Rescue workers who found Sherin Brown, 23, trapped under a steel light pole in New York City said she told them the pole fell on her, causing back and neck injuries. After she was taken to the hospital to be treated, investigators reviewing nearby surveillance videos saw a passing tractor-trailer clip the pole. The footage showed Brown jumping out of the way of the falling pole, then crawling under it just before help arrived. She was charged with falsely reporting an emergency. (New York’s Daily News)
• Authorities said Rashad D. Wilson, 18, entered a convenience store in Mexico, N.Y., wearing a camouflage ski mask and black hooded sweatshirt and demanded cigarettes. The clerk told Wilson to remove his mask first. Wilson then showed a handgun, but the clerk still insisted he take off his mask. Wilson left the store empty-handed and drove off, but Oswego County sheriff’s deputies stopped the car and arrested him. (Syracuse’s The Post-Standard)
Homeland Insecurity
Prosecutors in Salisbury, N.H., dropped charges against Walter Scott Jr., 59, after a device in his possession that police initially described as a powerful pipe bomb turned out to be a “tire thumper,” used to check the pressure of truck tires by banging on them. The device, consisting of a piece of PVC pipe with metal weights inside, couldn’t have harmed anyone, according to Scott’s attorney, Ted Barnes, “unless they were hit over the head with it.” (Concord Monitor)
Breaking Non-News
Norwegian radio journalist Pia Beate Pedersen announced to listeners of public broadcast station NRK that she was “quitting and walking away” because station management was putting too much pressure on the staff and that she “wanted to be able to eat properly again and be able to breathe.” Before walking out, she refused to read the scheduled newscast, declaring on air, “Nothing important has happened anyway.” (Britain’s Daily Mail)
Slightest Provocation
Sheriff’s deputies arrested Shannon Wriska, 34, at her trailer home in Milton, Fla., after her husband accused her of trying to burn his boat, go-kart and Jacuzzi because of an argument the night before while they were watching a movie starring actress Jennifer Lopez. Robert Wriska stated that his wife was very jealous of the actress and didn’t like him seeing her in the movie. After they argued over the actress, both went to bed, but the next day the husband said Shannon Wriska saw him drinking with a neighbor and set the fires. (Northwest Florida Daily News)
Way to Go
Christopher Kaiser, 29, died when he was hit by a train in Iredell County, N.C., while standing on a trestle with at least a dozen other people, who told investigators they had gathered hoping to see a “ghost train.” Sheriff Phillip Redmond said the incident coincided with the anniversary of a train wreck that occurred at the same location in 1891. All of the people on the trestle when three Norfolk-Southern Railroad locomotives rounded a bend and headed for them managed to clear the trestle, except Kaiser. (Charlotte’s WBTV News)
Dick Heads of the Week
Australian researchers said female marine snails living off the Perth coast are growing male sex organs on their heads. The condition, called imposex, results from exposure to the chemical tributyltin (TBT), according to associate professor Monique Gagnon of Curtin University’s Department of Environment and Agriculture. TBT is a common ingredient of paint used on boat hulls that prevents barnacles. Gagnon explained that although surveys show TBT contamination declined over the past 10 years at sites visited by recreational boats, the marine snail Thais orbita had a 100 percent rate of imposex at sites where commercial vessels were present. (Australian Associated Press)
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.
