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According to police in Warsaw, Poland, novelist Krystian Bala might have gotten away with torturing and murdering a businessman in 2000 if only he had resisted writing about his crime in his 2003 novel, “Amok.” The trail for the killer had been cold for several years until a tipster informed police of the book. In […]

Frederick Cronin is challenging the suspension of his New Hampshire driver’s license, claiming that his blood-alcohol reading (0.13) was not properly obtained. State law calls for two readings, with the second 20 minutes after the first, and Cronin claims that his second test was administered too soon. During the 20-minute period, he said, he had […]

Contrary Thinking: Three U.S. finance professors, working with business data provided to the government of Denmark, concluded that a company’s profitability usually falls following a death in the CEO’s immediate family. However, the professors found (according to a September Wall Street Journal report), that profitability slightly increased if the family death was that of the […]

Alex Baker, 96, told London’s Daily Mail in May that he is very happy to have lived all his life in the same Portsmouth house in which he was born (although the neighborhood has certainly changed a lot since 1911). David and Jean Davidson, who are retired and own an apartment in Sheffield, told the […]

Convicted sex offender Paul D. Brunelle-Apley, 26, was arrested again, in Madison Township, Ohio, in September, when his attempt to make up with his 14-year-old girlfriend came to public attention. According to police, Brunelle-Apley was seeing another girl on the side (age 15), and in a display of remorse, he delivered flowers and a teddy […]

In September, prominent California cardiologist Maurice Buchbinder had his privileges revoked at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla after he allegedly roughed up an unruly angioplasty patient during and immediately after the procedure. Buchbinder was so irritated by the patient’s combativeness that he even (according to witnesses interviewed by state medical licensing officials) delivered a […]

A Japanese clothing manufacturer, Kochou-fuku, announced in August a line of air-conditioned shirts, with two tiny battery-operated fans inside to evaporate perspiration (for the equivalent of about $95). (One drawback: The shirt billows out, suggesting that the wearer is overweight.) Among the recent recipients of Marin County (Calif.) Green Business certificates of environmental awareness was […]

Noted Israeli plastic surgeon Eyal Gur said in August that he expects approval next year for his revolutionary breast-lift procedure (“an internal bra”) in which an actual thin titanium bra-like frame is implanted just under the skin with silicone cups to hold the breasts up. Dr. Gur said the procedure will be quicker (40 minutes […]

Surprisingly Complicated: A 24-year-old woman in Lawrenceville, Ga. (in July), and a 59-year-old woman in Lincolnton, N.C. (in August), were killed after failing to negotiate driver’s-side devices allowing them entrance to, respectively, a gated parking lot and an automatic car wash. The Georgia woman had leaned out her window to insert a card into the […]

Some Americans continue to prefer to “do it themselves” to get rid of pests on their property, with tragic results. In June, Mike Harstad of Jamestown, Calif., attempting to eliminate a wasps’ nest with a can of Pledge and a cigarette lighter, ultimately burned down his mobile home and contents and destroyed an outbuilding, a […]