NEWSQUIRKS

Curses, foiled again
Police investigating a credit card theft in New Britain, Conn., identified Joel Rubin, 42, as their suspect. They said that after using the stolen card belonging to a co-worker to make an $11 purchase, Rubin handed the clerk a store discount card in his own name. A man entered a business in Nicholasville, Ky., waving a gun and demanding money. When an employee told him there was no money, police official Scott Harvey said the robber insisted, “I know you have money. It’s a bank.” After being told the bank moved four months earlier and that it was now the office of the Jessamine South Elkhorn Water District, the robber looked around, realized it wasn’t a bank and left emptyhanded.

Bush’s legacy
Shoe-throwing has gained a foothold as a form of protest since Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi hurled his size 10s at President George W. Bush during a December news conference in Iraq. The Washington Times reported six incidents within days of each other in January.

During a council meeting in Ithaca, N.Y., an antiwar protester identified as Robin Palmer threw three shoes at Mayor Carolyn Peterson. Palmer was removed from the meeting but not arrested.

Benny Dagan, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, was hit on the leg by a barrage of shoes, as well as books, during a student gathering at Stockholm University.

A Ukrainian reporter shoed a local politician over taxes. Several hundred Bosnians threw their shoes at effigies of local officials.

A lone British protestor threw a shoe that missed Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during a speech at Cambridge University.

Hooray for science
In a dispatch about German scientists having reconstructed the genome of Neanderthals, the New York Times reported that Dr. George Church, a genome researcher at Harvard Medical School, estimated a Neanderthal could be brought to life using present technology for about $30 million. Doing so, he said, would satisfy the deep-seated human desire to communicate with other intelligences.

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.