Watercooler Stories

Facebook pics lead to gang arrests

SHEFFIELD, England, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- British police said they used pictures posted to Facebook to identify and arrest gang members on firearm possession charges.

South Yorkshire Police said a Sheffield, England, resident in an area with high gang activity discovered pictures of Parson Cross Crew members posing with a shotgun online and created a Facebook group dedicated to identifying those in the photos, The Sun reported Monday.

Police Superintendent Andy Barrs said the photographs led to several arrests.

"We were already aware of some of the pictures but found out about others through the resident's Web site," he said.

Barrs said Joe Brent-Mitchell, 23, and Jamie Howden, 18, were each sentenced to 4 1/2 years in jail on firearm possession charges related to the gun in the photograph, which was never recovered by investigators.

Poll: Teachers wary of certain names

LONDON, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- British researchers said a poll of the country's teachers suggests instructors are immediately wary of students named Callum, Chelsea, Connor and Jack.

Parenting club Bounty.com said its poll of 3,000 school teachers found 49 percent of teachers make assumptions about students based solely on their names, the Daily Mail reported.

Names cited by teachers as suggesting naughtiness include Brandon, Charlie, Courtney, Chardonnay, Aliesha, Casey and Crystal.

However, the teachers said some names lead them to believe a child will be well-behaved, including Alexander, Adam, Christopher, Benjamin, Elisabeth, Charlotte, Emma and Hannah.

"Teachers are only human and make assumptions like the rest of us," said Faye Mingo of Bounty.com. "Rightly or wrongly, most of us make assumptions based on something as simple as a person's name and we base these on our previous experiences.

"It's only natural for teachers to make judgments based on the behavior and performance of former pupils with the same name, but I'm sure that they are happy for to be proved wrong," Mingo said.

Woman visits 90 Chicago churches

CHICAGO, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A suburban Chicago woman said she has attended services at about 90 different churches in the city during the past 20 years.

Marie Coyne, 73, who has been joined on her Sunday outings by friend Christine Scriba, 73, for the past five years, said she has attended churches with all-black congregations and facilities conducting mass in Latin, Spanish and Polish, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Coyne, a Eucharistic minister at St. John of the Cross Church in Western Springs, Ill., said she likes to study up on city churches before planning a Sunday trip with Scriba.

"I always try and go in the front door and get the whole picture. Some have gorgeous ceilings and windows and old confessionals and carvings," Coyne told the Sun-Times. "I enjoy the diversity, and the congregational diversity."

Scriba, a lecturer at St. John of the Cross, said she and Coyne have a "good time" visiting the different places of worship.

"You think of all the people that have worshiped there before you," Scriba said. "It's enriching for me, and enriching my faith."

NASA censors 'without clothes' question

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A Swedish student said U.S. space officials made him change a question posed to an astronaut on the International Space Station because it mentioned nudity.

Zhiwar Naeimiakbar, 14, one of the students at Stockholm's Satraskolan school chosen to interview Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang by phone, said the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration told him he could not ask Fuglesang if a person can survive in space "without clothes," Swedish news agency TT reported.

"At first I was hysterical. Oh my God, now I won't be a part of this. But then I understood why," Naeimiakbar said.

He said NASA allowed him to ask the question provided he changed "without clothes" to "without a spacesuit."

Fuglesang, who Monday became the first astronaut from a country other than the United States and Russia to complete three space walks, fielded a number of questions from students and is scheduled to meet an eighth grade class from the school when he returns from the space station.