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In June, Reuters profiled Jerri Lyons, 55, of Sebastopol, California, who conducts seminars on the legalities and etiquette of do-it-yourself funerals, which she promotes as an alternative to expensive funeral-home services. According to Lyons, personally bathing and dressing a deceased loved one makes the loss easier to accept. Tip: The deceased should be put on ice after about 24 hours (in a pinch, packages of frozen vegetables can be substituted for ice). An analyst for the funeral industry said Lyons was not seen as a threat and attributed a slump in profits to “a soft mortality rate due in part to a weak flu season.”
According to a wrongful-firing lawsuit filed in June by Stephanie Shepherd, a former media relations assistant for the Sacramento Kings basketball team, star player Doug Christie scrupulously avoids speaking to any female other than his wife out of “respect” for the latter. Shepherd says that her professional duties were gradually reduced to nothing after she passed along a telephone message to Christie and Mrs. Christie found out about it.
Update
Becky Nyang, 26, was hospitalized after being struck by lightning. The bolt was conducted to the inside of Nyang’s body by her tongue stud, leaving her with severe blisters about the mouth, face, and feet (Corfu, Greece). And a four-year-old girl was hit by a computer thrown from the 12th-story apartment of a South Korean father, who was angry because his daughter had failed to look up from the online game she was playing in order to greet him (Seoul).
