Curses, foiled again

A man who robbed a bank in Anchorage, Alaska, escaped on a bicycle but was stopped minutes later when he crashed into a police car responding to the bank alarm. The bicyclist, identified as Christopher Todd Mayer, 45, slid across the vehicle but lost his backpack, according to police Lt. Dave Parker, who said, “He ended up in a heap with his money pouring out of his pack.” Mayer tried to flee on foot, but was nabbed half a block away. (Associated Press)

First things first

When JoAnne Famal arrived at a Verizon wireless store in Trotwood, Ohio, to pay her monthly bill, her 16year-old grandson was in the driver’s seat of her sport utility vehicle. He hit the accelerator instead of the brake, causing the SUV to hop the curb and crash through the front window and into a wall inside the store. No one was hurt, although salesman Rob Thomas said, “If I hadn’t jumped over the counter, I’d be dead.” After the car stopped, Famal walked to the counter and paid her bill, then got behind the wheel of the SUV, backed out and drove off. (Dayton Daily News)

Hiding places

Customs officials at Los Angeles International Airport became suspicious of arriving passenger Sony Dong, 46, after they noticed bird droppings on his socks and feathers sticking out from under his pants. A search found 14 live Asian songbirds attached to pieces of cloth wrapped around his calves. Dong, who wore the birds on a flight from Vietnam, received four months in prison and was ordered to pay $4,000 to federal authorities who cared for the birds while they were quarantined. Authorities found 51 more songbirds at Dong’s Garden Grove home, worth $800 to $1,000 each. (Associated Press) Officials at the county jail in Wenatchee, Wash., said new inmate Gavin Stanger, 24, smuggled a cigarette lighter, rolling papers, a golf-sized bag of tobacco, a tattoo ink bottle, eight tattoo needles, a one-inch smoking pipe and a small bag of pot into his cell — all stuffed inside his rectum. (New York’s Daily News)

Beeline to disaster

The latest suspect in the widespread disappearance of honeybees and the collapse of their hives throughout Europe and North America is radiation from wireless phones. Researchers at India’s Punjab University said their findings suggest the phones are interfering with the bees’ sense of navigation, causing them to get lost. Reporting in the journal Current Science, Ved Prakash Sharma and Neelima Kumar said a hive exposed to cell-phone radiation in a controlled experiment showed a dramatic decline in the number of worker bees returning after collecting pollen, as well as a drop in the queen’s egg-laying rate. (Britain’s The Telegraph)

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet.

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