News & Blues

Curses, Foiled Again

A thief who tried to steal a Corvette in Prince George, British Columbia, stalled the car and then ran down the battery trying to restart it. Without power, the electric door locks wouldn’t work. Feeling trapped, the thief tried to break the side window with the victim’s anti-theft steering wheel lock but failed. He then tried to smash the window with a hatchet that he had in his backpack but couldn’t. He finally managed to break the window and was crawling through it when the police arrived. They arrested Brent Jameson Morgan, 20. “As it turns out,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Craig Douglass pointed out, “all the suspect would have had to do was manually slide the door lock to the side, and the door would have opened.” (The Prince George Citizen)

A gunman robbed a Los Angeles hotel, but two guests getting off the elevator heard the desk clerk call for help and chased the fleeing suspect. They happened to be martial arts experts in town for a tournament, so even though the robber was still holding a loaded 9mm handgun, they wrestled the weapon from him, knocked him to the ground with a leg sweep and pinned him until police arrived and arrested Luis Rosales, 31. (Los Angeles’ KTLA-TV)

Least Surprising Results

City officials in Chattanooga, Tenn., hired consultants from Birmingham, Ala., to come up with a new name for Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport that would create better brand awareness. Big Communications recommended calling it Chattanooga Airport. Deleting “Metropolitan,” the company said, creates simplicity. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)

Them That Has, Gets

New Jersey’s Crestek, which makes ultrasonic cleaning equipment, became the first company in America to be fined for stating in a help-wanted ad for a service manager that applicants “must be currently employed.” Crestek chief executive J. Michael Goodson said he’s contesting the $1,000 fine, explaining he wanted to hire someone “at the top of their game” and that if he hired someone not currently working, “my concern would be that their last job was in a bakery or pumping gas.” (Newark’s The Star-Ledger)

Thrust and Parry

A 37-year-old man kicked in the door of a motel room In Wichita, Kan., and told the 57-year-old man inside that his actions toward a woman who wasn’t present “were unacceptable.” The intruder refused to leave and threatened the older man with a sword with a 2-foot-long blade. The victim countered by grabbing two steak knives to defend himself. The two men fought in the room and then in the motel parking lot. Police Lt. Doug Nolte said that when officers arrived, the older man had pinned his attacker against a wall. (The Wichita Eagle)

Trash to Treasure

A Utah company has begun turning garbage into building materials intended to replace wood. At its prototype plant in Kearns, Better World Materials can convert up to 20 tons a day of milk jugs, cereal boxes and other trash that recycling centers have rejected into railroad ties. Better World president Dalyn Judd said the company just signed a contract to produce 2-by-6 planks for shed foundations and is negotiating to expand to plants in 15 states, each able to process up to 2,000 tons of rejected recyclables a day and employ 360 people. “Are we going to run out of garbage?” Judd said. “I don’t think so.” (The Salt Lake Tribune)

Aero Dynamics

The Air Force is set to certify all of its aircraft to burn fuel made from fat and the oil-bearing plant camelina in 2013, three years ahead of its goal to cut its use of fossil fuels in half. Noting that F-15 and F-16 fighter jets and C-17 cargo planes already use biofuel, Jeff Braun, director of the Alternative Fuels Certification Office, explained, “From a performance standpoint, you can’t tell the difference whether you’re burning a camelina blend, a tallow blend or another fuel that’s made up of a bunch of waste greases: fry grease and seasoning grease.” (Bloomberg News)

Twice in one week, passengers on Comtel Air charter flights from India to Britain were asked to contribute additional money to cover the cost of fuel and airport fees. In the first incident, 180 passengers were told during a stop in Vienna that the cabin crew needed $32,000 to continue the flight. Passengers who lacked enough cash were allowed to leave the plane one at a time to use cash machines. Later that week, passengers were stranded at the airport in Amritsar, India, because they refused to chip in $200 each. “I understand very well that there are passengers in Amritsar,” Bhupinder Kandra, managing director of the charter line, acknowledged. “But nobody is ready to pay.” (The New York Times)

It’s Who You Know

Facing eight to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to intentionally report false revenues and earnings to cover up losses and prop up stock prices of MCSi Inc., the company he headed, Michael E. Peppel, 44, was sentenced to only seven days in federal prison. Admitting in a Cincinnati, Ohio, courtroom that the sentence was a “huge” departure from federal sentencing guidelines, U.S. District Judge Sandra Beckwith said she was moved by 113 letters of support from Peppel’s friends and family and the fact that five children, an ailing mother and brother depend on Peppel for support. Beckwith added that Peppel, whose family and friends gave him a standing ovation when the lenient sentence was announced, wouldn’t have to pay restitution to 1,300 MCSi employees who lost their jobs when the company failed and at least 281 wiped-out investors. (Dayton Daily News)

When Jonathan Yates, 18, was ticketed in Centreville, Ill., for driving 43 mph in a 20-mph zone, Joann Reed, a clerk at the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department, wrote a three-page message asking Centreville village lawyer Carmen Durso to “dismiss the case.” Reed mistakenly faxed the request to the Belleville News-Democrat newspaper. When a reporter questioned her, Reed admitted that Yates “is the son of one of our deputies.” (Belleville News-Democrat)

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.