Curses, Foiled Again
British police identified Afrasayab Khan, 18, as the suspect in an assault on a Staffordshire University student after he stole her phone and changed her profile picture on a phone app to his. Friends noticed and notified the victim, who gave police the photo. Officers investigating an unrelated matter in Hanley spotted Khan and recognized him from the photo. He pleaded guilty. (Stoke on Trent’s The Sentinel)
Bacon Bits
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- Bacon can lower a man’s sperm count, according to Harvard University researchers, who studied men that regularly ate bacon, sausages, ham and other processed meat, and found they had 30 percent less normal sperm than men who restrained themselves to less than a rasher of bacon a day. (Britain’s The Telegraph)
- The latest bacon product from J&D Foods in Seattle is “Power Bacon,” a bacon-scented deodorant. “We realize that everyone loves bacon,” company co-founder Justin Esch said. “Well, now everyone can smell like it 24 hours a day.” (Seattle’s KIRO-TV)
- A Scottish court sentenced Wayne Stillwell, 25, to 10 months in jail for rubbing bacon over the handles of a mosque in Edinburgh and then throwing the bacon into the building. “Muslims regard bacon as unclean,” Stillwell explained after pleading guilty to causing a breach of the peace. (Edinburgh News)
- Authorities accused Boca Raton, Fla., city worker Donell Allison Jr., 33, of brutally beating another city employee after the victim took refuge in the back seat of a city vehicle when it began raining and sat on Allison’s lunch. (South Florida Sun Sentinel)
- Police charged Vernett Bader, 54, with stabbing her 64-year-old roommate in North Charleston, S.C., because he was listening to Eagles music and watching television with his brother. According to the police report, when Bader complained that she didn’t want to listen to the rock band, the roommate told her to shut up. Bader then grabbed a serrated knife from a kitchen drawer and swung it at the man. After the two men wrestled the knife away from Bader, she went back into the kitchen and returned with another knife. (Charleston’s The Post and Courier)
- Several people were injured during a running-of-the-bulls event in Dinwiddie County, Va., but not by the bulls. Sheriff’s Major William Knott said a camera-equipped drone crashed into the grandstand overlooking the Great Bull Run. (Washington’s WTOP-FM)
- When Roman Pirozek Jr., 19, lost control of the remote-control helicopter he was operating in a New York City park, it plummeted from the sky and sliced off the top of his head, killing him instantly. (New York’s WNBC-TV)
- After a Massachusetts school district canceled classes at all six of its schools because of “weather-related building issues,” Amherst Regional High School Principal Mark Jackson explained that the cause was slippery floors. Noting 22 falls were reported throughout the district, Jackson said the schools’ floors had been waxed during the summer, and high temperatures after schools opened melted the wax, making the floors slick. (Associated Press)
- Concerned about long-term damage to roads and the environment from using rock salt to deice city streets, Milwaukee’s Department of Public Works announced it will add cheese brine to rock salt. The brine is a liquid waste product left over from cheese making. It has a distinctive odor, but officials expect it to be more effective than the city’s previous deicing experiments: beet juice that turned into an oatmeal-like substance when mixed with road salt, and a sticky molasses-type product that residents complained was being tracked into their homes. (Associated Press)
- Mexico’s Education Department acknowledged finding at least 117 mistakes in new textbooks after printing and distributing 235 million of them to the nation’s elementary schools. Although officials wouldn’t release a list of mistakes, an independent review by the news blog Animal Politico found many words had been written with a “c” instead of an “s,” commas had been overused, words lacked correct accent marks, and a geography textbook located the Caribbean resort city of Tulum in Yucatan state instead of Quintana Roo. Officials promised to give teachers a list of the errors to correct textbooks manually. Mexico’s National Commission of Free Textbooks, which prints books that are mandatory for both private and public schools, blamed freelance editors for missing the errors. “The telephone rings, you have to go to the bathroom,” commission head Joaquin Diez-Canedo said. “You get distracted. You miss a word.” (Associated Press)
- The same day that Georgia state school superintendent John Barge announced his gubernatorial candidacy, his official website misspelled the word “governor.” It appeared as “govenor” until reporters alerted Barge’s campaign staff, which corrected it. (Atlanta’s WXIA-TV)
- The International Paralympic Committee declared swimmer Victoria Allen, 19, ineligible for last summer’s world championships because she wasn’t disabled enough. Having won four medals and set a world freestyle record the year before, she “failed to provide conclusive evidence of a permanent eligible impairment,” the IPC ruled on the eve of the 2013 competition. A star child athlete, Arlen developed a neurological condition that led to her spending three years in a vegetative state before she awoke in 2010 with paralyzed legs. She insisted she was being punished because her doctor believes that her condition might improve. IPC official Peter Van de Vliet defended the ruling. “If you’re classifying an amputee, either they’ve got a leg or they haven’t, and in 12 months they still won’t have a leg,” he said. “But when you get to these types of wheelchair athletes, it gets tricky.” (The New York Times)
- After Jakiya McKoy, 7, won the Little Miss Hispanic Delaware contest, pageant officials took away her crown because of concerns that she wasn’t Hispanic enough. Contestants are required to be at least 25 percent Hispanic, but Maria Perez, president of the sponsoring Nuestras Raices, said the verification the child provided “does not specify she was 25 percent Hispanic or Hispanic at all.” The McKoys protested that the real reason their daughter’s reign was cut short was her dark skin, not the lack of documentation. (New York’s Daily News)
- Authorities said Matthew Coleman, 37, shot his wife through both legs at their home in Windsor, Vt., while trying to show her that a 9-mm gun wasn’t loaded. (Burlington’s WCAX-TV)
- Police shot and wounded a 16-year-old high school student they thought was a would-be burglar but later learned had fled from officers because he was skipping school. After DeKalb County, Ga., police Chief Cedric Alexander called the shooting “an unintentional misfire,” the victim’s aunt and legal guardian said she wasn’t angry with the police. “If he’d been at school,” Geraldine Lloyd explained, “this never would have occurred.” (The Atlanta Journal Constitution)
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