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Mike Pingree

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December 16, 2001

    A BIT OF A DISCREPANCY: A Chicago con man faked his own death to evade prosecution, smothering a homeless man to death in Massachusetts and having the body shipped home for cremation under his name. 
The plot fell apart when Illinois authorities did a routine examination of the deceased and noted that he weighed 165 pounds. The cops knew the con man weighs 450 pounds. He has been arrested.

    COME AND GET ME! The Verizon Wireless company fired a woman and made  a big mistake on her severance pay due to a wrongly placed decimal point. Instead of the intended $10,000, they calculated she was owed $1 million, or about $700,000 after taxes. She had been making $30,000 a year as a sales clerk. 
She says she has already spent $100,000 and has no intention of giving any money back. The company is suing.

    SHORT AND SWEET: A bridegroom in Qazvin, Iran, in keeping with the customs of his country, licked honey from his wife's finger at the wedding ceremony to ensure a sweet beginning of their life together.
 Unfortunately, it also marked the end of their life together as he swallowed one of her false fingernails and choked to death. The bride fainted.

    WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!? A 50-year-old man got very intoxicated in the middle of the day and then laid down between the rails of the train tracks in Dalton, Ga. Soon came a freight train. The engineer slammed on  the brakes but the train went right over him.
He was apparently asleep and was uninjured. However, his luck ran out when the cops ran him through the computer and found an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

    MAYBE THEY'LL LISTEN TO REASON: A flock of enormous vultures descended on a residential area in Fruitland, Fla., roosting on roofs by the hundreds, ripping up shingles and relieving themselves everywhere. And there's nothing anyone can do about it, because vultures
 are a protected species. 
The birds arrived in June. Government experts snapped into action the first week of December and are currently trying to get them to move on.

Mike Pingree writes another Looking Glass column in the Boston Sunday Herald. You can read it by clicking here:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists.html

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