AfterTek

As an interpreter, Gloria Lupo-Torres is an important help of court hearings for many Spanish-speaking defendants. During a recent murder trial, Lupo-Torres, 41, of Whiting, sat next to defendant Victor Curbelo, repeating in Spanish everything that is said by the judge, attorneys and witnesses.

As the region’s Spanish-speaking population grows, many service providers must keep up in order to effectively meet the needs of that community. Lake Criminal Court Judge Thomas P. Stefaniak said he calls in an interpreter at least once a week. Which makes most people wonder if maybe everyone, who is in an important business position, should learn to speak Spanish.

New Yorkers who usually cross the street while listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine. New York State Sen. Carl Kruger says that three pedestrians in his Brooklyn district have been killed since September upon stepping into traffic while distracted by an electronic device. In one case bystanders screamed “watch out” to no avail.

Kruger says he will introduce legislation on Wednesday to ban the use of gadgets such as Blackberry devices and video games while crossing the street. “Government has an obligation to protect its citizenry,” Kruger said in a telephone interview from Albany, the state capital. “This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it’s becoming not only endemic but it’s creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand.”

A germ that kills males has triggered a vicious cycle of increasing female promiscuity and male sexual exhaustion in a species of butterfly, scientists report. The male-killing bacteria known as Wolbachia are extremely widespread in insects, found in more than one-fifth of species. The germs can turn males to females and cause infected females to reproduce without males.

Scientists had assumed these bacteria would profoundly alter the natural mating patterns of their hosts, but only had scant evidence of what these changes would entail in the wild. Evolutionary biologist Sylvain Charlat at University College London and his colleagues investigated the common eggfly Hypolimnas bolina. This butterfly is found in locations ranging from Madagascar to Asia, and from Australia and to Easter Island.