Shoe Business 

Curses, Foiled Again
Two masked men armed with a shotgun tried to rob a bagel shop in Orlando, Fla., but fled emptyhanded when one of the employees pushed a bagel cart at them.

Shoe Business
A man who robbed a shoe store in Knoxville, Tenn., made off with four or five left-foot shoes from the storeroom. Police Lt. Bob Woodbridge told the Knoxville Sentinel the robber didn’t get matching pairs because the right-foot shoes were being used for displays. The following day, employees spotted the suspect in the shoe-store parking lot and called police. They arrested Vincent E. Salters, 46, who the Sentinel said was shoeless at the time.

• Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe at President George W. Bush, was discussing his experience at a news conference in Paris when someone in the audience threw a shoe at him. Al-Zeidi ducked, and the shoe hit the wall behind him. The Associated Press reported that al- Zeidi’s brother, Maithan, chased the unidentified attacker and hit him with a shoe as he left the room.

Sprocket Crime
After police received a report of a man trying to ride a bicycle while holding a cash register in Bloomington, Minn., officers spotted Travis William Himmler, 22, a few blocks away behind some bushes, somewhat dazed. The Eden Prairie Sun said a loose electrical cord from the register apparently jammed the gears of the bike, causing it to careen out of control. “There was evidence all around him,” Commander Mark Stehlik said, adding that the shoes Himmler was wearing matched shoeprints on grease on the floor of the restaurant and on the register.

• German police searching for convicted killer Peter Paul Michalski, 46, after he escaped from a high-security prison in Aachen spotted him riding a woman’s bicycle near the Dutch border and deliberately crashed into him, knocking him off the bicycle onto the grassy shoulder.

• Police investigating motor noise near a Christmas tree lot in Portage, Ind., at 1 a.m. spotted Phillip Menefee, 48, riding a bicycle equipped with a homemade motor but no lights. The Post- Tribune reported Menefee was balancing a stolen Christmas tree across the handlebars.

Helping Those Who Help Themselves
After a charity car wash raised hundreds of dollars to benefit the family of a hit-and-run victim in Clark County, Wash., police accused fund-raiser organizer Mallory P. Ewart, 18, of using most of the money to bail defendant Antonio Cellestine, 18, out of jail. The Columbian reported the allday car wash drew between 30 and 40 cars, most belonging to parishioners of the victim’s church. The paper added that investigators were tipped off to the scam by a purported admission on Ewart’s MySpace page.

Avoirdupois Follies
More than two dozen seniors at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University risk not being able to graduate this spring because they were too fat when they were freshmen and have taken no measures to stem their obesity. Inside Higher Ed reported that 92 entering freshmen in 2006 had body-mass-index scores below 30 and were required to lose weight or take a one-semester class called “Fitness for Life.” Twenty-five of the students did neither, and James L. DeBoy, chair of the health, physical education and recreation department, notified them they failed to meet the school requirement. “No student should ever be able to leave Lincoln and not know the risks of obesity,” DeBoy said.

When Guns Are Outlawed
Authorities in Marion County, Fla., reported that a man told them Elsie Egan, 53, repeatedly hit him in the face with an uncooked steak. Sheriff’s deputies told the Associated Press that Egan attacked the man because he refused a piece of sliced bread. He said he wanted a roll. Egan denied hitting the man with the steak but did admit slapping him “so that he could learn.”

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet.