A Mission from ‘God’
During a Monday, July 23, debate among mayoral candidates in Key West, Fla., Sloan Bashinsky suddenly stopped speaking and, answering his cellphone, said: “Hello? What? God?” According to FLKeys News, it wasn’t the first time he’s heard from a higher power. “I have said every time I ran, I ran because God told me to run,” Bashinsky explained. “I think anyone who wants this job is insane.” Bashinsky has a law degree from Vanderbilt University and was once among the island’s homeless. He’s among six other candidates on the ballot.
A Millennial’s Mischief
Just after midnight on Sunday, July 22, a couple in Palo Alto, Calif., were awakened in their bedroom by a 17-year-old burglar in a mask. But, instead of demanding money, jewelry and the like, he asked the startled couple for their Wi-Fi password. According to The Sacramento Bee, the homeowners forced the teen out of their residence, sans password, and called police, who tracked him down a block away and arrested him for felony residential burglary. Police later determined it wasn’t the teen’s first attempt at criminal connectivity; less than an hour earlier that same night, a prowler had summoned a woman from her home to ask for access to her Wi-Fi network. She told him to go away, and he rode off on a bicycle—which she realized the next day was hers. She called police, who recovered the bike near where they had arrested the teen.
A Bogus Bruin
Jeffrey Jacobs, 37, thought he had a great thing going. Last year, when a tree fell on his White Plains, N.Y., home, he called a local tree service for assistance, informing them that he was the owner of the Boston Bruins hockey team, reported The Hour. Duly impressed, the tree service owner sent a crew amid a storm, then billed the real Bruins owner—78-year-old Jeremy Jacobs—the $5,100 fee. Police in nearby Wilton, Connecticut, heard about the deception when they received a call in May from security officials at a company chaired by the Bruins’ owner. The story sounded familiar. In November, Jacobs, who had been pulled over in Wilton and told officers he owned the Bruins in an effort to get out of the ticket. Jacobs, the bogus Bruin owner, has been charged with criminal impersonation.
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A Shitty Sentence
Painesville, Ohio, Municipal Court Judge Michael Cicconetti has a reputation for giving unusual sentences, and he delivered again on Tuesday, July 24, when Bayley Toth appeared in his courtroom. Toth was convicted of two misdemeanor criminal mischief charges for toppling a portable toilet at Painesville Township Park in June, among other things. Cicconetti sentenced him to 120 days in jail but suspended it in lieu of Toth shoveling manure at the Lake County Fair. “You act like an animal, you’re going to take care of animals,” Cicconetti told Toth. The News-Herald reported Toth will also have to perform 40 hours of community service and pay restitution for damage to the park.
A Rotten Russian
A weird in-air experience for passengers traveling from the Spain’s Canary Islands to the Netherlands on Tuesday, May 29, had an unhappy ending. The Transavia flight was forced to land in Faro, Portugal, after passengers began fainting and vomiting in reaction to the overpowering stench of another passenger—58-year-old Russian rocker Andrey Suchilin. “It was like he hadn’t washed himself for several weeks,” Belgian passenger Piet van Haut said. CBS News reported that Suchilin had sought medical attention in Spain and was given antibiotics for an “ordinary beach infection.” Taken to a hospital in Portugal, his condition deteriorated, and he was diagnosed with tissue necrosis caused by flesh-eating bacteria. Doctors induced a coma and performed several surgeries, but his wife reported on his Facebook page that he died on Monday, June 25.
A Notable Nematode
You thought you were old? You’re just a twinkle in a nematode’s eye. Russian scientists recently revived a frozen roundworm, or nematode, from a sample collected in Siberian permafrost, The Siberian Times reported on Thursday, July 26. The worm, which was found in a permafrost core drilled 30 meters deep, is believed to be female and some 41,700 years old. After collecting the core sample, scientists slowly thawed out the worm, which eventually started eating and moving. Scientists from the Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science in Moscow conclude, as other scientists have, that nematodes have an inherent, adaptive longevity mechanism.
© 2018 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
