How Expanded Playoffs Thin the Herd 

Curses, Foiled Again
Police said Eugene Edward Palmer, 40, tried to rob a bank in Brunswick, Fla., but gave up after yanking futilely on the locked door, failing to realize the branch was drive-through only. Police Lt. Leon Tucker said Palmer was armed and wore a ski mask during the attempted robbery but took off the mask in frustration when leaving, giving witnesses a good look at his face. (Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union)

After a car dealership reported a pickup was stolen, police in Lincoln, Neb., arrested a 39-year-old man who had taken the vehicle for a test drive earlier, having provided the dealership with photo identification and his address. After finding the truck parked near the man’s home and arresting him, police said the suspect made a copy of the truck’s key during the test drive and used it that night to steal the truck. (Lincoln Journal Star)

How Expanded Playoffs Thin the Herd
Urologists reported a spike in men scheduling vasectomies during college basketball’s March Madness so they can avoid work and chores to watch games while recovering. The American Medical News reported that some clinics have started giving vasectomy patients recovery kits that include pizza coupons and sports magazines. “We suggest the guys ice it and stay off their feet for 24 hours. Some will take it a little farther than that,” said Dr. Bill Utz, whose clinic in Edina, Minn., gives patients a brochure showing a man recovering in a recliner while his wife waits on him. (St. Paul’s Pioneer Press)

Nature’s Bounty
The Utah Legislature approved a measure to allow citizens to collect rainwater for their personal use. The state has prohibited rainwater harvesting for decades. The bill requires Utahns collecting rainwater to register with the state and limits the collection to 2,500 gallons, which must be stored in an approved, standardized container. (Associated Press)

In the U.S., He’d Get a Bonus 

A North Korean firing squad executed Pak Nam-gi, 77, the ruling Workers’ Party’s finance chief, after currency reforms he implemented damaged the country’s already ailing economy. He was accused of being “a son of a bourgeois conspiring to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionaries to destroy the national economy,” a South Korean news agency reported. The reform wiped out the savings of well-off North Koreans who had managed to save money earned from international trading and caused widespread hoarding and even starvation as food prices soared. (Britain’s The Guardian)

Irony Illustrated
Authorities investigating the death of Anthony Rankin, 26, said he was shot at his Atlanta, Ga., home during an argument with his wife of five days, Arelisha Bridges, 45, who is a registered lobbyist for a group fighting domestic violence. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

More Woes
Scientists warned that methane gas bubbling up from a long-frozen seabed north of Siberia “could trigger abrupt climate warming.” Their study, reported in the journal Science, said about 8 million tons of methane a year—equivalent to the annual total previously estimated from all of the world’s oceans—were seeping from vast stores long trapped under permafrost. “Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap,” said Natalia Shakhova of the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, a co-leader of the study. She noted current methane concentrations in the Arctic are the highest in 400,000 years.

Downplaying the threat, Martin Heimann of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Bio-geochemistry, said the Arctic emissions have been occurring since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago. He insisted that the release of 8 million tons of methane a year was “negligible,” compared with current global emissions of about 440 million tons. (Reuters)

Wish Come True
A Florida judge sentenced Sylvester Jiles, 25, to 15 years in prison for violating his probation by trying to climb a 12-foot fence to break into the Brevard County jail. Jiles, who accepted a plea agreement on manslaughter charges before his release, had begged jail officials to take him back into custody because he feared retaliation from the victim’s family. (Associated Press)

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.