Kathy E <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
LEAD STORIES
* Now They Tell Us: Researchers at Bristol University in England,
announcing in February the results of a study of 14,000 children, said
bathing every day is not good for a kid. According to the study,
children who take regular baths are 25 percent more likely to develop
asthma and other allergies because their immune systems are delicate and
still evolving.
* In January, Clinton Ellerman, 21, was sentenced to two years in jail
for vandalizing a mink farm near Salt Lake City as part of an animal
rights protest, and his brother, Joshua, 19, is awaiting trial on
federal charges of bombing a fur breeders' cooperative. The men are
members of the anti-drug, anti-smoking, anti-punk-rock, pro-vegetarian
movement called Straight Edge. Utah officials believe that local
Straight Edgers are responsible for more than 40 cases of assault,
arson, or vandalism, including the torching of a McDonald's restaurant,
all, apparently in the name of saving animals.
* In February, sheriff's deputies had a drug house in the northwest
Florida town of Callaway under surveillance, and when four men emerged
and drove off in a rental car, deputies decided to stop them and make
the arrests. Several squad cars surrounded the rental car, and by the
time officers went to open the door, the four men were conveniently
covered in white powder. A hidden bag of cocaine had been sliced open
by the air-conditioner fan blade and had dusted them. Arrested were
Marc St. George, 29, of Miami, three others in the car, and three more
back at the house.
CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE
* Robert Gettman Boone, 51, was arrested at his home in a Baltimore,
Md., suburb in January and charged as the man who had been firing
two-foot-long, homemade bombs from his front yard, across a busy
thoroughfare, to a lot behind a car wash. According to police, Boone
told them, "There's nothing to get excited about," that he was "just
doing some experiments with high explosives." (Later, it took
authorities almost eight hours to remove all the explosives that were in
his home.)
* The St. Petersburg Times wrote in January that it had documented cases
of 20 people, most elderly, who had traveled to Tampa, Fla., in recent
months at their own expense in order erroneously to claim jackpot
winnings after having misread letters from the American Family
Publishers sweepstakes (which processes magazine subscriptions through a
Tampa post office box). One man, Richard Lusk, 88, of Victorville,
Calif., believed he had won three straight $11 million sweepstakes and
made two trips to Tampa to collect them and would have made a third
except that his son talked him out of it.
* In September, police at Los Angeles International Airport stopped Mark
L. Kulp, 34, at a metal detector before his flight home to East Grand
Forks, Minn. In his carry-on bags, Kulp had several guns, 100 rounds of
ammunition, knives, handcuffs, a ski mask, and a fake sheriff's badge.
The police confiscated the equipment and detained Kulp, and even learned
that he was wanted on an arrest warrant in Minnesota for threatening a
police officer. However, they decided they could not arrest him because
the guns were not loaded, and when Minnesota authorities declined to
send anyone to bring him back, Kulp was released.
* A January Boston Globe report from Moscow described the Russian
passion of ice-fishing. One 54-year-old angler, who said he has fallen
many times into the black water of the Moscow River in winter, sat in
0F-degree weather with a line in each hand, perched over small holes,
all day long, with no fish to show for it, but still exclaimed, "Isn't
this great! This is not about what you catch. This is about total
relaxation." More than 100 Russians a year die while ice fishing, and
last year, when 75 anglers near St. Petersburg were swept away on a
platform of ice and were rescued nine hours later by helicopter, fights
broke out over which ones got to be the last ones aboard so that they
could remain fishing even longer.
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
* Capital Punishment: In October, the family of a British nurse,
convicted of a murder in United Arab Emirates, announced that it had
raised the $1.2 million needed by law to reduce her sentence from death
to life imprisonment. And the death penalty assessed to Assa Larsanova
by an Islamic court in Chechnya for murdering her husband was commuted
by the president of Chechnya after the husband's relatives said they
would accept 100 cows as law-allowed blood money.
* A December Associated Press dispatch from Hong Kong reported on the
success of shopkeeper Kwan Wing-ho in offering facsimile objects made of
paper (cell phones, computers, Mercedes-Benzes) for purchase by
relatives of the recently-deceased, to be burned in Chinese ceremonies
in which the object's smoke would waft into the hereafter. Said Kwan,
"Even in the spirit world, [they] think it is very important to show
wealth." And Mexico once again celebrated the Day of the Dead on
November 1, in which food and drink are brought to graveyards so that
people can party with their relatives' spirits.
* Five teenage girls attempted suicide in September in Turkey rather
than submit to "virginity tests" required of girls in government-run
foster homes. Many families still have physicians run daughters through
the test voluntarily, as part of a Muslim-based social code, and even
Turkey's women's affairs minister, who is female, has defended the
practice for the foster homes. Some fathers whose daughters have been
killed in accidents still insist that the test be performed on the
corpse, for the father's own peace of mind.
* Fundamentalist Islamic Blues: In November, ten men were imprisoned by
the Afghanistan Taliban regime for watching someone dance. And in
February a court in Tehran, Iran, pronounced a death sentence on German
businessman Helmut Hofer, 56, for having sex with his Muslim girlfriend.
(To avoid the punishment, he could convert to Islam and marry the
woman.) And in October, the Malaysian state of Kelantan, which had
previously ordered house lights on during movies to discourage couples'
making out, ordered supermarket lines segregated by gender and public
swimming pools (which previously had run on alternate hours for males
and females) to build second pools so each gender would have one.
COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS
* Donald Cooper, 59, explaining to a reporter in Scotland in September
why he abruptly left his wife's body with authorities in that country
and returned to the family home to England after she had passed away
during surgery after an accidental fall: "I know I'm being a bastard,
but I am just being honest. We were married for 35 years and were never
sentimental."
* Ghanan researcher Philip Adongo, explaining to a family planning
conference in Beijing in October why he interviewed spiritual mediums in
addition to other tribespeople in his country: "If I only heard from the
living, I wouldn't get a very good balance. This study has been the
first to be conducted of respondents who are deceased."
* Todd Lightle, 13, explaining to a Newark, Ohio, juvenile court judge
in December why he and a friend had apparently stepped up their
vandalism lately to include smashing windows in school buses, doing
$41,000 in damage: "It was, like, toilet-papering was getting boring."
* An unidentified man stabbed David Fleigelman, 40, in October at the
Sephardic Center synagogue in Brooklyn, N.Y. According to police, the
men had been arguing about who knows more about the Torah.
--
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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