NEWS & BLUES

Curses, Foiled Again

Police investigating a bank robbery in Houston, Texas, identified their suspects on Facebook. Following a tip, they discovered incriminating posts by teller Estefany Martinez, 19, (“IM RICH”), and her boyfriend, Ricky “Ricko Gee” Gonzalez, 18, (“WIPE MY TEETH WITH HUNDREDS” and another part of his anatomy with $50 bills). Authorities said Martinez enlisted fellow teller Anna Margarita Rivera, 19, and her brother, Arturo Solano, 22, as accomplices. “I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t post pictures of yourself on Facebook smoking pot or drinking because employers are now looking at Facebook pages,” said Martinez’s attorney, Richard Kuniansky. “But I never knew there should be a warning not to post about a bank robbery that’s been committed.” (Houston Chronicle) A smartphone app led South Korean police to a murder suspect. The unidentified university professor had sent his mistress an incriminating message via the messaging service app “Kakao Talk” shortly before strangling his wife. He went to the head office of the “Kakao Talk” provider after the murder and asked that the message be deleted, but it was saved for a month and retrieved by police in Busan while checking his phone records. The professor confessed to the murder. (Reuters)

No. 1 News

The National September 11th memorial is scheduled to open in New York City in time for the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, but despite taking nine years to plan, the eight-acre memorial site won’t have bathrooms because the developer of the $500 million project omitted them. City officials meeting to come up with a solution to the oversight nixed using portable toilets before deciding it would simply inform visitors about the lack of bathrooms and tell them to make sure they go before their visit. (New York’s WPIX-TV) A man fell down a 30-foot embankment while urinating on the side of a road in King County, Wash., and had to wait several hours before rescue crews could locate and save him. King County fire official Dave Nelson said rescuers at the scene noticed no drug or alcohol impairment, and a TV news crew reported a passing car had startled the unidentified man. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Guilty with an Explanation

Authorities in Will County, Ill., arrested Joshua Price, 26, for leaving a flash drive with child pornography on it at a Joliet Junior College computer lab. They searched his home and found more child pornography and some 1,700 photos of dismembered women. Sheriff’s Detective Joseph Fazio testified that Price told him the porn was “the only thing that kept him from killing his wife and children.” (Chicago Tribune) Lawyers for Dalia Dippolito, 30, charged with hiring a hit man to kill her husband of six months, claimed the couple staged the incident to get them a reality television show and that she never intended to actually kill him. “It was a stunt that Michael Dippolito, whether he’ll admit it or not, hoped to capture the attention of someone in reality TV,” defense attorney Michael Salnick declared in his opening statement at his client’s trial in West Palm Beach, Fla. (ABC News)

Cowgirl Up

An outbreak of equine herpes in Utah forced contestants for the title of Davis County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse Junior Queen to compete without horses. Instead, they trotted around the arena riding stick horses. Former queen Savanna Steed (sic) said before the pageant that the stick horses would test the riders’ knowledge of the show routine. “With a stick horse, it’s a lot different because you have to do all the work,” contestant Kylie Felter said, “and I think it’s going to be a lot more tiring than with a real horse.” (Salt Lake City’s KSL-TV)

Fruits of Research

Waste-watching Sen. Tom Coburn (R- Okla.) released a 73-page report identifying more than $3 billion in questionable studies funded with taxpayer dollars by the National Science Foundation. Among the projects Coburn blasted was a $559,681 study to test sick shrimps’ metabolism by having them exercise on a treadmill. The researchers found sick shrimp “did not perform as well and did not recover as well from exercise as healthy shrimp.” Other examples of what Coburn said constituted “waste, fraud, duplication and mismanagement”: “ an $80,000 study on why the same teams always dominate March Madness; a $315,000 study suggesting playing FarmVille on Facebook helps adults develop relationships; $1 million for an analysis of how quickly parents respond to trendy baby names; $50,000 to produce and publicize amateur songs about science, $581,000 on whether online dating site users are racist.”

NSF official Dana Topousis defended the agency’s “excellent record,” declaring, “We believe that no other funding agency in the world comes close to NSF for giving taxpayers the best return on their investment.” (The Washington Times)

Fire Buggery

After receiving reports of a child walking on a highway carrying a blowtorch, police in Shenango Township, Pa., located the 3- year-old boy, who told them where he lived. Arriving at the address, they found the boy had burned a porch swing, a broom, a sliding door, a deck and a knob on a septic tank and singed an igniter on a gas grill. Police Chief Dave Rishel noted the propane-powered blowtorch has safety switches but said the boy “was able to manipulate them and turn the torch on.” He estimated the damages at $5,000. (Pittsburgh’s WTAE-TV)

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.