News Briefs

Suspected drunk and drugged driver crashes into pumpkin cart

On Wednesday, a woman was arrested after driving into a hay wagon full of pumpkins in the yard of a Boston, N.Y. home.

Barbara J. Bender-Suto, 52, of Colden, N.Y., was found on the shoulder of a roadway after her Mercury Mountaineer collided into a mailbox, a pumpkin cart and a fence.

Witnesses said Bender-Suto was driving erratically before she crashed and crossed lanes into the yard. She was uninjured but had signs of intoxications and admitted to taking multiple prescription narcotics, according to The Buffalo News.

She was arrested for DWI, DWAI-drugs and multiple traffic violations.

White House official is fired after twitter posts are unmasked

A twitter account, @NatSecWonk, has been criticizing U.S. government officials, Democrats and Republicans alike, and their policies for the past two years.

The man behind the tweets was Jofi Joseph, the former director of nuclear nonproliferation issues on the National Security Council staff. He was fired last Wednesday after White House officials discovered it was Joseph's fake twitter handle. The tweets were meant to be a "parody account" of White House politics, Joseph wrote in a public apology. But it turned into a "series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments."

The account has since been deleted.

Among the many political figures targeted in his tweets, Josephs attacked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton many times. Some of the tweets criticized her handling of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya - an attack where four American ambassadors died.

Joseph worked many foreign policy jobs before he was employed by the White House. He also had connections with neoconservative establishments and his wife, Carolyn Leddy, was on the Republican staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Many of his colleagues were surprised at this revelation because he was respected at his workplace and was a prominent figure in foreign policy. Some, however, said they are not surprised due to his known snarky nature.

China newspaper makes bold front-page plea for journalist's release

TheNew Express, a newspaper based in Guangzhou, China, released an issue that headlined the words "Please set him free" on the front page.

The headline called for the release of one of its reporters, who had been detained by police.

Chen Yongzhou was arrested on Saturday on the basis of damaging a business' reputation. He wrote an article claiming a Hunan-based company, Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology, falsified sales numbers.

The newspaper verified Chen's allegations and found one inconsistency in which he claimed the company spent 513 million yuan on advertisements. The money, however, was spent on "advertisements and entertainment." The newspaper said if the government can find any other discrepancies, the staff would gladly acknowledge it.

There are not many cases of open confrontation to the government by the media in China. This past January, however, there was also a protest led by journalists in Guangzhou against government censorship.

Chen was taken from his home in a black Mercedes Benz with Hunan license plates, according to CNN.

Chen's contemporaries said he was a hardworking reporter, but didn't have the money to take his wife to Pizza Hut.

email: news@ubspectrum.com