It might be the most American thing to happen in recent memory! A US Army veteran used his sharp-shooting military training to rescue a bald eagle who became entangled in a rope and was hanging upside down from a tree 70 feet off the ground. Last Thursday, Jason Galvin used a .22-caliber rifle with a scope to fire 150 shots at the distant rope that was tangled around the eagle’s leg without hitting our national animal once. The bird was hanging upside down in a tree near Galvin’s Rush City, Minnesota cabin, according to his wife, Jackie. She said that her husband was nervous about shooting near the eagle but felt they had no choice after officials said the eagle had been stuck for days and there was “nothing they could do.” The rescue effort took nearly 90 minutes with a borrowed gun. The difficult conditions included high winds and only 4 inches of rope to aim at. But Galvin’s efforts weren’t in vain; once the rope was snapped, the couple wrapped the eagle in a blanket and took the exhausted animal in for aid. It’s now recovering at the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center.
A North Carolina couple faces charges after allegedly assaulting each other with pizza rolls, according to local news sources. Brad Scott Beard, 24, and Samantha Brooke Canipe, 21, were each charged on Monday with one count of misdemeanor simple assault. The suspects allegedly got into a fight at their Gastonia apartment and started throwing pizza rolls at each other. A motive in the incident remains uncertain. Beard faces 60 days in jail and Canipe faces 30 days in jail. Also no word on why he received more jail time, but our guess is he just had better aim.
Amid a haze of grief after her son’s murder last year, Marcia DeOliveira-Longinetti faced an endless list of tasks – helping the police gain access to Kevin’s phone and email; canceling his subscriptions, credit cards and bank accounts; and arranging his burial in New Jersey. And then there were the college loans. When DeOliveira-Longinetti called about his federal loans, an administrator offered condolences and assured her the remaining balance would be written off. But she got a far different response from a New Jersey state agency that had also lent her son money. “Please accept our condolences on your loss,” a letter from that agency, the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, said. “After careful consideration of the information you provided, the authority has determined that your request does not meet the threshold for loan forgiveness. Monthly bill statements will continue to be sent to you.” Daniel Frischber, a bankrupcty lawyer, said, “It’s state-sanctioned loan-sharking. The New Jersey program is set up so that you fail.” Since her son’s murder, DeOliveira-Longinetti has made 18 payments to New Jersey. Paying $180 per month, she has about 92 to go.“We’re not going to be poor because of this,” she said. “But every time I have to pay this thing, I think in my head, this is so unfair.”
