LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — A dentist found the source of the toothache Patrick Lawler was complaining about on the roof of his mouth: a four-inch nail the construction worker had unknowingly embedded in his skull six days earlier.
A nail gun backfired on Lawler, 23, on Jan. 6 while working in Breckenridge, a ski resort town in the central Colorado mountains. The tool sent a nail into a piece of wood nearby, but Lawler didn't realize a second nail had shot through his mouth, said his sister, Lisa Metcalse.
Following the accident, Lawler had what he thought was a minor toothache and blurry vision. On Wednesday, after painkillers and ice didn't ease the pain, he went to a dental office where his wife, Katerina, works.
"We all are friends, so I thought the (dentists) were joking … then the doctor came out and said 'There's really a nail,"' Katerina Lawler said. "Patrick just broke down. I mean, he had been eating ice cream to help the swelling."
He was taken to a suburban Denver hospital, where he underwent a four-hour surgery. The nail had plunged 1.5 inches into his brain, barely missing his right eye, Metcalse said.
"This is the second one we've seen in this hospital where the person was injured by the nail gun and didn't actually realize the nail had been imbedded in their skull," neurosurgeon Sean Markey told KUSA-TV in Denver. "But it's a pretty rare injury."
Lawler was recovering Sunday in the hospital, where he was expected to spend several more days.
Despite his lack of medical insurance and hospital bills between $80,000 and $100,000, Katerina Lawler said her husband is in good spirits.
"The doctors said, 'If you're going to have a nail in the brain, that's the way you want it to be,"' she said. "He's the luckiest guy, ever."
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — No one could say how long the browning pages of handwritten sheet music had been stacked there, or exactly who that was in the black-and-white photo with "November 1941" penciled on the back.
More than just history has been piling up at the Colored Musicians Club since it opened in 1918 as a union for black musicians.
"The club has really been neglected for a great many years," said board member Angel Wright, standing beneath an ornate tin ceiling clearly in need of repair.
More than 30 Americorps volunteers spent a service day Friday sorting, moving, crating and pitching the clutter that accumulated in the downtown jazz club.
The club, chartered in 1935, served as a watering hole and rehearsal hall for the likes of Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Nat "King" Cole, and in more recent years, McCoy Tyner and Freddie Cole.
As musicians came and went, documents, instruments and other objects were haphazardly stored in various rooms of the two-story building.
The club's board of directors welcomed the volunteers' help, having become overwhelmed by the boxes filled with rusty saxophones and clarinets, signed photos, membership ledgers and crumbling notebooks of club minutes.
With the old broken beer bottles and useless paper thrown out, library science students from Buffalo State College can now begin archiving and preserving the buried treasure, which includes newly discovered sheet music signed by the late Lionel Hampton.
Club leaders hope to eventually set up a display of some of the items.
Board members want to expand the club's role in the community, with music lessons for children and collaborations with other cultural organizations to promote its history, and black history in general.
That could re-establish the club's influence in the community, harkening back to a time when black musicians who wanted to play in Buffalo had to first stop by the union to register. After they performed in the community, they would go back and jam well into the morning in the dusky upstairs club with its sturdy bar and stage.
"Buffalo has sort of been forgotten as being one of the great jazz destinations," said board president George Scott. "A lot of great musicians have come from here and come through here."
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Rescuers searched the turbulent Bering Sea on Sunday for three crew members missing from a crab boat that sank, killing two of the other three people aboard.
The Coast Guard also was searching for a crewman who washed overboard from another crab boat Saturday, the same day the 92-foot Big Valley sank.
"We are not giving up hope of finding anyone alive," Chief Petty Officer Darrell Wilson said Sunday. "We have been surprised many times in the past. No one can discount the will of people to survive."
The Big Valley and the 134-foot Sultan were after snow crab, a fishery that opened to commercial vessels Saturday amid stormy seas and up to 40 mph winds. The Big Valley sank 70 miles west of St. Paul Island, about 750 miles west of Anchorage.
The three crewmen found were wearing bulky survival suits, but two of them died. Cache Seel, 30, of Kodiak, was recovering at a Saint Paul hospital after he was found floating in a life raft.
Also missing was a crewman who was washed off the Sultan 150 miles northwest of St. Paul Island.
Sunday's search took place in 12-foot seas. In the 37-degree water, the survival rate is estimated at slightly more than five hours for people wearing survival gear, according to Wilson.
"But that's just a chart," he said. "A lot depends on how healthy you are to begin with, how much body fat you have. So the numbers are kind of approximate. We've been proven wrong many times."
Officials were trying to locate relatives of the missing and dead crew members before releasing their names, Wilson said.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Thirty-two Chinese immigrants were found inside two cargo containers aboard a ship arriving from Hong Kong, authorities said.
They were discovered Saturday night when a crane operator at the Port of Los Angeles saw three men climbing out of a container, said Lt. Titus Smith of the Los Angeles Port Police.
The suspected illegal immigrants, including 28 men and four male teenagers, were being questioned by federal authorities, said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. All appeared to be in good health after the 10-day journey.
The 40-foot containers had little more than food, water, sleeping bags and battery-powered fans and arrived aboard the Panamanian-flagged NYK Athena. Authorities don't believe the ship's crew knew about the stowaways.
Federal agents said a container manifest listed its contents as "clothing." One migrant said he paid $3,000 for passage, although smuggling fees from China typically range from $30,000 to $60,000, officials said.
The group will be held at a federal detention center pending an immigration hearing.
"This is a very large number. Most of the times, we get a couple of people here and there, but we haven't found so many for some time," Smith said.
The number of Chinese nationals smuggled into the country through Los Angeles-area ports has dropped off in recent years, officials said.
The discovery marks the first group of smuggled immigrants uncovered at the port since February last year, when 19 were found inside a container aboard a Cypriot-flagged vessel called the Ningbo. Two Hong Kong brothers were later indicted for allegedly plotting to smuggle immigrants into port.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — In the nation's bloodiest prison, Wilbert Rideau became a thinking man, an award-winning journalist who has been called "the most rehabilitated inmate in America." Now, after more than 40 years behind bars, he is a free man.
Rideau, a black man convicted three times by all-white juries, walked free Saturday when a racially mixed jury found him guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter.
A quietly jubilant Rideau savored his new freedom Sunday in Baton Rouge, relaxing at a friend's house and blinking in a world he left behind when John Kennedy was the new president and "whites only" signs still hung across the South.
"I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it," Rideau told The Associated Press in one of his first interviews since the verdict in his native Lake Charles. "Jail is so far distant. It's distant."
Rideau, 62, never denied that he killed Julia Ferguson on Feb. 16, 1961, and shot two others after a botched robbery. Testifying for the first time in this trial, he said it was an act of panic.
Prosecutors, seeking a murder conviction and a life sentence, scoffed at Rideau's contention that although he killed Ferguson, he didn't murder her. But after deliberating for nearly six hours, the jury of eight whites and four blacks agreed with him that the crime was not planned or premeditated.
Since he has spent nearly 44 years in prison — more than double the 21-year maximum for manslaughter when the crime occurred — he was immediately released.
"It offers hope to the black community. It's a new day," said the Rev. J.L. Franklin of Lake Charles, who has led a minister's group that has pushed for years for Rideau's release.
After a celebration with his attorneys, he spent the night with his mother and sisters. Elsewhere in Lake Charles, a spontaneous celebration broke out at a crowded zydeco ball when news of Rideau's release emerged.
"Wilbert was just so elated," Franklin said. "We were all just extremely excited. And amazed that he is free. We were all very excited and Wilbert's talking about his projects."
Rideau was a janitor and eighth-grade dropout when he entered the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. Behind bars, he became a self-educated writer and helped expose the violence behind prison walls, elevating the prison magazine, The Angolite, to national acclaim.
He gained fame and numerous awards, co-directing the Oscar-nominated prison documentary "The Farm" and co-writing and narrating an award-winning National Public Radio documentary. Life magazine once called him "the most rehabilitated prisoner in America."
Jurors were barred from hearing about Rideau's accomplishments in prison.
Prosecutors "figured they would convict me on the case. The stuff that would get me the sympathy, they kept out," Rideau said Sunday. "Ironically, I got freed on the case. A lot of the `facts' turned out to be myths."
Rideau's fame also brought tension in Lake Charles, near the Texas line. Rideau left for Baton Rouge Sunday morning, and his supporters said they were worried for his safety because of the depth of feeling surrounding the case.
Don Hickman, whose father, branch manager Jay Hickman, was one of two people whom Rideau shot and left for dead, scoffed at the concern.
"These people here are not going to try to kill him," Hickman said. "I don't even know of any rednecks around here who would be dumb enough to do that."
Hickman, who attended every day of the trial, said he was disappointed in the verdict and that prosecutors "were just out-lawyered."
Rideau's lawyers contended Louisiana's 1960s-era climate of racial hostility — and three all-white, all-male juries — made it impossible to get a fair trial.
He was convicted and sentenced to death three times before the Supreme Court outlawed existing death penalty laws in the 1970s, commuting his sentence.
Then, in 2000, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals again overturned his conviction, this time because black people were excluded from the 1961 grand jury that indicted him. He was reindicted in 2001 by a mixed-race jury.
In his fourth trial, Rideau's defense sought a manslaughter verdict. Prosecutors wanted the jury to find him guilty of murder to ensure Rideau would end his days in jail, barring a pardon.
"The passage of time has made him older and hopefully wiser, but it certainly has not made him less guilty," Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Rick Bryant told the jury Saturday. "Time and age do not give you innocence."
But shortly before the jury was handed the case, Rideau's attorney Julian Murray suggested that racism had distorted the crime, keeping local passions inflamed.
"You have to understand that time, and then it comes together," Murray said. "You think they would hesitate to exaggerate the facts of the case, to get the result they wanted?"
The stabbing of Ferguson was "a terrible act, a criminal act, one for which he deserves great punishment, but not one for which he deserves to be locked up for the rest of his life," Murray said.
"He did a terrible thing, but it wasn't murder."
CINCINNATI (AP) — Jerry Springer has been a politician, television news anchorman and host of a raucous TV show. Now he can add radio talk show host to the list.
Springer, 60, will host a politically oriented radio talk show in Cincinnati — where he once served as mayor — and he promises to challenge the Bush administration on issues ranging from Iraq to Social Security.
"I'm excited about it," Springer said Wednesday in a telephone interview from the Chicago offices of TV's "Jerry Springer Show," which he will continue to host.
Some see the radio show as a springboard for the Democrat's possible return to politics in 2006, either in a run for Ohio governor or a Senate seat, although Springer declined to comment on the issue Wednesday.
The new show is "a great opportunity to offer other voices, which now are not heard very much in the political dialogue of America," he said.
Springer did radio commentary in the 1970s in Cincinnati and was a TV news anchor in the 1980s.
He served as a city councilman in the 1970s, but resigned in 1974 after admitting in federal court he wrote personal checks to pay prostitutes. He was later elected mayor and lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1982.
Springer is best known around the country for his trashy television show, which often devolves into fist fights and flurries of bleeped-out obscenities.
Begun in 1991, the show has built its ratings on raunchy topics such as "Country Lovin' Gone Bad" and a scantily clad woman who ran around a trailer park painting derogatory names on her neighbors' homes.
Springer said he will welcome opposing views on his show from callers in Cincinnati, a Republican bastion. "The conservatives have pretty much cornered the market on talk radio, cable talk," he said.
Republicans jabbed back.
"The more people hear from Jerry Springer, the less likely they will be to elect him to public office," said Jason Mauk, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party. "This is a guy who peddles smut for a living."
Clear Channel, which owns WSAI-AM in Cincinnati, is scrapping the station's oldies format and changing to an all-talk format with a schedule of liberal commentators. The call letters will change to WCKY-AM on Monday.
Springer's show will be three hours in the morning, five days a week.
The plan is to offer Springer's radio talk show in other markets, said Darryl Parks, director of AM radio operations for Clear Channel Cincinnati.
"There's talk about syndicating this, which will probably be happening in the next couple of weeks," Parks said. "Anytime you can get a marquee talent like Jerry Springer, you grab the chance."
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Organizers of a national benefit for tsunami victims on Sunday awaited the final fund-raising tally from the two-hour televised concert that featured a constellation of movie and music stars.
NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks said Sunday that the network would need two days to complete a tally of money collected during the program, which aired on NBC Universal-owned stations. All donations went to the American Red Cross International Response Fund.
During the telethon, actors told stories about the tsunami, and NBC showed pictures of the effects of the devastating waves and the agony of children left behind.
"We have a choice," actor Clint Eastwood said. "We can either look away or we can help."
Women had their choice of heartthrobs answering phones and taking pledges in the NBC Universal studios in Los Angeles: Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Nicolas Cage, Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Tom Selleck and James Caan.
The concert was reminiscent of a similar benefit that ran on more than 30 television networks less than two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. That benefit raised nearly $130 million for that cause.
In an echo of that concert three years ago, Madonna sang John Lennon's "Imagine," dressed in a black dress. Singer Neil Young performed the same song at the 2001 benefit.
Gloria Estefan sang "There's Always Tomorrow," former Beach Boy Brian Wilson sang "Love and Mercy" and Lenny Kravitz sang "Let Love Rule." In pre-taped performances from London, Elton John sang "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" and Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters sang "Wish You Were Here," accompanied by Eric Clapton.
Besides NBC, the program was carried on CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Bravo, Telemundo, Pax TV, Trio and the Sci-Fi Channel.
The benefit was not without a glitch: Singer John Mayer uttered an expletive that got on the air even though NBC was using a five-second delay.
While he was singing "Bold as Love," Mayer swore while backing away from the microphone during a guitar solo. The audio briefly cut out about a second or two after he had said it.
NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks said NBC's standards people had been too slow on the button to remove it. The network is only two weeks removed from a New Year's Eve telecast where Motley Crue's Vince Neil swore while wishing bandmate Tommy Lee a happy New Year, instigating a Federal Communications Commission investigation.
GREENWICH, Conn. (AP) — Mel Gibson has lost his bid to have a portion of his Connecticut estate classified as a farm.
The director of "The Passion of the Christ" asked to have 17 of his 75.7 acres in Greenwich taxed as farm land, but town officials rejected the request.
"Anyone can have a few pigs in their back yard, but a viable farm is more than having something for personal use," town Assessor John "Ted" Gwartney said. "It's about producing a viable product."
Gibson would have saved about $10,000 per year in property taxes on his $17.7 million estate if granted the exemption for owners of working farms. His annual property tax bill is about $137,000, the Greenwich Time reported Thursday.
Besides a 28-room mansion, pool, tennis court and two guest houses, the property includes a barn where Gibson has kept sheep, donkeys and possibly chickens, town officials said.
Gwartney, in a letter to Gibson's representatives in November, ruled that Gibson's property was "not being used as a bona fide productive farming activity."
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — Gisele Bundchen may be a leggy Brazilian supermodel, but she's no Bond girl. In fact, she's says, she's kind of dull.
Bundchen, at a news conference Friday, denied rumors she had been invited to play the love interest in the next James Bond film.
"I never received that invitation," she said. "You know what happens? I'm a very boring person. I work a lot, I go home from work, I eat dinner, sleep.
"I don't take drugs, I'm not scandalous. So people have to start inventing things about me to publish in the columns," she said.
The news conference took place after Bundchen appeared at Rio Fashion, a weeklong fashion event that showcases the autumn/winter collections of local designers.
Bundchen, who paraded for the Brazilian label Colcci, did leave open the possibility of participating in other film projects, however.
DETROIT (AP) — Entertainer Bill Cosby urged members of a primarily black audience to protect their children from rampant crime in urban neighborhoods.
Cosby spoke to about 1,800 people Thursday night in downtown Detroit in an event billed as a town meeting.
"Detroit, you're 87 percent (black)! Get up, do something," Cosby shouted. "Get up, remove this reputation. You've got a reputation, and it stinks."
Cosby told parents they should pay attention to their children's friends and habits and set rules and stick by them.
He pleaded with absent fathers to establish a presence in their children's lives and challenged the community not to tolerate drug use and crime.
The forum was designed to bring together residents and community organizations to address problems involving education, crime and drug abuse.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — The billionaire owner of a newspaper chain and his wife donated $1 million to Catholic Relief Services for its tsunami rescue and rehabilitation effort, the charity said.
Richard M. Scaife, chairman of Westminster Holdings Inc., and his wife, Ritchie, made the donation Thursday. The couple said they were moved by scenes of devastation in southern Asia following the tsunami on Dec. 26.
"It is absolutely heartbreaking to see hundreds of thousands of people who have nothing left, and to know that more than 150,000 have been killed and tens of thousands more may still die," he said.
As chairman of Westminster Holdings Inc., Richard Scaife heads Tribune-Review Publishing Co., which publishes the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the Tribune-Review of Greensburg, among other western Pennsylvania newspapers.
The Scaifes' donation is the largest so far to Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services since it started raising money for tsunami relief, spokeswoman Caroline Brennan said.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Sen. Ben Nelson finally has succeeded in getting President Bush to stop calling him by the detested nickname "Nellie."
Bush had been referring to the Nebraska Democrat as "Nellie" since 2001. Nelson disliked the nickname and had asked the president to stop using it.
The president likes to give people nicknames. He has called Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, "Pootie-Poot," while aide Karen Hughes gets "High Prophet."
But Bush heeded Nelson's request to scrap his moniker, and at the recent White House Christmas party, the president referred to Nelson as "Benny."
"The president had a twinkle in his eye when he called me that," Nelson said. "He knew what he had done. I said, 'Thank you, Mr. President."'
PHOENIX (AP) — Some Phoenix-area inmates are in the pink — pink handcuffs.
Maricopa County sheriff's deputies began using fluorescent pink handcuffs Thursday to transport inmates.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he introduced the pink handcuffs because he was tired of losing them to his own deputies and other law enforcement agencies. He ordered 1,000 of the pink handcuffs, which are made in England, at $19.44 each. The regular ones cost $18.84 a pop.
"We presume nobody else has pink handcuffs, so we can spot them and know they're ours," he said
Patrol deputies will still carry the silver cuffs, which they pay for themselves.
The new cuffs will go well with the county's color scheme. Maricopa County inmates wear pink boxers and sleep on pink sheets.
MILTON, Vt. (AP) — It's hard to imagine that a 3-pointer in the second quarter of a high school boy's basketball game would turn out to be the winning basket — unless it's one of only three made in the entire game.
That basket, along with an earlier field goal, was all Bellows Free Academy-Fairfax needed to beat Milton on Wednesday night. The final score: 5-2.
"I've never had a player hit a game-winner in the second quarter before," BFA-Fairfax coach Glen Button Jr. said.
It could not immediately be determined if the score was a state or national record low, but the contest certainly attracted attention.
"It had to have been one of the most boring games in the world," said Bob Johnson, the director of student activities for the Vermont Principals' Association, which governs high school sports.
Neither team scored in the second half.
"It was the ultimate deliberate stalemate," Milton coach Jim Smith said. "They didn't come out after us and we didn't go in against them."
Smith said the slowdown was implemented because BFA (7-4) has a strong scoring presence, while Milton (2-8) does not. The Milton players believed their best chance to be competitive was to just hold onto the ball.
"We had a shot go off the rim that would have tied it," Smith said.
BOSTON (AP) — If you're on the A-list at Suffolk Superior Court this month, then most likely you're also in the jury pool.
A computer glitch at the state Office of Jury Commissioner alphabetized names of potential jurors, rather than shuffling them, before summonses were sent out. That created a jury pool of people whose last names mostly begin with the letter A.
So far, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges agree that the error has not affected defendants' constitutional right to a fair trial in front of a jury of their peers, jury Commissioner Pamela J. Wood said.
There are five trials under way in Suffolk Superior Court and no lawyers have raised objections, said David Procopio, a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Conley.
"We do not believe that what was basically a procedural defect compromised the integrity of the jury pool," Procopio said. "Much more important is randomness based on race, gender, and other more substantive issues, and this pool does have that."
The A-list of jurors will continue to show up at the courthouse until Jan. 24.
Posted in Backpage on Monday, January 17, 2005 12:00 am
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