Weird

After pleading guilty in Cardiff Crown Court to forging an uncle’s checks worth 41,000 pounds ($65,000), Hayley Price, 42, was fined 5 pounds ($8), given a suspended sentence and ordered to do community service. The judge reasoned that Price was broke, having already spent the 41,000 pounds. Brian Wallace was the victim of a severe […]

Michael Yavorski, 52, who drew a three-month sentence in October for having twice fondled a 12-year-old girl and given her a beer, complained through his lawyer that the sentence was too long. “The collateral consequences for Mr. Yavorski here are tremendous,” said the lawyer, in that the negative publicity about the case might force Yavorski […]

Shawnee Mission Northwest outscored the competition at the Kansas Girls State Gymnastics Championship in November, but finished in third place because of a one-point penalty for a rule violation. The school’s coach had inquired about a balance-beam score outside the five-minute “window” for inquiries. The two schools that were tied for second place were declared […]

In November, a Chicago judge ruled that former firefighter Jeffrey Boyle is entitled to his $50,000 annual pension even though he had pleaded guilty in 2006 to eight counts of arson (and allegedly confessed to 12 more). Boyle is known locally as “Matches” Boyle to distinguish him from his brother, John “Quarters” Boyle, who is […]

Kevin Derks, 53, of Kenosha, Wis., swears that he has never touched an underage girl, even though he admitted to an all-consuming fixation on their “innocence” and beauty. Derks’ apartment, according to a detective, appears to be a “shrine” to little girls, with walls covered with posters and photos, including snapshots of celebrity kids and […]

Martina Rabess, 52, was sanctioned by Britain’s Sevenoaks Magistrates Court in October after neighbors complained about her loud, continuous recitations of the Lord’s Prayer in early morning hours around her apartment house. Atlanta municipal bus driver Leroy Matthews was suspended in November for a recent incident in which he suddenly stopped the bus and refused […]

Michael Sampson, who was in court in Salina, Kan., in November merely on charges of littering and driving with a suspended license, was arrested after a judge spotted him at the defense table, making threatening gestures to witnesses. Sampson was seen holding his thumb and fingers in the shape of a gun, “firing” at a […]

Shannon Broome, 15, of Jacksonville, Fla., with her leg in a cast and still laid up from a June rollover accident in an SUV, was hit again in December when another out-of-control SUV came through her bedroom wall and re-broke the leg (among other injuries inflicted). Recently, at the Abergele Hospital in North Wales, Geraint […]

In Somalia, which is without a central government to speak of and where very little functions beyond an Islamic resistance and individual warlords’ fiefdoms, a robust “stock market” has emerged in the city of Haradheere for “investors” in the seagoing pirate “industry” to raise money and supplies for kidnappers in exchange for a share of […]

Sara Foss, 39, the mother of 13 in Derby, England, who is scheduled to deliver No. 14 in March, told the Daily Mail in November of her vow to continue getting pregnant until she fulfills her desire to have twins. Her longtime, live-in boyfriend works as a boat-builder, but their main income is government benefits […]