When Sal Magluta goes on trial later this year for bail jumping, it’s too bad he won’t be able to plead temporary insanity. He’d get off for sure. After all, what jury wouldn’t believe that Magluta was just a few ounces short of a kilo when he walked away from…
During HABDI’s regular monthly board of directors meeting in March, Augustine Ajagbe announced his desire to add to the seven-member panel Dick Judy, the controversial former aviation director for Dade County. Although it looked like Ajagbe’s proposal, several other board members suspected it was really the handiwork of HABDI’s president,…
Lead Stories *The Nashville Tennessean reported in February about state government engineer Ken Robichaux’s lonely, ten-year crusade to wipe out both the U.S. system of measurement and the metric system, in favor of one that combines weight, length, and volume into a single set of measures denominated as (not surprisingly)…
We Love Art, We Just Don’t Want to Pay for It Judy Cantor’s article regarding the arts in Miami Beach (“Everybody’s a Critic,” April 3) indicated that the city’s public officials are doing little to support the Art in Public Places Committee and its initiatives. I take this opportunity to…
Yet More SoBe Snobbery I want to respond to Kirk Semple’s article “South Beach Goes Palm Beach” (April 3). The Ocean Drive business people who started this campaign against Carnival Miami South Beach are guilty of plain old snobbiness, if not outright racism. Perhaps they couldn’t deal with the fact…
Lead Stories *Saddam Hussein filed a libel suit in February in Paris against the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur for its September 1996 story in which he was referred to by other Arab leaders as, among other things, an “executioner,” a “monster,” a “murderer,” “a perfect cretin,” and a “noodle.” *In…
The Miami Heat is in the midst of its finest season ever. The team, under the leadership of coach Pat Riley, has secured a spot in the playoffs and is on the verge of winning the Atlantic Division for the first time in the franchise’s nine-year history. Attendance for Miami’s…
Lead Stories *Kurt Irons, age 28, was arrested in December in Wausau, Wisconsin, and charged with vehicular homicide. Reportedly, Irons was driving a stolen truck after drinking heavily and crashed into another truck, killing a 37-year-old woman. According to the Marathon County sheriff’s report, Irons was surprised that he was…
Hoop Themes Thanks to Robert Andrew Powell for a slam dunk with his superb article on Jack Shaber (“Mr. Basketball,” March 27). Shaber is a hall-of-famer in my book. John Bell Plantation Robert Andrew Powell replies: Jack Shaber has such an eagle eye for inaccuracies that I wanted to, uh,…
Until Tuesday morning this page was occupied by an article headlined “Los Van Van Ban Lifted.” Staff writer Elise Ackerman prepared the story, which explained how it came to be that recordings by the venerable Cuban band Los Van Van were now being played on a commercial radio station –…
Lead Stories *Former Gotti crime-family hit man Sammy “The Bull” Gravano cooperated on author Peter Maas’s Gravano biography Underboss, to be published in April. Despite the fact that his testimony helped send Gotti to prison for life without parole, and 36 others to the slammer, and despite the fact that…
Thirteen years ago, when it was revealed that the Pentagon had spent $640 on a toilet seat and $435 for a hammer, the public was outraged. Congress immediately launched an investigation, hearings were held on Capitol Hill, and red-faced military leaders stood by helplessly as their careers came to an…
Witness Against the Prosecution Jim DeFede is getting to be quite the comedian. What a sense of humor! He sounds as though he expects something to come of [Dade State Attorney] Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s political inquisition (“A Primer on Prosecuting Corruption,” March 20). Ha! She caught Ronnie Book not with…
On January 23, New Times published a cover story entitled “You Call This a Fairway?” revealing that, for nearly two years, Dade County Manager Armando Vidal had accepted dozens of free rounds of golf from the company hired to manage the county-owned Golf Club of Miami. The story also established…
High-Spirited and Perhaps Highly Imaginative Though I shudder at the thought that Kathy Glasgow’s “Urban Shipwreck” (March 6) will amount to my fifteen minutes of fame, I respectfully request your correction regarding the following: 1) Robert Madsen has been paid in full through his last date of employment. He is…
Lead Stories *Veterinary breakthroughs: In February surgeons in Washington, D.C., removed a cataract from the eye of the National Zoo’s six-foot-long Komodo dragon Muffin in hopes that she could better see how studly the male was and thus would mate with him. And in January doctors in Johannesburg, South Africa,…
Lead Stories *In 1978 the Oakland Raiders’ Jack Tatum made a clothesline hit on New England Patriots receiver Darryl Stingley’s neck, causing permanent paralysis. At the time Tatum arrogantly defended the play as legal and warned other opponents they could expect the same. In January 1997 Tatum applied for disability…
Big Elk Speaks I take this opportunity to thank New Times, writer Ray Martinez, and photographer Steve Satterwhite for the fine article on the Coral Gables Elks Lodge (“Fraternal Reorder,” March 6). The members enjoyed contributing to the story and looked forward to seeing it in print. We are very…
Prejudging Them on Their Prejudice Jim DeFede’s article “Coming of Rage,” (February 27) was an extremely well-written and insightful piece of journalism regarding the racial situation in Miami. Ira Everett’s statement that Cuban immigrants do not appreciate the civil rights movement is true, but let’s be frank. Cubans don’t care…
Lead Stories *In January the owners of KZZC-FM in Tipton, California, ended eighteen consecutive months of being an all-“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” station, playing various versions of that song all day, seven days a week (except once, when it played the Eagles’ “New Kid in Town” for a…
Standing above the tiny coffin containing five-year-old Rickia Isaac’s body, Mayor Alex Penelas searched for meaning in the tragedy of the child’s death. “This is a day of grief,” he declared during her funeral earlier this month. “We are all grieving.” But that sorrow should not be directed toward Rickia,…
Lead Stories *The Associated Press reported in January on the three-year-old anti-smoking policy of Kimball Physics in Wilton, New Hampshire, which not only forbids lighting up at work but subjects each employee and visitor to a sniff test of his breath and clothing by receptionist Jennifer Walsh. Those whose odor…
