Poor Mojo's Newswire

Thomas Pilaar, 33, was suspected of using different names to obtain seven library cards from the Denver Public Library, then checking out 300 items per card and selling at least some of the items, KCNC-TV in Denver reported.

"It appears his intent was to sell 2,100 (items) from the Denver Library collection," Denver Public Library spokeswoman M. Celeste Jackson told the station. She estimated the losses at about $35,000.

Despite her constant pleas, Staten said it wasn't until she gave birth, the baby fell on the cell floor and she held her child up to the cell bars that she finally got the attention of a guard, who cut the umbilical cord with her fingernails.

Staten, 22, filed a civil rights lawsuit Monday claiming she and her newborn baby were subjected to cruel and unusual punishment when the staff at the Lackawanna County Prison left her alone in her cell without providing medical care or transporting her to a hospital. The suit names Lackawanna County, Lackawanna County Prison, Warden Janine Donate, three unnamed guards, and an unnamed nurse. Dr. Edward Zaloga and Correction Care Inc., which provide the medical care at the jail, were also named.

Late on July 9, Staten began to feel pain and told correctional officers she thought she was going into labor, according to the suit. She was taken to the medical ward of the prison, where she was examined for an hour by nurses who said her contractions weren't "consistent enough."

That rating doesn't mean that a bridge is considered in danger of this kind of collapse, but with more than 67,000 deficient bridges nationwide, such a tragedy is not a surprise to anyone who's been looking at the state of our national infrastructure.

The NBI survey was big news at the paper I work for, in Delaware, where "only" 35 bridges received the structurally deficient rating. The reaction there seemed to be that this meant the state should probably fix those 35 bridges. That meant figuring out how to pay for these repairs -- something they're still wrangling over in Dover. Similar wrangling is going on in Pennsylvania, where I live, where some 5,582 bridges are structurally deficient.

In Minnesota, where yesterday's tragedy occurred, 1,135 bridges were found to be structurally deficient in last year's inventory -- including the I-35W bridge, where repairs were underway when yesterday's collapse occurred.

The first demographic profile of bridge suicides since the famous art deco span opened in 1937 dispels years of hype over the global scale of the bridge's fatal attraction.

Of the 203 people confirmed to have jumped off the bridge from July 1997 to Thursday, more than 85% were Bay Area residents and 92% were from Northern California, says Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes.

According to his data released this week, the average person was 41.7 years old, with the youngest being a 14-year-old girl and the oldest an 84-year-old man. Men outnumbered women almost 3 to 1. Although jumpers came from all races, 83% were white.