Extracted from US news papers:
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Sherri Lynn Rossi was hit in the head more than 20 times with a blunt object and left covered in
blood and in a coma on the side of a road, according to doctors in Pittsburgh in June. When she came
out of the coma, she identified her attacker as her husband, Richard A. Rossi Jr., pastor of the
local, independent, charismatic First Love Church. Richard Rossi denied the charge, insisting that
the hijacker must have been a man who looked like him and had a car like his, and that it was "very
possible, oh, yes" that his wife's attacker was Satan in human form. In October, Sherri Lynn Rossi
abruptly withdrew her accusation, and concurred that her attacker might have been a demon in human
form.
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New York city police arrested the city's most notorious traffic scofflaw, Leroy Linen, 41, in
November. He had inadvertently given them his real name when he was stopped for having only a crudely
hand-lettered "licence plate" on his car. Linen's driver's licence has been suspended 633 times since
1990. When police entered his name into their computer, it took an hour and 45 minutes to print out
all of his traffic violations. Still at large in the city are 340 others whose licences have been
suspended more than 100 times.
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Among the Republicans swept into office in November was Steve Mansfield, elected to Texas' highest
court that handles criminal appeals. Among Mansfield's pre-election lies or exaggerations (freely
admitted in a post-election interview in the publication Texas Lawyer) were his claim of vast
criminal-court experience (he is an insurance and tax lawyer), that he was born in Texas (actually,
Massachusetts), that he dated a woman "who died" (she is still alive), and that he had "appeared" in
courts in Illinois (never) and Florida (advised a friend of his, but not as a lawyer). Mansfield also
said he lived in Houston as a kid, but when a reporter asked if that was a lie, Mansfield admitted it
was. Mansfield called those and other instances "puffery" and "exaggerations," and said he would stop
doing that now that he is one of the highest-ranking judges in Texas.
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A judge in Santa Ana suspended a murder trial in September for one day so that a juror could get
medical help after she mistook nail adhesive for contact lens cleaner and glued her eye shut during a
recess.
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In Kirkland, Wash., a 30-year-old man on a motorcycle, who said he wanted to test a radar sign that
measures vehicle speed, raced toward the sign and watched it rise to "59" mph. However, the man then
smashed into the sign; he was taken to Evergreen Hospital Medical Center with numerous cuts and
bruises.
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On a sanctuary off the coast of Mauritius, England's Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust has run
breeding programs for seriously endangered species, including the extremely rare Mauritius kestrel
falcon and Mauritius pink pigeon. In October, the trust announced that one of the falcons had swooped
down and eaten one of the pigeons.
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Three cows at the University of Missouri Forage Systems Research Centre have been surgically equipped
with "portholes," the Brookfield News Bulletin reported in June. Twice a week, animal science
students reach into a cow's stomach, remove the contents, send the cow out to graze, then recheck the
stomach's contents when the cow returns. The cows don't seem to mind the procedure. "They just stand
there and ignore us," one student says.
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Police in Kewanee, Ill., charged "model citizen" Roger Harlow in October with 81 counts of burglary.
The insurance agent and part-time Sunday school teacher was accused of entering the homes of friends
and townspeople over a 10-year period when he knew they would be away and stealing about 1,000
valuables. Police said Harlow once was late to a golfing foursome because he stopped off to
burglarize the homes of the other golfers, and once he excused himself midway during a lunch date,
allegedly dashed away to burglarize his companion's home, and returned as the main course was being
served. He also allegedly stole from hospitalized friends' homes during hospital visiting hours.
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Aaron Miller, a 17-year-old Amish man, tried to outrun sheriff's deputies in August for four miles in
his buggy near Leon, N.Y. The officers followed patiently in their cruiser and ultimately charged
Miller with some traffic violations.
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Five Portuguese-Americans went on hunger strikes in November protesting the failure of their local
cable television system in the Massachusetts cities of Somerville, New Bedford and Fall River to
carry a Portuguese channel as part of its "basic cable" service.
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According to a videotape of the May meeting of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Party, the Rev. Matthew
Trewhella, guest speaker, told the audience that church congregations should be prepared to fight
physically against legalized abortions. Trewhella said he had trained his 16-month-old son to
identify which finger is his trigger finger. He also told parents not to play "pin the tail on the
donkey" but rather to promote an exercise in which a child is blindfolded and learns to take a gun
apart and put it back together.
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In a review of Diana Gazes' $29-a-ticket psychic spoon-bending seminar in July, the San Francisco
Chronicle reported that Gazes told the 100 attendees that their powers of concentration would "cause
an alteration in the spin of the atoms" of the spoon. To achieve that, the student should grasp the
spoon in both hands with thumbs underneath the smallest part of the handle and "apply some downward
strength." (Not surprisingly, the Chronicle reported, spoons handled in that manner bend fairly
easily.) As Gazes shouted "Bend! Bend!" the attendees leaped to their feet, one by one, waving
spoons, shouting, "I bent!"
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Skydiving student Sharon McClelland, 26, who had just amazingly survived a 10,000-foot plunge in
September near Queensville, Ontario, into a marsh when her parachute malfunctioned, struggled to her
feet and rushed to apologize to her instructor Kevin Killin because she had not followed procedures
to open her backup chute.
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Organizers of a pop music concert at Hong Kong Stadium announced in October that they had reached an
accommodation with nearby residents who fear the loud noise. Organizers will give out 17,500 pairs of
gloves for the audience to wear so that when they enthusiastically applaud their idols, they won't
make very much noise.
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Frederick Treesh, 30, is one of three men accused of being the gang of "spree killers" that
terrorized the Great Lakes states this past summer. A police officer alleges that Treesh said: "Other
than the two we killed, the two we wounded, the woman we pistol-whipped, and the light bulbs we stuck
in people's mouths, we didn't really hurt anybody."