NEWSQUIRKS

Curses, foiled again Parole absconder Robert Lewis Crose, 47, managed to evade California authorities for 12 years but then led them right to him when he complained on his Facebook page about the cold weather in the northern Montana town of Cut Bank. A fugitive task force in California notified Glacier County, Mont., sheriff’s Sgt. Tom Siefert, who arrested him. “He said he’d worked cutting up here, harvesting, for the last 10 years,” Siefert said. (Montana’s The Billings Gazette)

Irony of the century Smoking pot may slow or halt Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at California’s Scripps Research Institute. Reporting in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics, they discovered that marijuana’s active ingredient — delta- 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — helps preserve brain function. “Compared to currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, THC is a considerably superior inhibitor of Abeta aggregation,” the key pathological marker of Alzheimer’s, said the study, whose authors point out it “provides a previously unrecognized molecular mechanism through which cannabinoid molecules may directly impact the progression of this debilitating disease.” (MSNBC)

Techno world When Las Vegas voters complained after they’d been awakened during the night by automated phone calls urging their support for a ballot measure to change how state judges are selected, the California company that the campaign’s organizers hired to make the calls apologized — with another robo-call. The voice of Paul Stone of Campaign Solutions blamed “human error and computer error” for mixing up a.m. and p.m. (KTNV-TV)

Slightest provocation Frederick Wilkes, 54, beat his wife after he started to prepare lasagna for dinner and found leftover beans inside a ricotta cheese container, according to Massachusetts authorities. “He threw the container of beans at her, and they became involved in an altercation,” said Jake Wark of the Suffolk County district attorney’s office. Dinner guest Mario Donnarumma, who offered to go to the store for ricotta cheese but returned with only beer and vodka, told police that Wilkes grabbed his wife and threw her outside their Chelsea apartment, along with a bean-splattered couch. Police found the lifeless body of Theresa Kenna Wilkes, 50, in her driveway the next morning. (Boston Herald)

Every day Is Mother’s Day While Karen Remsing, 42, was visiting her terminally ill 15-year-old son at a Pittsburgh hospital, police said she temporarily disconnected an intravenous tube that had been providing a sedative to the boy, then stole syringes from a hospital tray to siphon the drug, which she injected into herself. Police added that when Remsing reconnected the tube, an air bubble formed that further threatened the boy’s life. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.