In the news
Wanding Yang, author of a case study on a 34-yearold British man who spent a week in the hospital after rupturing the back of his throat by trying to suppress a sneeze, said the man always tried to hold them back because he believes sneezes are “very unhygienic.”
Darrin Lavallee, 46, of Webster, Mass., arrested on larceny charges, put out orange traffic cones to warn passing drivers about open manholes in the street when he stole seven heavy-duty metal covers, which were later recovered at a salvage yard, police said.
Eric Rivera-Valdez, 39, who used fake names and altered fingerprints while on the run from New Hampshire authorities for 16 years, was captured just across the state line in Methuen, Mass., when police arrested him on fugitive and drug trafficking charges.
Kimberly Flamm, a restaurant owner in Fargo, N.D., apologized for telling a breast-feeding mother to leave, despite a 2009 state law allowing women to breast-feed in public if they do it “in a discreet and modest manner.”
John McNally, a magistrate judge in Butler County, Ohio, set bail totaling more than $1 million for Donald Gazaway, 31, who was arrested after firing as many as 30 shots while using a 10-yearold boy as a shield during a hostage standoff that lasted about 30 hours, police said.
Adam Smith, Atlanta’s former chief procurement officer who assisted an ongoing FBI investigation into City Hall corruption, was sentenced to 27 months in prison and fined $25,000 after being found guilty of accepting bribes in exchange for city contracts.
Jeffrey Thomas, 50, who jumped from an upper-floor window and claimed a nonexistent gunman was inside holding children hostage, was charged with concealing a death after police in Rockwood, Mich., found his girlfriend’s body inside the house wrapped in a sheet and plastic.
Tony Lethbridge, 51, hired a helicopter on a hunch to find and rescue his 17-year-old son, Samuel, who didn’t return from a night out with friends in Newcastle, Australia, with the pilot and the teen’s uncle spotting his car from the air nearly 30 hours after he crashed into scrub brush along a highway.