NEWSQUIRKS
Curses, foiled again
When Jeffrey P. Cannon, 20, arrived at Washington’s Dulles International Airport from Ireland, customs officers detained him because a check of the passenger list turned up an outstanding DUI warrant. Officers searched his luggage and found “a large amount of tea bags,” Border Patrol official Steve Sapp told the Washington Post. The bags’ bulky shapes aroused suspicion, and officers found they contained 3.2 grams of hashish and 2.3 grams of marijuana. “If you know you’re coming into the U.S. with bad stuff,” Sapp said, “be prepared to be greeted rudely by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”
An Australian man wanted in connection with two home invasions in Sydney tried to evade police by hiding in the attic of his own home. While officers were searching the house, however, the 31year-old suspect fell through the ceiling into the family room, where police arrested him.
It’s always something
The world’s largest passenger jet, the Airbus A380, is so quiet that pilots complain they can’t sleep during rest breaks on long-haul flights because sounds caused by passengers, such as crying babies, flushing vacuum toilets and call bells, constantly disturb them. “On our other aircraft, the engines drown out the cabin noise,” said Ed Davidson, a senior vice president with Emirates Airlines.
Pilots using the crew rest area in the rear of the aircraft have tried sleeping with earplugs, “but the cabin noise goes straight through them,” Davidson noted, adding that one solution might be installing lightweight generators to create ambient noise.
Fiery irony
After a fire gutted an animal shelter in Oshawa, Ontario, killing nearly 100 cats, investigators blamed the blaze on mice. Shelter manager Ruby Richards said the mice chewed through electrical wires in the attic.
An Australian woman who donated money to buy her local fire department a new truck lost her rural home to a blaze that thwarted it and five other fire engines. Alan Fraser of the Wartburg Fire Brigade said heat from the fire kept firefighters from the only available water, forcing crews to wait for a tanker to arrive. By then, however, the multimilliondollar home belonging to Annemarie Geckeler, 79, had burned to the ground.
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.
