain-reaction crash.

Hunt & Peckers

New York City signed a $982,269 contract
with a New Jersey company to buy thousands of new manual and electric
typewriters over the next three years and a $99,570 maintenance
contract with a Manhattan firm to service existing typewriters. The New York Post
reported most of the money was for the New York Police Department,
which still uses typewriters to fill out property and evidence vouchers
printed on carbon-paper forms.

The reliance on typewriters contributes
to the slow pace of processing arrests, according to Edith Linn, a
retired NYPD officer and professor of criminal justice at Manhattan’s
Berkeley College. Of the roughly 500 NYPD officers Linn interviewed for
her 2008 book Arrest Decisions, many cited the outdated equipment as a reason for their reluctance to make arrests for less serious crimes.

Horns of a Dilemma

Marijuana may protect the brain from the
harmful effects of binge drinking, according to researchers at the
University of California San Diego. They performed brain scans on 16-
to 19-year-olds in three groups: binge drinkers, binge drinkers who
also smoke pot and those with very little drug or drinking experience.
The study, reported in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology,
found that subjects who drank and smoke showed less brain damage than
binge drinkers and only slightly more brain damage than the control
group.

The Nose Knows

Honolulu city councilors introduced a
bill that would make it illegal for bus riders to have “odors that
unreasonably disturb others or interfere with their use of the transit
system.” Passengers convicted of body odor would face a $500 fine and
up to six months in jail.

A British amusement park last summer
banned rollercoaster riders from raising their arms after receiving
complaints about body odor. Signs at Thorpe Park in Chertsey, Surrey,
warn visitors to keep their arms down and “Say no to BO.” Wardens on
the rides also remind people to consider their fellow passengers and
will remove anyone ignoring the warnings. “Our rides are really scary,
and people tend to sweat more than normal due to the fear and
anticipation they experience while queuing up,” Mike Vallis, a park
director told The Daily Telegraph, “so it can get really pongy.”

Second-Amendment Follies

Larry Tenbrink, 61, was watching TV at home in Mount Vernon, Wash., when he heard his chickens “carrying on,” he told The Skagit Valley Herald.
He grabbed his .22 caliber pistol, headed outside and spotted an
opossum the size of a large cat. Tenbrink said he went to shoot the
animal but pulled the trigger too soon and shot himself in the right
thigh.

A 38-year-old man told sheriff’s
deputies in Carvers Bay, Ga., he and another were practicing with a
rifle at a hunting club when he tried to shoot some dragonflies. Just
then, the other man walked in front of him and was shot in the head. The Georgetown Times said the victim insisted the shooting was accidental.

Slightest Provocations

A 28-year-old Cleveland barber tried to rob a store two doors down from his barbershop because it sold him bad beef jerky. The Plain Dealer
reported the owner recognized the barber and chased him outside with a
baseball bat. The barber said the beef jerky made him and his dog sick.

A 58-year-old man smacked a 64-year-old
woman and then threatened her husband with a kitchen knife after his
luck turned bad playing UNO in Orem, Utah, police Lt. Gary Downey told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Police called to a fight in Allentown, Pa., found a 25-year-old man had been stabbed. The Morning Call
said the victim identified Eric Thomas, 50, as the stabber and told
police the two men began fighting after they argued over the tying of
the victim’s daughter’s shoelaces.

Violence broke out among spectators at a
basketball game in Guangdong, China, after supporters of one team
accused the other team of using a player who was too tall. The Guangzhou Daily
reported that Huizhou Qiaoxing of the Dream Basketball League, which
was set up for players of shorter stature, with a height limit 1.88
meters (6 feet 2 inches), signed three-time national slam-dunk champion
Hu Guang, whose height is listed as 1.95 meters. The coach of the
opposing Shenzen Kuruite demanded officials verify Hu’s height, but he
wouldn’t stand up straight and measured 1.87 meters. Shenzen forfeited
in protest, sending Hu’s team to the finals. Shenzen fans disrupted
that game, causing officials to stop it at halftime. Other spectators,
upset the game had been stopped, then smashed up five cars with
Shenzhen license plates outside the arena.

Mensa Rejects of the Week

Two people declined to evacuate Big
Tujunga Canyon during the wildfire in the mountains north of Los
Angeles and decided to ride out the firestorm in a backyard hot tub.
They wound up critically burned and had to be airlifted for treatment,
according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s official Steve Whitmore, who
told the Associated Press the pair “completely underestimated the fire”
and that the hot tub provided “no protection whatsoever.”

Police in Charleston, W.Va., told WSAZ
News that a 57-year-old man seriously injured his left hand when he
tried to drill through a live round to make a keychain ornament, and
the ammunition exploded.

Avoirdupois Follies

Texas authorities charged George Vera,
25, with possession of a firearm in a correctional facility after the
nearly 600-pound inmate told a guard at the Harris County jail that he
had an unloaded 9mm pistol. The gun and two clips were hidden under
folds of fat and overlooked by police officers who searched him during
his arrest and guards who searched him when he entered the jail.
“Obviously, the system broke down,” former Detention Maj. Mark Kellar
told KPRC News, which reported Vera hid the weapon for more than a day
while in custody.

An increasing number of British soldiers
have become so fat that they cannot be deployed to conflict zones
because doing so puts lives at risk, according to an emergency memo
sent to all army units. The Sunday Observer quoted the memo as saying the army needs to “reinvigorate a warrior ethos and a culture of being fit.”

Churches should try harder to make
overweight people welcome, according to a new Church of England book
that says they should be regarded as “special needs” worshipers,
alongside the blind, the deaf, the bald, breast-feeding mothers, very
short people and readers of tabloid newspapers. “Some pew spaces and
chairs are embarrassingly inadequate for what is known in church
circles as ‘the wider community,’” says the book, which is titled Everybody Welcome. 

Size Matters

The Port of Seattle will have to pay
about $1 million extra for its new cargo terminal because the trench
dug to hold the electrical cable for cranes that lift containers from
ships was too narrow for the cable. “Clearly, the contractor should’ve
built the trench at 2.52 inches, and it’s 2.5,” Port Commission
President Bill Bryant told The Seattle Times.

A bigger trench would have cost
$500,000, so the Port decided to order a smaller 2-inch cable from
Italy that cost $200,000. It’s also liable for a $1 million rent credit
for the tenant whose use of the cable was delayed.

When Guns Are Outlawed

Police in Elyria, Ohio, arrested Thomas
B. Heffner, 49, and his 18-year-old son, Thomas W., for fighting with
swords. “Heffner Jr. stated that he believes he was being treated
unfairly and started to argue,” the police report said. Amy Heffner
explained that when the argument intensified, her husband and son
grabbed swords off the wall and continued to swing them at each other
until the police arrived.

Litigation Nation

A Maryland family wants Honda to pay
them $10 million after a tornado picked up their Odyssey van, which,
according to their statement, “remained airborne for a few seconds
before plummeting to the ground and landing on all four wheels.” Upon
impact, the driver’s side passenger window shattered, and glass flew
into the car, injuring five occupants. Although the Achumba family said
in Prince George’s County Court that the automaker should have used the
same laminated glass for side windows that it uses for windshields, the
father noted that his wife, a defendant, ignored the tornado warning,
choosing to drive her children to school for back-to-school night
because she “was upset at the program for not properly caring for her
child.”

Trina Thompson, 27, is suing her alma
mater for a $70,000 tuition refund because she hasn’t found a job since
earning her bachelor’s degree this April. The information-technology
student insisted the Office of Career Advancement at New York’s Monroe
College has “not tried hard enough to help me.”

The passenger in a car driven by a
drag-racing teenager who seriously injured the driver of a minivan he
hit head-on is suing the victim, insisting she “carelessly and
negligent {sic} failed to avoid the collision with the other vehicle.”
Investigators in Salem, Mass., concluded that Timothy Pereira, 19, was
going 81 mph in a 30 mph zone when he lost control of his Ford Mustang,
veered across the centerline and hit the Honda Odyssey driven by
Christine Speliotis, 42. The Salem News reported that Brandon
Pereira, 17, Timothy’s cousin, was ejected from the vehicle and
suffered severe injuries. His lawyer, Roland Hughes, said he’s seeking
$450,000 from Speliotis, who police said was driving at a reasonable
speed and did nothing wrong, because “I’m trying to get compensation
for my client anywhere I can.”

Fred Hiestand, a leading opponent of
frivolous lawsuits in California, is suing the city of Sacramento, the
city’s police chief, city police officers and a tow truck company for
towing his car after he left it in a no-parking zone. “I was concerned
this might happen,” John Sullivan, president of the Civil Justice
Association of California, told The Recorder. “Fred has been
fighting against frivolous lawsuits for decades, and like a doctor
fighting malaria, he’s become infected himself.”