Respite for Print 

Curses, Foiled Again
Raul Gaucin-Valenzuela, 33, and a friend broke into a home in Evans, Colo., intending to beat up the friend’s ex-wife’s new boyfriend, according to police. The plan failed because the woman living there was baby-sitting Gaucin-Valenzuela’s two children, ages 8 and 11, who recognized their dad, even though a bandanna covered his face. Police said Gaucin-Valenzuela didn’t realize his kids were at the home. (Greeley Daily Tribune)

• Craig Owen David Jr., 32, met his ex-girlfriend at a Wal- Mart parking lot in Uniontown, Pa., to borrow money for prescription medication. State Trooper Ozzie Mills said that when the woman pulled out a $10 bill to give him, David grabbed it and two $20 bills and fled. He was quickly apprehended while making his getaway across the parking lot on a motorized scooter the store owns for the use of disabled shoppers. (Uniontown Herald-Standard)

Respite for Print
The Long Island daily newspaper Newsday became one of the first nonbusiness newspapers to charge customers for access to its Website, which it spent $4 million to redesign and relaunch. In the first three months, only 35 people signed up to pay the $5 fee, according to publisher Terry Jiminez, who reportedly told a staff meeting, “That’s 35 more than I would have thought it would have been.” (The New York Observer)

Pre-Slept Comfort
Holiday Inn introduced a bed-warming service at three of its English hotels, provided by staff members dressed in fleece sleeper suits and nightcaps. The chain said the human bed warmers at one Manchester and two London locations are equipped with thermometers to assure the temperature reaches 68 degrees F, and will leave the bed before the guest occupies it. Spokesperson Jane Bednall likened the bed-warmers service to “having a giant hot water bottle in your bed.” (Reuters)

Unclear on the Concept
Seattle police arrested a Peeping Tom at a peep show. Officers reported the 27-year-old suspect snuck into the Lusty Lady strip club by walking backward through the front door and entered one of the viewing stalls. He then climbed through the stall’s ceiling panels and tried to reach the strippers’ dressing room along a crawl space above the club’s glass ceiling. Alerted by one of the strippers, who said she “was startled when (the man’s) legs came crashing through the glass panel ceiling above her,” officers found the suspect still in the crawl space. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Food Fights
Police said that when a customer at a restaurant in Brownsville, Texas, complained he was served beef instead of chicken, owner Maria Del Rayo Cordero told the man to pay for the food anyway and leave. An argument ensued, during which the owner threw a tray of food and tea at the customer, who threw the tea back. Cordero responded by throwing a ceramic plate that hit the customer on the forehead. Paramedics treated him, police arrested her. (KRGV-TV News)

• When Ralph Barr, 61, pointed out that a grocery store in Findlay, Ohio, mistakenly priced crab cakes, store manager Monte Erwin, 44, offered to sell him the first pound at the discounted price but the rest at the correct price. Police said Barr responded to the offer by spitting in the manager’s face, head-butting him five or six times in the face and breaking the manager’s glasses. Police arrested Barr, who claimed Erwin hit him with a price gun, but witnesses said the manager didn’t fight back. (Sandusky Register)

Fruits of Research
Researchers at the University of California Davis said they’ve identified “clusters” of autism in areas where parents have higher-than-average levels of education. For example, children in neighborhoods where parents finished college were at least four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than children of parents who didn’t finish high school. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that higher education causes autism,” cautioned UC Davis MIND Institute researcher Irva Hertz-Picciotto, one of the study’s authors, who explained that the high rates of autism occur where parents are more likely to obtain a diagnosis for their child. (NPR)

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.