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Fetishes on Parade

In January, Ronald Dotson, 39, pleaded no contest to attempting to break into a Ferndale, Mich., store in order to steal a mannequin outfitted in a French maid’s uniform, which authorities said was his seventh “statuephilia”-related offense in 13 years. “I thought I was getting my life together,” he told the judge, even though his […]

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Oops!

Try to Read This Without Wincing: A cable broke on a leg extension machine at a YWCA facility in Akron, Ohio, in 2004, catapulting a steel bar forcefully at a 22-year-old football player working out for a shot at a college scholarship, hitting him squarely between his parted legs, whacking his left testicle. Three years […]

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The Continuing Crisis

At least five convicted sex offenders in Florida’s Miami-Dade County have their official residence in a makeshift encampment underneath a bridge on the Julia Tuttle Causeway to Miami Beach, with the blessing of the state Department of Corrections, according to an April report by CNN. Officials say that the state’s tough zoning law for sex […]

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The Litigious Society

In lawsuit-friendly Madison County, Ill. (termed “the promised land” by some trial lawyers), a judge awarded $311,700 to Amanda Verett for a long series of painful injuries that her courtroom-veteran chiropractor has been treating. Verett said she was holding a door open at a Pizza Hut when an employee yanked it open farther, and calamitous […]

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Ironies

So many U.S. executives want to visit India to make deals to outsource their companies’ jobs that in March, India’s Washington, D.C., embassy said it was forced to outsource the job of processing the executives’ visa applications. Yet another U.S. job was outsourced to India in May, that of “local government reporter” covering city hall […]

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Compelling Explanations

Local music producer Ricky Lackey, during questioning in March by a judge in Cincinnati to help her determine an appropriate sentence for Lackey for his crime of attempted theft, told her that he has no children but that he has “six on the way.” The judge sought clarification. “Are you marrying a woman with six […]

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Fine Points of the Law

At a special session of Arizona’s Court of Appeals in April, judges heard arguments on whether a bag of methamphetamine had been legally seized by police, who had a search warrant but not the authority to inspect body “cavities.” The bag had been partially protruding from a certain cavity, and an officer pulled it out. […]

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Names in the News

The Des Moines, Iowa, woman who was the victim in December of an Iowa Methodist Medical Center policy on disposal of amputated body parts (the woman wanted to take her toe with her): Gladys Goose. The 41-year-old woman charged with assault in February, in a suburb of Tampa, Fla., after she allegedly grabbed a high-heeled […]

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Update

Last year, a BBC News correspondent in Sudan reported that village elders in the Upper Nile state had punished Charles Tombe, who had been caught being amorous with a goat, by requiring him to pay a dowry to the goat’s owner, to endure a “wedding” to the goat, and to treat the goat as his […]

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Least Competent Criminals

Not Ready for Prime Time: Eric Cunningham, 18, was arrested and charged with robbing a Hess gas station at gunpoint in Orlando in April, done in by his forgetting to take his gun case with him as he fled; inside was the receipt for his gun, made out to “Eric Cunningham.” Jazrahel King, 29, was […]

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