NEWSQUIRKS
Curses, foiled again
When a woman reported that a man exposed himself to her and her children, police in Mesa, Ariz., knocked on the apartment door of upstairs neighbor Michael Polley, 55. He answered with his pants still around his ankles. Court records noted he became “immediately angry” at being interrupted and began cursing at the officers, who arrested him. (Phoenix’s The Arizona Republic) Police said Jerome Taylor, 20, entered a restaurant in Hartford, Conn., wearing a mask, pulled what looked like a gun on the cooks and demanded money. The cooks refused and grabbed their knives. Taylor promptly apologized and insisted it was all just a joke, and anyway, the “gun” was only an iPhone. (Hartford’s WVIT-TV) Police alerted to the theft of a 50-inch television off a delivery truck in Auburn, Wash., arrested Johnathon Barnes, 22, whom they spotted right outside the police station pushing a shopping cart containing the stolen set. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Melodious mutants
Japanese scientists started breeding mice that sing like birds. The researchers at the University of Osaka genetically engineered the mice as part of their “Evolved Mouse Project,” which accelerates mutations to see what develops. “We checked the newly born mice one by one,” lead researcher Arikuni Uchimura said. “One day we found a mouse that was singing like a bird.” He explained the “singing mouse” was a random mutation but that the trait has been used to breed 100 of them so far and will be used to breed more like it. “I was surprised because I had been expecting mice that are different in physical shape,” Uchimura said, adding that the project had also produced “a mouse with short limbs and a tail like a dachshund.” (Agence France-Presse)
Video games in real life
A 23-year-old man was hospitalized in Anderson, S.C., after an SUV hit him while he was playing a real-life version of the arcade game “Frogger,” where players move frogs through traffic. The victim had been discussing the game with his friends, said Chief Jimmy Dixon, who said the man suddenly yelled “go” and darted into oncoming traffic in the four-lane highway. (Associated Press)
Reasonable explanations
When police accused Michael Elias, 28, of half a dozen home burglaries in San Antonio, Texas, he explained he had to keep committing the burglaries so he could afford to pay his attorney $150 a week to keep him out of jail. (San Antonio’s KSAT-TV) Police who arrested William Liston, 33, in suburban Cleveland on suspicion of driving drunk said he explained, “Ozzy Osbourne and his music made me do it.” (Cleveland’s WJW-TV)
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.
