Lead Story
In September the Zhu Ma Dian pharmaceutical company won a defamation lawsuit against a newspaper and a TV station in Liaoning, China, regarding the strength of the company’s sleeping pills. The newspaper had reported truthfully that a couple, distraught over gambling losses, attempted suicide by swallowing a total of six bottles of the pills, but wound up only with bad stomachaches. Since the story appeared at the time of the Chinese National Medicines Fair, the company claimed it lost about 90 percent of expected sales.
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In December two men and a woman were arrested in connection with the murder of Randall Sheridan, who’d been involved in a child-custody dispute with the woman in Junction City, Kansas. One of the reasons they were arrested was that their alibis had been refuted by a satellite photo, which purportedly showed that their cars were not parked where they ‘d said they were. Bail was lowered a few days later when the photo was revealed to have been a fake.
In February William Williams, 34, and Robert Williams, 32, were arrested in Des Moines, Iowa, and charged with breaking into a change machine and a detergent machine at a Laundromat. Police were assisted by an eyewitness, who said the men offered to give her several small packages of detergent if she’d keep quiet.
