We begin this overdue set of Clippings with a lighter story: more
than 500 patients of Maine's largest health-care provider died within
a couple of days. Wait a minute; perhaps I'm confused. Officials
with MaineHealth certainly were - when they mailed out condolence and
estate-advice letters for 531 people who hadn't actually died.
Furthermore, the form letter used, while intended for the next of kin,
went to the patients themselves.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, MaineHealth blamed a computer system.
Our second story too comes from the bowels of the medical system. The
setting this time is the intestinal system of a 13-year-old New
Zealand boy, where roughly 100 magnets converged to create a knotty
![[IMG: The
x-rays, magnets all in rows]](images/magnets.png)
problem. Three days after ingesting 5x2 mm neodymium magnets he'd
bought online, he began experiencing excruciating abdominal pain.
Four days later, he arrived at Tauranga Hospital, where x-ray imaging
revealed four neat lines apparently 'in separate parts of bowel [that]
adhered together due to magnetic forces'. He spent eight days in
hospital once surgeons had removed both the magnets and the portions of
the organ where their pressure had led to necrosis.
The Chinese-founded e-commerce company Temu offered condolences and
pledged to take greater care to follow the safety requirements in New
Zealand, where sale of high-power magnets is illegal.
A 26-year-old Romanian woman sought hospital treatment for a swollen
left eye that had been bothering her for about a day. When questioned
further, she mentioned that she had developed a twitchy 'nodule' on
her right temple a month earlier but that it had vanished about a day
before her visit. Yes, the two were connected. Surgeons removed an
11 cm roundworm from beneath the skin of her upper eyelid. Doctors
Gabriela Dumitru and Ruxandra Moroti Constantinescu suspect that the
culprit was mosquitoes delivering larval Dirofilaria repens to the
woman's pet dog - she had human heartworm disease.
Things aren't necessarily any better when the parasitic worm does
its own work. Consider Britain's James Michael, whose progressively
worse digestion problems and weakness were not aided by antibiotics.
Declaring that he shouldn't have to use a catheter and wheelchair at
age 32, he kept seeking answers until he was diagnosed with bilharzia
contracted during his holiday in Malawi: a worm had crawled up his
urethra and laid eggs in his body. Michael, who made a full recovery
after three months in hospital, says: 'I would urge anyone thinking of
getting into Lake Malawi not to.'
When police dispatchers in New Jersey's Franklin Township received
reports of gunshots and screaming, they directed their sole on-duty
officer to the scene. That officer, Kevin Bollaro, reported hearing
nothing at the first caller's location, and the pattern repeated as
further calls poured in. According to GPS data, however, Bollaro had
headed 3 km in the opposite direction - to a cash machine and then a
pizzeria, where he remained for an hour before an hour-long stay at
another food-and-drinks venue.
The next day, two bodies were found at a home 180 metres from the
first 911 caller's location. Things might have gone very differently
if state police lieutenant Ricardo Santos had visited Duke's Pizzeria
instead of committing double murder and then killing himself.
In Westchester County, New York, it is not one cop but five facing disciplinary action. In a van transporting five men to prison, 32-year-old Louis Soto managed to shoot a fellow 'passenger' in the leg. Staff back at police headquarters ascertained that neither the drivers nor the arresting or intake officers had thoroughly checked the environment: a proper frisking or strip search 'should have revealed' the .22-calibre revolver tucked between Soto's buttocks, not just his crack cocaine. All five officers have been suspended.
Elsewhere, the cops' job is considerably easier. The California
Highway Patrol's Merced station offer an example, from an officer who
pulled over a vehicle upon spotting 'something unusual' about the rear
![[IMG: The
DIY number plate]](images/artistic.png)
number plate. Closer inspection confirmed that the licence plate had
been hand-drawn and given a fake registration sticker. While handing
out 'points for creativity', the CHP reminded the public that this is
not an acceptable solution to having lost a state-issued plate - 'you
can easily get replacements through the DMV instead of breaking out
the art supplies'.
You might have read news stories in July about the man who leapt 15
metres from the cruise ship Disney Dream to rescue his five-year-old
daughter. While lauding him as a hero, those stories were silent on
how she'd ended up overboard. We now have an answer: her mother had
asked her to perch atop a railing and pose for photographs, whereupon
she fell backward through a porthole.
The mother later explained that it took a while to work out what had
happened, since she'd assumed there was a glass barrier in place. Her
screams then prompted the father to spot the girl in the water and
spring into action. He ended up with spinal fractures, the girl
suffered only mild hypothermia, and Mum will not face any charges.
We have a second cruise-ship story. An elderly woman on a luxury
cruise around Australia was discovered to be missing several hours
after the Coral Adventurer's first stop, on Lizard Island, off
Queensland. It emerged that Suzanne Rees, 80, had fallen ill during
the hill-climb portion of a hike and been asked to head back down,
unescorted. Her daughter later summarised: 'Then the ship left,
apparently without doing a passenger count.'
Rees was found the next morning, dead. Australian media report that
she may have fallen from a cliff.
When a New Jersey man felt horny at 4am, he thought the best solution
was to send the text message 'bring ya ass' to his 'side chick',
29-year-old Taija Russell. She obliged; however, he had fallen asleep
by the time she reached his home to supply the sex requested. He
didn't hear her at the door and failed to answer her eight calls or
respond to her text messages - which culminated in 'You wasted my
money to come out here' and 'I see you wanna die'.
So she purchased lighter fluid, matches, and a cigarette lighter
at a nearby petrol station. And he awoke. He escaped from his
burning residence by removing a window frame and climbing through the
opening. In a plea deal, Russell has admitted to arson.
Back in April, the same petrol station provided supplies to Tasia
Young, 33, who had similar aims. Her arson was prompted by her
boyfriend sending her home during a threesome while letting the other
woman stay.
I don't normally run truck-spill stories, but this one is a little
different. In Mississippi, a vehicle crash on Interstate 59 returned
a group of rhesus monkeys to the wild. The scene's broken crates
labelled 'live animals' gained a more sinister edge when locals learned
that, in their tenure as lab monkeys at Tulane University, these
simians had amassed an impressive tally of viruses, from hepatitis-C
to SARS-CoV-2.
All but one of the monkeys, which local police officials described
as aggressive to humans, were 'destroyed' by nightfall. Five days
later, on 2 November, a woman spotted the final one outside her home,
so she headed outside with a firearm and her mobile phone to
'protect [my five] children'. No more monkey business.
I don't normally run 'won the lottery' stories, but this one is a little different. A 33-year-old Michigan man visiting Detroit's Fawaz Petroleum noticed an abandoned scratchcard sitting beside the till. When he asked about it, the clerk explained that it hadn't been put away yet after another customer decided not to purchase it after all. He bought the Blazing Suits ticket himself, thereby winning the $1 million top prize.