Bill banning teen texting while driving advances

JACKSON - Teens who text while driving should beware.

State senators on Wednesday approved a bill that would prohibit 15- and 16-year-olds with learner's permits or intermediate driver's licenses from indulging in their habit.

It previously passed the House and now is headed to the governor for consideration.

If signed into law, the bill would impose an up to $500 fine on teen drivers caught texting in non-accident cases or up to $1,000 if they are involved in an accident while texting.

It also would add six months to the minimum age for teenagers to get their driver's licenses. An intermediate license, which allows some unsupervised driving, would become available at 16, while an unrestricted license could be obtained six months later.

Southaven Police Chief Tom Long said he supports restrictions against texting while driving as the practice jeopardizes safety.

"You wouldn't want someone going down the road and on a typewriter, would you?" he asked. "Texting is like that, constant typed communication. You are looking away, having to read, having to respond."

College phone booth stunt just like old times

Twenty-two students at St. Mary's College of California have done something their predecessors famously did 50 years ago: cram into a phone booth. Teams competed to fit as many bodies as possible into a phone booth on the campus green Wednesday, a half-century after Life magazine published a now-famous photograph of 22 St. Mary's students stuffed into a phone booth, a popular college stunt in the 1950s.

Current students matched the number in the 1959 image, though they failed to break the campus record of 24 set in 1984. St. Mary's officials say a South African team set the world record of 25 set in 1958.

World's cheapest car

The world's cheapest car will retail for just over $2,000 and can be yours — if you live in India and are very lucky — by July, Tata Motors said Monday. The Nano, a pint-sized vehicle designed to make car ownership accessible to millions of the world's poor, finally goes on sale in India next month. Whether it will revolutionize the global auto industry — or turn around its manufacturer's fortunes — has yet to be seen, and other automakers will be watching closely to see how consumers respond to the car. So will environmentalists.

"We can do what most countries felt could not be done," Ratan Tata, chairman of the sprawling Tata group of companies, said at a launch ceremony Monday, as the swelling strains of the theme song to "2001: A Space Odyssey" died away in the warm night. Nothing is really impossible if you set your mind to it," he said. "What we have done is given the country an affordable car."

And, he pledged to go to Europe and America soon, with safer, cleaner but still ultra-cheap Nanos for the developed world.

The Nano was initially targeted at impoverished first-time car buyers in Asia and Africa, but the global economic meltdown has amplified Ratan Tata's export ambitions.

Tata Motors unveiled the Nano Europa, a slightly more robust version of the Indian model, at the Geneva Motor Show this month, with a planned launch of 2011.

Oops: Colbert wins NASA space station name contest

NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won. The name "Colbert" beat out NASA's four suggested options in the space agency's effort to have the public help name the addition. The new room will be launched later this year. NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report" to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes.

That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday. NASA reserves the right to choose an appropriate name. Agency spokesman John Yembrick said NASA will decide in April, but will give top vote-getters "the most consideration."

Romantic teen seeks prom date, gets cops instead

A South Carolina teen's romantic gesture has won him the attention of police and environmental officers. Authorities told The Island Packet of Hilton Head that the 18-year-old man was caught spray painting the word "prom" on the beach near the home Sunday of the young lady he wanted to take to the dance. A neighbor had called police.

Deputies made the teen clean the area, but did not file any charges. The spray paint cans were sent to environmental officials to see if the chemicals pose any harm to the beach. Department of Health and Environmental Control spokesman Thom Berry said it is impossible to determine if the agency will fine the teen until the cans are analyzed.

Parrot honored for warning that girl was choking

A parrot whose cries of alarm alerted his owner when a little girl choked on her breakfast has been honored as a hero. Willie, a Quaker parrot, has been given the local Red Cross chapter's Animal Lifesaver Award. In November, Willie's owner, Megan Howard, was baby-sitting for a toddler. Howard left the room and the little girl, Hannah, started to choke on her breakfast.

Willie repeatedly yelled "Mama, baby" and flapped his wings, and Howard returned in time to find the girl already turning blue. Howard saved Hannah by performing the Heimlich maneuver but said Willie "is the real hero." "The part where she turned blue is always when my heart drops no matter how many times I've heard it," Hannah's mother, Samantha Kuusk, told KCNC-TV. "My heart drops in my stomach and I get all teary eyed."

Willie got his award during a "Breakfast of Champions" event Friday attended by Gov. Bill Ritter and Mayor John Hickenlooper.

DeSoto students to honor teen who lost cancer battle

SOUTHAVEN — Some DeSoto Central High students are hoping to flood the halls of their school with pink today.

They will wear the color, and observe a moment of silence, as tribute to a 17-year-old who recently lost her long battle against leukemia.

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Umberger died Saturday at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, leaving behind a sister, two brothers and her father and wife, Michael and Kathy.

She was a junior, choir member and office worker at the Southaven school who teacher Stephanie Scudder said couldn’t help but make an impression.

“Lizzie touched my life like no other student ever has,” she said. “There were times when I would go to tutor her at what should have been some of her toughest moments, but instead, Lizzie would be doing things that kept me laughing. Other times I would go to her house carrying my own heavy loads and leave feeling so uplifted wondering how she made that happen. I tutored Lizzie in her lessons for school, but she tutored me in lessons for life. I love her very much and will miss her terribly.”

Team gets uniform foul

An Illinois high school basketball team's jerseys may have cost it a shot at a state championship.
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No joke in April Fool's Day computer worm

A computer-science detective story is playing out on the Internet as security experts try to hunt down a worm called Conficker C and prevent it from damaging millions of computers on April Fool's Day.

The anti-worm researchers have banded together in a group they call the Conficker Cabal. Members are searching for the malicious software program's author and for ways to do damage control if he or she can't be stopped.

They're motivated in part by a $250,000 bounty from Microsoft and also by what seems to be a sort of Dick Tracy ethic.

"We love catching bad guys," said Alvin Estevez, CEO of Enigma Software Group, which is one of many companies trying to crack Conficker. "We're like former hackers who like to catch other hackers. To us, we get almost a feather in our cap to be able to knock out that worm. We slap each other five when we're killing those infections."

The malicious program already is thought to have infected between 5 million and 10 million computers.

Octuplets' mom fires free nursing service

(CNN) - Nadya Suleman, the Southern California woman who gave birth to octuplets in January, has fired a nonprofit group of nurses charged with helping care for her children, CNN affiliate KTLA has reported.

Suleman accused the nurses, from a group called Angels in Waiting, of spying on her to report her to child-welfare authorities, the affiliate reported Monday.

The group was working for free, the affiliate said. Suleman instead will rely on nurses whom she is paying, Suleman's attorney said.

She now has four of the octuplets at home, along with her six other children. The other octuplets remain in a hospital, which is discharging them two at a time to ease the adjustment.

Jordan cries at son's game

Michael Jordan is reduced to tears after a high school game involving his son Marcus.
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Golfer looks for tee, finds grenade

A golfer looking for an errant tee shot found a half-buried hand grenade near the eighth fairway of the Augusta Municipal Golf Course. The Richmond County sheriff's bomb squad was called to the scene after Wednesday's discovery and detonated the war relic. Bomb squad investigator Charles Mulherin said recent heavy rains washing down a hill probably unearthed the Mk 2, or "pineapple" grenade, used by the U.S. military from the final months of World War I until the Vietnam War.

Mulherin said he did not know if the grenade was live, so the bomb squad detonated it. During World War I, the land that became the golf course was part of Camp Hancock, a sprawling Army base that included woods unsuitable for tents because of a ravine.

Used tires, beer kegs keep zoo animals healthy

A lion rips open a paper bag stuffed with hay and meat. Giraffes chew up old Christmas trees. Asian black bears claw on empty beer kegs. It's been a busy winter for zoo animals — and their schedules promise to be just as packed this spring. But this is not for show: Zoo keepers say games and other activities are essential to keeping animals physically and mentally healthy when they're out of their natural environments.

The so-called "animal enrichment" programs are part of a general change in zoo philosophy in the past several years. Not long ago, zoos thought keeping animals alive and healthy meant serving food in bowls and giving them limited physical activities out of fear of injury. During the cold weather, animals were kept off exhibit in warm buildings with little to do.

"But in an effort to keep them healthy, we almost made them unhealthy," says Tim French, deputy director for animal programming at the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, R.I. "Zoo animals tended to be overweight, pretty much across the board. Behavioral issues were a much bigger problem because they were idle both physically and mentally."

Now all the nation's zoos have enrichment programs of some kind, some even mandated by the federal government.