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Leading Economic Indicators

A new condominium development in New York City, near 11th Avenue and West 24th Street (with prices starting at $6.25 million), features in-unit garages, allowing the resident to drive into the En-Suite Sky Garage System at street level and be lifted to his own unit. Guests and residents who don’t own cars will just have […]

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Smooth Reactions

Po Shiu-fong, 58, was sentenced in July to six months in jail in Hong Kong for stabbing her boyfriend, 49, in his eyes with a chopstick because she thought he was cheating on her. (At the hearing, Po admitted that she had already blinded him in the left eye six years earlier by poking him […]

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Obsessions

Australian Les Stewart holds what the Web site Oddee.com calls the “third most bizarre” of all Guinness Book world records: having typed out the written numbers “one” through “one million,” over a period of 16 years from 1983 to 1998, according to an August story in his local newspaper Sunshine Coast Daily. He said he […]

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The District of Calamity

(1) The Washington, D.C., Department of Corrections fired three jailers in August after finding that they had locked up Virginia Grace Soto, 47, in the men’s detention unit following her July arrest, despite her protests and despite a formal strip search and despite observing her in the shower. Their reasoning: A paperwork error listed Soto […]

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Names in the News

Convicted of murder in a home invasion, Mr. Andrew S. “Junebug” Warrior (the “S” stands for Sweetie) (Tucson, Ariz., June). Discouraged by school officials from attending a Catholic school because of his name, the 5-year-old Max Hell (Melbourne, Australia, July). Arrested for stealing three rolls of toilet paper from a courthouse, Ms. Suzanne Marie Butts […]

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Crises in Men’s Nipples

William R. Cohen filed a $1 million lawsuit in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in May against a family after their Jack Russell terrier bit his left nipple, causing him (according to the lawsuit) medical expenses, loss of income, pain, disfigurement and “loss of sexual comfort and desire.” In June, Ronald Barrett, 68, a longtime school administrator […]

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Unclear on the Concept

Israeli police announced in September that they had arrested a gang of eight young Israeli neo-Nazis from the city of Petah Tikva (near Tel Aviv), who had been attacking and harassing religious Jews (and also gays and foreigners), beating them and videotaping the attacks. A police search turned up weapons and also Nazi materials such […]

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Troubling female hormones

Junior New York City hedge fund trader Andrew Tong charged in October that his boss forced him to take female hormones to dampen his aggressiveness, which the supervisor said was leading him to make bad trades, according to a CNBC report. In his lawsuit against Mr. Ping Jiang (a big-time trader who reportedly earns $100 […]

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Can’t Possibly Be True

The city of Toronto is campaigning with posters and a Web page to urge citizens to vote a 1-cent set-aside tax for municipal services, but in October received a bill from Canada’s mint for about $47,000 in licensing fees. The mint cited the posters’ use of a photograph of a penny and the campaign’s use […]

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Recurring Themes

People who decide to urinate in public continue to find the practice dangerous, as News of the Weird has documented many times. A 40-year-old man, somewhat inebriated, attempting to urinate into the River Bulbourne in Hemel Hempstead, England, fell in and drowned (April). A 58-year-old man stood up in his boat to urinate while fishing […]

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