Lead Stories
The New York Post reported in June that the state of New York has provided about 25 free organ-transplant operations, costing taxpayers about $1 million, to illegal aliens in the 18 months since Governor Pataki promised to end the practice. State officials told the Post they knew of “dozens” of cases over the years in which foreigners flew into the city, applied for Medicaid, received expensive surgery (which can include sex changes), and then flew home.
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Life imitates a Simon and Garfunkel song: In May a 26-year-old man in Madison, Wisconsin, phoned 911 to report that upon returning from the bathroom in the middle of the night, he discovered a stranger wearing only boxer shorts sleeping in his bed. The stranger turned out to be a very intoxicated 22-year-old student from De Pere, Wisconsin.
In June three members of Greenpeace set up a 12-by-6-foot survival station atop a narrow, barren, 65-foot-high rock called Rockall, 290 miles off the coast of Scotland, and vowed to remain there until the British government stops oil exploration in the Atlantic Ocean. Waves often reach heights of 90 feet or more in area storms.
A May report in the Jakarta Post described the pilgrimage of ill people to the home of Cecilia Subini and her husband Florentinus Suparmo in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, to be licked and nuzzled by their bull Joko Andhini. Thousands believe in the power of Joko’s saliva and urine (which some rub on their skin and others drink) to cure such maladies as incontinence, arthritis, strokes, rashes, diabetes, and cancer. And in June an Associated Press dispatch from Hyderabad, India, touted the success of a sardine-and-herb asthma treatment that hundreds of thousands of people ingest on the one astrologically auspicious day of the year for swallowing the fish.
Robert A. Jackson, 17, and another man were arrested in July and charged with robbing a convenience store and a gas station in Saint Peters, Missouri. According to police, when Jackson couldn’t get his car started after the first robbery, he apologized to the clerk and gave the money back in exchange for a jump start. The clerk started the car, then called police. Officers were already looking for Jackson when he allegedly pulled the second job.
