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On Track for Healing

The latest medical treatment in Indonesia involves as many as 50 people a day lying on railroad tracks outside Jakarta, believing that the electrical current from the tracks will cure them of various ailments. Patients scramble to safety when a train approaches, then resume their position the minute it passes. “I’ll keep doing this until I’m completely cured” of diabetes, Sri Mulyati, 50, said, twitching visibly as an oncoming passenger train sent an extra rush of current racing through her body.

Train-track therapy began after a rumor spread that a partially paralyzed stroke victim lay on the tracks to commit suicide but instead found himself cured. Accelerating the trend has been the failure of the state-sponsored health system since the 1998 ouster of longtime dictator Suharto, according to Marius Widjajarta, chair of the Indonesian Health Consumers Empowerment Foundation. Hoping to discourage the practice, police and the state run railroad company erected a warning sign threatening penalties of up to three months in prison or fines of $1,800. (Associated Press)

Curses, Foiled Again

When Colby Wade Cardoso, 20, came upon a car crash that killed two people in Hillsborough County, Fla., authorities said he parked his vehicle near the scene and tried to steal a pickup truck belonging to a witness. The truck wouldn’t start, however, so he ran, only to be chased by sheriff’s Deputy Carl Luis, 53, and arrested. (Tampa’s WFLA-AM) Dionette L. Price, 26, jumped on the hood of a car in Kansas City, Mo., pointed a gun at driver Rayna Garrett and ordered her to “drive, or I will blow your head off,” according to Jackson County prosecutors. She headed to the Kansas City police station, nearly two miles away, and honked to alert officers. The suspect leapt off the hood and fled, but police soon spotted him waiting at a bus stop. (Reuters)

The Wicked Man Flees Although No One Pursues

Authorities searching for a suspect in Mercer County, W.Va., spotted a man running into a store when they drove by and stopped to investigate the suspicious behavior. “He thought he had warrants and he ran, but he didn’t have them,” state police Sgt. W.A. Pendleton said after apprehending Arlis Cecil Dempsey Jr., 32. “This idiot sees the cruiser, leaves his kids and goes to hide in the ceiling.” Even though Dempsey hadn’t been wanted, because he left three little girls in his pickup truck when he fled, police charged him with three counts of child neglect creating a substantial risk of injury or death and turned over the children to child protective services. (The Bluefield Daily Telegraph)

Tipping the Scales of Justice

A New York appeals court overturned the robbery conviction of 400-pound Eric Kenley, 48, because the police lineup where witnesses identified him didn’t include any other 400-pound men. “Although the fillers were large men, there was a very noticeable difference between defendant and the fillers,” the Appellate Division ruling stated, suggesting that the “situation would call for some kind of covering to conceal the weight difference.” (New York Post)

Detached Attachment

Two British security officers assigned to place an electronic monitoring tag on Christopher Lowcock, 29, were fired after officials discovered the device had been attached to Lowcock’s artificial leg. According to the Ministry of Justice, Lowcock wrapped the fake limb in a bandage and then talked an agent of G4S, a security firm the government hired to tag offenders, into installing it over the bandage. Whenever Lowcock wanted to go out, he unattached the monitored leg and left it home. The second agent was fired after he went to inspect the monitoring equipment but failed to notice it was attached to an artificial leg. Managers discovered the ruse when they went to check on Lowcock a third time, only to learn he’d left home and been taken into custody for driving illegally. “Procedures were clearly not followed,” a ministry official acknowledged, noting, “Two thousand offenders are tagged every week, and incidents like this are rare.” (Britain’s The Telegraph)

Litigation Nation

The Washington, D.C., city attorney general’s office filed a suit against convicted drug kingpin Cornell Jones, who founded a nonprofit organization when he got out of prison that received grants to fund a job-training center for people with HIV/AIDS. Instead, the suit says, Jones used $329,653 of the grant money to turn a 14,000-square-foot warehouse into a popular nightspot that advertises “five-star dining” and nude dancers. (The Washington Post) John H. Gass filed suit against the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles for revoking his driver’s license after its $1.5 million antiterrorism computerized facial recognition system misidentified him as another driver. Gass, who drives for a living, said he had to spend 10 days dealing with bureaucratic indif- ference to prove his identity and correct the error. “There are mistakes that can be made,” Registrar Rachel Kaprielian conceded but insisted protecting the public far outweighs Gass’s or anyone’s inconvenience. “A driver’s license is not a matter of civil rights.” Kaprielian reminded. “It’s not a right. It’s a privilege.” (Boston Globe)

Non-User Fees

AT&T began charging its landline customers who don’t have long-distance calling plans — most rarely, if ever, make long-distance calls — a $2 a month “minimum use” fee. AT&T’s Holly Hollingsworth said the charge is necessary to cover the company’s cost “to provide customers with basic long-distance service, including account maintenance, even if no calls are made.” (Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer)

Justice Is Blind

After Julia Sullivan, 16, failed three tryouts for her high school cheerleading squad, her parents asked the Aurora, Neb., school board to correct what they called “scoring errors” during her third tryout. Following school administrators’ advice to evaluate all participants the same, the three judges gave Sullivan, who cheers from a wheelchair and was born without legs and with arms that stop short of her elbows, a low score in the jumps/kicks category. (Omaha World- Herald)

Way to Go

After an Asiana Airlines flight from Guangzhou, China, landed at Korea’s Incheon International Airport, a 43-yearold South Korean man’s body was found in the aircraft’s bathroom hanging by his belt from a clothes hanger. Police said the passenger apparently committed suicide during the flight. (Associated Press) Bakery workers David Mayes, 47, and Ian Erickson, 44, were baked alive while cleaning a giant oven at a bread factory in Leicester, England. The men were crawling along a conveyer belt that carries bread trays slowly through the 75-foot-long oven because managers at the Harvestime bakery decided it would cost too much to remove the oven’s side panels to easier access. Prosecutor Anthony Barker told Leicester Crown Court the machine should have been allowed to cool for 12 hours before the men went inside, but it had cooled for only two hours because the company lost 1,120 pounds ($1,750) for every hour the oven was idle. (Britain’s Daily Mail)

When Guns Are Outlawed

When two teenage boys threw rocks at a passing car in San Diego, the vehicle stopped, and a passenger fired a crossbow that wounded one of the boys. The vehicle drove off, according to police, who said the deadly projectile pierced the 16-year-old boy’s belly, but the injury wasn’t life threatening. (San Diego Union Tribune)

Risky Relaxation

Massages could prove fatal, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which said King International’s ShoulderFlex Massager has already killed one user and nearly strangled another because a necklace and clothing became caught in a piece of the device that rotates during use. In other cases, people’s hair became caught in the ShoulderFlex. The agency urged people who own one of the personal massagers to “dispose of the device components separately so that the massager cannot be reassembled and used.” (U.S. Food and Drug Administration safety communication) One-Stop Shop

A public restroom in Boston is being converted into a takeout sandwich shop. City officials said that Floridabased Earl of Sandwich chain signed a 15-year lease on the 660-square-foot Pink Palace restroom, which was built on Boston Commons in the 1920s and last used in the 1970s. It’s called the Pink Palace for the color of its masonry. The company will renovate the mausoleum-like building to use as a kitchen and aims to open in spring 2012. (Associated Press)

Slightest Provocation

Indianapolis police arrested Edward Lay, 37, after he shot two women to death and critically injured another man during a rampage provoked by an argument over the volume of a stereo. “They were constantly arguing over there,” neighbor Richard Reeves said, “but I didn’t expect anything like this.” (Indianapolis’ WRTV-TV)

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.