News & Blues 1/6

When a sheriff’s deputy in Dodge County,
Neb., tried to pull over a drunk-driving suspect, the car sped up. Then
the driver lost control, drove into a ditch and wound up on train
tracks. The Fremont Tribune reported that when the 21-year-old driver abandoned the car and hid from the deputy, a passing train rammed his car.

Mitchell Deslatte, 25, drove up to a
state trooper station in Baton Rouge, La., and asked the trooper at the
front desk if he was in a hotel. WAFB-TV News said Deslatte was
promptly booked for DWI.

Lost in Translation

After 75 minutes of translating Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi rambling speech at the United Nations, his
simultaneous interpreter shouted into the microphone, in Arabic, “I
just can’t take it anymore!” The New York Post reported that
the U.N.’s Arabic section chief, Rasha Ajalyaqeen, took over for the
final 20 minutes. Speeches by heads of state during the annual,
weeklong General Assembly are meant to last a quarter-hour maximum.
“His interpreter just collapsed,” a colleague told the Post. “This is the first time I have seen this in 25 years.”

Rules Are Rules

A Bank of America branch in Tampa, Fla.,
refused to cash a check for a customer who couldn’t provide the
required thumbprint identification because he has no hands. Steve
Valdez told CNN he showed two photo IDs so he could cash a check drawn
on his wife’s account, but a bank supervisor said that without a
thumbprint he would need to bring his wife with him or open an account.

Old School

Frustrated by slow Internet
transmission, a South African information technology company
demonstrated it could transmit data faster by carrier pigeon than by
using the country’s leading Internet service provider, Telkom. Local
news agency SAPA reported that Unlimited IT needed two hours, six
minutes and 57 seconds for the pigeon with the date card strapped to
its leg to fly 50 miles from its offices and the data to be downloaded.
During that time, only 4 percent of the data was transferred using a
Telkom line.

Clear-Cut Path

Bhutan warned its citizens they’re threatening the
Buddhist kingdom’s lush scenery and their own national happiness by
cutting down 60,000 young trees each year to make prayer flags, which
Himalayan Buddhists display for good luck and to help the dead find the
right path to their next life. Buddhist monks say fresh poles must be
used each time. “If you reuse an old flagpole, you aren’t putting in
effort, which means the merit earned is compromised,” monk Lopon Gyem
Tshering told Reuters. Bhutan’s constitution emphasizes the importance
of Gross National Happiness over Gross Domestic Product and stipulates
the country must have at least 60 percent forest cover.

Patron of the (Body) Arts

Arkansas authorities charged Betsey Wright, 66, a former
top aide of Bill Clinton when he was governor, with trying to smuggle a
knife and 48 tattoo needles onto the state’s death row. A guard found
the needles inside a Doritos bag. Insisting she found the Doritos bag
lying in the bottom of a vending machine at the prison, Wright said,
“They think it’s me, but it’s not.”