GEN-ERIC News

A man arrested at the Ottawa courthouse for impersonating a lawyer was released from custody without charge after police confirmed he was in fact a lawyer. Lee Mullowney spent about three hours in police custody last Thursday after he attended as an observer at a bail hearing for a man he had represented once before. Police spokesman Const. Alain Boucher said yesterday the file in the case indicated an allegation had been made that Mullowney had told a Crown lawyer on an earlier occasion he was acting for the same accused man and had improperly received disclosure.

A judge in Southern California made no friends in the RIAA when she handed down a precedent-setting verdict that cleared the defendof all charges in the case Interscope v. Rodriguez. Since the early days of P2P file-sharing the RIAA has made a questionable name for itself as a legal bulldog, issuing thousands of lawsuits against individuals each year. Typically the RIAA accused these individuals of downloading and/ord distributing copyrighted works. These statements often were followed by little evidence and sometimes came against people that had no apparent access to a computer.

A woman in South Carolina who went to court to pay a traffic ticket drove there in a stolen car and ended up behind bars. Chief Deputy Joe Bradham says police received a tip that Amber Helton was going to be in a stolen car when she paid the ticket. They arrested her as she opened the door of the 2001 Dodge Intrepid on Tuesday morning.

A carpenter caught hammering nails and sawing wood in the nude has been found by a judge to be not guilty of indecent exposure. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Julie Conger ruled Thursday that although Percy Honniball of Oakland was naked, he was not acting lewdly or seeking sexual gratification. Honniball, 51, was arrested last year after he was spotted building cabinets naked at a home where he had been hired to work. The carpenter has said he likes to work in the nude because it is more comfortable and it helps him keep his clothes clean.

The mayor of a Siberian oil town has ordered his bureaucrats to stop using expressions such as “I don’t know” and “I can’t.” Or look for another job. Alexander Kuzmin, 33, who is mayor of Megion, has banned these and 25 other phrases as a way to make his administration more efficient, his spokeswoman said Tuesday. “It’s a suggestion to the staff that they should think before saying something,” Oksana Shestakova said by telephone. “To say ‘I don’t know’ is the same as admitting your helplessness.” To reinforce the ban, a framed list of the banned expressions has been hanging on the wall next to Kuzmin’s office for the past two weeks, Shestakova said. Some of the other prohibited phrases are “What can we do?” “It’s not my job,” “It’s impossible,” “I’m having lunch,” “There is no money,” and “I was away/sick/on vacation.”

A man on a stolen bulldozer rammed the town police station early Friday, heavily damaging the building. Stanley Burt, 34, is charged with criminal mischief, reckless conduct with a deadly weapon and driving and probation violations. No one was inside at the time and no one was hurt. Police say Troy officer Kevin Stone pulled into the station parking lot just before 12:30 a.m. and saw the bulldozer repeatedly smashing into the front of the building.

A stray cat relieving itself inside a Marikina City bank drew a police squad after the animal tripped the bank’s burglar alarm late Monday. Members of the Marikina City Police Station were dispatched to the Bank of the Philippine Islands after repeatedly receiving alarm signals around 11 p.m. Monday. With the bank closed and the bank manager’s mobile phone unreachable, the policemen used a ladder to inspect the bank’s roof and saw a small hole, which they thought was a sign of “forced entry.” The policemen became even more suspicious after a peek through the tinted glass doors revealed a collapsed ceiling.

A Chinese wife has cut her husband’s right hand off because of his internet addiction. Jiang Ming of Chengdu city promised his wife, He Ling, that he would not go on the internet anymore and would spend more time at home to take care of their newborn son. But after a short time he started to sneak into nearby internet cafes again to have video chats with girls. “I was on the internet, and suddenly felt a numbness in my right hand. The arrow on the screen stopped moving,” says Jiang Ming. “Then I found that my right hand was on the mouse pad, and blood was shooting out.” In court, the husband pleaded with the judge to release his wife, since he was to blame for breaking his promise.

Former US astronaut Lisa Nowak on Friday came face-to-face in court with the romantic rival she is accused of attacking after allegedly driving half-way across the United States wearing diapers. And in testimony that raised eyebrows in the courtroom, a police officer said Nowak had told him she had used the soiled baby diapers he found in the back of her car to avoid making too many stops on her long drive from Texas to Orlando, Florida. Nowak, whose bizarre saga has earned her nicknames such as “astronutty,’ asked the court to remove the monitoring bracelet she has to wear pending her September 24 trial. But the woman she allegedly attacked and plotted to kidnap testified that she is still scared of her.

So much for the meatball defense. A veteran counterterrorism detective’s claims that he flunked a drug test because his wife served him marijuana-spiked meatballs “simply weren’t credible,” and he has been fired by the New York Police Department, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Thursday. With the dismissal, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly rejected an earlier recommendation by an administrative judge that the detective, Anthony Chiofalo, be reinstated. Kelly has final say on firings. An attorney for Chiofalo did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment. Chiofalo, a 22-year-veteran assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, was suspended without pay in 2005 after a random drug test found marijuana in his system. The officer denied ever using drugs and demanded a hearing.

A judge will have to decide again whether a police officer can smell alcohol on a man’s breath from inside of a fast-food drive-through window. The prosecution believes Officer Kenneth Marrow can and did earlier this year. The attorney for 24-year-old Cody Schaaf disagrees and says the officer had no reasonable cause to stop Schaaf on suspicion of drunken driving. The stipulated trial Monday in Lancaster County Court centered on the arrest of Schaaf early in the morning of March 20. Sometime before 3 a.m., Schaaf ordered four cheeseburgers at a McDonald’s south of downtown Lincoln. As Schaaf’s car got to the pickup window, Schaaf was asked by a McDonald’s worker to pull ahead a few feet and wait for his food. The officer took the food to Schaaf’s car and eventually arrested him. Schaaf’s blood later tested out above the legal limit. A police spokeswoman said Wednesday that the officer had stopped at the restaurant because its managers had been reporting problems with drunken customers. Marrow testified during a hearing in July that Schaaf had bloodshot, watery eyes and that his speech was slurred. Marrow said he could smell alcohol coming from the car. But Mark Rappl, Schaaf’s lawyer, challenged Marrow’s account, doubting the officer could have detected the alcohol from inside the restaurant, seven feet from Schaaf.