Kathy E <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
LEAD STORIES
* Social Security Administration investigators revealed in January
that they had uncovered massive fraud involving members of a
single extended Georgia family. 300 relatives over four
generations were on the rolls, including 181 collecting from the
Supplemental Security Income program for people unable to work
because of disability, with a large number claiming some form of
mental impairment, many through the recommendations of a single
local doctor. So far, 90 of the original claims have been found to
be fraudulent, but in the course of the investigation, more relatives
turned up, running the number under suspicion up to around 500.
* Slam-Dunkers at Risk: Peter Martin Vella, 18, filed a lawsuit
against the city of Milford, Conn., in December, claiming that he
ripped his nose open during a city playground basketball game. He
said his nostril caught on a protruding hook (on which the net
hangs) on the basket rim. And a 20-year-old man was killed in
Melbourne, Australia, in January when the brick wall of a garage
collapsed; the wall had a basketball backboard attached, and the
man had held onto the rim after a slam-dunk, bringing the
backboard and the wall down on top of him.
* In January, the executor of the estate of the late Larry Lee
Hillblom agreed to pay out at least $90 million each to four Pacific
Islands teenagers whose DNA showed Hillblom was their father.
Hillblom, who founded the DHL international courier firm and
died in a 1995 plane crash, was described by one lawyer in the case
as a pedophile who obsessively pursued teenage virgin bargirls in
the Philippines and the Micronesian islands. At least one of the
children will see quite an income bump this year, from the $125 a
month he and his grandmother now earn in Palau.
THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
* The Washington Post reported in November on the unusual cat
obsession of Kristin Kierig in Fairfax County, Va., unusual
because the 114 cats that live with her are well-fed, and her
townhouse is clean and orderly. More typical stories were of foul-
smelling houses in Oshawa, Ontario, in August (120 cats),
Edmonton, Alberta, in September (59 cats), and Piedmont, Calif.,
in October (150 cats, most of them diseased, plus another 250 dead
cats in the freezer). Said Piedmont police Capt. Fred Gouveia,
"One litter box and 150 cats. You have a problem."
* In October, the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, which
provides defense attorneys on capital punishment cases, briefly
suspended lawyer Timothy T. Riddell and a colleague for an inept
last-minute appeal in June to spare the life of convicted killer
Harold McQueen Jr. Riddell had been lightly punished for another
indiscretion the year before, having acknowledged in a child-
custody case that he several times had recorded his own solo
sexual activity over state-owned videotapes that contain official-
record sessions of capital punishment trials. According to
newspaper reports, the tapes show Riddell dressed in women's
underwear and engaging in, among other things, various activities
with his own urine.
* Latest Indoor Landfill: In November, a 27-year-old woman in
Swansea, Mass., was so distraught when she took a peek at the
inside of her stepmother's home that she called 911. In most
rooms, garbage was piled to the ceiling, and some rooms couldn't
be entered because of trash blocking the doors. Apparently, the
stepmother and her two sons lived in the house uneventfully,
although the boys told police that they didn't like it that the house
had been so dirty for a couple of years now. The stepmother was
said to have become distraught when some relatives died.
* Speaking to an audience at the Folger Shakespeare Library in
Washington, D. C., in October, novelist Kathryn Harrison (who
previously had written about her four-year affair with her father)
read a letter she had written to her dead grandmother, in which she
confessed to sticking her finger into the woman's cremated ashes
and licking it off, then doing the same thing with her whole hand.
According to the New York Post, "The crowd responded with
polite applause."
* In October, librarians at several Ohio colleges reported that
hundreds of their books had been vandalized by someone's clipping
photographs from them, all of young boys. Targets included
children's books, fine arts books, and health and medical books,
and pictures of Anglo, Middle Eastern, and Asian boys were taken.
The vandal or vandals are still at large.
* The Weirdo-German Community: In a November letter to the
New England Journal of Medicine, three physicians describe the
case of a German female hospital-lab technician, age 45, who was
treated for 13 episodes of malaria during 1994-1996. Because of
the frequency and the fact that the underlying parasite genotypes
were different in several of the attacks, the physicians quizzed the
patient, who immediately broke down and admitted she had been
deliberately injecting herself with malaria-infected blood.
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
* In July, the Lomsko Pivo brewery in Lom, Bulgaria, announced
that brewmaster Yordan Platikanov has developed a beer that could
neutralize any lingering amounts of uranium 134 and strontium in
the body after exposure to nuclear radiation. Platikanov said the
new beer should be urged on nuclear power plant workers relaxing
at the end of a shift.
* In December, Clearwater, Fla., entrepreneur Victoria Morton
announced that she has developed a brassiere that can increase cup
size during wear by repositioning fat near the breasts. "If a woman
has extra tissue anywhere above her waist, even on her back, she
can use this bra to create bigger, firmer breasts," said Morton, 62,
in a press release. Morton is the person credited with inventing the
"mineral body wrap" weight-loss technique in the 1960s.
* In November, Abuja, Nigeria, entrepreneur Bawa Garba began
marketing Abacha-brand television sets in his country, emblazoned
with the image of Nigeria's military ruler, Gen. Sani Abacha. Most
of the sets will be sold to government agencies, but the public can
buy the 21-inch models for about $490, which the average Nigerian
would need to work 22 months to earn.
I WANT MY RIGHTS
* In December, veterinary student Beate Broese-Quinn filed a
lawsuit against Foothill College in San Jose, Calif., which had
flunked her after she declined to do a class assignment to dissect a
fetal pig. Said her lawyer, "[Forcing] her to [dissect] is antithetical
to everything this country is founded on" because her love of
animals is the equivalent to other people's belief in God.
* According to the Times of London in December, the latest group
to take offense at the workings of the world is a federation of meat-
shop owners in France, who say they're hurt that reporters routinely
refer to vicious murderers as "butchers." Butchers, said the
association, are "gentle, peace-loving" "artisans."
* In November, Oakland (Calif.) Community College student
Anita S. Lee filed a sexual harassment complaint with the U. S.
Department of Education against psychology professor Joel M.
Cohen. She was offended not at the actual content of the class,
whose opening session she left after about 10 minutes, deciding it
was not for her, but at the warning that Cohen had put on the
syllabus, alerting students that "adult themes and topics" would be
explored in an "open, frank" and "controversial" way. A member
of the National Association for Women in Education, supporting
Lee, said, "I read [the warning], and said, 'If I was a student, I'd be
scared stiff.'"
--
Kathy E
"I can only please one person a day, today is NOT your day, and tomorrow
isn't looking too good for you either"
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