January 2009 Archives

Marvin Schur's neighbors found the World War II veteran's frozen body in his Bay City bedroom on January 17, four days after a device that regulates how much power he uses -- installed because of failure to pay -- shut off his power. A medical examiner said the temperature was 32 degrees in his house when Schur's body was found.

Utility officials said Schur owed at least $700, but Schur's nephew, William Wallworth, said his uncle told him he was worth at least a half-million dollars, and authorities say Schur had cash clipped to his utility bills on his kitchen table.

A Kentucky high school football coach has been indicted by a grand jury for the death of a sophomore player at Louisville's Pleasure Ridge Park High School. It was his first year as head coach.

The prosecutor made stated that the grand jury found that the coach should have realized a player could collapse from heat stroke in the broiling weather during practice, in announcing reckless homicide charges in a youth's death on Aug. 20, 2008.

A Houston lawyer has taken a home equity loan to repay his law firm for $182,500 lost in a variation of what has become known as the Nigerian e-mail scam.

In the case of lawyer Richard Howell Jr., the scammer claimed to be a Japanese businessman who needed help collecting $3.6 million from four customers in the United States. Howell checked and found websites of the collecting company and the four U.S. debtors. His firm Buckley, White, Castaneda & Howell, would get a contingency fee of one-third for any money collected. Believing the contact to be a potentially lucrative client, he proceeded in the collections action.

Forbes magazine recently ran an article asserting that American law students are "victims of an unfolding education hoax on the middle class"--the myth that college and advanced degrees translate to a life of economic privilege.

The average law grad has $100,000 in student debt, according to the magazine. An UCLA law professor says the problem can be worst for African-American students, who are lured into law school to improve diversity rankings without being told that less than half will pass the bar. Schools also "goose employment statistics by temporarily hiring new grads and spotlighting kids who land top-paying jobs, while glossing over far-lower average incomes," the story says.

General Mills Inc. and grocers Kroger Co. and Safeway Inc. have joined the growing list of food companies and retailers pulling items made with peanut butter amid a salmonella outbreak.

The Food and Drug Administration has traced the recent salmonella outbreak to a Georgia plant owned by Peanut Corp. of America, which makes peanut butter and peanut paste and sells it to institutions and food companies. The FDA has advised consumers to avoid eating cookies, cakes, ice cream and other foods containing peanut butter until health officials learn more about the contamination. Peanut butter sold in jars to consumers is not included, officials said.

In a very troubling new trend spreading across the nation n, teens and pre-teens are sending nude or semi-nude pictures to one another on their mobile phones in a practice called "sexting".

Though the youngsters see the activity as tantalizing fun, for some it is starting to lead to serious consequences. Recently, teenagers have been arrested on child pornography charges and there have been reports of high-schoolers losing jobs or college scholarships as a result of being identified in sexually-suggestive pictures that have appeared on the internet.

A Long Island surgeon has a broken heart and only one kidney. Dr. Richard Batista donated one of his healthy kidneys to his wife in 2001 when, after she experienced two rejections, she was in dire straits. Batista claims his wife, Dawnell, callously repaid him by first having an affair with her physical therapist and then denying him access to their children in an increasingly bitter divorce.

Now the doctor wants his soon-to-be-ex to pay $1.5 million for the organ he gave on her eight years ago in a gift meant to save her life and their foundering marriage.

National Safety Council, a national safety group, recommends a total ban on cell phone use while driving, saying the practice is clearly dangerous and leads to fatalities. States should ban drivers from using hand-held and hands-free cell phones, and businesses should prohibit employees from using cell phones while driving on the job. The group's statement likened talking on cell phones to drunken driving.

No state currently bans all cell phone use while driving. Six states -- California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Utah and Washington -- and the District of Columbia ban the use of hand-held cell phones behind the wheel, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Also, 17 states and the district restrict or ban cell phone use by novice drivers.

A Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who claims to have turned fat, extricated in liposuction, into biofuel for his car has skipped town after US officials raided his surgery in an investigation into his procedures.

Dr Craig Alan Bittner, who runs the Liposculpture clinic on Rodeo Drive, said that he had created "lipodiesel" with his patients' excess subcutaneous fat. Dr Bittner is under investigation by the California Department of Public Health because it is illegal in the state to use human medical waste to power vehicles.

Denver firefighters evacuated an apartment building primarily full of University of Denver graduate students yesterday afternoon after a graduate student had called for help. She was groggy when she answered her door. Another student, found in an adjacent apartment, was taken to a hospital after she was found unconscious on the top floor of the three-story, 42-unit Josephine Place building at 2035 Josephine St. just before 5 p.m., said a spokesman for the fire department. This student tragically died later in the night.

Though the apartment is adjacent to the university, it is not a campus facility. Investigators found the carbon monoxide had leaked from a flue from the boiler that had been repaired Monday after wind damage last week.