news & opinion
news & blues
CURSES, FOILED AGAIN
Two men lacking masks when they broke
into an apartment in Carroll, Iowa, used a Sharpie marker to draw on masks. The Daily Times Herald reported that police, responding to a caller who saw two men with “painted faces” drive off, stopped a car after noticing Matthew McNelly, 23, and Joey Miller, 20, sporting the irremovable disguises.
FOILED AGAIN AND AGAIN
AND AGAIN AND AGAIN
A man whose truck got stuck on railroad
tracks near the Baltimore airport abandoned the stalled vehicle and tried to steal four vehicles in succession. The Washington Post said police learned of the first theft attempt from a woman who said she heard a loud noise, which turned out to be the sound of the stalled truck being hit by an Amtrak passenger train. The woman then reported finding a man trying to steal her car. She shouted, and he fled. While police were looking for him, two other people reported the same man tried but failed to steal their cars. When police found suspect Gary E. Ensor, 43, not far from the site of the first theft attempt, a man approached and told them Ensor had tried unsuccessfully to steal his car, too.
STICKING TO THE SCRIPT
Charged with making 18 bomb threats to
schools and hospitals in New South Wales, Australia, James Ronald Condren, 44, insisted his brother had made the calls. According to Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Condren didn’t help his case when magistrate Kevin Maughn denied him bail by shouting, “There’s a bomb in the courthouse, everyone back away right now.”
IT IS WRITTEN
Malaysian authorities confiscated more
than 15,000 Bibles imported from Indonesia because they call God “Allah.” Both Indone- sian and Malaysian languages use “Allah” as the translation for God in both Islamic and Christian traditions, but Malaysia has banned non-Muslims from using “Allah” in their writ- ings, declaring the word is exclusively Islamic.
NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN
NOR OODLES OF NOODLES
Marie O’Kelly, 95, called police to report
finding letter carrier Kristine A. Pflughaupt, 46, sitting on the floor of her kitchen in Mar- ion, Iowa. “She was in uniform and had mail
WWW.SYRACUSENEWTIMES.COM
WANT TO SEE MORE OF JOE GLISSON’S CARTOONS? Just visit the Arts and Entertainment section at syracusenewtimes.com
and a mail-carrying bag with her,” Lt. Steve
Etzel told The Cedar Rapids Gazette, adding
that Pflughaupt was using her hands to eat leftover noodles, which were running down her shirt. When O’Kelly asked her what she was doing, Pflughaupt didn’t answer. “She just kept eating those noodles,” O’Kelly said.
LITIGATION NATION
Scott T. Zielinski, 23, currently serving an
eight-year prison sentence after being convict- ed of robbing a party store in Clinton Town- ship, Mich., filed a lawsuit seeking $125,000 from the store, its owner and three employees. After holding up the employees at knifepoint and threatening to kill them in order to steal cigarettes, liquor and $873 in cash, Zielinski claims the store workers chased him, shot him twice and beat him excessively. The Macomb Daily reported that Circuit Judge David Viviano ruled Zielinski could proceed with his suit but only after posting a $10,000 bond in case he loses and has to pay the defendants’ legal fees.
FLAME GAMES
Firefighters treated a mobile home resident
in Des Moines, Iowa, for smoke inhalation after the bathtub caught fire while the resi- dents were celebrating the Day of the Dead. Noting someone put candles in plastic plant vases with dirt at the bottom in the tub, inves- tigators concluded that when a candle burned down to the bottom of a vase, it caught fire, melted down and caused the bathtub to catch on fire. “We normally have the candles burn- ing in a plate of water,” resident Noemi Gar-
cia told The Des Moines Register. “Whoever
put them in the bathroom thought the dirt would be good enough. But it wasn’t.”
YOGI KNOWS BEST
Bears looking for food ransack minivans
more often than any other vehicle, according to scientists at Yosemite National Park. They found that of the 908 vehicles broken into by park bears between 2001 and 2007, 29 percent were minivans, which represented just 7 per- cent of all the cars that visited Yosemite. The study, published in the Journal of Mammalogy, explained that minivans, which are typically driven by families with children, are virtual picnic baskets on wheels, containing plenty of snacks, drinks and well-stocked coolers.
WHEN GUNS ARE
OUTLAWED
Authorities in Marion County, Fla.,
reported that a man told them Elsie Egan, 53, repeatedly hit him in the face with an uncooked steak. Sheriff’s deputies told the Associated Press that Egan attacked the man because he refused a piece of sliced bread. He said he wanted a roll. Egan denied hitting the man with the steak but did admit slapping him “so that he could learn.”
SECOND-AMENDMENT
FOLLIES
When the New Orleans Saints played the
Washington Redskins, Wayne A. Spring of Albany, La., announced to his friends that
they were welcome to shoot his 60-inch, high- definition, flat-screen TV if the Saints won. The Redskins looked like winners until the final minutes, when the Saints tied the score. After they won in overtime, about a dozen Saints fans showed up at Spring’s house with firearms and a case of beer and shot up his TV. The TV shooting broke no laws, Louisi- ana State Police Lt. Doug Cain told the Asso- ciated Press, “but I would say mixing booze and firearms is not a good thing.”
HOW GOVERNMENT WORKS
An abuse hotline staffed by Florida’s
Department of Children & Families has begun curtailing the number of calls it investigates in an effort to reduce workload and the system- wide stress that high case loads can cause. The Miami Herald said that since the depart- ment changed its policy, the Tallahassee-based hotline has screened out tens of thousands of calls alleging kidnapping, rape, aggravated child abuse, medical neglect, malnutrition and kids roaming the street unsupervised. The revised policy allows investigators to concen- trate on children who are most at risk and cut down on frivolous complaints, DCF Secretary George Sheldon said, including a report from a teacher that a child came to school wearing mismatched sneakers and another about a boy whose underwear was on backward. A workshop on government openness
held in Washington, D.C., was closed to the public. WJLA-TV News reported the Justice Department-sponsored private training session for Freedom of Information Act officials was aimed at explaining the new U.S. Office of Government Information Services, which set-
continued on next page
Syracuse New Times March 31 - April 7, 2010
3
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31