News & Blues 7/28

Following his initial court appearance, during which he wept but
made no statement, Giusti’s mother, Eleanor Giusti, 83, blamed Fox News
for radicalizing her son, whose criminal record includes evading train
fare. (Talking Points Memo, San Francisco’s KGO-TV News)

Shot in the Dark

When a light is turned on at night, even briefly, it triggers
cellular changes that might lead to cancer, according to researchers in
the United Kingdom and Israel. Writing in the journal Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics,
Dr. Rachel Ben-Shlomo of the University of Haifa recommended, “If you
want to get up to go to the toilet, you should avoid reaching for the
light switch. (Britain’s Daily Mail)

Eighth-Amendment Follies

After a Nevada judge sentenced Michelle Lyn Taylor, 34, to life in
prison for forcing a 13-year-old boy to touch her breasts, public
defender Alina Kilpatrick pointed out, “She is getting a greater
penalty for having a boy touch her breast than if she killed him.” (Elko Daily Free Press)

Watching the Defectives

An inspector general’s report that high-ranking employees in the
Security and Exchange Commission violated SEC rules “by viewing
pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images using
government computer resources and official time” cited as one example a
staff accountant who tried to access pornographic web sites nearly
1,800 times in a two-week period, using her SEC laptop, and had some
600 pornographic images saved on her laptop hard drive. The report also
said a senior attorney admitted to spending up to eight hours a day
downloading pornography to his government computer, so much
pornography, in fact, “that he exhausted the available space on the
computer hard drive and downloaded pornography to CDs or DVDs that he
accumulated in boxes in his office.” (CNN)

Not-So-Great Escape

Sheriff’s deputies who went to a farm in Albion, Ind., to arrest
Thomas Hovis Jr., 52, on drug charges, said that when they arrived,
Hovis ran from the house to a small outbuilding. They used tear gas to
try to flush him from the building, but he remained inside. Finally
they entered the building, where they found him neck deep in a pit
filled with hog and dog feces. Chief Deputy Doug Harp said Hovis stood
in the manure pit for at least an hour and had to be treated for
hypothermia. (Fort Wayne’s WANE-TV News) 

Privatization Follies

Italian contractors helping train Afghan police recruits solved the
mystery of why the trainees couldn’t shoot straight while being taught
by U.S. government contractors. The Italians noticed the Americans, who
were paid $6 billion to train the Afghans, had never adjusted the
sights on their AK-47s and M-16s. During the eight years contractors
from DynCorp International were allegedly training recruits, the death
rate for Afghan police officers rose from about two dozen a month to
around 125. “We’re paying somebody to teach these people to shoot these
weapons, and nobody ever bothered to check their sights?” said Sen.
Claire McCaskill, D-Mo, who chaired Senate committee investigating
contractor oversights. “It is an unbelievable, incompetent story.”
(McClatchy Newspapers)

Bum Bomb

A California Highway Patrol officer who questioned Steven Ferrini,
60, for parking illegally at 4:30 a.m. found drugs and arrested him. A
subsequent search found “a suspicious wire, with an on-off switch” in
the man’s front pocket leading to his anal cavity, according to a
police report. When “the subject began to explain his knowledge of
explosives and bomb-making,” officers called the El Dorado County
Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team and evacuated the South Lake Tahoe
office. The bomb squad determined the device was not a bomb but an anal
vibrator. (Tahoe Daily Tribune)

Problem Solved

The Japanese automation firm Super Faiths has developed recycling
machines that turn used diapers, mostly those used by incontinent
adults, into fuel for biomass boilers and stoves. The SFD Recycle
System machines can handle up to 1,102 pounds of diapers a day. They
automatically shred, dry and sterilize used disposable diapers and turn
them into bacteria-free material for making fuel pellets, which can be
used to help heat roads, homes or water. (CNET)

 Obvious Choice

Authorities said the executive director of the Chicago area’s
commuter rail service committed suicide by stepping in front of one of
his agency’s trains. Phil Pagano, 60, who headed Metra for 20 years,
was on paid administrative leave at the time because of allegations he
received an unapproved $56,000 bonus. McHenry County Sheriff Keith
Nygren said a train engineer saw Pagano on the tracks facing the train
and applied the emergency brakes but wasn’t able to stop in time.
(Associated Press)

Rule Britannia

The coastguard had to rescue a man intending to sail along the coast
of southern England after his motorboat ran out of fuel. He was well
short of his goal, having spent eight days circling a 36-square-mile
island a short distance from where he set off. The man, who had no
nautical charts and only a roadmap, told authorities he was trying to
navigate by keeping the coastline on his right, but he “somehow lost
his bearings and ended up traveling around the Isle of Sheppey,” said
Robin Castle, a member of the lifeboat rescue station. (Reuters)

Blessing of the Week

A Louisiana House committee approved a bill allowing concealed
weapons to be carried in churches and temples, but the measure fell
short of passage in the full House by eight votes. Rep. Harry Burns,
who introduced the bill, said he would reintroduce it. Rep. Walker
Hines, who amended the bill to prohibit the carrying of a firearm at a
church on a school campus, said he would not want to see Burns’ bill
apply to “cults and fringe groups.” (New Orleans’s The Times Picayune)

Little Things Mean a Lot

Authorities in Indonesia’s Papua announced that applicants to join
the police or military would be rejected if they’ve had their organs
artificially enhanced. Papua police chief Bekto Suprapto said that
unnaturally large penises cause “hindrance during training.” A
sexologist quoted by The Jakarta Globe said Papuans often wrap
their penis with leaves from the gatal-gatal (itchy) tree so that it
swells up “like it has been stung by a bee.” (Reuters)

To Serve Man

An Australian publisher had to destroy copies of a cookbook because
a recipe called for “salt and freshly ground black people” instead of
black pepper. “When it comes to the proofreader, of course they should
have picked it up,” Bob Sessions of Penguin Group Australia said, “but
proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task.” (BBC News)

Fetishes on Parade

Police who arrested Sherwin Shayegan on a drug warrant in Tualatin,
Ore., said the convicted felon had befriended student athletes and
offered them money to give him piggyback rides. “We received
communication from several schools that this individual had talked his
way into their locker room, had pictures taken, had a ball autographed,
had gone out to the parking lot and got piggyback rides from some of
the players,” said Tom Welter, executive director of the Oregon School
Activities Association. Detectives in Bonney Lake, Wash., said Shayegan
also made friends with a football player there, “gave him a manila
envelope full of odd amounts of money, then jumped on his back and told
him he wanted a piggyback ride.” (Portland’s KGW-TV News)

A 27-year-old Oklahoma City man told police he was sexually
assaulted by a man he met online while seeking a “friend” who shares
his “fetish for flatulence.” After exchanging phone numbers and text
messages with graphic sexual questions, the victim said he agreed to
meet the man because he agreed to “fart for me.” (The Oklahoman)

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.