Lead Stories *In January Iowa became the second state to require employers to provide reasonable restroom breaks, and in April or May, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) plans to issue the first-ever federal directive on the topic. OSHA acted after hearing from employees who routinely were not permitted…

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…

Lead Stories *In February in Lakeland, after Justin Rezendes scratched and bit teachers, the principal, and the school police officer, he was arrested, booked, and fingerprinted. Mug shots were taken. Justin is six years old. Two weeks earlier in Pensacola, Chaquita Doman, age five, scratched and bit two officials at…

Lead Story *Henry Ingram, Jr., told the Savannah, Georgia, Morning News in February that he intends to bar all Northerners from ever setting foot on any part of his recently acquired 1600 acres along U.S. 17 near Hardeeville, South Carolina. He recently recorded a deed restriction making that desire possible…

Lead Stories *Among the exhibits at the “Impulse to Collect” show at San Jose State University in February were Chris Daubert’s Chromatic Extrusions Rodenta (the droppings of rats that had ingested oil paints), Maryly Snow’s collection of 696 toothbrushes (each catalogued for thirteen attributes), and Bob Rasmussen’s assembly of items…

Lead Story *In West Monroe, Louisiana, in February, a 35-year-old mother allegedly bit a teacher, a teacher’s aide, and the principal during a parent-teacher conference. And in January a couple filed assault charges on behalf of their son against his Kentucky high school basketball coach, Bobby Keith, for allegedly biting…

Lead Stories *Social Security Administration investigators revealed in January that they had uncovered widespread fraud involving members of a single extended Georgia family. Three hundred relatives from four generations were on the rolls, including 181 collecting from the Supplemental Security Income program for people unable to work because of disability…

Lead Stories *Things you thought didn’t happen any more: An agency of the International Chamber of Commerce in London reported in January that a total of 51 people on ships were killed by pirates in 1997. The prime areas for raids were near Indonesia, India, the Philippines, and Brazil. *The…

Lead Stories *In January The New Yorker wrote about the latest body ornamentation in the city: small jewelry charms inserted under the skin, producing boil-like bulges. The “subcutaneous jewelry” can be inserted in the forehead, the back of the hand, or any other place near bone that the skin can…

Lead Story *Tough guys: In Paris in December, just before being convicted of the murders of two counterespionage agents, international terrorist Carlos the Jackal was sentenced to ten days’ solitary confinement for calling a prison guard a “gnu.” Two weeks later, Montreal Canadiens’ defense man Dave Manson underwent surgery to…

Lead Stories *Vincent Morrissey’s police brutality lawsuit went to trial in New Haven, Connecticut, in December. Ofcr. Ralph Angelo took the witness stand and claimed that Morrissey had provoked the encounter by swinging at him. Morrissey’s attorney, skeptical of the testimony, asked Angelo to demonstrate to the jury how hard…

Lead Stories *In December nationally known Emory University business school professor Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, age 43, abruptly resigned, according to several news reports, because the university had recorded him on a surveillance tape vandalizing a wall. He was also suspected to have previously gouged doors, woodwork, and furniture in the…

Lead Stories *The New York Times reported in October about the secret life of a 25-year-old British-born daughter of Pakistani immigrants living in Bradford, England, who has changed residences nineteen times in the last five years just to avoid death threats from her own father and brother. They’re angry that…

Lead Story *In November in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Kenneth J. Nowicki, age 34, was formally charged with disorderly conduct. According to the police complaint, Nowicki picked out three kids in a park, left them candy and a cup, and asked them via typewritten instructions to spit into the cup after eating…

Lead Stories *The Court of Appeal in London ruled in November that a convicted rapist who continued to call and write his victim and her husband from prison could sue the victim for libel because of what she wrote to the police when reporting the harassment. The rapist, David Daniels,…

Lead Story *Allegheny High School in Clifton Forge, Virginia (which is seventeen percent black), suspended two boys and a girl (all white) who wore Ku Klux Klan outfits to school as their Halloween costumes. In Saybrook, Illinois, however, the Lions Club awarded its prize for best schoolkid Halloween costume to…

Lead Stories *In November Denver school board candidate Lee McClendon lost his race despite a vigorous campaign promising to improve kids’ performances in reading, writing, and basic math. The loss might have had something to do with his 1984 guilty plea for attempted sexual assault of an eight-year-old boy, a…

Lead Stories *Kenneth Curtis, age 32, was arrested in November in Hartford, Connecticut; state prosecutors will again attempt to bring him to trial for the 1987 murder of a former girlfriend. Curtis had avoided trial earlier because of mental incompetence — he sustained a brain injury after shooting himself in…

Lead Stories *In September Michael F. Schmitz, age 45, serving two years in the Kentucky State Reformatory for drunk driving, filed a $1.9 million lawsuit against the Lexington Police Department, complaining that officers had been too nice when they arrested him in 1996. According to the lawsuit, when police found…

Lead Stories *In December 1996 Phillip Johnson, then age 32, of Johnson Bottom, Kentucky, shot himself in the left shoulder with his .22-caliber rifle “to see how it felt,” he told ambulance personnel. On October 2, 1997, an ambulance crew was again called to Johnson’s home, where he was bleeding…

Lead Stories *According to an October Reuters news report, a man who mooned German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a political protest two years ago near Vienna has decided to appeal his fine of about $357. The man has asked a court to require Kohl to come back to Vienna, take…

Lead Story *In September in Columbus, Ohio, Peter “Commander Pedro” Langan was convicted of federal assault and gun charges for a 1996 shootout with police. Langan has also been convicted of two bank robberies and faces trial in four others as leader of a neo-Nazi white supremacist gang that used…