Lead Story
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The UK’s Department of Work and Pensions acknowledged in April that it had a system in place for providing benefits to members of polygamous households that are formed legally in other countries but later settle in Britain, where polygamy is illegal. For instance, a polygamous husband and one wife can qualify for roughly $184 per week in joint unemployment benefits, then claim additional wives as adult dependents, each of whom receives an extra $67. While Conservative politicians expressed outrage that the government was “rewarding” polygamy, a Work and Pensions official maintained this wasn’t so, as a single woman can claim nearly $120 per week in such benefits, far more than she would receive as a polygamous wife.
Just like a fender bender, except you’re naked: Police were called to a brothel in Braunschweig, Germany, in June to mediate a dispute. After a condom broke during sex, a prostitute requested her client’s contact information in case of any future medical ramifications, but he was reluctant to provide it; according to a Reuters account, officers ultimately persuaded both parties to turn over the necessary details.
Inexplicable
News of the Weird has reported several times over the years on people whose personalities have changed dramatically following trauma to the brain. In March a judge in London awarded about $2.4 million in damages to 28-year-old Kunal Lindsay, who suffered a head injury in a 2002 highway collision. In addition to a newfound obsession with sex that led him to pester his wife in uncharacteristically graphic terms, Lindsay developed an overwhelming interest in cell phones: he began spending hours each day playing with his phone (he had accessed his favorite phone-based game 8,000 times in the previous 12 months) and, according to the Telegraph, became unusually likely “to enter into unwise phone contracts.”
