Lead Stories
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In September police in Irvine, California, told the Los Angeles Times they were stunned by the rampant abuse of handicapped parking placards uncovered during a recent crackdown. Highlights: A teenager used her grandmother’s placard to park at a Weezer concert three months after the old woman’s death, then tried to persuade an officer that she was her grandmother (“So you’re 80 years old?” he asked). Another woman insisted that she’d inherited her husband’s parking privileges when he died.
In August in New York City, businessman Herbert Black sued socialite Denise Rich (ex-wife of Clinton pardonee Marc Rich) for breach of contract, claiming she’d never paid him for his services as a financial adviser. The suit alleges he saved her roughly $8 million a year, including $125,000 by arranging to have flowers delivered to her apartment less often when she was away, $30,000 by modifying the payment plan for her yoga instruction, and $52,000 by cutting down on “dog maintenance” (he gave away her two oldest dogs, which were so feeble that a sitter pushed them around Central Park in an $8,000 baby carriage).
Least Competent People
In Huntsville, Texas, 42-year-old Rex Mays was executed for the 1992 stabbing murders of two young girls; he’d once performed part-time in the Houston area as Uh-Oh the Clown….An Iranian trade official complained that, in the six months after September 11, Iran’s caviar exports had fallen by two-thirds (to ten tons) compared to the same period the previous year–because first-class airline passengers are the country’s largest market for the delicacy….And European researchers found that children whose bedding contains relatively high levels of “endotoxins”–that is, dirt and dust–have a lower asthma rate than those raised in cleaner environments.
