NEWS & BLUES

Curses, Foiled Again

While police were driving burglary suspect Kylen English, 20, to the Montgomery County, Ohio, jail, he began banging his head against the car’s rear passenger window when crossing a bridge. “The officer starts to pull over,” Dayton police Lt. Kim Hill recounted, “and once he pulled over, the suspect had the window broken. He then went head-first out the window and head-first over the bridge.” The cruiser was roughly midway across the bridge, but the river flows beneath only a third of the span. English fell 30 feet onto a dry, rocky area and was pronounced dead. (Dayton Daily News) When a gunman demanded money from Fred and Julie Kemp in Boynton Beach, Fla., Fred Kemp, 63, pushed the gun away, provoking the robber to pistol whip him in the head. “I reacted from there,” the 5-foot-7, 150-pound former wrestler said. “I foot-sweeped him down,” then maneuvered him into a “sleeper hold” until he began to lose consciousness and dropped the weapon. Kemp held the robber down until police arrived and arrested Richard Nowling, 41. (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Wireless Service

Employees at the Department of Agriculture Office in Guthrie, W.Va., arrived for work to find they had no phone service. State police investigated and reported someone had stolen the copper phone line serving the office compound. The phone-line theft was the office’s second in two months. (Charleston Daily Mail)

Current Events

Millions of tons of debris washed out to sea by Japan’s March 11 tsunami are moving across the Pacific Ocean and could start washing up on California, Oregon and Washington beaches in 2013 or early 2014. “The area north of Tokyo was basically shredded,” said Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who estimates the debris--everything from furniture to roofs to pieces of cars, even tractor-trailers--is moving east at roughly 10 miles a day and is spread over an area about 350 miles wide and 1,300 miles long. Lots of the flotsam will break up and sink, but some won’t, Ebbesmeyer predicted, pointing out, “Things float a lot longer than you think.” (California’s San Jose Mercury News)

Slightest Provocation

Sheriff’s deputies arrested Kenneth Charles Stuck, 46, after he smashed a toilet against the front door of a house in Hudson, Fla., because he had given the homeowner money to buy more beer, but the man was taking too long to return. (St. Petersburg Times) Denver police Officer Kevin Carlile, 37, and a friend, Christopher Douglas, 39, were issued summonses after they each punched a man in the face at the Colorado National Golf Club in Erie during a dispute over which baseball game to watch on TV. (Boulder’s The Daily Camera)

Contrary to Popular Belief

Pollution from coal-burning power stations in China “has tended to cool the climate, which offset to some extent the warming effect of carbon dioxide emissions,” according to researcher Robert Kaufmann of Boston University, who headed the study of global average surface temperatures between 1998 and 2009, when Chinese power stations doubled the amount of coal they burned. He explained that sulphate particles released into the atmosphere from these power stations lower temperatures by reflecting sunlight and heat away from Earth.

(Britain’s The Independent) North Dakota has never been a state, according to John Rolczynski, 82. The Grand Forks resident explained North Dakota’s original constitution omits requiring the executive branch and other high-ranking officials to take the oath of office, contradicting the federal Constitution and thus invalidating it. State Sen.

Tim Mathern introduced a bill to fix the wording, but residents won’t vote on it until November 2012. Meanwhile, Rolczynski pointed out the constitution states that the Red River forms North Dakota’s entire eastern border, but for 41 miles the Bois De Sioux River marks the boundary. (Fargo’s KVLY-TV)

Freak Accidents

When a Pontiac Sunfire traveling east along a highway near Luskville, Quebec, hit a bear, the impact sent the animal flying into the westbound lane. It crashed through the windshield of a Nissan Pathfinder, killing the 25-year-old driver and a 40-year-old passenger in the back seat. According to Constable Martin Fournel, the bear then “went back out by the back window.” (Canada’s QMI News Agency) Attempting to save her cancer-stricken dog from being put down, Taylor Mae Stinchcomb, 15, stole the family minivan and fled her home in Gurnee, Ill., with the dog and a friend. When she became too distressed to drive, she let the 15-year-old friend take over. Police said the friend lost control of the van and crashed into several trees and a utility pole, killing Stinchcomb and the dog. (Fox News) While a group of men celebrated aboard a party bus in Detroit, reveler Salvator Talluto, 24, popped open an overhead emergency hatch. Police said that when he stuck his head out, it slammed into an overpass, killing him. (Detroit’s WDIV-TV) A fake taxi used for a TV trivia show called Cash Cab struck and killed a 61year-old pedestrian in Vancouver, British Columbia. Andrew Burnstein, president of the show’s production company, said the incident occurred just before midnight while a producer was driving the mock cab back to a storage facility after filming. (The Canadian Press)

Sleep Assurance

The Crowne Plaza hotel chain introduced “snore monitors” at six of its hotels in Britain to combat noisy sleepers. The monitors patrol the hotels’ designated quiet zones and knock on the door to warn guests who snore too loudly. “Repeat offenders will be offered an alternative room away from the quiet zone for their next stay,” said Laura Simpson, snore monitor at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Leeds.

The hotel chain also is testing “snore absorption” rooms at 10 hotels in Europe and the Middle East. The rooms feature soundproofing on the walls and headboards, anti-snoring pillows and whitenoise machines. (Reuters)

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.