WhiteBoard News for Thursday, September 4, 2003

Clermont, Florida (Independent Online):

The telephone company Sprint is remaking phone books distributed in central Florida after learning that the colourful cover art could be sending the wrong message.

The phone book in south Lake County features the magenta petals of the opium-bearing poppy, the flower used to make heroin.

Sprint spokesperson Darcy Miller said the picture was chosen from stock art for its color and attractiveness but has been deleted and will not be used again.

Workers for Sprint recently distributed thousands of the books to the communities of Clermont, Groveland, Mascotte, Minneola and Montverde.

Miller said no one at the Sprint office in Kansas City, Kansas, where the picture was selected, realized that the photograph depicted the poppy until she was contacted by a newspaper. She said the books will not be recalled. 
==============

Janesville, Wisconsin (AP):

To track down this alleged thief, all police had to do was flick on a computer. 

A 40-year-old man was arrested Wednesday and charged with stealing a computerized tracking device that uses a global positioning system to keep track of jail prisoners on home detention. 

"He apparently didn't know what he had because he would be awfully stupid to steal a tracking device," said correctional officer Thomas Roth, who runs the home detention program at the Rock County Jail. 

The $2,500 device was temporarily placed outside a home by a woman serving home detention. The device, which is a little bigger than a brick in size, has a built-in GPS satellite receiver. 

Prisoners wear a transmitter about as big as a cigarette pack on the ankle, and it acts as a 100-foot tether to the portable tracking device. 

By the time the prisoner called to report the theft Monday night, the device had automatically notified the jail that it had been taken outside the prisoner's home area. 

Roth then tracked the device through the Internet on his home computer. 

A trail of electronic dots led authorities to an apartment building, where the suspect was captured. 
=============

San Francisco, California (San Francisco Chronicle):

Ricky Beale rode in the back of a stretch limousine to rob a Bank of America of $5,000, San Francisco police say, and was awarded with a free ride to jail. 

Beale, 31, a personal trainer, hired the limo to take him from his studio to San Francisco International Airport, said Inspector Dan Gardner of the robbery detail. Beale told the driver to stop at his girlfriend's place. 

Instead of visiting his girlfriend, however, Beale went to a nearby Bank of America branch, police said, and allegedly robbed two tellers after simulating having a handgun. 

A witness spotted Beale getting into the limo. Police were alerted and pulled the car over. 

"It's a stretch limousine _ not exactly the most discreet getaway vehicle, " Gardner said. The driver, he added, "got stiffed." 
================

Riksbanken, Sweden (Ananova):

A Swedish man has been awarded nearly $94,900 compensation after he was sacked for telling off a colleague for breaking wind.

Computer technician Goran Andervass took the Swedish Bank, at Riksbanken, to industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal.

He said he rebuked his un-named colleague because he believed he had deliberately broken wind in his office.

"My colleague was absolutely aware of the awful smell. It was pure provocation," he told Aftonbladet.

"I felt provoked by the fart at 7.30am and it made me terribly angry."

Krister Skoglund, of the Swedish Work Environment Authority, commented: "If a fart is done on purpose when going into somebody's office it is important that management takes the matter seriously."
=============

Berlin, Germany (Independent Online):

It began raining cash on the German highway on Wednesday, leading to a major traffic jam and road closure, police said.

A 42-year-old motorist left a briefcase full of tens of thousands of euros in cash on the roof of his car and drove off on to the highway in the western city of Bochum, sending the bills flying.

Because drivers stopped their vehicles in the middle of the road to collect the money, the highway was blocked for about 10 minutes.

Of the original sum, police were only able to recover a small amount.

The briefcase was missing and police were searching for a man who was seen collecting dozens of "brightly coloured notes" on the highway.

A police spokesperson said the man could be charged with larceny for not reporting the find.

It was not clear why the driver had such a large sum of cash with him.
===============

Gruenau, Austria (Ananova):

Researchers have provided a flock of lazy and disorientated rare birds with a car and driver because they are incapable of migrating on their own.

Ornithologists from the Konrad Lorenz research centre in Gruenau in Austria have spent more than two years breeding the Northern Bald Ibis species.

They had to drive the birds to their winter quarters in the Maremma region in northern Italy by car after discovering they were unable to make the 500 mile trip on their own.

Dr Kurt Kotrschal from the Zoology Department at Vienna University said the birds were used to being taken care of and they refused to fly south.

He said: "The birds are used to the all-inclusive treatment at the research centre. So we had to pack the lazy birds into the car and drive them."

The small Ibis population, which had once been widespread in Austria until it was entirely wiped out in the Middle Ages, has lost its natural sense of orientation.

Experts who are now trying to bring the birds back to Austria are not only transporting the birds by car but they are also showing the migratory birds the way in hang gliders.

The bird which is about 80 centimetres tall with shiny black feathers usually takes between two and three weeks, depending on the weather, to make the journey.
=============

Chow
SuperChef
www.joeha.com