NEWS & BLUES

Curses, Foiled Again!

After a two-car crash in Williamsport, Pa., injured one driver, the other sped from the scene. Before he’d gone a block, his car broke down, so he fled on foot. Investigating Patrolman Dustin Reeder found the car and discovered a wallet in the center console with a driver’s license belonging to Scott Lee Applegate, 50. Just then, Applegate returned to retrieve a case of beer he’d forgotten. Reeder spotted him with the beer and, after a brief chase, detained him. Drunk driving was one of several charges filed. (Williamsport Sun-Gazette)

When managers of a jewelry store at a shopping mall in Naples, Fla., discovered items missing, they identified Andrew Alexander Roberts, 26, who had been working at the store only five days, as the culprit. Surveillance cameras caught him taking cash and jewelry, some of which he then sold to another store in the mall. When confronted, according to the arrest report, Roberts told management to “discount it from his paycheck.” (Naples Daily News)

Monkey See, Monkey Do 

Zookeepers at Indonesia’s Taru Jurug Zoo moved a female orangutan out of sight of visitors to stop her from smoking lit cigarettes that people throw into her cage. Zoo official Daniek Hendarto said the orangutan has been smoking for 10 of her 15 years, aping humans by holding cigarettes casually between her fingers and puffing away while visitors watch and photograph her. (Associated Press)

America’s Footprint

Instead of closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military announced plans to spend $40 million to upgrade communications at the Navy base, whose outdated satellite communications system was overburdened by the military court hearing the cases of the top plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks and other terrorist suspects, and by ongoing detention operations. Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale explained that the new underwater fiber optic line from Guantanamo Bay to Florida has more bandwidth, is more reliable than satellites and “will bring the base online with communication technology equal to that of the Department of Defense footprint around the world.” (CNN)

Reasonable Explanation

When police confronted Flora Burkhart, 58, about leaving the scene of an accident after rear-ending a pickup in Van Burean, Ark., they reported her telling them, “I left because I did not want my ice cream to melt.” (The Smoking Gun)

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

A study identifying the world’s 122 laziest countries, reported in the British medical journal The Lancet, ranked the United States 46th. Physical activity was the determining factor. Malta was the laziest, Greece the least lazy. (Forbes)

A survey of energy efficiency in the world’s 12 major industrial powers ranked the United States ninth. Only Brazil, Canada and Russia scored lower, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s International Energy-Efficiency’s Scorecard. The most energy-efficient country is the United Kingdom. (The Washington Times)

A National Geographic Society and GlobeScan survey of environmental attitudes and behavior among 17,000 consumers in 17 countries ranked Americans last when it comes to practicing sustainable behavior involving housing, transportation, food and consumer goods. Despite finishing last since the survey began in 2008, only 21 percent of Americans reported feeling guilty about their impact on the environment. The survey found consumers in India, China and Brazil are the greenest but feel the most guilt about their environmental impact. (National Geographic)

Not-So-Great Escape

When sheriff’s deputies approached a man they found lying in a motel parking lot in Modesto, Calif., he ran behind the motel and disappeared. A deputy noticed a hole in the ground, 18 inches in diameter, leading to a septic tank, where the man was hiding up to his shoulders in liquid. Deputies and fire rescue crews spent 30 minutes trying to coax the man from the tank. He remained “verbally combative,” Battalion Chief Bryan Hunt said, until agreeing to leave the tank if his mother told him to. After she spoke with him by phone and sent his stepfather to the scene, he emerged from the hole, lit a cigarette and refused to be hosed off. When deputies asked the unidentified man why he jumped into the tank, he answered he’d seen people make similar moves on TV. (The Modesto Bee and Sacramento’s KTXL-TV)

War Toys

Thailand paid $30 million for 1,576 GT200 and Alpha 6 handheld bomb detectors issued to a dozen government security forces, including the army and the agency responsible for the security of Thailand’s royal family, despite a U.S. warning that the devices are as useless as “a toy” and appear “to be a glorified dowsing rod.” British explosives expert Sidney Alford added that he examined one and found that the so-called “detection card,” which is supposed to be inserted into the plastic device to identify explosives or drugs, is nothing more than a useless piece of paper. Despite these findings, the government continues to deploy the devices, which top defense officials insist work. Some observers believe the military refuses to admit it was duped into buying useless bomb detectors because doing so “may invite unwanted investigation into suspected corruption,” Bangkok Post former editor Veera Prateepchaikul said. (The Washington Times)

Unclear on the Concept

Police arrested Shannon White, 36, in Belleville, Ill., for calling 911 six times on a Saturday night to complain that her boyfriend wouldn’t give her more beer. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

After Tonya Ann Fowler, 45, spotted her police mugshot on the front page of a local publication that circulates pictures of recently arrested people, she called 911 to complain “about how she looked” in the photo. Police in Winder, Ga., responded by arresting her and taking a new mugshot when she was booked at the Barrow County Detention Center for unlawful use of 911 and disorderly conduct. (The Smoking Gun)

Slow-Speed Getaway

David Driver reported that 1,600 turtles made a break for it after vandals tore down or stole metal fencing at his turtle farm in Summerville, Ga. Driver, who sells the turtles he raises to pet shops and to China, where they’re eaten, said the escaped reptiles — all native species such as common snappers, Eastern paints and yellow-bellied sliders — headed for nearby ponds and creeks, costing him the bulk of four years’ worth of work. (Tennessee’s Chattanooga Times Free Press)

Distracted Driver

A tow-truck operator notified police in Fort Pierce, Fla., that he pulled alongside a Jeep Cherokee and observed that the driver was naked and masturbating. A police officer who stopped the vehicle reported that when he asked Robert Casey, 49, why he was driving naked, “Casey stated he has problems with this and he is getting therapy.” The officer then found a toy pistol tied to Casey’s leg, part of which was hidden in his rectum and part tied around his genitals. (West Palm Beach’s WPBF-TV)

Second-Amendment Follies

After his girlfriend refused to shoot a .380-caliber, semiautomatic handgun in his family’s backyard in Alamo, Texas, Israel Torres, 17, grabbed the weapon and fired at a butane tank. The bullet richoted, fatally hitting him in the head. (Associated Press)

Adaisha Miller, 24, died from a gunshot by an off-duty police officer who was dancing at an outdoor party in Detroit after she hugged the officer from behind, causing the holstered weapon to accidentally discharge and strike her in the chest. (Detroit Free Press)

An unidentified 32-year-old man accidentally shot himself in Teaneck, N.J., when the .45-caliber gun he was carrying in his waistband slipped. Police said that when the man tried to grab the gun, he accidentally pulled the trigger, shooting himself in the leg and rupturing an artery. (Bergen County’s The Record)

Charles Robert Kimball, 19, died at a gun range in Livingston County, Mich., while his 19-year-old friend was firing an AK-47 assault rifle. Sheriff Bob Bezotte said the friend was applying lubricant after the weapon jammed when he accidentally engaged a bullet, which fired and struck Kimball, who was standing about 12 feet “down range.” (Detroit Free Press)

Federal authorities blamed Craig Shiflet, 23, with starting a wildfire that burned more than 18,000 acres of Arizona’s Tonto National Forest by firing a shotgun at a bachelor campout with four other men. The round was an “incendiary shotgun shell” whose packaging promises, “Shoots 100 feet of fire, setting everything in its path ablaze. Warning: Extreme FIRE HAZARD.” (The Smoking Gun)

Blinded by Delight

Modesty patrols in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community began selling special spectacles that prevent men from having to glimpse women. The glasses, which cost $8, have lenses that let men see clearly for a few yards ahead of them so they can walk. Everything beyond that, however, is a blur, including women who flout the ultra-Orthodox interpretation of religious law that dictates women appearing in public wear closed-neck, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts. Besides the blur-inducing glasses, which sell for $8, the insular community’s unofficial modesty patrols offer hoods and shields that block peripheral vision. (Associated Press)

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.