NEWS & BLUES

Curses, Foiled Again

Two thieves stole $500 worth of Christmas decorations from a lawn in Sweetwater, Fla., that included a Mickey Mouse on a horse, hugging penguins, Snoopy on a doghouse and Santa on a sled. Police arrested two women who lived less than a block away after victim Inrid Alemendarez notified police that she’d spotted those same stolen items on their lawn. (Associated Press)

While acting as his own attorney at his robbery trial in Lehigh County, Pa., defendant Philome Cesar, 32, asked a witness who’d been robbed at gunpoint to describe what the robber sounded like. “He sounded like you,” Daryl Evans testified. The jury broke into laughter. Moments later, Cesar asked another witness to describe the robber’s voice. “It sounded exactly like you,” Charlotte Sine answered. Cesar dropped that line of questioning. After a rambling closing argument, during which Cesar paraphrased a quote attributed to deceased Family Circle cartoonist Bill Keane (“The things that happened yesterday are history.”), the jury promptly pronounced him guilty. (Allentown’s The Morning Call)

Comfy Ending

Firefighters who found a 74-year-old woman at her home in Independence, Mo., said she had been in her reclining chair so long that her skin had fused to it and remained with the chair when she was pried from it. A fire captain described the woman as a “rotting corpse that was still breathing.” She died shortly after. (Associated Press)

Doomed by Success

A British bakery that signed up with Chicago-based Groupon to offer a 75 percent discount on a dozen cupcakes, which normally cost $40, was forced to bake 102,000 cupcakes when 8,500 people signed up online for the $10 bargain. To fill the orders, Need a Cake bakery owner Rachel Brown had to spend $19,500 to hire temporary workers through an employment agency, wiping out her year’s profits. Her Reading bakery also lost between $2.90 and $4.70 on each batch of cupcakes she sold. “Without doubt, it was my worst-ever business decision,” Brown said. (BBC News)

Fire Power

Arthur Joseph Knafla, 84, greeted the opening day of hunting season in Minnesota by trying to light a propane heater in his deer stand. According to the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, the heater set his clothing on fire, and he fell to the ground and died. (Minneapolis’ The Star Tribune)

Louis Amodt of the Utah Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program said it would be several months before the agency knows if its latest attempt to extinguish a 70-year-old underground fire is successful. The fire, one of about two dozen documented coal fires burning in the state, was first spotted in 1941 at a mine outside Helper. It forced the mine’s closing in 1945 but caused no deaths or property damage, so authorities let it burn. In 1989, however, it grew so hot it set above-ground trees on fire, and efforts to douse the blaze began. All have failed. In November, state contractors pumped 14,000 cubic feet of grout into the ground through drill holes and cracks, hoping to suffocate the fire. Noting that the fire has burned so long it has faulted and fractured the ground “so it leaks like a sieve,” letting oxygen reach the fire “from multiple sources,” Amodt declared confidently, “If we can shut the oxygen supply, the fire will go out.” (Salt Lake City’s KSL-TV)

Poetic Justice

When Colorado authorities arrested former Arapahoe County Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan Jr., 68, on a drug charge, the 2001 National Sheriff Association’s “Sheriff of the Year” was jailed at the Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility, named in his honor. (Denver’s KCNC-TV)

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

A 22-year-old man in Lubbock, Texas, returned home with his wife and child around 1 a.m. but realized he had left his key inside the house. Not wanting to pay a locksmith, he decided to climb down the chimney. He got stuck, and his wife had to call 911, according to Deputy Fire Marshal Robert Loveless, who said firefighters finally rescued him after about an hour by dropping a rope down the chimney and hoisting him up. (Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)

Ethan Bennett, 36, told sheriff’s deputies in Benton County, Ore., that he was startled when a squirrel ran up his left leg at his residence and fired a .22-caliber rifle at it. He missed the squirrel but shot himself in the foot. (Corvallis Gazette-Times)

Paper Trail

Federal prosecutors said salespeople for a West Palm Beach, Fla., company conned a dozen elderly customers into spending about $1 million to buy unnecessary septic products, in some cases more than 70 years worth of toilet paper. The con artists at FBK Products told their victims the federal government had changed regulations governing toilet paper and that they needed the company’s special toilet paper to avoid ruining their septic tanks. (The Miami Herald)

Stalker of the Year

Dutch authorities arrested a 42-year-old Rotterdam woman for calling a 62-year-old man 65,000 times in the past year. The man complained he’d been bombarded with calls, texts and emails from the woman, who claimed to be in a relationship with him and denied that her 178 calls a day were excessive. At a preliminary hearing in The Hague, a judge granted the woman bail on condition that she leave the man alone. Within hours of her release, however, she began calling him again and was taken into custody until her trial. (BBC News)

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Cary Dolego, 53, a write-in candidate for governor of Arizona in 2010, traveled to Ukraine to meet a potential bride, only to find himself the victim of an online dating scam. Dolego stayed, however, even though he was broke and forced to sleep in public parks in Chernivtsi. “I need a special lady,” he explained, “a Ukrainian lady, so that we can start a life together.” (Associated Press)

Kisses of Death

Merlin Holland marked the 111th anniversary of the death of his grandfather, the writer Oscar Wilde, by unveiling Wilde’s renovated tomb, now declared to be kiss-proof. The oft-visited Paris tomb had been closed for repairs because it was “being eaten away by lipstick” caused by “endless women kissing it,” according to actor Rupert Everett, who appeared at the unveiling ceremony. A glass screen now prevents visitors from touching the stonework, although tourists have already started leaving their lipstick marks on a nearby tree. (BBC News)

Temptation Eyes

Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice affirmed its right to order women whose eyes seem “tempting” to cover them immediately. Saudi women already must wear a loose black dress and cover their hair and sometimes their face when they appear in public. Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet of the Ha’eal district announced the CPVPV’s authority after a Saudi man fought with a member of the committee who ordered the man’s wife to cover her eyes. The husband was stabbed twice in the hand. (Egypt’s Bikya Masr news agency)

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.