News & Blues 3/31

Foiled Again and Again And Again and Again

A man whose truck got stuck on railroad tracks near the Baltimore
airport abandoned the stalled vehicle and tried to steal four vehicles
in succession. The Washington Post said police learned of the
first theft attempt from a woman who said she heard a loud noise, which
turned out to be the sound of the stalled truck being hit by an Amtrak
passenger train. The woman then reported finding a man trying to steal
her car. She shouted, and he fled. While police were looking for him,
two other people reported the same man tried but failed to steal their
cars. When police found suspect Gary E. Ensor, 43, not far from the
site of the first theft attempt, a man approached and told them Ensor
had tried unsuccessfully to steal his car, too.

Sticking to the Script

Charged with making 18 bomb threats to schools and hospitals in New
South Wales, Australia, James Ronald Condren, 44, insisted his brother
had made the calls. According to Sydney’s Daily Telegraph,
Condren didn’t help his case when magistrate Kevin Maughn denied him
bail by shouting, “There’s a bomb in the courthouse, everyone back away
right now.”

It Is Written

Malaysian authorities confiscated more than 15,000 Bibles imported
from Indonesia because they call God “Allah.” Both Indonesian and
Malaysian languages use “Allah” as the translation for God in both
Islamic and Christian traditions, but Malaysia has banned non-Muslims
from using “Allah” in their writings, declaring the word is exclusively
Islamic.

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Oodles of Noodles

Marie O’Kelly, 95, called police to report finding letter carrier
Kristine A. Pflughaupt, 46, sitting on the floor of her kitchen in
Marion, Iowa. “She was in uniform and had mail and a mail-carrying bag
with her,” Lt. Steve Etzel told The Cedar Rapids Gazette,
adding that Pflughaupt was using her hands to eat leftover noodles,
which were running down her shirt. When O’Kelly asked her what she was
doing, Pflughaupt didn’t answer. “She just kept eating those noodles,”
O’Kelly said.

Litigation Nation

Scott T. Zielinski, 23, currently serving an eight-year prison
sentence after being convicted of robbing a party store in Clinton
Township, Mich., filed a lawsuit seeking $125,000 from the store, its
owner and three employees. After holding up the employees at knifepoint
and threatening to kill them in order to steal cigarettes, liquor and
$873 in cash, Zielinski claims the store workers chased him, shot him
twice and beat him excessively. The Macomb Daily reported that
Circuit Judge David Viviano ruled Zielinski could proceed with his suit
but only after posting a $10,000 bond in case he loses and has to pay
the defendants’ legal fees.

Flame Games

Firefighters treated a mobile home resident in Des Moines, Iowa, for
smoke inhalation after the bathtub caught fire while the residents were
celebrating the Day of the Dead. Noting someone put candles in plastic
plant vases with dirt at the bottom in the tub, investigators concluded
that when a candle burned down to the bottom of a vase, it caught fire,
melted down and caused the bathtub to catch on fire. “We normally have
the candles burning in a plate of water,” resident Noemi Garcia told The Des Moines Register. “Whoever put them in the bathroom thought the dirt would be good enough. But it wasn’t.”

Yogi Knows Best

Bears looking for food ransack minivans more often than any other
vehicle, according to scientists at Yosemite National Park. They found
that of the 908 vehicles broken into by park bears between 2001 and
2007, 29 percent were minivans, which represented just 7 percent of all
the cars that visited Yosemite. The study, published in the Journal of Mammalogy,
explained that minivans, which are typically driven by families with
children, are virtual picnic baskets on wheels, containing plenty of
snacks, drinks and well-stocked coolers.

When Guns Are

Outlawed

Authorities in Marion County, Fla., reported that a man told them
Elsie Egan, 53, repeatedly hit him in the face with an uncooked steak.
Sheriff’s deputies told the Associated Press that Egan attacked the man
because he refused a piece of sliced bread. He said he wanted a roll.
Egan denied hitting the man with the steak but did admit slapping him
“so that he could learn.”

Second-Amendment

Follies

When the New Orleans Saints played the Washington Redskins, Wayne A.
Spring of Albany, La., announced to his friends that they were welcome
to shoot his 60-inch, high-definition, flat-screen TV if the Saints
won. The Redskins looked like winners until the final minutes, when the
Saints tied the score. After they won in overtime, about a dozen Saints
fans showed up at Spring’s house with firearms and a case of beer and
shot up his TV. The TV shooting broke no laws, Louisiana State Police
Lt. Doug Cain told the Associated Press, “but I would say mixing booze
and firearms is not a good thing.”

How Government Works

An abuse hotline staffed by Florida’s Department of Children &
Families has begun curtailing the number of calls it investigates in an
effort to reduce workload and the system-wide stress that high case
loads can cause. The Miami Herald said that since the
department changed its policy, the Tallahassee-based hotline has
screened out tens of thousands of calls alleging kidnapping, rape,
aggravated child abuse, medical neglect, malnutrition and kids roaming
the street unsupervised. The revised policy allows investigators to
concentrate on children who are most at risk and cut down on frivolous
complaints, DCF Secretary George Sheldon said, including a report from
a teacher that a child came to school wearing mismatched sneakers and
another about a boy whose underwear was on backward.

A workshop on government openness held in Washington, D.C., was
closed to the public. WJLA-TV News reported the Justice
Department-sponsored private training session for Freedom of
Information Act officials was aimed at explaining the new U.S. Office
of Government Information Services, which settles disputes between the
federal bureaucrats and the public. “If they’re getting marching
orders, why shouldn’t the public be there?” Jeff Stachewicz of FOIA
Group Inc. said.

Finders Keepers

Jesus Leonardo, 57, told The New York Times he makes more
than $45,000 a year by cashing in winning tickets on horse races that
betters throw away. “It is literally found money,” he said, explaining
he spends more than 10 hours a day at a New York City off-track betting
parlor. “This has become my job, my life. This is how I feed my family.”

Leonardo collects the betting slips by picking through the OTB
parlor’s trash each night. He also pays two friends $25 a bag to bring
him the trash at four other OTB parlors around the city. Leonardo
collects 2,000 to 7,000 discarded tickets a day and hauls them to his
New Jersey home. He and two other friends bundle them in stacks of 300
for Leonardo to tote to the city the next morning and spend hours
scanning each ticket to find any winners. “It is such exhausting work,”
Leonardo said, “that I give myself a lunch hour.”

Jolting News

The Brazilian Coffee Industry Association (ABIC) has intensified its
crackdown on rogue roasters, who cut corners and costs by adulterating
their products. “The most common thing is to find wood from the
(coffee) tree and shells from the beans, but you can also find corn or
caramel, which is much cheaper than coffee,” Almir Jose da Silva,
ABIC’s chairman, told Reuters. “These coffees can make you feel unwell
in the stomach or make you burp a lot.” 

Brazil is the world’s No. 1 coffee grower and No. 2 consumer, and
since most of the exported coffee is raw beans, the tainted coffee is
largely a domestic problem. Noting that the ABIC ousted 10 members this
year for deliberately bulking up their products, Silva said the
crackdown is aimed at thwarting efforts to recruit new coffee drinkers.
“Quality is what develops consumption,” he said.

Like Shooting

Pork in a Barrel

Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) earmarked $100,000 of taxpayer money
to go to the library in Jamestown, S.C., which is in his district. But
Congress mistakenly designated the money for Jamestown, Calif., a town
that doesn’t even have a library. “That figures for government, doesn’t
it?” Chris Pipkin, who runs the one-room library in Jamestown, S.C.,
told The Washington Times. Pipkin added that he had requested
only $50,000 to buy computers and new bookshelves, but Clyburn’s office
told the paper the congressman decided to double the request after
visiting the library and finding books strewn on the floor because of
the lack of shelving.

As part of the same $1.1 trillion catchall spending bill, Congress
upped a request for funding for bus shelters in Bal Harbour, Fla., from
$100,000 to $250,000. And the airport in Wasilla, Alaska, hometown of
former Gov. Sarah Palin, is getting $500,000 to expand airplane parking
space.

Social Networking

A Detroit man who took a bus to Madison, Wis., to spend a week
dating a woman he met on Facebook told police that when his visit
ended, she pretended to drive him to the bus station but robbed him.
Considering that Facebook arranged the meeting, a police official told The Wisconsin State Journal, “We have significant leads.”

God Helps Them Who Help Themselves

Preaching to his congregation in North Yorkshire, England, the Rev.
Tim Jones, 42, announced that the commandment “Thou shalt not steal”
isn’t carved in stone. He explained that shoplifting is acceptable as
long as the shoplifters are desperate and that they steal from large
national chain stores rather than small, family businesses.

Photoshop Politics

For a photo contest held in conjunction with December’s Copenhagen
climate talks, Canada’s opposition Liberal Party posted on its Web site
a submission showing a doctored photo of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot
in which Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s face was
substituted for Oswald’s. Another posting showed Harper with his fist
in a cow’s rectum, which the site presented as one of the “best seven”
depicting where Harper would rather be than in Copenhagen. Reuters
reported the postings were quickly removed and an apology issued by
party official Mario Lague. The year before, Harper was forced to
apologize after the Conservative Web site featured an animated video
showing a puffin pooping on then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

Clumsy Is As Clumsy Does

New York City police investigating a triple murder at an upper West
Side apartment said gunman Hector Quinones, 44, tried to shoot a fourth
person, who escaped because Quinones tripped over his baggy pants while
chasing her. The Daily News reported that when police arrived
on the scene, Quinones tried to flee by jumping out a third-floor
kitchen window onto the fire escape, but he lost his balance and
plunged to the alley below, where he died from a broken neck with his
droopy pants around his ankles.

Spelling Counts

While drinking at a bar in Jefferson, Wis., Jennifer K. Luick and a
girlfriend began grabbing people by the butts “as a joke and to be
playful,” according to police, who said that Andrew J. Wirth, 24,
objected when Luick grabbed him. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
reported that when Luick told her companion, Gregg T. Peters, 40, that
Wirth had offended her, Peters confronted him. Wirth, who has a neck
tattoo that reads “Nothing to lost {sic},”