The Pittsburgh area had received two feet of snow when Curtis Mitchell began calling emergency dispatchers around 2 o’clock in the morning on February 6th. In his first 911 call, he stated that his “entire stomach was in pain” according Dr. Ron Roth. His symptoms were judged to be non-life-threatening.

After two hours with no sign of the paramedics showing up, Mitchell placed a second call. He learned that an ambulance was stuck in the snow near a local bridge. He was asked if he could walk four blocks to meet the ambulance but he said his pain was too severe to leave his home sofa. His desperate cry for help was cancelled because he, the victim, was unable to walk through heavy snow drifts to and ambulance that should have been able to come get him.

It took ten calls to the emergency line 911 and almost thirty hours for paramedics to reach Curtis Mitchell. However, by the time they made it to his home, he was dead.

The publication has been cancelled for a controversial book about the bombing of Japan that Avatar director, James Cameron, had chosen to be the possible story line of a new movie. The oublisher, called Henry Holt and Company, said that the author, Charles Pellegrino, “was not able to answer” questions about The Last Train from Hiroshima, including whether two men written about in the book actually existed.

Pellegrino had previously stated that one of the people he supposedly interviewed had falsely claimed to be on a plane flying with the Enola Gay, a plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

The national holiday of Groundhog’s Day was February 2nd  and it’s bad news. Punxsutawney Phil emerged to see his shadow before a large crowd that gathered in Pennsylvania. The groundhog seeing his shadow means winter will last for another six weeks.

 The tradition is originally German and it’s said that if a hibernating animal sees its shadow on February 2nd, or the Christian holiday of Candlemas, winter will last for another six weeks. If the animal can’t see his shadow due to clouds, legend states that spring will come early that year.

The Circle City Classic is one of the longest running swim meets in the United States. It has been held annually since 1984 at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI). This year, Colorado sent one swim team, North Jeffco Swim Team (NJST) to this meet over the weekend of January 29-31. NJST brought a total of 17 athletes to attend this meet. All athletes performed well with the advantage of racing at low altitude. George Meyers Pool where the team practices is located in Arvada, CO at an altitude of one mile, so the lack of oxygen during the normal training season gives the athletes a leg up when they travel to locations at sea level where there is more oxygen.

The most impressive male race can be awarded to 15 year old Nolan Tesone of Pomona High School who swam a 1:52.50 in the 200 yard backstroke. This time qualified Tesone for the Junior National Championships. The most impressive female race goes to Blair Kacynski for dropping 4 full seconds off of her 200 backstroke with a final time of 2:15.27.