WhiteBoard News for Tuesday, June 3, 2003

Florence, Oregon (AP):

Michael McNamara wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper critical of the police for failing to arrest criminals and the police responded by arresting him.

McNamara wrote the letter to the Siuslaw News last month, criticizing police for their inability to prevent several local burglaries that occurred around that time.

Florence police chief Lynn Lamm responded by thanking McNamara for reporting two of those burglaries. But Lamm said he also discovered some "interesting facts" about McNamara.

During investigation of the burglaries, it was determined that McNamara had several outstanding felony warrants from Arkansas and California. McNamara was arrested and is awaiting extradition to California.

Lamm said McNamara's record suggested he is a "career criminal."

Now officers are now investigating whether McNamara played any role in the burglaries, Lamm said.
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Berlin, Germany (Reuters):

A German wanted for theft has been arrested after he reported his wallet stolen, police in the northern city of Hamburg say. 

Police became suspicious of the 47-year-old because of his reluctance to give his real name while filing the complaint. A quick check then established his own criminal credentials. 

"They eventually discovered his name, spotted he was wanted for theft and clapped handcuffs on him immediately," a police spokesman said. 
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Cancun, Mexico (Ananova):

TV producers thought two soap actors were giving the performance of their lives when they almost drowned in Mexico.

Yahir Orthon Parra and Jose Antonio were shooting a drowning scene in the sea at Cancun, Mexico, for soap opera Enamorate.

An Azteca TV spokesman told Terra Noticias Populares: "We saw them screaming for help, but thought they were just giving their best performance ever."

It was only when the crew realised the actors were too far out to sea, more than 300 metres from where they should have been, that they realised something was wrong and sent out a rescue team.

The spokesman added: "Thank God they are all right. I hope they don't hear me say this, but I'd say the whole thing was worthwhile, the scene turned out brilliantly!"
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Sydney, Australia (Independent Online):

In the beginning was the word, and the word was "G'day!".

That's how the New Testament might have begun if Jesus had been born Australian, according to an Australian author and broadcaster who has just completed a collection of favourite bible stories retold in Australian English.

To some, Australian English is a screech of tortured vowels and suppressed consonants parodied by Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

'We don't talk like anyone else on Earth' 
But to Kel Richards, author of The Aussie Bible (Well, Bits Of It Anyway), it is a rich vein of regional idioms and unique slang expressions.

"We don't talk like anyone else on Earth," he said.

Based loosely on a similar book of mainly New Testament bible stories in Cockney rhyming slang, Richards' Aussie Bible was backed by the Bible Society of New South Wales in an attempt to win new readers for some of the world's best-known stories.

The Three Wise Men, for example, becomes "three eggheads from out east" who go in search of the baby Jesus. "We saw his star out east, and we've come to say 'G'day Your Majesty'," they say.

Richards' version of the bible has the Good Samaritan attacked by "a bunch of bushrangers", while "Australian Jesus" describes those who build their houses on sand as "boofheads", a contraction of the English slang phrase "bufflehead", meaning muddle-headed or confused.

Richards also reconstructs Psalm 23 as A Bush Ballad which begins: "God is the Station Owner, and I am just one of the sheep. He musters me down to the lucerne flats, and feeds me there all week". 
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