Lead Stories

After resisting for five years, Missouri was forced by a federal judge in November to allow the Ku Klux Klan into its Adopt-a-Highway cleanup program. In September the army revealed that its new lead-free combat bullet will not be ready before 2003; it needs the bullet because 1,000 indoor military firing ranges are currently closed due to lead contamination. In June researchers at Ontario’s University of Guelph reported genetically engineering a pig that produces manure 20 to 50 percent lower in phosphorus–which can pollute water supplies–than ordinary pig manure.

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »

In 1998 Florida passed the Marriage Preparation and Preservation Act, which requires license applicants to read a 16-page booklet heavy on parenting techniques and responsibilities and gives a $32.50 license discount for taking a four-hour course. In September Max Gordon and his fiancee, Mollie Levy, planned to marry in Delray Beach until Max had trouble reading the book because of his cataracts. Max is 90, Mollie 82, and between them they have six children and 31 grand- and great-grandchildren.

In July police in Dhaka, Bangladesh, rescued two spider monkeys that a drug dealer had chained up and used to sell his product to reduce employee theft. Signs ordered customers to pay the monkeys in either of two denominations, which the monkeys could distinguish by color, after which the monkeys would fetch the appropriate quantity of drugs from their hiding places.

Least Competent Criminals