Extracted from US news papers:
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As part of an ongoing feud in Fairfield, Iowa, Ronald Warren Switzer, 39, flew a small plane over the
home of Mike Parsons in July and fired several rifle shots - perhaps the first fly-by shooting in the
U.S.
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According to Saundra Lewis, a clerk at a Durham, N.C., convenience store that was held up in
February, the robber kept apologizing. He said he was sorry when he began the holdup, then again when
he rejected her plea to think it over, then again just as he fled. A few seconds after leaving, he
returned and said, "I'm sorry - really, I'm sorry," but nevertheless kept the money. In contrast, the
robber of a tobacco shop in Mesa, Ariz., in March not only returned the next night to rob the clerk
again, but chastised her for having been rude to him the night before.
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In a San Francisco Chronicle story in May, Officer Cliff Kroeger of Martinez, Calif., said he once
gave a ticket to a man clocked at 87 m.p.h. in a car that had a large flexible tube sticking out of a
rear window. The tube extended to an aquarium in the back seat. The driver explained he had
mathematically calculated that 87 was the exact speed he needed to aerate the aquarium, to keep his
fish alive.
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In New York city in July, Bartolome Moya, 37, charged with kidnapping, drug-dealing and six murders,
skipped town after being released on bail. In 1993, Moya was jailed pending trial on the same charges
but was in such poor health from heart disease a judge thought his death was imminent and dismissed
the charges so Moya could go home to die. In February, 1994, Moya obtained a Medicare-financed heart
transplant. Prosecutors learned of the transplant, reindicted Moya in May, and jailed him. Then a
judge released him on bail on the condition that Moya wear a beeper/monitor. Moya has not been heard
from since.
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The regional airline Markair apologized to passenger Rosalyna Lopez in July for a May incident in
which a flight attendant on a Tucson-to-Washington, D.C., flight ordered her to stop talking in
Spanish to a relative traveling with her. "No Spanish!" said the flight attendant. "English only! Do
you understand that?"
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In August, Ottawa biologist David Brez Carlisle told a meeting of geologists in Waterloo that the
exotic amino acids found in several rocks from space, which are considered evidence that
extraterrestrial life exists, are not what they seem. Carlisle said the space rocks he has examined
contain not the exotic amino acids but flakes of human dandruff, which have a similar chemical makeup
to the amino acids. Carlisle said he knows a lot about dandruff because he has had a severe, lifelong
case.
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According to a grievance by workers at a Mississippi poultry plant, as reported in U.S. News & World
Report in July, the company does not permit workers more than three bathroom breaks a week without a
doctor's note, and employees must pay 10 cents a cup for drinking water on the job.
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On the same day (Oct. 17), the U.S. government announced it would reduce by $ 55 million funding for
food banks and other programs that feed needy Americans and spend $ 47 million in new funds to create
makework jobs and job training for the much-reviled Haiti police force.
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Adoption agency official Mary Graves, in a Doylestown, Pa., case in which a girl had been taken from
her father after the mother passed away, testified in August that she favored keeping the girl with
the adopted family. With her father, Graves said, "She would have none of the benefits but all of the
disadvantages of a mother who is dead."
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Christine McKatherine, 43, who staged a 24-hour civil-rights protest inside her car on a Chicago
street in August after the car was immobilized with a Denver boot for having 115 unpaid parking
tickets: "I'm tired of people getting harassed in Chicago."