Lead Stories *Officials at the Central Penitentiary in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, revealed in October that they are encouraging male inmates to marry each other in order to hold down HIV infections. Eight couples have taken the plunge so far. The marriages are valid only in prison because Honduran law does not…
Lead Stories *In October Miriam Flores, serving six years for robbery in Mexico City, was selected Miss Mexico Jailhouse in a pageant that featured fourteen of the city’s foxiest female inmates. A week later Pham Ngoc Tam won first place in a nationwide beauty contest of female jail guards held…
Lead Stories *People getting too much sleep: Michele and Tony Phebus were arrested in Lafayette, Indiana, in August after they fell asleep in their car between the microphone and the pick-up window at a White Castle drive-thru; police found numerous marijuana butts in the car and a brick of the…
Lead Stories *In a procedure denounced by the Association of Professional Piercers, Phoenix piercer’s apprentice Joe Aylward recently had a metal plate implanted under the skin of his skull so he can screw decorative spikes into his head. *Incriminating fingers: In Amsterdam in August and Miami in June, men were…
Lead Stories *On October 21 the CBS Evening News aired a videotape of an Iraqi wedding reception in which members of a cult of Sunni Muslims performed a series of severe self-mutilations to demonstrate their devotion to Saddam Hussein. While Saddam’s sons Odai and Qusai looked on approvingly, the men…
Lead Stories *Denny Constantine revealed to the San Jose Mercury News in October that he was part of a team that almost got the go-ahead to drop flying-bat bombs on Japan in World War II. The plan: Tiny incendiary devices would be attached to millions of bats, which would be…
Lead Stories *A New York Times report on the first day’s rescue operations for TWA Flight 800 in July mentioned a man in an army uniform who showed up at the crash-site command center and helped direct helicopter traffic for about twelve hours before those in charge realized they had…
Lead Stories *Several news services reported in October on the growing number of “telephone clubs” in Tokyo in which men (mostly middle-age and older) talk sex with junior high and high school girls. According to the Wall Street Journal, perhaps eight percent of schoolgirls participate at least occasionally. Many of…
Lead Stories *Right place, right time: In Pittsburgh, during the Steelers-Ravens football game in September, Allen E. Adams was picked up on a previous arrest warrant when a police officer recognized Adams’s name as a winner in the halftime field-goal-kicking promotion. And a few days later, in Victoria, British Columbia,…
Lead Stories *Overcoming disabilities: In September wheelchair-using men in Frankfurt, Germany (no legs), and Pompano Beach (missing part of a leg and one eye) attempted bank robberies but were thwarted when a customer and a cop, respectively, rushed in and tipped over the wheelchairs. Also in September, police in East…
Lead Stories *Dangerous minds: In the same week in September, Southwest Elementary School in Lexington, North Carolina, suspended a six-year-old boy for kissing a girl on the cheek (“sexual harassment”), and the New York Supreme Court disallowed the suspension of a fifteen-year-old boy who was carrying a loaded gun at…
Lead Stories *Conspicuous getaways: Armed with descriptions of the perpetrators, police made arrests fairly quickly in robberies in Chicago and Oshawa, Ontario, because thieves were unable to blend in with the crowd as they walked away with their loot. According to police, Jude Bradshaw was still wearing the green hat…
Lead Stories *In Chicago transportation analyst Steve Lewins, using the stationery of his employer, the investment firm Gruntal & Company, said he had information on alleged federal government complicity in the crash of TWA Flight 800 and the explosion of the Challenger. He said he deals with death threats against…
Lead Stories *Singapore began a clean-lavatories campaign in August. Officials said the measure of a nation’s social progress is the cleanliness of its public restrooms and its appreciation of music. And in April, the government of Shanghai, China, opened several “hotel-grade” public restrooms, charging about two cents per visit, that…
Lead Stories *The London insurance firm of Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson announced in August it would offer policies covering people worried about alien abduction. A premium of $155 a year would pay off $160,000 to an abductee (provided the abductor was not from Earth) and double that if the insured…
Lead Stories *Coincidental middle names: Conan Wayne Hale, age twenty, a triple-homicide suspect who allegedly confessed to a priest in Portland, Oregon, has been fighting for three months now to have the confession ruled inadmissible in court on the grounds of freedom of religion. And escaped murderer Michael Wayne Thompson…
Lead Story *Hillsborough County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies charged Jeffrey Alan McLeod, age 29, with robbing a Chevron gas station in August. He was caught after a brief chase when his car ran out of gas. Said a sheriff’s spokesman: “When you’re going to rob a gas station, you’re supposed to…
Lead Story *Three fishless bass-fishing tournaments were held last winter with anglers casting lines into indoor swimming pools and a computer determining whether the bait had struck water where a fish was. Dave Beuckman, publisher of a tournament fishing magazine, held the contests in Kansas City, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; and…
Lead Stories *Willie King, age 37, was arrested moments after he had allegedly mugged a 94-year-old woman in a housecoat just outside her front door in New York’s Greenwich Village in July. He picked the wrong prey: The woman is the mother of Vincent “Chin” Gigante, reputed godfather of the…
Lead Stories *Abdala (“El Loco”) Bucaram was elected president of Ecuador in July, six years after he briefly moved to Panama to evade corruption charges. In the campaign, Bucaram reminded voters of his tenure as the rectitudinous police commissioner of Guayaquil in the Eighties, during which he sometimes jumped off…
Lead Stories *At Thailand’s national games in June, to select those who would represent the country in the Olympic games, the gold medal in men’s volleyball was won by a squad of twelve transsexuals who have developed breasts and who dress as women but who have not yet had genital…
Lead Stories *Air New Zealand announced in June that it will permit cockpit crews on international flights to nap during periods of low activity as long as one pilot remains awake. The airline said that it thus hopes to end “unofficial and uncontrolled” napping, which it said pilots on all…
