News & Blues 5/26

Curses, Foiled Again

Two burglary suspects fleeing Sacramento County, Calif., sheriff’s
deputies, headed for a high school football field, where they ran into
players practicing for the upcoming Pig Bowl, an annual contest between
firefighters and law enforcement. The latter team, comprising mostly
deputies, was working out and quickly tackled suspects James Hill Jr.,
19, and a 17-year-old boy. (Sacramento Bee)

Two gunmen tied up the staff at a Chicago scrap-metal plant and then
tried to steal an automated teller machine the company keeps on hand to
pay customers. They gave up, however, after the 250-pound machine
proved too heavy for them to lift onto their Jeep Cherokee. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Craig Owen David Jr., 32, met his ex-girlfriend at a Wal-Mart
parking lot in Uniontown, Pa., to borrow money for prescription
medication. State Trooper Ozzie Mills said that when the woman pulled
out a $10 bill to give him, David grabbed it and two $20 bills and
fled. He was quickly apprehended while making his getaway across the
parking lot on a motorized scooter the store owns for the use of
disabled shoppers. (Uniontown Herald-Standard)

Bad Medicine

Thomas Alan Heugel, 56, performed circumcisions without a license,
according to Michigan authorities, saying Heugel was fingered by his
former boyfriend, who declared, “He needs to be taken off the streets.”
A Kent County sheriff’s investigation found that Heugel told patients
he was a doctor and performed circumcisions at his home in Sparta. “I
don’t know what the attraction is,” sheriff’s Lt. Kevin Kelley said. “I
don’t know, and the detective doesn’t know.”

Neighbor Maria Horn, 53, said Heugel represented himself as an
ordained minister, an emergency medical technician and had vehicles
modified to look like vintage police cruisers. She said he began
performing circumcisions, as well as ear piercings and removing skin
tags. (The Grand Rapid Press)

How Government Works

FEMA paid twice what it might have to lease a facility in Tennessee
that was dilapidated and full of potentially hazardous chemicals. A
cleaning company told FEMA it would cost $1.2 million to clean it up. A
report by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general placed
the blame on two federal officials who bypassed commercial real estate
agents and web sites and instead drove around Nashville in a car
looking for vacant offices. When they found one, government inspectors
sent to check out the building went at night, using flashlights because
there was no electricity.

FEMA paid $122,000 to rent the building for three months, during
which someone had to watch the boiler “24/7 so it would not explode or
crack.” The agency trucked in bottled water because tap water wasn’t
drinkable, and sewage leaks frequently sent workers home early. One
worker developed a rash that lasted the whole three months. Rooms next
to the leased office were filled with debris, and some parts were roped
off because of suspected chemical contamination. (Politico)

Get ’Em While They Last

Canada’s Parliament reacted to a European Union ban on seal products
by serving seal hors d’oeuvres and main dishes at its restaurant. Two
dozen lawmakers attended a luncheon to eat seal and listen to speeches
endorsing Canada’s annual seal hunt. “This support begins on the plates
of Canadians,” federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea proclaimed while
dining on medallions of double-smoked, bacon-wrapped seal loin in a
port reduction. (Reuters)

Faith-Based Initiative

Selective brain damage might influence spiritual and religious
attitudes, according to an Italian study of patients before and after
surgery for brain tumors. Researchers interested in linking brain
activity and spirituality focused specifically on the personality trait
called self-transcendence (ST), which is considered a measure of
spiritual feeling, thinking and behavior. Reporting in the journal Neuron, the researchers said they hoped their findings could lead to new strategies for treating some forms of mental illness. (Science Daily) 

Stuck in the Past

Turkey recalled its ambassador to the United States after the House
Foreign Affairs Committee voted to label as “genocide” the killing of
Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I. The symbolic resolution
passed 23-22. The United States previously condemned the killings of
300,000 to 500,000 Armenians between 1915 and 1918 but refrained from
calling them genocide to avoid straining relations with Turkey, a key
Muslim-majority ally in the Middle East. President Obama promised
during his campaign that he would recognize the events as genocide but
backed down from using that term in his message last year commemorating
the killings. (Agence France-Presse)

Bad Egg

Florida Highway Patrol officials reported that a 17-year-old girl,
after discovering that her ex-boyfriend was seeing another girl, headed
for the boyfriend’s home in New Port Richey with the intention of
egging his car, but she lost control of her Dodge Neon while swerving
to avoid another vehicle and smashed into a house. The collision took
out a wall of the one-story building and left the garage door mangled.
(Tampa’s Bay News 9)

Second-Amendment Follies

School district superintendent Dwain Haggard was showing his replica
black powder muzzleloader to five high school students in Reed Point,
Mont., when the gun fired and lodged a ball in the front wall of the
classroom. “I can’t explain how it was loaded,” Haggard said, insisting
the students were “never really in danger.” (Billings Gazette)

When Guns Are Outlawed

When a man watching Shutter Island at a theater in Lancaster,
Calif., complained about a woman sitting near him using a cell phone,
two men with her attacked the man. One of them stabbed him in the neck
with a meat thermometer. Acting on a tip, Los Angeles County sheriff’s
deputies arrested Landry Boullard, 39. (Los Angeles Times)

Police in Iowa City arrested Nitasha Camilla Johnson, 20, who they
said attacked her sister with a toilet tank lid. (Iowa City’s Press-Citizen)

Use ’Em or Lose ’Em

Jim Kennedy, 46, has survived 18 months without a job by living on
his frequent flier and hotel loyalty points. After getting kicked out
of his condo in Newport Beach, Calif., the former IT and finance worker
moved his belongings, including a 375-bottle wine collection, into a
storage unit, put his clothes and day-to-day items in his leased BMW
and began making the rounds of hotels. Part of the free rooms is free
breakfasts, which he augments with microwave meals. He gets his
unemployment checks at a Mailboxes Plus. Spending his days checking
online job banks, Kennedy figures he has enough points to last another
two months but realizes “I’m kind of running against time.” (The Orange County Register)

News and Blues is compiled from the nation’s press. To
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Roland Sweet in care of The New Times.