Bad, Bad Samaritan!; Terrorists and cats

• (1) Roy Ortiz hired a lawyer in March and said he was considering suing the first responders who rescued him during the historic September 2013 flooding around Broomfield, Colo.--because they failed to find him fast enough when his car plunged into raging waters. (2) In March, Houston, Tex., sheriff's deputy Brady Pullen filed a lawsuit against the grieving family of the delusional man he was forced to shoot and kill during a 2012 emergency call--because Pullen had been injured in the skirmish and believes the family failed to warn him just how dangerous Kemal Yazer was. (Also, in Alcona, Ontario, in April, Sharlene Simon, 42, filed a lawsuit against the family of the teenage bicyclist she accidentally ran down, fatally, in 2012--claiming that the boy's dangerous joyriding at 1:30 a.m. initiated the events that left her traumatized.) [KCNC-TV (Denver), 3-4-2014] [Houston Chronicle, 3-29-2014] [Toronto Sun, 4-25-2014]

• Facial recognition software, increasingly important to global anti-terrorism operations, is being brought to . . cats. Taiwanese developer Mu-Chi Sung announced in July plans for marketing the software as part of a cat-health device so that owners, especially those with multiple cats, can better monitor their eating habits. Sung's set-up had to overcome an problem of how to get the cat to stick its head through a slot so the software can start to work. The device, with mobile apps for remote monitoring by the owner, may sell for about $250. [CBS News, 7-22-2014]

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