NEWS & BLUES

Curses, Foiled Again

Less than an hour after Richard Owens, 18, was released from jail in Land O’ Lakes, Fla., a sheriff’s deputy saw him trying to break into a car in the jail parking lot. “He knows Richard because he released him from jail earlier in the evening,” the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office reported, adding the car belongs to another deputy. (Tampa Bay Times)

After a man stole a 32-inch TV from a Wal-Mart store in Port Charlotte, Fla., two detectives in separate vehicles spotted the suspect fleeing on a bicycle. One pulled ahead of him while the other gave chase on foot. While watching the detective behind him, the suspect failed to realize the vehicle in front had stopped and slammed into it. Wal-Mart security personnel identified Jonathan Ryan Fontaine, 32, as the suspect, and he was arrested. (Sarasota’s WWSB-TV)

Felonious Haberdashery

Authorities who know Richard Henry Bain, 61, the man accused of opening fire at a political rally in Montreal, described him as “a little eccentric” because he wore a kilt. “Certainly, when you see someone in a kilt in this region,” Marie-France Brisson, the municipal director general in La Conception, Quebec, where Bain lives, “it’s not like New York. It stands out a bit more.” (Reuters)

Government Enterprise

Treasury Department investigators estimated that the Internal Revenue Service paid $6.5 billion last year to identity thieves who filed fraudulent tax returns. In one instance, the IRS issued more than $3.3 million in refunds for 2,137 separate tax returns listing the same address. In another, hundreds of refunds were deposited into the same bank account. (Associated Press)

The U.S. Postal Service wastes at least $2 million a year by printing more commemorative stamps than it sells and then destroying the unsold stamps, according to USPS investigators. It wasted $1.2 million in printing costs in 2009, for example, by issuing 1 billion 44-cent stamps commemorating television’s The Simpsons. It sold 318 million. Responding to the report, the USPS said it already addressed the problem by creating the “forever” stamp, whose value increases with postage rates. (Bloomberg News)

Wrong Arm of the Law

A man suspected of fatally shooting two men and seriously wounding two others in Detroit turned himself in at a fire station two hours after the incident. Fire officials called police, but, according to a police statement, “due to area patrol units being busy handling high priority runs, no units were dispatched to the location.” The 36-year-old man eventually went to a police station, where he was arrested. (Associated Press)

God Almighty

Kentucky’s Supreme Court declined to review two challenges to state laws requiring the state to credit God for its homeland security that were passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The first stated the “safety and security of the commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.” The second created the state’s Office of Homeland Security and required its executive director to publicize “dependence on Almighty God.” The group American Atheists insisted the laws violated constitutional bans on state-sponsored religion. A judge agreed, but the Court of Appeals reversed the decision, declaring the law “merely pays lip service to a commonly held belief in the puissance (power) of God” and doesn’t advance religion. (Louisville’s The Courier-Journal)

Blind Faith

A man driving off a ferry in Whittier, Alaska, went about 400 feet, then obeyed his GPS unit directing him to make a hard right turn and drove down a boat ramp into the harbor. Whittier public safety director Dave Schofield said the Subaru was fully submerged, but a man jumped in the water and broke open a window, allowing the unnamed driver and his two dogs to escape. A cat inside a carrier drowned. (Associated Press)

Hoarding Hordes

Fed up with Canadians crossing the border to use their high Canadian dollar to stock up on comparatively cheap gas, milk and other items, some residents of Bellingham, Wash., started a Facebook page calling for American-only shopping hours at the local Costco. It reports that Canadians not only are loading up on goods, leaving little for the locals, but also are taking up more than one parking space in the store’s lot. Some even complain that Canadians are behaving rudely.

But Chamber of Commerce Ken Oplinger urged patience, pointing out, “In the last two years, our sales tax generation has doubled or tripled the pace in the rest of the state, and it’s almost entirely because of the Canadians coming south.” (CBC News)

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.