News & Blues

Curses, Foiled Again

Police searching for a stolen iPad used the tablet’s GPS to track it to an apartment in San Jose, Calif. The officers didn’t have a search warrant, but when they asked permission to enter the apartment, the occupants obliged. “They probably thought if they didn’t, we’d suspect something,” Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney David Tomkins suggested. Once inside, the officers found 780 pounds of crystal meth, worth about $35 million. “I told my dad about the bust,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said, “and he said, ‘They have $35 million, and they can’t go out and buy an iPad?’” (San Jose Mercury News)

When a single-engine Cessna 182 strayed into the same Los Angeles airspace as a Marine helicopter carrying President Obama, the North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled two Air Force fighter jets to intercept the aircraft in the no-fly zone and direct it to land at Long Beach Airport. Federal agents who questioned the pilot determined that he presented no security threat, but they also found 40 pounds of marijuana aboard the plane and turned him over to Long Beach police. (Associated Press)

Police arrested a 17-year-old boy they said tried to burglarize a home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, after a patrol spotted the juvenile at the front door struggling to free his hand from the flap of a mail slot. He became stuck while trying to reach through the slot to unlock the door. (Associated Press)

High People in Low Places

Barely an hour into his 21st birthday, Damien Dasilveira Bittar was arrested for drunk driving after he crashed his car into an alcohol rehabilitation center in Eugene, Ore. Police said Bittar was trying to flee the scene when officers arrived. (Eugene’s KVAL-TV)

High People in High Places

When sheriff’s deputies went to a home in Dickson County, Tenn., to notify Danielle Elks, the wife of Charlie Daniels band keyboardist Joel “Taz” DiGregorio, that her husband had died in a car crash, they found the back door open and entered. They found what they suspected was marijuana on the kitchen table, as well as rolling papers. They also noted there was a sticker for the Governor’s Marijuana Eradication Task Force. Elks is the director of the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission, whose mission includes the eradication of marijuana. The deputies neither investigated nor arrested anyone. (Nashville’s WSMV-TV)

Low People in High Places

While serving as mayor of Hawthorne, Calif., Larry Guidi also worked as a warehouse operations manager for the Hawthorne School District. He was fired after a security camera recorded him loading a commercial food mixer into his pickup truck. He pleaded guilty to stealing the mixer, explaining that he took it so he could make dough for his home pizza oven. (Associated Press)

Anwar El-Balkimy, an ultra-conservative Islamist member of the Egyptian parliament, told reporters from his hospital bed that masked gunmen robbed and beat him on a desert highway. Later, however, the employees of a plastic-surgery clinic in Giza said that El-Balkimy was covering his face in bandages to hide plastic surgery. El-Balkimy admitted he’d gotten a nose job and resigned from both the Salafist Nour Party and parliament. (USA Today)

Fiction Turns to Fact

After Maria Dmitrienko won for Kazakhstan at the Arab Shooting Championships in Kuwait, she received her gold medal while the public address system broadcast a spoof of Kazakhstan’s national anthem from the 2006 movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Instead of “Sky of golden sun” and “steppe of golden seed,” the audience heard “Kazakhstan’s prostitutes cleanest in the region.” Dmitrienko kept a straight face throughout the anthem but afterward cracked a smile. Her teammates, however, demanded an apology and that the ceremony be repeated. Organizers insisted they had downloaded the parody from the Internet by mistake. They also got Serbia’s anthem wrong. (BBC News)

Facebook Justice

Alan Fulk married a woman in 2001, moved out in 2009, changed his name to Alan L. O’Neill and remarried without divorcing her. The first wife found out about the second wife when Facebook’s automatic efforts to connect users suggested a friendship connection under its “People You May Know” feature. “Wife No. 1 went to wife No. 2’s page and saw a picture of her and her husband with a wedding cake,” Pierce County, Wash., Prosecutor Mark Lindquist said, adding that the first wife immediately called O’Neill’s mother. Within an hour, O’Neill was at the first wife’s apartment, admitted they weren’t divorced and implored her not to report him. Despite his protests, she promptly notified police, who charged O’Neill, 41, with bigamy. “Facebook is now some place where people discover things about each other that end up reporting that to law enforcement,” Lindquist said. (Associated Press)

Orthographic Outrage

When some parents objected to a school menu in Methuen, Mass., that offered “KKK Chicken Tenders,” the Methuen Public School’s Nutrition Department said “KKK” stood for “Crispy, Crunchy Chicken,” with the C’s swapped for K’s. Informed that “KKK” was offensive, a department official said the menu wouldn’t be reprinted, but the entry was changed on the school’s website to “Krispy, Krunchy Chicken.” A parent who’d complained, complained again, saying, “If they’re teaching our kids to spell correctly, it should be ‘CCC.’” (Boston’s WCVB-TV)

Way to Go

Justin Miller, 28, was killed while walking along a sidewalk in Beaufort, S.C., after being hit by a stolen fire truck. Firefighters had responded to an emergency call at an apartment complex, where authorities said Kalvin Hunt, 26, stole the fire engine. He drove about two miles before hitting Miller, then careened off the road and crashed into some trees. Hunt was pinned inside the truck. After rescue workers freed him, he began assaulting two police officers who tried to take him to the hospital with injuries. (The Beaufort Gazette)

Immodest Proposals

Missouri lawmakers voted to add gun owners to the list of groups protected against workplace discrimination. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Wanda Brown, said the measure was inspired by a constituent who runs a meat-packing plant in a bad neighborhood and “was told that if he didn’t quit carrying his gun, the USDA would not come and inspect his product,” meaning he couldn’t sell it. After the measure passed, 115 to 36, openly gay Rep. Mike Colona declared, “What this body has done is put protecting gun ownership above discriminating against somebody because of their sexual orientation.” (St. Louis’s KWMU-FM)

Ohio Senate Bill 271 would allow telephone companies to stop providing landline service, potentially leaving a large number of Ohio residents without any phone service. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Frank LaRose, said the measure frees phone companies to spend their time and money on new, high-speed connections. “Those resources are being wasted on vintage services customers are walking away from,” he explained. Among the bill’s opponents are seniors and people unable or unwilling to give up their landlines. “If you eliminate landlines,” Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly pointed out, “you would put these people out there without a means to report a crime.” (Springfield News-Sun)

Keeping in Touch

Jacob Jock got kicked off a jury in a civil trial in Sarasota, Fla., after sending a Facebook friend request to one of the defendants within 20 minutes of being instructed by the judge not to contact anyone connected with the case. “I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Jock said, explaining that he sent the friend request while he was in the jury pool. “I didn’t think I would get picked for the jury.” But he was, and defendant Violette Milerman informed her attorney, who told the judge. (Sarasota Herald-Tribune)

Authorities were called to rescue Bonnie Miller after she walked off a pier in St. Joseph, Mich., while texting. “I had set an appointment for the wrong time, and so I sent about three words,” Miller said. “Next thing you know, it was the water.” (South Bend’s WBND-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.