Could drinking fermented apple juice give you a false positive for an OUI?

Mon Mar 30, 12:59 pm ET
WARSAW (Reuters) – A Polish lawmaker who failed a drink-driving test said he had eaten too many apples, the website of daily Gazeta Wyborcza said Monday.
Asked why a traffic police check Sunday showed he had 0.7 units of alcohol in his blood, Marek Latas denied having drunk alcohol that day.
"I am diabetic, I ate a few apples before driving.
"I have been involved in no accident, I underwent a routine roadside check. I was confident there was no chance I had alcohol in my blood," said Latas, a member of parliament for the conservative opposition Law and Justice Party.
The prosecutor's office is investigating his case, the website said. In Poland, the legal limit for alcohol when driving is 0.2 units. Fermented apple juice can be used to make cider, an alcoholic drink.


Link:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090330/od_nm/us_apples_1

DNA testing found not to be 100% accurate in Germany, how will this affect cases in the U.S.

The murderer dubbed "The Phantom of Heilbronn" had been baffling German investigators for two years. The criminal was a rarity, a female serial killer, and a very busy one: Police had linked DNA evidence from 40 crimes — including the famous homicide of a policewoman in the southern German town of Heilbronn — to the same woman.
The police thought they'd been looking everywhere. But it turns out they should have been looking down — at the cotton swabs they were using to collect DNA samples. On March 26, German police revealed that the cotton swabs they use may have all been contaminated by the same worker at a factory in Austria — and that the Phantom of Heilbronn never existed.
It wasn't until earlier this year that investigators figured something had to be very wrong. Trying to establish the identity of a burned corpse found in 2002, they were re-examining the fingerprints of a male asylum seeker taken from his asylum application made many years earlier. The fingerprints contained the Phantom's female DNA. Impossible, they thought, so they repeated the test with a different cotton swab — and this time found no trace of the Phantom's DNA.
This raised suspicions that the DNA found at all the Phantom's crime scenes might be traced to a single innocent factory worker, probably employed to package the swabs. Cotton swabs are sterilized before being used to collect DNA samples, but while sterilizing removes bacteria, viruses and fungi, it does not destroy DNA. (Read a TIME cover story on DNA.)


Link: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1888126,00.html

A police officer in Washington, was arrested for drunk driving while he was in his marked police cruiser

WASHINGTON—A Montgomery County police officer was arrested for drunk driving in a marked police car Friday night. Police say Corporal Fernando Martinez crashed his police cruiser into a concrete barrier northbound on Route 270 just south of the Montrose Road exit in Rockville. When police arrived they smelled alcohol on the officer's breath and arrested him for drunk driving after he failed a sobriety test.


Link: http://wtopnews.com/?nid=706&sid=1635690

How long before police in the U.S. will disable your vehicle at their whim?

Jamie De Lisle's Buick had been warning her for days, first with a flashing yellow light, then a flashing red light. But the 31-year-old mother of two from Collinsville, Ill., was too busy to heed the distress signals. It was only when Mrs. De Lisle began hearing an incessant beeping that she took notice: If she didn't make her car payment that day, the vehicle wouldn't start the next day.
The repo man has found a new hiding place -- inside your car. Increasingly, used-car dealers are installing remote disabling devices that keep the cars from starting if the buyer gets too far behind on payments.
These so-called disablers, palm-sized devices that are placed under dashboards and wired into ignitions, once were limited to what industry insiders call the "buy here -- pay here" segment: the kinds of small used-car lots that line state highways, strung with lights and multicolored pennants. But as the economic downturn deepens, larger, more mainstream dealerships are using the devices as a condition of financing.




Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123794137545832713.html

Indiana state police officer Facebooking may face reprimand, how many officers across the country Facebook or Twitter?

"Oops! Where did my front end go?" he wrote when he posted the picture. Later, while discussing the accident with his friends on Facebook, Pestow added, "kiss my butt, Not my fault.:)"And he isn't shy about sharing his views of police work, referring to himself as not a state trooper, but as a "garbage man." His Facebook page said, "I pick up trash for a living."
Pestow also weighed in on the issue of people who resist arrest and threaten police officers. Referring to an incident in California in which Fresno Police officers punched a homeless man during his arrest, Pestow wrote: "Let someone, homeless or not, try and stab me with a pen, knife, spoon, etc, not only will he fail, he'll probably end up shot. These people should have died when they were young anyway, i'm just doing them a favor." [sic]
Pettiford says the state's biggest concern is that Trooper Pestow may have been Facebooking while you were paying for it.ISP records show Pestow was on duty during the early morning hours of February 11. That day at 2 a.m., an entry on his Facebook page reads "Chris Pestow is NOT working in the rain."On February 19, while state records indicate Pestow was working his overnight shift, the Trooper's Facebook site shows this entry at 3:22 a.m.: "It's cold AND snowing?!?! I can't possibly work in these conditions." And on November 28 at 1:20 a.m., ISP says Pestow was supposed to be on duty at the same time he apparently wrote, "Chris Pestow is keeping the mean streets of Fishers safe and free of trash."


Link: http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=10066071

22 year police veteran accused of robbing a bank in Houston

A Conroe Police Department veteran accused of robbing a Montgomery County bank where he also worked as a security guard was released on $100,000 bail Wednesday, but with conditions.
Michael Edward Tindall, who appeared in a federal courtroom Wednesday afternoon, must wear an electronic monitoring device, surrender his weapons and seek mental health counseling. Tindall, a 22-year veteran of the Conroe Police Department, said he has seven or eight guns.



Link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6337329.html

Doctors in Canada use faulty techinques due to watching television shows can the same be true in the U.S.?

When physicians at an Alberta hospital asked why so many medical students and residents were using a faulty technique for inserting life-saving breathing tubes in patients, they received an unexpected answer: It's television's fault.
Many of the doctors in training said they had learned the procedure from watching medical dramas. And a subsequent analysis of the show ER revealed its fictional MDs and nurses performed intubations incorrectly almost every time.
The findings, just published in the journal Resuscitation, revive an intriguing debate over whether entertainment TV has an obligation to portray medicine accurately, and underline what some see as chronic flaws in the system of training Canada's physicians.


Link: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1419824

Private investigator uncovered new evidence, which helped clear a man of murder

Marty Tankleff had just turned 17 when he was arrested for killing his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff, in their home on Long Island, NY. Based on a dubious, unsigned "confession" extracted from him following hours of interrogation by a detective with a questionable background, Marty was convicted and sentenced to 50 years to life, and has already served 17 years in maximum security prisons for a crime he did not commit. Now, based on new evidence tracked down by a private investigator, a court hearing is underway that could free Marty. But can Marty ever find justice in Suffolk County? Click here to read more.

Link: http://www.martytankleff.org/Gui/Content.aspx?Page=Home

Jurors across the country Twittering or posting on Facebook

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Eric Wuest's post late Friday to Facebook friends teased: "Stay tuned for a big announcement on Monday everyone! "Wuest wasn't hinting at an engagement or new job. Instead, the law firm benefits coordinator was suggesting the verdict was near after five months as a juror in a high-profile criminal case. On Monday, a nervous Wuest found himself in the judge's chambers, defending his veiled posts about the corruption trial of former state Sen. Vincent Fumo in Philadelphia. But he is not alone in posting his courtroom musings online, according to one lawyer who studies Twitter. "Dozens of people a day are sending tweets or Facebook updates from courthouses all over America," said Anne W. Reed, a Milwaukee trial lawyer and jury consultant who writes a blog that follows juries and social networking sites.


Link:http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-trial-tweets,0,7348527.story

Eyewitness testimony and it's shortcomings

Our eyes deceive us. Social scientists have insisted for decades that our eyewitness-identification process is unreliable at best and can be the cause of grievous injustice. A study published last month by Gary Wells and Deah Quinlivan in Law and Human Behavior, the journal of the American Psychology-Law Society, reveals just how often those injustices occur: of the more than 230 people in the United States who were wrongfully convicted and later exonerated by DNA evidence, approximately 77 percent involved cases of mistaken eyewitness identification, more than any other single factor.
Wells has been studying mistaken identifications for decades, and his objection to the eyewitness-identification system is not that people make mistakes. In an interview, he explains that eyewitness evidence is important, but should be treated—like blood, fingerprints and fiber evidence—as trace evidence, subject to contamination, deterioration and corruption. Our current criminal-justice system allows juries to hear eyewitness-identification evidence shaped by suggestive police procedures.In a 1977 case, Manson v. Braithwaite, the Supreme Court held that such evidence could be used ifdeemed "reliable."Today we know you can have a good long look, be certain you have the right guy and also be wrong. But Manson is still considered good law


Links: http://www.newsweek.com/id/189294
http://www.newsweek.com/related.aspx?subject=Gary+Wells

Resume dictionary is a useful tool for anyone looking for a new career.

The Resume Dictionary is the power tool for resume writing You can give your resume the edge with power words, keywords, and phrases that are defined, demonstrated in formula, associated with synonyms and other power terms, and shown in resume example statements and language. You can express your skills and abilities with power words. Resume writing is easy with power vocabulary. You’ll discover how to write a resume the easy way using the power words and examples to create “resume star power” that gets you the attention you need to get the job you want. Many words and examples in the Resume Dictionary have been submitted by Human Resource Directors.



Link: http://www.resumedictionary.com/

MIT policeman purchases drugs while in uniform, using MIT police vehicle

An MIT police officer was busted for allegedly picking up a package of 400 prescription painkiller pills while in uniform, the district attorney's office said Saturday. Boston Police said D'Amelio pulled up to Advanced Automotive on London Street in his official marked MIT vehicle at about 6 p.m. to pick up the drugs.

Link: http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/031409_DA_Cop_made_drug_pickup_in_uniform

Ohio court will take your case if you supply paper

Judge Lee McClelland of Morrow County Municipal Court in north-central Ohio says the court has just enough paper to handle hearing notices and other documents for pending cases.


Link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jly5D-EnGvCUYehHLfq25X_W9eDQD96TVNM00

DUI arrests dismissed due to lying policemen in Chicago

The video from top DUI cop Joe D. Parker's squad car shows a man walking a straight line, without stumbling or flailing his arms.
But Parker, a Chicago Police officer who has won acclaim for being among the leading DUI enforcers in the state, told a different story in his police report.
He wrote that Raymond L. Bell lost his balance and used his arms to steady himself. And he arrested the 33-year-old Oak Lawn man on charges of driving under the influence, speeding and negligent driving.
Now, after reviewing the squad-car video, Cook County prosecutors have dropped the July 2008 charges against Bell. Prosecutors have charged one of those cops -- Officer John Haleas -- with trumping up a DUI case. A review of his DUI arrests led to 156 cases being dismissed, Daly said. Parker has been placed on desk duty while the Chicago Police Department conducts an investigation of his DUI arrests, sources said.



Link: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1470350,CST-NWS-duivideo11.article

Where does your money go when paying a speeding ticket?

Here’s how a typical speeding ticket (in this case a ticket from Indiana that we paid through our Traffic Justice Program) is divvied up:

State Courts: $49.00

County Courts: $18.90

City Courts: $2.10

Law Enforcement Fee: $4.00

Jury Fee: $2.00

Highway Work Zone: $0.50 (??)

Auto Record Keeping Fee: $7.00

Document Storage Fee: $2.00

Infractional Judgments: $99.50 The fine!

Public Defense Administration Fee: $3.00

Judicial Insurance Adjustment: $1.00

Judicial Salaries Fee: $18.00: Do you think murderers and rapists pay this fee too?

DNA Sample Processing Fee: $2.00 Very common service for traffic tickets.

Court Administration Fee: $5.00



Total Cost Of Ticket: $214.00

Link: http://www.motorists.org/blog/where-does-the-money-from-a-speeding-ticket-go/

Medicaid fraud at $10 Million dollars in Florida how prevalent is it in every state?

In January 2007, Medicare shut down the businesses of 18 medical equipment suppliers in Miami-Dade County after investigators told the federal agency that the companies were shams.
But when Medicare heard their appeals, the operators were quickly reinstated -- only to be indicted later that year for submitting more than $10 million in phony claims to the very agency that had let them back in business, court records show.
Medicare wound up paying those suppliers at least $5 million. Despite mostly successful prosecutions, much of that ill-gotten money was never recovered

Link: http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/939682.html

Should people trust Yelp, are they selling reviews?

With the Web site Yelp still responding to allegations by San Francisco businesses that it manipulates the prominence of positive and negative reviews, some Chicago merchants are adding to the heat.They allege that Yelp representatives have offered to rearrange positive and negative reviews for companies that advertise on the site or sponsor Yelp Elite parties.Ina Pinkney of Ina's restaurant in the West Loop said that last summer a Yelp salesperson offered to "move up my good reviews if I sponsored one of their events. They called it rearranging my reviews."

Link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/technology/chi-0309-yelpmar09,0,3536868.story

Youtube offers some instructional videos from private investigators

Link: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=private+investigator+show&aq=f

Rate doctors in the U.S.

What is the purpose of this site?The purpose of the site is to be a resource for people who want to find a good doctor. Where else can you find out what others think of your doctor? When choosing a doctor, wouldn't you like some information first? It also gives you, the user, a place to voice your opinion. Your opinion will help others find a good doctor.
Who are you? Are you doctors? No, we're not doctors; we're just average patients who happen to know how to make websites; we are not affiliated with any medical organizations so we don't have any conflicts of interest. Having visited several doctors in the past few years, we became frustrated with some of the treatment we received, and the lack of comparative information available for choosing a good doctor, so we created this website to help people who have had similar experiences. Our co-founders are: John Swapceinski - Founder of RateMyProfessors.com, co-founder of RateMyTeachers.com, and president of Ratingz.net. John has an M.S. in Computer Science.

Link: http://www.ratemds.com/social/

Doctors try to halt patient reviews, what do doctors have to hide?

CHICAGO — The anonymous comment on the website RateMDs.com was unsparing: "Very unhelpful, arrogant," it said of a doctor. "Did not listen and cut me off, seemed much too happy to have power (and abuse it!) over suffering people." Such reviews are becoming more common as consumer ratings services like Zagat's and Angie's List expand beyond restaurants and plumbers to medical care, and some doctors are fighting back.
They're asking patients to agree to what amounts to a gag order that bars them from posting negative comments online
John Swapceinski, co-founder of RateMDs.com, said that in recent months, six doctors have asked him to remove negative online comments based on patients' signed waivers. He has refused.
"They're basically forcing the patients to choose between health care and their First Amendment rights, and I really find that repulsive," Swapceinski said.
He said he's planning to post a "Wall of Shame" listing names of doctors who use patient waivers.


Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-03-05-doctor-reviews_N.htm

Local MA private investigator in the news

According to police, the victim informed them he believes someone may have a key to his apartment and was using it to gain entry when he was away. In order to catch the intruder, the victim hired a private investigation firm to install a video surveillance system in his home.
A Winchester man was arrested after allegedly getting caught on a hidden camera entering his neighbor’s apartment and stealing money from a dresser drawer.
Link: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/state/x594725966/Private-eyes-secret-camera-leads-to-theft-arrest

States testing for air toxicity, questions arise over conflict of interest

State environmental officials in Louisiana and Pennsylvania have released results of short-term air monitoring for toxic chemicals near schools, and in both states officials say the tests showed no health threats.
In Pennsylvania, regulators took 12 days of air samples while a steel mill in the borough of Midland sat idle and another factory in Erie operated at 50% capacity. The tests showed "no unsafe levels of air pollutants or metals" outside schools in either city, the state Department of Environmental Protection reported.
In Baton Rouge, regulators spent four hours checking the air quality outside Wyandotte Early Childhood Center, a preschool blocks from an ExxonMobil refinery. They say the air there meets "all known health and safety standards."
Some activists question whether state regulators have any incentive to look for air quality problems, let alone find them. "They started out to prove that they didn't have a problem," activist Orr says of Louisiana officials. "Taking a single sample at a school can't be used to say things are safe 365 days a year. I don't see how they can even take the data and conclude things are safe."
That's also the fear of some environmental experts. "The states have what I think is a very obvious conflict of interest," says Al Armendariz, an environmental engineering professor who reviewed the Louisiana and Pennsylvania findings. Armendariz, a professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says state regulators "issue the permits for the facilities ... For them to turn around now and find that there's a public health impact, that would be embarrassing."


Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-03-04-toxic-states_N.htm

Police in FL charge a 22 yr. old with A/B on a police officer, then drop charges when they discover a videotape exonerating the defendant.

After a beat down in an elevator, Joshua Daniel Ortiz ended up with his nose broken and facing a charge of battering a police officer. The 22-year-old Sunrise man was surprised and delighted to learn Wednesday that Broward prosecutors were dropping the case against him after reviewing an elevator surveillance video showing three officers aggressively rush and beat Ortiz to the ground.
Police first charged Ortiz with felony battery on a law enforcement officer. But after seeing the video obtained by Ortiz's defense attorney, Stephen Melnick, prosecutors downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor resisting charge. Upon further review, prosecutors dropped the case entirely."We thought based on the facts and the evidence, including the videotape, that there was no reasonable likelihood of conviction at trial," said Lee Cohen, assistant state attorney in charge of misdemeanor cases.




Link: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-bn-0304video,0,1616907.story

AAA announces speed camera alerts on website

AAA announced in February that it will include alerts to its members about a new statewide system of speed cameras in Arizona in online and printed trip maps. The Arizona speed camera system, authorized by the state Legislature last June, is the latest example of the rapid growth of the technology used to nab both speeders and red-light runners nationwide.
Though AAA has included information about places it deems "strict enforcement areas," where traffic laws are aggressively enforced, in places such as Washington, D.C., and stretches of Interstate 75 in Georgia, this is the first time the group has issued such a warning about an entire state, says Mark Madeja, a spokesman for AAA.
More than 300 communities across the USA use cameras to catch red-light runners, says Russ Rader, media relations director for the non-profit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. That's up from about 150 communities in 2006, he says.


Link:http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-03-01-speedcameras_N.htm

Fourty one thousand new job postings at USAJOBS. GOV

There are 41,420 U.S. Government job opportunities worldwide

http://www.usajobs.gov/
http://www.usajobs.gov/firsttimers.asp

Will lie detectors ever be 100% accurate?

Kozel and his team initially identified typical neural activity patterns for true and false statements. Then, in the first use of fMRI to detect deception in individuals, the researchers used the patterns they identified to correctly determine whether each of the subjects had taken a watch or a ring 90 percent of the time.
The use of fMRI represents the cutting edge of lie-detection technology. As far as we know, no region of the brain specializes in lies. But investigators have found that lying activates brain regions involved in suppressing information and in resolving conflicts—such as that between the impulse to describe reality and the wish to contradict it. The use of fMRI combined with a clever questioning strategy could lead to a better method for detecting lies or, more precisely, for getting at the truth despite a person’s attempts to hide it.
Improved ability to detect falsehoods would be of significant use in solving crimes, for example, and perhaps also in ferreting out military spies. Unraveling the neurocircuitry of deception, moreover, might help doctors better understand, diagnose and treat patients with disorders in which compulsive lying is a prominent component, including antisocial personality disorder and substance dependence.

Link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=building-a-portrait-of-a-lie

Customers swipe their own credit cards at restaurants in Tenn.

Matt Charette knows the customers at his three local restaurants trust him every time they turn over their credit cards to pay a tab.
That's why he's started putting bright yellow cards that read "customer swipe" with the checks, giving customers the option to walk over to the wait station and run their own cards. As a business owner, he says, it's a small comfort he can offer. As a fellow consumer, he hopes he'll get people thinking about being safer with their credit cards.
According to a report issued last week by the Federal Trade Commission, the Nashville-Murfreesboro region reported about 5,200 instances of fraud to the agency in 2008, ranking it in the middle of the pack among the 382 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. The region was about two-thirds up the list in complaints of identity theft, with nearly 1,400 reported

Link: http://tennessean.com/article/20090302/NEWS01/903020333