news & blues

Curses, Foiled Again

Parole absconder Robert Lewis Crose, 47, managed to evade California authorities for 12 years but then led them right to him when he complained on his Facebook page about the cold weather in the northern Montana town of Cut Bank. A fugitive task force in California notified Glacier County, Mont., sheriff’s Sgt. Tom Siefert, who arrested him. “He said he’d worked cutting up here, harvesting, for the last 10 years,” Siefert said.

(Montana’s The Billings Gazette) When Walter Allen Jr. bought two Bentleys from a Houston car dealership for $458,000, he paid by signing over a $500,000 check issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. Managers at the dealership became suspicious because the Federal Reserve Bank usually uses wire transfers, not checks. They asked Allen to return later to pick up his cars, then alerted police, who confirmed the check was a fake and were waiting for Allen when he returned. (Houston Chronicle) A man who was robbed at gunpoint outside a Subway store in Homestead, Pa., flagged down police and told them he recognized the suspect as having applied for a job at the Subway right before the robbery. “We checked with Subway, and they did have an application,” Homestead Police Chief J.A. DeSimone said. Using information from the form, police arrested Kris Johnson, 18. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, WTAE-TV)

The Eyes Have It

Prince Frederic Von Anhalt, 68, the husband of celebrity Zsa Zsa Gabor, glued an eye shut when he accidentally grabbed his wife’s nail glue instead of eye drops. “It was stupid,” Von Anhalt said after a doctor at an eye clinic in Beverly Hills, Calif., repaired the damage. Gabor, 93, suffered a similar eye injury years ago, according to her daughter, Francesca Hilton, when she mistakenly used “crazy glue” on her eyelashes. (CNN)

Born to Be Wild

New York state officials announced plans to implement an emergency birth-control program because a flock of wild turkeys, estimated at 72 birds, won’t stop pestering families living in Staten Island’s Ocean Breeze section. “It’s frustrating,” said Christopher Decicco, speaking for Councilman James Oddo, who represents the area. “We want to do something for the residents in Ocean Breeze who keep calling and complaining their houses are surrounded by wild turkeys.” Oddo recently suggested birth control for pigeons nesting at the Staten Island Ferry but denied he is anti-bird. “I have nothing against fowl,” he said. “I have nothing against birds.”

Even though the New York City Parks and Recreation Department said that wild turkeys citywide have gone from near extinction in the 1950s to 65,000 in the 1990s, it’s illegal to hunt them. Instead, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said its program would coat the turkeys’ eggs with vegetable oil during the breeding season to prevent them from hatching. (Staten Island’s The Epoch Times and SILive.com)

Chronicle of Lower Education

Scholars found dozens of factual errors in two history textbooks used by Virginia schools. “I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes — wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere,” said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College, who reviewed Our Virginia: Past and Present. He recommended it “should be withdrawn from the classroom immediately.”

Among the mistakes in Our Virginia and Our America: To 1865, are that New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (actually a Spanish colonial port), that the Confederacy included 12 states (actually 11), that thousands of black soldiers fought for the South (disputed by most mainstream historians) and that the United States entered World War I in 1916 (actually 1917). The books’ author, Joy Masoff, isn’t a trained historian and admitted relying on the Internet for her research.

Five Ponds Press of Weston, Conn., publishes both books, which the Virginia Department of Education approved and many local school districts favor, according to Kenneth Bassett, social studies supervisor for Prince William County schools, because Five Ponds Press books are “substantially less expensive than the … next highest-rated competitor.” (The Washington Post)

Mensa Reject of the Week

German authorities reported that a 64year-old man in Gumperda tried to seal off the entrance to his cellar with bricks but trapped himself inside. He didn’t realize his mistake until he’d finished the work, then waited a few days to see if anyone would rescue him before deciding to free himself by knocking down a wall. Neighbors who heard drilling noise called police, who were waiting for the man. A police official noted that instead of escaping through the wall he’d just built, the senior citizen demolished a neighbor’s wall. (Reuters)

When Guns Are Outlawed

A man wearing a black bandana across his face tried to rob a convenience store in La Mesa, Calif., by threatening the clerk with a glove scrunched up into the shape of a gun. Police said that when the clerk realized it wasn’t really a gun, he pulled out a screwdriver and ordered the man to leave. He did.

(The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Make and Break

Oklahoma Rep. Terry Harrison was so proud of killing a piebald, white-tailed deer that he summoned the media to boast about his feat. When game warden Shane Fields read about the hunt, he called his friend Harrison and suggested the lawmaker research hunting regulations. Harrison said his heart “just sunk” when he realized he had shot the animal illegally because he didn’t have a permit. Facing a $296 fine, Harrison admitted he should have known better because he helped write some of the state’s hunting laws. (The McAlester News-Capital)

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.