NEWS & BLUES

Curses, Foiled Again

While a sheriff’s deputy was giving Louis Cruz, 55, a sobriety test after stopping him for driving erratically in Okaloosa County, Fla., Cruz suggested that a “bad foot” might be affecting his response to the test. When he leaned down to show the deputy the foot, he accidentally revealed an ankle holster. Lacking a permit to carry a concealed weapon, Cruz was arrested. (Northwest Florida Daily News)

A state trooper who noticed Sean Schmidt, 20, standing with his upper body sticking out of the sunroof of a vehicle on a Buffalo, N.Y., highway activated his lights to pull over the vehicle.

The trooper reported that Schmidt then tried to throw away a small bag of marijuana, but it landed on the hood of the trooper’s car, providing evidence the trooper needed to ticket Schmidt for marijuana possession in addition to not wearing a seatbelt. (Associated Press)

Opposable-Thumb Follies

The first case of texting impairment caused by Botox has been reported by the journal Archives of Dermatology. A study by Julia Lehman of Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic recounts how she treated a 17-year-old girl for excessive sweating by giving her Botox injections. The patient complained afterward that the treatments controlled the sweating but slowed her texting speed. The impairment lasted for six weeks after the injection. Lehman said the case “shows the importance of thinking about modern-day activities and how our treatments could potentially impair some of these modern-day activities such as texting.” (Reuters)

Concrete Evidence

Police responding to reports of an alligator sighting in Independence, Mo., had been advised by a conservation agent to kill the gator if they thought it posed a danger. When the three officers saw it lurking in the weeds leading down to a pond, they opened fire. The first round hit the gator in the head, but when the second one bounced off, the officers realized they’d been shooting at a concrete lawn ornament. Homeowner Rick Sheridan explained he bought the life-size gator to keep people off his property. (Associated Press)

Shuttlecock Teasers

Declaring it needed to create a more “attractive presentation” for female badminton players, the Badminton World Federation decreed that all women competing at the elite level must wear skirts or dresses, not shorts and pants. “We’re not trying to use sex to promote the sport. We just want them to look feminine and have a nice presentation so women will be more popular,” BWF deputy president Paisan Rangsikitpho said, noting that some women compete in oversize shorts and long pants and appear “baggy, almost like men.” Male players are required only to dress in “proper attire,” officials said. In a nod to Muslim women, the BWF said women could still wear shorts or long pants for cultural and religious reasons but only beneath a proper dress or skirt. After widespread protests against the rule, labeling it sexist, offensive to Muslim women and a cumbersome hindrance to performance, three days later the BWF withdrew it. (The New York Times)

Fire Buggery

Deana Melendez, 51, decided to get rid of an oil painting by her husband that she hated by burning it in the fireplace of their home in Meadow Pointe, Fla. The fire somehow spread from the painting to the walls and roof. Missing her cat, Melendez refused to leave, cursing at a firefighter who tried to remove her and kicking him in the knee: “F--k you,” she told him repeatedly. “I’m looking for my cat.” After the blaze left the house a charred frame, husband Rubely Melendez, 50, said he kept most of his money in cash in the house, and it had all burned. (St. Petersburg Times) Jena Liberty, 48, locked her keys in her car at 4 a.m. on a freeway north of Santa Clarita, Calif. The freeway callbox she tried using to summon help was disconnected, so, according to sheriff’s Lt. Joe Efflandt, “To get attention, she decided to set the hillside on fire.” The fire burned about a half-acre of brush before firefighters extinguished it. (Los Angeles’ Daily News)

Identity Crisis

Police arrested a divorced couple in Stillwater, Okla., who admitted trying to fake the man’s death to escape some outstanding arrest warrants and so he could start a new life as a woman and “return to the family with a different identity,” police Capt. Randy Dickerson said. Heather Davis and William Davis previously lost custody of their children after their underage daughter caught her father having sex with a blow-up doll. (Oklahoma City’s KFOR-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.