Scandal has rocked the Sudoku community. Eugene Varshavsky of Lawrenceville, N.J. has been stripped of his third place position in the national Sudoku after cheating allegations were raised due to his sharply uneven performance. As a Sudoku addict, I am crushed. Not since the Black Sox Scandal and Shoeless Joe Jackson has such alleged depravity brought the great so low.
Continue reading “Say It Ain’t So-duku, Joe: Scandal Rocks the Puzzle World”
Ali Sibat is a Lebanese citizen who counsels couples and viewers on television, making predictions about their future. Saudi police arrested Sibat when he was visiting Medina last year and accused him of being a sorcerer. He was convicted without a lawyer and sentenced to death.
Police in Bruceville-Eddy, Texas shot and killed a dog that they insist was threatening them and then tasered its elderly owner for failing to obey their commands. The man turns out to be deaf and there is still no word on the investigation that began in March in the incident.
Continue reading “Texas Police Shoot Dog and Then Taser Dog’s Deaf Elderly Owner For Failing to Obey Commands”
Roy C. Sun, 21, is a smart senior student who hopes to be an engineer. He is a senior student at Purdue University in Indiana. Purdue police also say that he is a terrorist after he left a suspicious box in the hallway of the university’s Visitor Information Center. The police surrounded the area, used a small x-ray machine, and evacuated the building — only to discover that the box contained a wheel lock, a Purdue parking ticket and $20. Tippecanoe County Prosecutor Pat Harrington has charged him as a terrorist.
Continue reading “Tippecanoe and Terror Too: Engineering Student Charged With Terroristic Mischief for Leaving Box with Wheel Lock, Ticket, and $20 in Hallway”
Perhaps it was inevitable with the rapid increase in the use of tasers, but police are now tasering animals. Toronto police tasered a deer that was found near a commercial building after it was tranquilized by a veterinarian.
Continue reading “Fawning Innocence: Police Taser Deer”
Michael Sampson, 41, succeeded in turning a minor driving with a suspended license into a charge of threatening a judge and intimidating a witness — all without uttering a word.
Continue reading “Motion to the Court: Kansas Man Charged With Threatening Judge and Witness”
The Kentucky Court of Appeals upheld but reduced a punitive award to a McDonald’s manager who was duped into a prank forcing a young worker into a strip search. The punitive award against McDonald’s was reduced from $1 million to $400,000. However, the court let stand the $5 million award of punitive damages for 18-year-old worker who was the subject of the search.
Note to self: When parking a car in London, walk slowly away from the vehicle. Michael Raphel recently went on a birthday cruise on the River Thames. When he returned, police had blown up his car.
Continue reading “Walk, Don’t Run: English Police Blow Up Car After Spotting Motorist Running For Boat”
There is another fatality connected to the use of tasers. Ronald Petruney, 49, of Washington, Pa. died after he was hit by three tasers by police trying to restrain him.
Continue reading “Pennsylvania Man Dies After Hit By Multiple Tasers”
A new alleged abuse is receiving national action from the ever-expanding controversies surrounding Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. We have been following the scandals surrounding Arpaio from his crackdown on illegal aliens to use of his office for a reality show to his attack on the press to his shaming of prisoners to his defense of deputies who rifle through the files of lawyers. Now, he is accused of forcing Alma Minerva Chacon to give birth in shackles when she went into labor the night of her arrest. What is interesting is that this is not the first such case of a shackled birth.
William Woodson, 22, really wanted to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers game. So much so that, according to police, the Bridgeville, Pa. man kicked his girlfriend’s puppy to death for misbehaving.
Continue reading “Kick-Off: Man Kicks Dog To Death To Watch Steelers Game”
Over the years, we have followed hunting accidents (here and here and here) — the subject of an earlier column on “buck fever.” We have a new and tragic such case in Virginia. Ferrum College senior Jessica Goode, 23, went out hiking with friends last week when Jason D. Cloutier, 31, mistook her for a deer. He shot and killed her in the chest with his .35-caliber, high-powered rifle. The bullet went through her chest and into the hand of her friend Regis Boudinot, 20.
Continue reading “Hunter Kills College Student and Wounds Another in Hunting Accident”
When Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was being beaten and interrogated for 118 days as an accused spy he expected death but not the Daily Show. During his beatings, the Iranian interrogator played a segment from John Stewart’s Daily Show under the apparent belief that it is a real news program and revealed Bahari’s spy activities.
Cats have long resented the monopoly of dogs in animal law enforcement.
Continue reading “Kitty Cop: Feline Fights to Serve and Purrtect”
It was probably not the reptile logo on an Izod shirt that gave Michael Plank, 40, away at the Los Angeles International Airport. It was more likely the 15 live lizards strapped to his chest under the shirt, including 11 skinks.
Continue reading “Stewardess, the Man Next to Me Skinks: California Man Arrested at Airport With 15 Reptiles Tied to Body”