The U.K.'s Barnet Council got aggressive in August against a landlord in Hendon, in north London, who had defied an earlier order to stop offering a too-small apartment for residential rental. Landlord Yaakov Marom said tenants were still eager for the room even though the entryway required most people to drop to all fours, since it was less than 28 inches high (and therefore a fire-code violation). Council officers checking on the earlier order against Marom found a couple still residing there, paying the equivalent of $685 a month. [The Guardian, 8-22-2014]
When he was 19, Rene Lima-Marin (with a pal) robbed two Aurora, Colorado, video stores at gunpoint and, winning no favors from the judge, received back-to-back sentences totaling 98 years. In 2008, eight years into the sentence, Lima-Marin was mistakenly released and until this year was a model citizen, employed, married with a son, on good terms with his parole officer. However, the mistake was found in January, and he was returned to prison, and according to his lawyers in their August appeal, the original sentence has been reimposed, thus moving his release date to the year 2104. [KMGH-TV (Denver), 8-22-2014]
Among the more than 350 convicted violent felons whose right to carry guns has been restored over the past six years by the state of Georgia were 32 who had killed another person and 44 who were sex offenders, according to an August report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As pointed out by ThinkProgress.com, among those who once again can carry is Dennis Krauss, a former Glynn County police officer convicted of raping a woman after a traffic stop.
On Aug. 21 and 22, in front of Linwood Howe Elementary School in Culver City, California, traffic officials posted a towering parking regulation sign pole (reportedly, 15 feet high) with at least eight large white signs, one on top of the other - in familiar red or green lettering, restricting access to the school's curb lane. Each sign contains orders either to not park or to park only under certain conditions, each with its specific hours or other fine-print limitations. The mayor ordered the signs replaced on Aug. 22. [KABC-TV (Los Angeles), 8-22-2014]
Florida was one of 26 states to decline billions in federal funding under the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") to establish their own state insurance "exchanges" (including expanding their state Medicaid programs). Florida legislators chose instead to offer a separate state program, funded at less than $1 million, to provide a small level of assistance, including help to the 764,000 people whose low income qualified neither for Medicaid nor Obamacare subsidies. The Tampa Bay Times reported in August that according to the most recent tally, the nine private plans under Florida Health Choices had registered 30 people (26 of whom receive only discount plans for prescription drugs or vision care). [Tampa Bay Times, 8-28-2014]
Guests at the May wedding of Shona Carter-Brooks in Ripley, Tennessee, reported that the bride's idea for integrating her month-old daughter into the ceremony consisted of tying her ("well-secured," she said later) to the long train of her wedding dress, dragging the child as the bride walked the aisle. Carter-Brooks was forced to take to her Facebook page in defense: People always "have something negative to say," she wrote, but her wedding was "exclusive and epic." [People.com, 6-2-2014]
Plastic surgeons, first in University of Missouri research in 2000 and recently in a study by Singapore doctors in the journal of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, have postulated that the "ideal" navel is basically vertically shaped with slight hooding - and, of course, an "innie."
The earlier study "analyzed" photos of 147 females aged 18 to 62
