BOSTON Jul 11, 2006 (AP)— Twelve tons of concrete fell from the ceiling of one of Boston's Big Dig tunnels, crushing a woman in a car and again raising concerns Tuesday about the integrity of the massive highway project in the central artery through the city.
Authorities said they were inspecting at least 17 other sections of the tunnel system where similar "tiebacks" were used to hold ceiling panels in place.
"I don't think anyone can feel the tunnels are safe, given what happened this morning," Gov. Mitt Romney told a New England Cable News reporter after touring the tunnel under an industrial area of South Boston where the woman died.
The driver of the crushed car managed to crawl through a window to safety, but his passenger was killed when four of the massive concrete ceiling panels hit the vehicle late Wednesday.
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BIG PINE KEY, Fla. (AP) - He wasn't wearing blue suede fins, but an Elvis impersonator was among the snorkelers and divers who swam in the Underwater Music Festival.
Neil Goldberg, of Key West, costumed in a white-caped jumpsuit and flashy gold chains, joined several hundred visitors and residents who took the plunge for the six-hour weekend radio broadcast piped underwater at Looe Key Reef.
"We even had a Chihuahua in goggles and a swim vest on one of the dive boats," said festival founder Bill Becker.
Other participants dressed as a mermaid with a blue and purple tail and a hot-pink angelfish with gauzy fins, while an underwater band pretended to play instruments sculpted to resemble deep-sea creatures.
The broadcast featured melodies ranging from Jimmy Buffett's "Fins" and the Beatles'"Yellow Submarine" to classic Presley hits. The songs were mixed with public service announcements promoting reef preservation and warning the divers to avoid touching the coral.
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A retired mechanical designer with a penchant for poor prose took a tired detective novel scene and made it even worse, earning him top honors in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing.
Jim Guigli of Carmichael submitted 64 entries into the contest. The judges were most impressed, or revolted perhaps, by his passage about a comely woman who walks into a detective's office.
"Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean," Guigli wrote.
"The judges were impressed by his appalling powers of invention," said Scott Rice, a professor in SJSU's Department of English and Comparative Literature. He has organized the bad writing contest since its inception in 1982.
Guigli will receive "a pittance" for his winning entry, a bit of cash he said he may put toward the purchase of a motor boat. His work for the contest represents a sampling of a career that never quite developed for him.
"At one time I thought I wanted to write to detective novels," Guigli told the Associated Press Monday. "I never got a good start on it."
His bad start was to be celebrated Tuesday, when the contest results were to be officially announced by Rice.
The contest is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" began with the oft-mocked, "It was a dark and stormy night."
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MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. (AP) - Two people who helped place a man under citizen's arrest when he strayed onto the wrong property found themselves in jail.
Michigan City police received a call Sunday night from a man who said he had been detained by four people while he was trying to find a friend's house. The man told police he was grabbed by two men and told to quit resisting, as he was under arrest. The man said he complied because he thought they were police officers.
Two women then came out of a nearby house and handcuffed the man, although he tried to explain he was just visiting a friend and had taken the wrong staircase, he told police.
The group took the handcuffed man to his friend's house, and released him when the friend vouched for him.
After receiving the report, police contacted Joel and Claudette St. Germain, who acknowledged handcuffing the man. Joel St. Germain told police he has had problems in the past with people stealing things from his lawn. He told officers he didn't know it was wrong to handcuff a man he didn't recognize in his yard.
The St. Germains, who were being held Monday at the LaPorte County Jail, were arrested and charged with criminal confinement, a Class D felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine, and battery, a Class A misdemeanor which carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a fine up to $5,000.
The other two people accused of confining the man were not identified.
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SHERMAN, Conn. (AP) - A high-flying hello from strangers in Michigan made its way through storms and across several hundred miles, landing recently near a Connecticut woman's home.
Marcella Lourd, 80, who lives in the western Connecticut town of Sherman, found a cluster of about 17 bright orange balloons last week near her home's tennis court, their helium nearly spent and a business card dangling from their tied-together strings.
When Lourd sent an e-mail to the address on the card, she received surprising news: The balloons, the idea of a 9-year-old girl, had been released one day earlier in the western Michigan city of Grand Rapids.
They apparently made the 630-mile trip to Sherman in about 13 hours despite - or perhaps helped by - the storms that swept eastward into Connecticut during that time.
Brian Buck, 35, had released the balloons, prompted by his daughter Anna's curiosity about how far they'd travel. Buck, a stay-at-home father who works part-time at a store that sells balloons, called it "all just a bit of fun, really."
"We once saw a TV report about a balloon that was released on St. Valentine Day and ended up in France, so my daughter said we should try to do the same thing," he told The News-Times of Danbury. "We have to get rid of the balloons every night anyway because the helium inside can affect the store's security detection system."
Still inflated, the balloons have found a welcoming home with Lourd.
"They still have air in them so I think I'll just keep them," she said. "They'll make a nice little ornament."
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NEW DELHI (AP) - Malevolent ghosts stealing your chickens and torturing you in the night? Who you gonna call? For farmer Sunil Das, his first call was the police, who laughed at what they thought was a joke, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported Tuesday.
But a judge in India's northeastern state of Assam saw little humor in Das' allegation that ghosts controlled by his neighbors were making off with his poultry at night. Instead of laughing, the judge ordered police to get to work and find the culprits, the newspaper reported.
In his complaint, Sunil Das accused his neighbors of using their "obedient but malevolent" ghosts, "subjecting me to physical and mental torture," the newspaper reported.
Das said his neighbors were notorious for using black magic against people they had a grudge against.
Superstitions and belief in ghosts are widespread across India, particularly in rural villages.
Nevertheless, police working the case said it was a first for them.
"We have dealt with hardcore criminals and armed militants but this is the first time we are required to pursue a case with a spooky angle to it," the newspaper quoted a local police officer as saying.
"We are yet to crack the case but investigations are on," said the unidentified officer.
Authorities said they were inspecting at least 17 other sections of the tunnel system where similar "tiebacks" were used to hold ceiling panels in place.
"I don't think anyone can feel the tunnels are safe, given what happened this morning," Gov. Mitt Romney told a New England Cable News reporter after touring the tunnel under an industrial area of South Boston where the woman died.
The driver of the crushed car managed to crawl through a window to safety, but his passenger was killed when four of the massive concrete ceiling panels hit the vehicle late Wednesday.
------------------------------------------------------------
BIG PINE KEY, Fla. (AP) - He wasn't wearing blue suede fins, but an Elvis impersonator was among the snorkelers and divers who swam in the Underwater Music Festival.
Neil Goldberg, of Key West, costumed in a white-caped jumpsuit and flashy gold chains, joined several hundred visitors and residents who took the plunge for the six-hour weekend radio broadcast piped underwater at Looe Key Reef.
"We even had a Chihuahua in goggles and a swim vest on one of the dive boats," said festival founder Bill Becker.
Other participants dressed as a mermaid with a blue and purple tail and a hot-pink angelfish with gauzy fins, while an underwater band pretended to play instruments sculpted to resemble deep-sea creatures.
The broadcast featured melodies ranging from Jimmy Buffett's "Fins" and the Beatles'"Yellow Submarine" to classic Presley hits. The songs were mixed with public service announcements promoting reef preservation and warning the divers to avoid touching the coral.
------------------------------------------------------------
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A retired mechanical designer with a penchant for poor prose took a tired detective novel scene and made it even worse, earning him top honors in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing.
Jim Guigli of Carmichael submitted 64 entries into the contest. The judges were most impressed, or revolted perhaps, by his passage about a comely woman who walks into a detective's office.
"Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean," Guigli wrote.
"The judges were impressed by his appalling powers of invention," said Scott Rice, a professor in SJSU's Department of English and Comparative Literature. He has organized the bad writing contest since its inception in 1982.
Guigli will receive "a pittance" for his winning entry, a bit of cash he said he may put toward the purchase of a motor boat. His work for the contest represents a sampling of a career that never quite developed for him.
"At one time I thought I wanted to write to detective novels," Guigli told the Associated Press Monday. "I never got a good start on it."
His bad start was to be celebrated Tuesday, when the contest results were to be officially announced by Rice.
The contest is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" began with the oft-mocked, "It was a dark and stormy night."
------------------------------------------------------------
MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. (AP) - Two people who helped place a man under citizen's arrest when he strayed onto the wrong property found themselves in jail.
Michigan City police received a call Sunday night from a man who said he had been detained by four people while he was trying to find a friend's house. The man told police he was grabbed by two men and told to quit resisting, as he was under arrest. The man said he complied because he thought they were police officers.
Two women then came out of a nearby house and handcuffed the man, although he tried to explain he was just visiting a friend and had taken the wrong staircase, he told police.
The group took the handcuffed man to his friend's house, and released him when the friend vouched for him.
After receiving the report, police contacted Joel and Claudette St. Germain, who acknowledged handcuffing the man. Joel St. Germain told police he has had problems in the past with people stealing things from his lawn. He told officers he didn't know it was wrong to handcuff a man he didn't recognize in his yard.
The St. Germains, who were being held Monday at the LaPorte County Jail, were arrested and charged with criminal confinement, a Class D felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine, and battery, a Class A misdemeanor which carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a fine up to $5,000.
The other two people accused of confining the man were not identified.
------------------------------------------------------------
SHERMAN, Conn. (AP) - A high-flying hello from strangers in Michigan made its way through storms and across several hundred miles, landing recently near a Connecticut woman's home.
Marcella Lourd, 80, who lives in the western Connecticut town of Sherman, found a cluster of about 17 bright orange balloons last week near her home's tennis court, their helium nearly spent and a business card dangling from their tied-together strings.
When Lourd sent an e-mail to the address on the card, she received surprising news: The balloons, the idea of a 9-year-old girl, had been released one day earlier in the western Michigan city of Grand Rapids.
They apparently made the 630-mile trip to Sherman in about 13 hours despite - or perhaps helped by - the storms that swept eastward into Connecticut during that time.
Brian Buck, 35, had released the balloons, prompted by his daughter Anna's curiosity about how far they'd travel. Buck, a stay-at-home father who works part-time at a store that sells balloons, called it "all just a bit of fun, really."
"We once saw a TV report about a balloon that was released on St. Valentine Day and ended up in France, so my daughter said we should try to do the same thing," he told The News-Times of Danbury. "We have to get rid of the balloons every night anyway because the helium inside can affect the store's security detection system."
Still inflated, the balloons have found a welcoming home with Lourd.
"They still have air in them so I think I'll just keep them," she said. "They'll make a nice little ornament."
------------------------------------------------------------
NEW DELHI (AP) - Malevolent ghosts stealing your chickens and torturing you in the night? Who you gonna call? For farmer Sunil Das, his first call was the police, who laughed at what they thought was a joke, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported Tuesday.
But a judge in India's northeastern state of Assam saw little humor in Das' allegation that ghosts controlled by his neighbors were making off with his poultry at night. Instead of laughing, the judge ordered police to get to work and find the culprits, the newspaper reported.
In his complaint, Sunil Das accused his neighbors of using their "obedient but malevolent" ghosts, "subjecting me to physical and mental torture," the newspaper reported.
Das said his neighbors were notorious for using black magic against people they had a grudge against.
Superstitions and belief in ghosts are widespread across India, particularly in rural villages.
Nevertheless, police working the case said it was a first for them.
"We have dealt with hardcore criminals and armed militants but this is the first time we are required to pursue a case with a spooky angle to it," the newspaper quoted a local police officer as saying.
"We are yet to crack the case but investigations are on," said the unidentified officer.
