Cops: Woman cuffed self to hubby - By Daniel Tepfer and Genevieve Reilly
Staff writers

FAIRFIELD -- A woman is in trouble with the law for making her estranged husband a prisoner of love, according to police. Helen Sun, 37, of Tunxis Hill Road, allegedly slapped handcuffs on her View Full Story

Man plays Madoff's prison number and wins $1,500

Tue Mar 24, 9:00 PM EDT

AP-Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff is a lucky charm for one New York City construction worker. Queens resident Ralph Amendolaro said he saw Madoff's prison number in a newspaper and had a good feeling so he played the last three digits of it in the state lottery's Numbers game. It hit March 15, paying $1,500.

Lottery officials say other people had the same idea. The number combination 0-5-4 produced 501 winning tickets the Sunday after Madoff's guilty plea, up from 120 winners the previous day.

Madoff's prison registration number is 61727-054.

A lottery spokeswoman says people often play numbers they see on the news.

So many people played the flight number of a jet that landed safely in the Hudson River that the lottery had to halt sales.

Guard fired after locking new hire in with inmate

Alleged iPhone thief left photo trail

NEW YORK, March 24 (UPI) -- A New York woman said police tracked down the man who stole her iPhone after he used the device to e-mail pictures of himself.

Sayaka Fukuda, 29, who moved to New York from Tokyo three years ago, said Daquan Mathis, 18, and an accomplice approached her Feb. 21 at 4:30 a.m. on a train platform and took her iPhone and purse, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

Fukuda said she reported the theft to police and returned home to find something unusual in her e-mail.

"I checked my e-mail and saw something in my outbox," she wrote in her blog. "I knew I didn't send anything. I opened the attachment, and there he was with his black and red knitted (Spider-Man) hat. The same hat I described to the police officers."

The woman passed the pictures along to police and Mathis was arrested Thursday and charged with robbery and grand larceny.

March 23, 2009

Orange City skateboard ramp set ablaze
in dispute, man arrested

PATRICIO G. BALONA

News-Journal
Staff Writer

ORANGE CITY -- A Volusia County man who had repeatedly asked that a skateboard ramp be removed from the road near his home set it on fire, sheriff deputies said.  Lewis Smith, 45, decided to get rid of the ramp by burning it Sunday, said sheriff spokesman Gary Davidson. 

Smith was charged with criminal mishcief and released from the Volusia County Branch Jail on his own recognizance, Davidson said.

The incident occurred at 8:05 p.m. while firefighters were already busy trying to knock down brush fires. They rushed to 17th Street and Central Avenue west of Orange City to douse the flaming ramp in the middle of the road, Davidson said.

Deputies found neighbors and the man who built the ramp arguing with Smith. Neighbors told deputies there had been friction over the skateboard ramp because Smith didn't like it in the road, Davidson said.

While being interviewed by deputies, Smith said he had told the man who built the ramp several times to keep it out of the road then, on Sunday, Smith said he decided to get rid of the problem by using a lighter to set the ramp on fire.

Whitcomb faces new robbery charge

By Jim Patten
jpatten@eagletribune.com

March 23, 2009 08:15 am

—

LAWRENCE — A Methuen man being held for one store robbery is now a suspect in another.

Anthony Whitcomb, 33, of 11 Frederick St., who was accused last week of robbing the Golden House Chinese restaurant, 129 S. Broadway, is facing charges stemming from a robbery at Tesedchi Foods, 208 S. Broadway, on March 4, police said.

The suspect in the Tedesci robbery was captured on the store's security video system, which provided a clear image of his face. The man reached across the counter and scooped the cash from an open register. A store clerk was able to pick Whitcomb's picture out of a photo array shown her by police.

The man who robbed the Golden House used the same technique, police said. He asked for change for a quarter, and once the register drawer opened grabbed the money inside, police said.

Four police officers were having dinner at the time. They chased the robber, who was later identified as Whitcomb.

Whitcomb's nose was broken and his face cut when he resisted being arrested. Two officers were also injured in the scuffle, police said.

At his arraignment Thursday in Lawrence District Court, Judge Barbara Pearson revoked Whitcomb's bail in a Haverhill case and sent him to jail for 60 days. And, she set bail at $10,000 cash on the charges stemming from the restaurant

updated at 17:52 GMT, Monday, 23 March 2009

World's cheapest car is launched

The Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car, has been launched in India.

Costing just 100,000 rupees ($1,979; £1,366), the Nano will now go on sale across India next month, with deliveries starting in July.

Tata hopes the 10-foot (3-metre) long, five-seater car will be cheap enough to encourage millions of Indians to trade up from their motorcycles.

Tata owner Ratan Tata has described the Nano as a "milestone". Analysts say it will not make a profit for six years.

We wanted a find a safe way to transport Indian families at an affordable price Tata owner Ratan Tata

Tata's managing director Ravi Kant said that from the first orders, a ballot would then select the initial 100,000 people to get their Nano.

"I think we are at the gates of offering a new form of transport to the people of India and later, I hope, other markets elsewhere in the world," Mr Tata added.

"I hope it will provide safe, affordable four-wheel transportation to families who till now have not been able to own a car."

Environmentalists are warning that the Nano will add to India's already clogged up roads, and pollution levels will soar. Tata says the Nano will be the least polluting car in India.

Factory row

The four-door Nano has a 33bhp, 624cc engine at the rear.

The Tata Nano is unveiled at a press event in India

The basic model has no airbags, air conditioning, radio, or power steering. However, more luxurious versions will be available.

A slightly bigger European version, the Nano Europa is due to follow in 2011, and is expected to cost nearer to £4,000.

I want to be able to take my wife out for a drive in a car - my own car Indian chauffeur Gopal Pandurang

Analysts said that if the car proves an immediate hit in its home market, Tata may struggle to meet demand.

This is because the main Nano factory in the western state of Gujarat, which will be able to build 250,000 cars a year, is not due to open until next year.

In the meantime, Tata will only be able to build about 50,000 Nanos at its existing plants.

The delay happened when Tata had to abandon plans to build the Nano in a new plant in the eastern state of West Bengal due to a row over land acquired from farmers.

This caused the launch of the Nano to be put back by six months.

Global slowdown

Even if Tata can sell 250,000 models a year, it will add only 3% to the firm's revenues, says Vaishali Jajoo, auto analyst at Mumbai's Angel Broking.

"That doesn't make a significant difference to the top line," he said.

"And for the bottom line, it will take five to six years to break even."

Yet with seven million motorcycles sold last year in India, Tata is eyeing a huge marketplace for the Nano.

Like almost all global carmakers, Tata has seen sales fall as the global economic downturn has continued.

The firm made a 2.63bn rupees loss for three months between October and December.

In addition, Tata is struggling to refinance the remaining £2bn of its £3bn loan it took out to buy the Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford in June of last year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7423737.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7960055.stm

NYer ignores friends, wins $26M on Friday the 13th

Monday, March 23, 2009

(03-23) 08:38 PDT NEW YORK, (AP) --

Ignoring his friends has paid off big for a New York man.

He won $26 million in a Friday the 13th lottery draw.

New York state lottery officials said Monday the winner is from Wyandanch, on Long Island. The identity of the El Salvador native was not revealed.

Officials said the man didn't heed the warnings of well-meaning friends who told him to stay away from the lottery on Friday the 13th.

Glenn Hartong, The Enquirer
Six year-old Pranav Veera, who has a photographic memory and has tested in the very upper ranges of intelligence, poses with letters spelling his name

He's only 6 years old.

At first glance, Pranav is a typical young boy who is highly competitive at playing Wii video games and likes to play outside. A closer look reveals he's anything but typical.

Pranav has an IQ of 176. One person in 1 million has an IQ of 176 or above. Albert Einstein's IQ was believed to be about 160. The average IQ is 100.

When Pranav was 4-and-a-half, his parents noticed he seemed unusually intelligent while playing with alphabet sets. He could even recall which letters were certain colors.

"That kind of puzzled us," said his father, Prasad Veera. "You have to have not a normal memorization, but some other means of recall."

Now, he loves all kinds of alphabets.

"He loves to collect them, like different colors, different sizes, different materials," said his mother, Suchitra Veera.

The Veeras decided to have Pranav tested three months ago at Powers Educational Services in Hyde Park, Ohio.

"I said, 'Let's try it out, because he seems to do a lot of stuff kind of not quite normal for his age,' " his father said. "He tested 176."

He seems to have a photographic memory, so keeping Pranav engaged and learning is a big challenge for his family.

His mother and grandmother, Shanta Sastri, work with him at home.

They're guided by his focus and interests.

"The way to get him interested is to associate something with numbers, like presidents' birthdays … and when they came into office," his mother said.

"Once we introduced him to the idea, he was asking more and more questions, so we created a spreadsheet for him in Excel, and he keeps on asking us to add more types of information to it, like sort them in the order that they came into office, sort them in the order when they were born," she said.

In prekindergarten, his teacher had him do more challenging work, such as division and telling time. In kindergarten, his classmates are learning the alphabet and numbers up to 100. He's counting over 1 million.

"He's an amazing child," said Marci Taylor, his teacher at McCormick Elementary in the Milford School District. "He knows so much, yet he's probably more excited about learning than any child I've ever seen. He shakes with excitement."

Pranav knows so many incredible things, she said, but what's also impressive is that he's still a 6-year-old boy.

"He loves to go play at recess and climb on the monkey bars," Taylor said.

It's possible that Pranav might eventually have his learning accelerated, even by skipping grades, but his father said they would have to consider that with his social needs. "We want him to be as normal as possible," his father said.

"Right now, it's kind of early, and we can do a lot at home," his mother added. "We have to figure out what works best, because I think it's different for each child."Pranav draws his intelligence from both sides of the family.

His father has a Ph.D. and his mother has two master's degrees.

What does Pranav want to be when he grows up?

"An astronaut," he said without hesitation.

Truly, for Pranav, the sky's the limit.

TV Cameraman Pulls Man from Wreckage Just Before it Explodes watch!

http://www.trutv.com/video/most-daring/one-hot-ride.html?link=truTVshlk

Landlord offers free rent to laid-off tenants