Lead Stories
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In June, Milwaukee police officer Robert Henry, 34, was awarded lifetime disability benefits due to work-related stress, which he claimed was caused by the department’s decision to fire him after catching him roughing up a suspect on videotape in 2002. Henry, who joined the force in 1998, was awarded an immediate lump sum of $23,000 and $39,000 a year for the next 29 years–after which he’ll be eligible for full pension.
Police in Westerly, Rhode Island, arrested Robert Brayman, 51, and his disciple, Hobart Livingston, 42, in July, charging Brayman with commissioning Livingston to build a pipe bomb intended to kill a woman Brayman was stalking. According to police, Livingston submitted himself entirely to Brayman, believing that the latter had uncanny spiritual powers. Livingston reportedly paid Brayman nearly $14,000 over the last three years to prevent “alien eggs” implanted in Natalie Portman’s body from hatching and killing the actress. Part of Livingston’s spiritual training involved dodging shots from Brayman’s BB gun in a local cemetery.
The Classic Middle Name (all new)
A courthouse in Henrietta, Texas, was temporarily closed after lawyers and county officials were attacked by swarms of fleas infesting the building….Two mortuary workers in Harare, Zimbabwe, were charged with renting out corpses to motorists to enable them to go to the head of gas-station lines (the rules governing gasoline rationing give priority to hearses).
