Lead Stories
On the heels of the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter in September due to engineers’ failure to standardize units of measurement between the metric and the English systems, a U.S. government report in December revealed that a 1998 test of mock nuclear warheads failed because a contractor had accidentally installed dead batteries in them. And at a speech in February in Albuquerque, the project manager for the Cassini interplanetary cruiser now heading for Saturn dismissed critics concerned about the danger of the craft, which blasted off with 72 pounds of plutonium in 1997 and approached earth again in August 1999.
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A city commission upheld Little Rock police officer Carlton Dickerson’s 57-day suspension for sleeping on the job in October despite his claim that he suffers from sleep apnea. In his four years on the force, he has been caught sleeping six times and has wrecked five patrol cars. Dickerson once denied to internal affairs investigators that he had fallen asleep even after two fellow officers said they rapped on his desk for 15 minutes trying to wake him.
People Who Are Not Like You and Me
A 58-year-old man was killed when his truck accidentally fell into a 25-foot-deep hog-manure lagoon near Laverne, Oklahoma, in December; divers could not find the body for 18 days. A similar fate befell a 23-year-old man in December when his pickup truck smashed through a fence in Orono, Maine, and landed in a 400,000-gallon tank of raw sewage. And a 57-year-old man was accidentally asphyxiated in Duluth, Minnesota, in December; his body was found stuck headfirst in a sump drain in his basement.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Shawn Belschwender.
