Curses, foiled again
Police captured Juventino Sanchez Jr., 57, who they said tried to break into a bank in Topeka, Kan., but got stuck in a rooftop exhaust vent and had to hang upside down for as long as four hours. The Topeka Capital- Journal reported that police learned of his predicament when his daughter called to say she received word that her father was trapped from a family member who had reached him by cell phone. Firefighters used ropes to pull Sanchez out of the vent feet first.
Rules are rules
Michigan authorities warned Lisa Snyder that she faces a $1,000 fine and jail time for watching her neighbor’s three children until their school bus comes. Snyder told WZZM-TV News the bus arrives 15 to 40 minutes after the neighbors need to be at work. She said the Department of Human Services contacted her to say it had received a complaint she was operating an illegal child-care home and needed a license. A DHA official said the agency was only complying with state law.
Vanity follies
After authorities in Birmingham, Ala., informed Scottie Roberson, 38, he owed the city more than $19,000 for unpaid parking tickets, the Huntsville resident explained he has been to Birmingham only once in the past five years. “Whenever I call, nobody seems to want to help me,” Roberson told the Birmingham News. “One woman said not to worry about it because they didn’t have the manpower to come arrest me.” After a year of receiving notices, he finally heard from city officials that the tickets were issued by mistake because his vanity plate is XXXXXXXX, which is what parking enforcement officers enter on citation forms for illegally parked vehicles without license plates.
Touch of class
A new Internet auction site aims to help down-ontheir-luck millionaires by discreetly facilitating sales and trades of luxury assets, ranging from art and antiques to commercial properties, businesses and foreclosed homes, “so they don’t have to deal with the shame and or embarrassment of downgrade,” Quintin Thompson, co-founder of BillionaireXchange, told Reuters. “I would say that in the United States market, that’s probably the majority of the types of the transactions that we’re seeing right now.” Thompson said the Miami-based company, which completed a 10-month test phase before officially launching Nov. 9, requires prospective members to have at least $2 million in verifiable net worth. He added it already has 26,000 multi-millionaire members and “nearly a dozen” billionaires, among them professional athletes and A-list actors.
It is written
Malaysian authorities confiscated more than 15,000 Bibles imported from Indonesia because they call God “Allah.” Both Indonesian and Malaysian languages use “Allah” as the translation for God in both Islamic and Christian traditions, but Malaysia has banned non-Muslims from using “Allah” in their writings, declaring the word is exclusively Islamic.
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.
