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Michael Anthony Randall Jr., 19, tried to rob a convenience store in
Athens, Ohio, but when he tried to pull a sawed-off shotgun from his
coveralls, he shot himself in the leg and foot, according to
Athens-Clarke police, who said the blast caused extensive nerve, muscle
and tissue damage. The Athens Banner-Herald said investigators
believe Randall had his finger on the trigger of the shotgun with the
barrel extending down his left leg when he tried to withdraw it.
Fruits of Research
Researchers at the University of California Davis said they’ve
identified “clusters” of autism in areas where parents have
higher-than-average levels of education. For example, children in
neighborhoods where parents finished college were at least four times
more likely to be diagnosed with autism than children of parents who
didn’t finish high school. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that higher
education causes autism,” cautioned UC Davis MIND Institute researcher
Irva Hertz-Picciotto, one of the study’s authors, who explained that
the high rates of autism occur where parents are more likely to obtain
a diagnosis for their child.
More than half of British adults—25 million—have been injured by
cookies, according to a survey by Mindlab International. At least 500
wound up in the hospital. Hidden dangers included flying fragments,
burns while dunking cookies in scalding tea, poking themselves in the
eye with a cookie, choking on crumbs, breaking a tooth or filling
biting a cookie, and falling off a chair reaching for the package.
Seven percent of those surveyed said they’d been bitten by a pet or
“other wild animal” trying to get their cookie.
Breakthrough
Albanian Katerina Munguli, 16, not only became the first girl to
compete in a traditionally male-only Orthodox ceremony to retrieve a
metal cross from the bottom of the Ionian Sea, but she also won,
beating out a dozen men and boys for the $111 prize. “We were all happy
a girl got it,” said Vladimir Kumi, co-organizer of the event. “She is
the youngest of four sisters and behaves a bit like a boy.”
Ten Times Fast
Two 47-year-old men accused of stealing a $950 postal check in
Hellertown, Pa., are named Richard A. Fluck and Bryan Flok. Police said
Fluck and Flok took the check from the post office, co-signed it and
cashed it.
Irony Illustrated
A single-engine airplane used for rush-hour traffic reports in
metropolitan Philadelphia caused a mile-and-a-half backup in both
directions of the New Jersey Turnpike when it made an emergency landing
in the northbound lanes near Cherry Hill. Noting no one was injured,
New Jersey Turnpike Authority said the backups were due mostly to
rubbernecking, adding, “For the first time in eight years, I can
probably say you had a good reason to stop and look.”
Not-So-Great Escapes
Police pursuing a gang of home invaders in Oakland, Calif., found
four of the suspects wedged in a 6-by-12-inch space between buildings.
“I heard someone come through my gate and run past, and they came to
this cubby way,” local resident Dave Moore said. “It turns into a
funnel at the end, so they tried to come back through and got stuck.”
Travis Copeland, 19, bolted from a courtroom during his bond hearing
in Waukegan, Ill., and headed for a skyway that connects courtrooms in
two buildings. According to the Arlington Heights’ Daily Herald,
as Lake County sheriff’s deputies closed in, Copeland, ignoring that he
was two stories above a busy street, tried to shoulder block his way
through a skyway window to make his escape. The bulletproof glass
didn’t break when Copeland hit it with his head and shoulder, however.
Instead, he bounced off the window and staggered to the floor, while
nine deputies with guns drawn surrounded him. When Copeland was
returned to the courtroom, his bail was raised from $50,000 to $1.5
million.
Duck and Cover
Earth remains at risk from potentially devastating asteroids because
Congress won’t fund its own project for the United States to defend the
planet. The government spends about $4 million a year looking for big
and obvious near-Earth objects, but in 2005 Congress ordered a broader
survey to find near-Earth objects as small as 460 feet in diameter.
These smaller objects “can cause huge damage on Earth,” warned
University of Maryland astronomer Mike A’Hearne, who helped chair the
National Academy of Sciences report, “Defending Planet Earth:
Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies.” It said
more than 2 million space objects have a near-Earth orbit and that
objects only 165 feet wide could cause destruction equal to that of a
nuclear explosion.
The report warned that if the government won’t pay for space probes
to orbit Venus and track threats to Earth, it should at least give
scientists a bigger telescope so they can detect 90 percent of the
smaller asteroids by 2030. Meanwhile, since launching spacecraft to
divert an asteroid’s path needs planning, the report advised nations to
rely on organized evacuations and other civil defense efforts to deal
with small asteroids.
Extra Crispy
A police officer who saw a man in flames in Portland, Ore., reached
for a fire extinguisher in the trunk of her patrol car but instead
accidentally grabbed a large can of pepper spray used in riot control.
The pepper can sprays are red like a fire extinguisher, according to
Police Bureau Chief Rosie Sizer, who said the victim, Daniel Shaull,
26, set himself on fire in an apparent suicide attempt. Sizer noted
that although the spray didn’t put out the fire, it isn’t flammable and
“didn’t have any additional reaction with him already being on fire.”
Shaull died at a hospital.
Police investigating a one-car crash in Prince George’s County, Md.,
located the driver, Kenneth R. Taylor, 28, nearby. After talking to him
briefly, officers went to the crashed vehicle. Police Officer Henry
Tippett said that Taylor jumped into one of the officers’ cruisers and
sped off. Officers didn’t pursue the cruiser, which ran off the road
about a mile away, crashed into a tree and burst into flames.
Firefighters responding to the first crash arrived at the second one
but were unable to put out the fire and pronounced Taylor dead at the
scene.
Holy Scanner
Grzegorz Sowa, a Catholic priest in the Polish town of Gryfow
Slaski, installed an electronic reader to check fingerprints of
schoolchildren so he could monitor their attendance at mass. Attending
200 masses in three years exempts them from having to pass an exam
before they can be confirmed. “This is comfortable,” one pupil,
identified as Karolina, told the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. “We don’t have to stand in line to get the priest’s signature in our confirmation notebooks.”
Downhill Slide
British police officials reprimanded a group of officers after a
passer-by recorded them using their riot shields as makeshift sleds and
posted the video on YouTube. Conceding that snow brings “out the child
in all of us,” Thames Valley Police Superintendent Andrew Murray said
he told the officers “that tobogganing on duty, on police equipment and
at taxpayers’ expense is a very bad idea.”
Writer’s Cramp Justice
Fiji’s attorney general urged the country to adopt a modern court
recording system to replace having magistrates record proceedings by
hand. “Currently, lawyers in court were sometimes asked to speak as
fast as the magistrate could write,” Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said. “As
such, lawyers could get lost in what they were trying to say because
they had to slow down.”
Marketing Magic
After the Iraqi government paid $84 million to a British company for
1,500 dowsing rods the company insisted could detect explosives,
detectives questioned Jim McCormick, 53, a former police officer who
runs the company, ATSC (UK) Ltd., about widespread claims that the
company’s products don’t work. ATSC describes its ADE, “Advanced
Detection Equipment,” as able to detect “all known drug and explosive
based substances,” using “non-vapor” methods. A simple plastic holder
is fitted with a special piece of cardboard which has been prepared
using “the proprietary process of electrostatic matching of the ionic
charge and structure of the substance” to be detected. The device uses
no electronics, being “charged” by the body of the user. Attached to
the holder is a metal wand held at right angles to the user’s body. The
wand is said to drift in the direction of any explosive, drug or
whatever else the cardboard insert has been “electronically matched”
to—even contraband ivory or truffles—at ranges of up to a half-mile.
“Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects
bombs,” Major General Jehad al-Jabiri of the Iraqi interior ministry
told The New York Times last year after arranging a
demonstration by one of his police officers. When a reporter couldn’t
get the dowsing rod to work, the general stated, “You need more
training.”
Lucky Day
The Missouri treasurer’s office paid a Jefferson City man $1.6
million from its unclaimed assets fund. Treasurer Clint Zweifel said
the unidentified man lost track of a stock fund, and the brokerage had
lost track of him. After the treasurer’s office held the stock for 18
months, it cashed it in in 2007, just before precipitous market
declines, and added to its $600 million account on behalf of 3.5
million unaware people or households. The unclaimed assets office’s
14-person staff eventually traced the man, who received his money in
January.
Reasonable Explanation
A jury in Orangeburg, S.C. found Mark Zachary, 51, guilty of
stealing an $80 slab of beef from a store in Orangeburg, S.C.
Authorities said that when a store manager approached Zachary about the
missing meat and the big bulge under his shirt, he fled—right into the
arms of an off-duty police officer. He testified that he wasn’t
stealing the meat, just “massaging” it.
Incendiary Devices
Fire department officials investigating a rooftop blaze at a Houston
shopping center identified the cause as an inflatable gorilla on the
roof. After the remnants of the gorilla were found, District Chief Fred
Hooker said the “blowup doll” had deflated and landed on some lights,
sparking the fire.
A 76-year-old German man trying to thaw out his car incinerated it
instead. A police official in Hildesheim said the man left a blow
heater next to the frozen windshield-washer tank and went inside to
wait. Shortly afterward, he heard two explosions and returned to find
the vehicle on fire. Authorities estimated damages to the car and the
man’s house at $56,240.
Bump in the Road
Four months into his attempt to travel around the world in a school
bus powered by french-fry fat to highlight the benefits of using
low-carbon energy, British eco-activist Andy Pag, 34, was arrested in
northern India. His family said Pag faces anti-terrorism charges and
jail time for using a satellite phone without permission.
Rocket Man
A 62-year-old man hosting a sledding party in Oakland County, Mich.,
stuffed a used automobile muffler with gasoline, gunpowder and match
heads, strapped it to his back and asked another person to light a
fuse, seeking what Undersheriff Mike McCabe called “a rocket-launch
effect.” As the man headed downhill on an orange plastic sled wearing a
motorcycle helmet and a plastic garbage bag as a cape, the device blew
up, causing second-degree burns to the man’s face and the right side of
his body and possible eye injuries. “Apparently, he has this sledding
party every year, and he always does outrageous things at it,” McCabe
said. “But he’s never blown himself up before.”
Not So Fast
Authorities charged Chamil Guadarrama, 30, with shoplifting after
security officers at a mall in Springfield, Mass., found Guadarrama’s
pants stuffed with 75 8-ounce glass bottles of body lotion. Noting the
suspect wore ordinary trousers but had strings tied around each ankle
to keep the bottles from slipping out, police Sgt. John M. Delaney said
officers “could not fit Mr. Guadarrama into the cruiser because his
pants were bursting at the seams, and he could not bend over.” Delaney
said security officer Jane Colon told him they nabbed Guadarrama after
a brief foot chase because he “had a hard time running and was
extremely bowlegged.” His legs were also “extremely chaffed.”
Morality Play
A male dance instructor told police in Madison, Wis., that a man
phoned for private dance lessons, but when he opened the door to let
him in, the man shocked him repeatedly in the neck with a stun gun.
According to the criminal complaint, the 59-year-old attacker, who was
also carrying a sledgehammer, insisted the instructor was a “sinner”
who “defiles married women.” He told detectives that his church does
not condone touching while dancing and that he intended to scare the
instructor “and tell him to leave the women alone.”
Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-Race
Elation among Scots Americans at news reports that the United States
was about to lift its 21-year import ban on haggis turned to dismay
when the Agriculture Department denied the ban was being relaxed or
lifted. A department official acknowledged the ban on beef and lamb
products was under review but gave no time frame for its completion.
The ban on British beef and lamb took effect during the height of fears
over mad cow disease. Haggis is made from the heart, liver and lung of
sheep. Even if the ban is overturned, another regulation, dating to
1971, prohibits importing food made with sheep’s lung, which makes up
10 to 15 percent of the haggis recipe. “If it hasn’t got lamb’s lung,”
haggis producer Fraser MacGregor of Cockburn’s in Dingwall said, “it
isn’t haggis.”
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.
