Black bear returns 3 times to Florida location

SHALIMAR, Fla. (AP) — Officials are hoping the third time is a charm for a 350-pound black bear found sleeping in a Florida Panhandle tree.

The bear has been caught and tagged and removed from the area twice since April. But he keeps finding his way back to the Panama City area.

On Monday, he was spotted in a pine tree outside the Shalimar Yacht Basin.

He was first spotted April 14 near a Panama City elementary school. The Northwest Florida Daily News (http://bit.ly/1pSEloG) reports wildlife officials relocated him 90 miles away to Mud Swamp in Apalachicola National Forest. It took him three weeks but he made it back to the neighborhood.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission worked with Eglin Air Force Base to remove him but he returned on Monday.

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Information from: Northwest Florida Daily News (Fort Walton Beach, Fla.), http://www.nwfdailynews.com

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Single men wash their bedsheets just 4 times a year, study says

Should single men clean their bed sheets more often? (Reuters)If you’re a single man, you may go to bed with a clear conscience but you rarely sleep on clean sheets. At least that’s according to a new study, which found that single men on average clean their bedsheets only four times a year.

In comparison, single women change their sheets every two weeks.

And while cleanliness numbers surge for married couples, it appears the credit for the median boost for guys primarily belongs to women. In fact, it may be that the men are dragging the women down, as the average washing frequency among couples is once every 2.3 weeks, with women doing 81 percent of the washing.

As “How Stuff Works” points out, the average person spends about a third of his or her entire life in bed. In other words, the old saying, “As you make your bed, so you must lie on it,” may have more meaning than originally intended.

But are these single men literally sleeping in beds of filth? Or are the women perhaps overdoing it a bit? Turns out, it mostly depends on your own standards of cleanliness.

For example, Martha Stewart recommends washing the sheets weekly, but notes that it ultimately is an issue of personal preference. The Wall Street Journal also says that weekly washes are the norm but that many go several weeks between cleanings.

For people with asthma or other allergies, clean sheets are more of a priority. That’s because sheets, and mattresses and pillowcases in particular, are excellent at accumulating dust and microorganisms that can disrupt otherwise healthy breathing patterns.

In that case, many experts recommend laying plastic covers on top of mattresses and even pillows in to keep those microorganisms from making a home inside the mattress or pillow padding.

"The conventional idea is that you might exacerbate eczema, hay fever or asthma at night, but all of these ideas are more based on conventional wisdom, not necessarily founded in experience," Euan Tovey, head of the Allergen Research Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research told MSN.

"We've done research that showed that you don't get as much exposure to dust mites in bed as we once thought. Anywhere where there is dust and movement you are going to get exposure –– it's not confined to bed," he added.

According to the survey, people between the ages of 35 and 50 are the most likely to wash their bedsheets each week.

So, as Tovey said, health concerns might not be a major issues for younger sleepers. But it certainly could be an aesthetic one for younger men hoping to forge meaningful romantic relationships.

"Would you want to be invited into a bed of somebody who hadn't washed it for months?" Tovey asked.

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NSA reportedly broke privacy rules thousands of times

The National Security Agency has overstepped its authority and broken privacy rules thousands of times every year since being given new surveillance powers by Congress in 2008, The Washington Post reported, citing an internal audit and other secret documents.

The documents, which the Post claims it received earlier this summer from NSA leaker Edward Snowden, detail how the controversial agency has crossed the line many times over in its collection of massive amounts of data from around the world.

Despite repeated claims by officials that the NSA does not spy on Americans, the Post reports that the bulk of the infractions involved improper surveillance of Americans or foreign targets in the U.S. Some of the infractions were inadvertent, caused by typographical errors resulting in U.S. calls or emails being intercepted. Others were more serious.

The Post reported that the most significant violations included the unauthorized use of information on more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders. In another incident, the Post reported that a “large number” of calls from Washington were intercepted in 2008 after the Washington area code 202 was confused with the code 20, which is the code for dialing to Egypt.

In total, an NSA audit from May 2012 reportedly found 2,776 incidents in the prior 12 months of improper collection and handling of communications.

In another case, the special court that oversees the NSA did not learn about a new collection method until it had been underway for months. The court ruled the method unconstitutional, according to the Post.

"NSA’s foreign intelligence collection activities are continually audited and overseen internally and externally,” an NSA official told Fox News late Thursday. “When NSA makes a mistake in carrying out its foreign intelligence mission, the agency reports the issue internally and to federal overseers -- and aggressively gets to the bottom of it."

In a statement to the Post, the NSA said it tries to identify problems "at the earliest possible moment, implement mitigation measures wherever possible and drive the numbers down."

"We're a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line," a senior NSA official told the newspaper.

The details shed light on the errors and violations in the NSA collection efforts that administration officials so far have addressed only in broad terms.

When the intelligence community made key documents public in late July about the nature of the NSA collection effort, one document said that "there have been a number of technical compliance problems and human implementation errors" in programs that collect both bulk phone and email records. 

The document did not reveal much more, other than to state that no "intentional or bad-faith violations" were found. The document said only that the missteps resulted in the "automated tools operating in a manner that was not completely consistent with the specific terms of the court's order."

The Post story showed infractions were widespread. The report said despite the sharp growth in oversight staff, infractions increased through 2011 and early 2012. It was not clear whether the trend continued after that.

President Obama recently vowed to provide more transparency and oversight in the process, but has not bowed to calls to fundamentally change the surveillance programs. Some in Congress, like Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and leaders of the congressional intelligence committees, have described the collection efforts as critical to national security. Others say they have gone too far and run the risk of infringing on Americans’ right to privacy.

A separate Washington Post report on Thursday also said the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court acknowledged that its ability to provide oversight of the spying programs is limited.

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Miami cop fired 8 times could make it 9

For one police officer, will the ninth strike mean he's out?

This time around, Sgt. German Bosque—who has been fired eight times from three different police departments—has been charged with leaving his assault weapon with his girlfriend’s father, a trained security guard, while on an eight-day leave, according to CBS4 Miami.

That’s a no-no, says the Opa-locka Police Department, which presented its case to dismiss him in front of an arbitration officer on Wednesday.

The station, which covered Bosque's hearing, spoke with City Attorney Joe Geller, who said, "We’re here on a very simple matter. It’s going to be up to the arbitrator. We think what the officer did was wrong.”

Geller is arguing that Bosque violated the department’s policy that an officer’s weapon should be secured at all times.

But like the Terminator, Bosque has a history of coming back: He's the most fired, fined and disciplined officer in the state, according to CBS4.

The Miami cop has managed to return to his post despite his alleged vices. The Miami Herald reports Bosque has beaten back a long list of head-turning charges, including:

- busting the skull of a handcuffed suspect
- beating juveniles
- having dope and booze in his squad car
- ripping off suspects
- falsifying reports
- participating in an unauthorized chase where four people were killed
- calling in sick … from Cancun

“It’s allegations. Allegations are not convictions,” said Bosque’s union-provided attorney, Andrew Axelrad. “We have a system in place, and that system is a fair system.”

To hear Bosque tell it, he just loves his job. “I love serving the community. I love what I do for a living, and I’m very proud,” he said.

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