Nation briefly
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, February 17, 2007
Police arrest suspect in mugging of Elie Wiesel
SAN FRANCISCO – A man accused of roughing up Nobel laureate and Holocaust scholar Elie Wiesel at a San Francisco hotel earlier this month was arrested Saturday, authorities said. Montgomery Township police arrested Eric Hunt, 22, of Sussex County, N.J., on Saturday. He faces charges that include attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and the commission of a hate crime, according to San Francisco police. Wiesel, 78, who survived the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald during World War II, has worked for human rights in many parts of the world.
D.C.: Bush’s moles are benign
The two moles removed from President Bush’s left temple were found to be noncancerous, the White House said Saturday. The skin growths were removed Friday during a brief procedure performed at the White House. It took just a day for tests to show the moles were benign, a White House spokesman said. The president has regular checkups to guard against any lesions advancing to a more dangerous stage.
Texas: No sale on JFK sniper perch
The auction of a window advertised as Lee Harvey Oswald’s sniper perch in the killing of President John F. Kennedy brought a bid of about $3 million, but the sale quickly fell through. The window was up for auction Friday on eBay with a starting price of $100,000, and bidding quickly rose to seven figures. But 32 bids were either retracted by the bidders – normally because a wrong price had been entered, including one for $17 million – or canceled by the seller because a bidder didn’t meet qualifications.
Illinois: City tickets foie gras scofflaw
A Chicago hot dog restaurateur who advertised that he was selling foie gras despite the city’s ban on its sale has become the first to be cited. A health department inspector turned up just before Hot Doug’s opened Friday, slapped owner Doug Sohn with a citation and confiscated the duck- or goose-liver delicacy. Sohn faces a fine of from $250 to $500 when he appears at a March 29 hearing. “I was poking the grizzly bear, and it snapped my head off,” Sohn said.
New York: Mummy’s TV still on
The partially mummified body of a Southampton man dead for more than a year has been found in a chair in front of his television, which was still on, authorities said. Vincenzo Ricardo, 70, apparently died of natural causes, a Suffolk County’s medical examiner said. The home’s dry air had preserved his features, a morgue assistant said. Neighbors said they had thought Ricardo was in a hospital or nursing home. “We never thought to check on him,” one neighbor said.
From Herald news services
