Mother of the year award goes to this Phoenix woman.
A 51-year-old Arizona mom allegedly used her young sons and their friends to commit at least 20 armed robberies in a calculating and “revolting” scheme, police said. Cynthia Roberson was arrested Friday and accused of manipulating her adolescent sons and others into scores of gunpoint thefts in the Phoenix area by making them feel guilty about finances.
Heads up to those who just can’t put their cell phone down.
If your pinkie and ring fingers tingle or feel numb, you might not want to pick up that cell phone to call the doctor. Orthopedic specialists are reporting cases of “cell phone elbow,” in which patients damage an essential nerve in their arm by bending their elbows too tightly for too long. When cell phone users hold the phone to their ears, they stretch a nerve that extends underneath the funny bone and controls the smallest fingers. When talkers chat for a long time in that position, it “chokes the blood supply to the nerves.
GM selling Hummer brand to Chinese company.
A Chengdu-based machinery company is close to clinching a deal to buy General Motors’ (GM) Hummer brand, making it the first Chinese company to own an American carmaker. Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company is expected to spend between $150 million and $250 million on Hummer, the gas-guzzling brand of sports utility vehicles popularised by Arnold Schwarzenegger before he embraced the environment.
Deer leaping over cop car caught on dash camera.
An Indianola police officer said his close call with a deer is something about which he’ll be able to talk for a long time. A dashboard camera caught the deer leaping just in front of Dan Deffenbaugh’s car. Deffenbaugh posted the video to YouTube, where it’s become a quick hit, reported KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa. Indianola is about 15 miles south of Des Moines. “My shift’s just getting started,” he said, recalling the event. “I figure it’s going to be a normal day.” Instead, he said he witnessed a near-miss like none other in his 10 years on the street.
A solicitor who knocked on a door on Sycamore in Sterling Heights got more than a door slammed in his face Monday. He had a gun fired at him. Police got a report about 1 p.m. in the 42000 block about a man firing a rifle, said Lt. Luke Riley. Officers arrested a 20-year-old man who is expected to be charged today with the unlawful discharge of a firearm.
A French couple tried in vain to get last-minute seats on the Air France flight that disappeared overnight but were turned away because it was full. “It’s miraculous – we should have been on the plane,” medical professor Claude Jaffiol said at Rio’s international airport. “We were in Brasilia and we decided to cut our trip short and return to (the French city of) Montpellier,” he said, his wife beside him sharing his sense of having avoided tragedy by the slimmest of margins.
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College student, angry at life, takes a hammer to the heads of two soon to be “former” friends.
Police say a 23-year-old Cedar City man used a hammer to severely beat two of his friends as they slept early Sunday morning. The most seriously injured victim, a 20-year-old man, remained in a medically induced coma at Intermountain Medical Center on Monday but was expected to survive, said Cedar City police Lt. Darin Adams. Police still aren’t sure exactly why Zachary King, a Southern Utah University student, became angry with his two friends while they hung out together Saturday night at the 20-year-old man’s home on the 2400 block of 400 South in Cedar City. It doesn’t appear that he fought with them.
A bat-wielding would-be bandit left a Long Island convenience store with $40 and a loaf of bread after the forgiving shopkeeper opted for redemption over a rifle blast.
Chicago cop guilty of aggravated battery for knocking the crap out of female bartender in 2007.
A Cook County judge today found Chicago Police officer Anthony Abbate guilty of aggravated battery for his 2007 attack on a female bartender, saying that even if the woman pushed and shoved Abbate to get him to leave a restricted area, “that did not justify his actions afterward, which were completely out of proportion.” Earlier in the day, Judge John J. Fleming, presiding over the bench trial, acquitted Abbate of two lesser charges of official misconduct. Fleming said the bartender, Karolina Obrycka, had a right as an employee of the bar to use force to prevent Abbate from trespassing behind the bar, and Fleming found that she did not use excessive force. He noted that even if Abbate was accustomed to other bartenders allowing him to go behind the bar, Obrycka had the authority to deny him access.
Black drivers 67% more likely to get pulled over than white folks in Missouri.
A report on Missouri traffic stops shows black motorists remain more likely than white motorists to be pulled over by police. The annual report released Monday by Attorney General Chris Koster found that black drivers were 67 percent more likely than white or Hispanic drivers to be stopped in 2008.
Poor guy trying to catch a ride on city bus slips, falls beneath it and gets run over.
A man has had surgery after he was run over by a Port Authority of Allegheny County bus he was chasing in Pittsburgh. Port Authority spokesman Jim Ritchie says the accident happened about 11:30 last night.
Microsoft today sparked a games console war when it unveiled a revolutionary new control system for the Xbox 360 that banishes the need for a hand-held controller. A 3D motion-sensing camera tracks players’ movements and projects them straight into the game on the screen. The player of a football game, therefore, simply needs to swing a foot to kick the ball on the screen, while a boxing game will see legions of living room fighters dodging, weaving and throwing punches at invisible foes. The motion-sensing technology goes much further than that currently available on the Nintendo Wii, which uses motion sensors within controllers that must still be clutched by the player.
On duty Chicago police officer shot to death during drive by attack.
Chicago police say a plainclothes officer died after being shot in the head while he was investigating reports of gunfire on the South Side. Police Superintendent Jody Weis said Monday evening that several leads were being investigated but would not say if a suspect was in custody.
If recent grant applications win approval, all vehicles traveling on certain local traffic arteries would have their license plates automatically recorded and checked against a U.S. criminal records database. A surveillance system would run every plate number through the National Crime Information Center, a computerized index maintained by the FBI. If the number matches someone with an outstanding warrant, or a criminal record, or perhaps just a person of interest in a local investigation, police would be alerted.
Quote of the day.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
-Winston Churchill