News & Blues

Curses, Foiled Again

A witness observed a boy who appeared to be breaking into a pickup truck in Port Charlotte, Fla. When confronted, the suspect fled, but as he did, the witness told Charlotte County sheriff’s deputies, his shorts fell down, revealing red boxer undershorts. The deputies reported that they located the suspect, Antonio Kleiss, 14, and “asked him to pull down his tan shorts a little, and he revealed that he was wearing red boxer shorts underneath.” Recognizing the shorts, the witness identified Kleiss, who was charged with burglary and attempted grand theft. (United Press International)

Authorities arrested Dale Foughty, 56, after they said he entered a convenience store in Onslow County, N.C., wearing a Spider-Man mask and waving a sword, and demanded money. The clerk pulled out a broom and poked the robber in the stomach. A second clerk joined in the struggle, during which the suspect lost his mask and had part of his ponytail ripped out. He fled empty-handed, but sheriff’s deputies found him nearby. (Associated Press)

His and Her Cars

Women are more likely to sustain injuries in a car accident because safety features are designed more with men in mind, according to a study based on a decade of data. Writing in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers Dipan Bose and Jeff Crandall of the University of Virginia and Maria Segui-Gomez of Spain’s Navarra University found, for example, that female drivers wearing seat belts were 47 percent likelier than men to suffer serious injury and that the positioning of head restraints fails to take into account how women’s necks differ from men’s in size and strength. The authors recommended that health policies and vehicle regulations tailor safety designs to women to assure “equity in injury reduction.” (Agence France-Presse)

How Socialized Medicine Works

When Doreen Wallace, 82, fell and broke her hip in the lobby of Ontario’s Greater Niagara General Hospital, she lay bleeding for almost 30 minutes before anyone from the hospital came to her aid. Even though she was only 50 yards from the emergency room, according to her son, two nurses came over and told her she would have to call an ambulance. One was dispatched from nearby St. Catherines. Before it arrived, an orthopedic surgeon noticed Wallace and, with the help of an assistant, moved her into a wheelchair. “It was horrible, it really was,” she said.

Last April, at the same hospital, 39-year-old Jennifer James died from a “catastrophic heart event” a few days after emergency room staff refused to help her in the parking lot when she lost consciousness and stopped breathing. They told her boyfriend to call 911 instead. (Toronto Star)

Woe Be We

After Charlie Bolden, the administrator of NASA, declared that deflecting a near-Earth object (NEO), such as an asteroid or a comet, will be “what keeps the dinosaurs—we are the dinosaurs, by the way—from becoming extinct a second time,” he admitted that the space agency couldn’t afford to tackle that task, even if it wanted to. He explained that the annual federal allocation for “planetary defense” is $5.8 million, which represents a mere 0.03 percent of NASA’s budget and is barely adequate merely to locate NEOs and track their orbits. (The New Yorker)

Rude Awakening

After a couple staying at a tree-house bed-and-breakfast in Taklima, Wash., fell to the ground, they sued Josephine County for $1.2 million for physical, financial and emotional injuries. The suit filed by Michelle M. Buswinka and Maurice L. Breslin charged, among other things, that the county failed to stop the Out ’n’ About Tree House Treesort from building structures without a permit. County Legal Council Steve Rich said the county had threatened to tear down the tree houses over permit issues but ultimately allowed it to operate with five tree houses. On its website, however, the resort lists 18 tree houses, as well as rope bridges, zip-lines and rope swings. (Grants Pass Daily Courier)

Rescue of the Week

Firefighters had to be summoned to free a man from a straw dispenser at a McDonald’s restaurant in Ipswich, England. The victim tried to remove straws from an opening at the rear of the dispenser that workers use to refill it but became trapped. The rescue crew took 20 minutes to free him. (Britain’s East Anglian Daily Times)

Firefighters in Vallejo, Calif., rescued a 21-year-old man who spent nine hours stuck in a child’s swing. The man told police he became stuck after making a $100 bet with friends, then lubricating himself with laundry detergent so his legs would fit through the swing’s two leg holes. When he couldn’t get out, his friends left him overnight. Summoned by a groundskeeper who heard his screams for help the next morning, firefighters cut the swing chains, then took the victim to a medical center and used a cast cutter to slice the swing off his body. (Vallejo’s Times-Herald)