news & blues

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tles disputes between the federal bureaucrats and the public. “If they’re getting marching orders, why shouldn’t the public be there?” Jeff Stachewicz of FOIA Group Inc. said.

FINDERS KEEPERS

Jesus Leonardo, 57, told The New York

Times he makes more than $45,000 a year by cashing in winning tickets on horse races that betters throw away. “It is literally found money,” he said, explaining he spends more than 10 hours a day at a New York City off- track betting parlor. “This has become my job, my life. This is how I feed my family.” Leonardo collects the betting slips by pick-

ing through the OTB parlor’s trash each night. He also pays two friends $25 a bag to bring him the trash at four other OTB parlors around the city. Leonardo collects 2,000 to 7,000 dis- carded tickets a day and hauls them to his New Jersey home. He and two other friends bundle them in stacks of 300 for Leonardo to tote to the city the next morning and spend hours scanning each ticket to find any winners. “It is such exhausting work,” Leonardo said, “that I give myself a lunch hour.”

JOLTING NEWS

The Brazilian Coffee Industry Associa-

tion (ABIC) has intensified its crackdown on rogue roasters, who cut corners and costs by adulterating their products. “The most com- mon thing is to find wood from the (coffee) tree and shells from the beans, but you can

also find corn or caramel, which is much cheaper than coffee,” Almir Jose da Silva, ABIC’s chairman, told Reuters. “These cof- fees can make you feel unwell in the stomach or make you burp a lot.” Brazil is the world’s No. 1 coffee grower

and No. 2 consumer, and since most of the exported coffee is raw beans, the tainted cof- fee is largely a domestic problem. Noting that the ABIC ousted 10 members this year for deliberately bulking up their products, Silva said the crackdown is aimed at thwarting efforts to recruit new coffee drinkers. “Quality is what develops consumption,” he said.

LIKE SHOOTING

PORK IN A BARREL

Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) earmarked

$100,000 of taxpayer money to go to the library in Jamestown, S.C., which is in his district. But Congress mistakenly designated the money for Jamestown, Calif., a town that doesn’t even have a library. “That figures for government, doesn’t it?” Chris Pipkin, who runs the one-room library in Jamestown, S.C., told The Washington Times. Pipkin added that he had requested only $50,000 to buy computers and new bookshelves, but Clyburn’s office told the paper the congressman decided to double the request after visiting the library and finding books strewn on the floor because of the lack of shelving. As part of the same $1.1 trillion catchall

spending bill, Congress upped a request for funding for bus shelters in Bal Harbour, Fla., from $100,000 to $250,000. And the airport in Wasilla, Alaska, hometown of former Gov. Sarah Palin, is getting $500,000 to expand airplane parking space.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

A Detroit man who took a bus to Madison,

Wis., to spend a week dating a woman he met on Facebook told police that when his visit ended, she pretended to drive him to the bus station but robbed him. Considering that Facebook arranged the meeting, a police

official told The Wisconsin State Journal, “We

have significant leads.”

GOD HELPS THEM WHO

HELP THEMSELVES

Preaching to his congregation in North

Yorkshire, England, the Rev. Tim Jones, 42, announced that the commandment “Thou shalt not steal” isn’t carved in stone. He explained that shoplifting is acceptable as long as the shoplifters are desperate and that they steal from large national chain stores rather than small, family businesses.

PHOTOSHOP POLITICS

For a photo contest held in conjunction with

December’s Copenhagen climate talks, Cana- da’s opposition Liberal Party posted on its Web site a submission showing a doctored photo of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot in which Con- servative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s face was substituted for Oswald’s. Another posting showed Harper with his fist in a cow’s rectum, which the site presented as one of the “best seven” depicting where Harper would rather be than in Copenhagen. Reuters reported the postings were quickly removed and an apology issued by party official Mario Lague. The year before, Harper was forced to apologize after

the Conservative Web site featured an animated video showing a puffin pooping on then-Lib- eral leader Stephane Dion.

CLUMSY IS AS CLUMSY DOES

New York City police investigating a triple

murder at an upper West Side apartment said gunman Hector Quinones, 44, tried to shoot a fourth person, who escaped because Quinones tripped over his baggy pants while chasing her. The Daily News reported that when police arrived on the scene, Quinones tried to flee by jumping out a third-floor kitchen window onto the fire escape, but he lost his balance and plunged to the alley below, where he died from a broken neck with his droopy pants around his ankles.

SPELLING COUNTS

While drinking at a bar in Jefferson, Wis.,

Jennifer K. Luick and a girlfriend began grab- bing people by the butts “as a joke and to be playful,” according to police, who said that Andrew J. Wirth, 24, objected when Luick

grabbed him. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

reported that when Luick told her companion, Gregg T. Peters, 40, that Wirth had offended her, Peters confronted him. Wirth, who has a neck tattoo that reads “Nothing to lost {sic},” pulled out a .380 semiautomatic handgun and fatally shot Peters and Luick. After his arrest, Wirth appeared in Jefferson County Circuit Court, where he was Tasered twice for erupt- ing in obscenities and lunging at the gallery.

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.

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March 31 - April 7, 2010 Syracuse New Times

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