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Commuter nag acquitted of train assault

NEW YORK, April 8 (UPI) -- A lawyer who objected to a teenager talking on his cell phone on a New York train was cleared of harassment and assault charges Tuesday.

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Manhattan Judge Larry Stephen acquitted John Clifford, ruling he did not have any criminal intent in a dispute on the Long Island Railroad in March 2007, Newsday reported.

Witnesses during the trial described Clifford as a self-appointed behavior monitor. Donna DeCurtis, who said she was "petrified" of Clifford, described a 2006 altercation when he ordered her to talk less loudly.

Prosecutor Mary Weisgerber compared him to "a dog marking his territory."

Clifford, a former police officer who represented himself, said he only wanted "to get to work as peacefully as possible."

The incident that led to the court case began when Clifford complained that Nicholas Bender, 19, was talking too loudly on his cell phone. Weisgerber said Bender had just learned a cousin had kidney failure.

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A woman who offered Bender her business card said Clifford tried to grab it and struck her on the hand.


Man arrested for forgetting to pay for pop

CLEVELAND , April 8 (UPI) -- A Cleveland man says he was arrested after mistakenly leaving a store without paying for a $4 case of soda among his two cartloads of groceries.

Tom Sturgis said he paid for $157.20 worth of groceries at the self checkout lane of a Brooklyn, Ohio, supermarket and walked out the door not realizing he had forgotten to pay for the soda, which was on the shelf under the cart, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported Tuesday.

Sturgis said a police officer working security asked to see his receipt.

"I went looking for the receipt, the pop wasn't on it and they decided to have me arrested," he said.

"It's over a case of pop," said Sturgis' wife Wendy. "He turned around and offered to go back in and pay for it and the cop told him it's like robbing a bank, you just can't get caught robbing a bank and say, 'I'm sorry, I'll give you your money back.'"

Sturgis, who was charged with petty theft, spent 3 1/2 hours in jail, from 11:30 p.m. until 3 a.m.

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Turkeys terrorize Wis. mail carriers

MADISON, Wis., April 8 (UPI) -- A post office manager in Madison, Wis., says delivery workers are being terrorized by wild turkeys in a West Side neighborhood.

Mara Wilhite, manager of the Hilldale Station Post Office, said between five and 10 large male turkeys have been pecking at postal carriers and occasionally attacking them with the spurs on their legs in the Parkwood Hills neighborhood, the Wisconsin State Journal (Madison) reported Tuesday.

Wilhite said one turkey barged into a mail truck's open door and scratched the surprised driver.

Eric Lobner, regional wildlife program supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said the turkeys' aggression is likely tied to the mating season, which started recently and lasts until mid-May. He said the red, white and blue coloring on the mail trucks could be raising the ire of the birds, whose heads change color between blue, white and red during the mating season.


Group: FCC most 'egregious' censor

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., April 8 (UPI) -- The Federal Communications Commission has topped a Virginia organization's list of the most "egregious and ridiculous censors" in the United States for 2008.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, based in Charlottesville, Va., said in a news release that it included the FCC on its 17th annual "Jefferson Muzzles" list for "its inconsistent and unpredictable standards for determining what constitutes 'indecent' broadcasting."

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Also on the list were Sarpy County (Neb.) Attorney L. Kenneth Polikov, who pressed flag mutilation and negligent child abuse charges against a man whose son stood on a U.S. flag during a protest at a military funeral; U.S. Attorney Donald Washington and Grace Chung Baker, acting head of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, who pressed federal hate crime charges against a man who displayed nooses on the back of his pickup truck during a civil rights march in Jena, La.; and Lancaster County (Neb.) District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront, who banned witnesses at a sexual assault trial from using the words such as "rape," "victim" or "assailant" during testimony.

The center also cited the Federal Emergency Management Agency for having its employees pose as reporters during a news conference.

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