Small Bits of News You Didn’t Know you Needed

Croatian cameraman fired over T-shirt message
A Croatian cameraman was fired Friday after Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor took offence to a message on a T-shirt the cameraman was wearing at the government press conference.
RTL television cameraman Thursday afternoon wore a T-shirt with the words: "I do not need sex, the government f***s me every day".
Kosor said the sign was insulting, while the cameraman defended himself by saying that it was the only clean shirt he had.
RTL television on Friday fired the cameraman, saying he had behaved unprofessionally and damaged RTL’s reputation.
The Croatian Journalists Association immediately protested and asked the cameraman to be reinstated.
.
Judge sentences man to 6 months in jail for yawning
6-month term given by judge who has doled out the most charges of contempt in Will
Clifton Williams arrived at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet and sat in the fourth-floor courtroom where his cousin was pleading guilty to a felony drug charge.
As Circuit Judge Daniel Rozak handed down the cousin's sentence -- 2 years' probation -- Williams, 33, stretched and let out a very ill-timed yawn.
Williams' sentence? Six months in jail -- the maximum penalty for criminal contempt without a jury trial. The Richton Park man was locked up July 23 and will serve at least 21 days.
"I was flabbergasted because I didn't realize a judge could do that," said Williams' father, Clifton Williams Sr. "It seems to me that a yawn is an involuntary action."
Chuck Pelkie, a spokesman for the state's attorney's office, said the prosecutor in the courtroom that day told him that "it was not a simple yawn -- it was a loud and boisterous attempt to disrupt the proceedings."
Jason Mayfield, the cousin of Williams who was pleading guilty at the time, said it was "not an outrageous yawn."
A Tribune review of a decade's worth of contempt-of-court charges reveals that Rozak jails people -- typically spectators whose cell phones go off or who scream or shout profanity during sentencing -- at a far higher rate than any other judge in the county. There are now 30 judges in the 12th Judicial Circuit, but since 1999, Rozak has brought more than a third of all the contempt charges, records show.
.
He was checking out panties. Now he's checking into jail
A North Miami-Dade man is facing up to one year behind bars after police say he used his phone to videotape women up their skirts and in dressing rooms at an Aventura department store.
Police last weekend arrested Marcelo Matus, 34, on a charge of video voyeurism, a first-degree misdemeanor.
According to an arrest report, witnesses on Saturday saw Matus using his video-equipped phone inside the Bloomingdale's at the Aventura Mall.
The women were unaware of the defendant's activities. The women in the fitting rooms were in various states of undress, and had an expectation of privacy in the fitting rooms,'' according to the Aventura police report.
Police seized the phone and the store surveillance video. Matus, who has a court date Wednesday, was jailed and has since posted bail.
Matus could not be reached for comment. He faces prosecution under a 2004 law aimed at curbing upskirting,'' or filming women for posting on the Internet.
.