Lead Stories
In February Richard Kreimer, a 55-year-old homeless man, announced that he’d reached a settlement (the terms remained undisclosed) in his lawsuit against a New Jersey bus company that had allegedly denied him service because of his body odor and irritating behavior, but he dropped his suit against the city of Summit, New Jersey, which he claimed had wrongfully kicked him out of its train stations. In 1991 Kreimer received a total of about $230,000 in his suit against Morristown, New Jersey, where he’d received similar treatment at the public library.
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The mayor of Appalachia, Virginia (population 1,774), and 13 others were indicted earlier this month on 269 counts of election fraud and corruption. The investigation into the alleged rigging of a 2004 election began after residents reported that a supporter of one candidate tried to buy their votes with offers of beer, moonshine, cigarettes, and, in one case, a bag of pork rinds.
Gregory Wheal, 42, of Coventry, England, was sentenced in January to four months in jail after his eighth conviction for stealing the eggs of rare birds. He admitted to possessing 75 rare eggs plus “items capable of being used for egg collection” (an egg-blowing kit and maps showing the location of nests); his lawyer told the judge that Wheal needed professional help. According to a wildlife officer, Coventry is the capital of British egg collecting, and Wheal is only one of eight known obsessive collectors in the area.
