Aggressive police questioning of a weak-willed suspect can produce an occasional false confession, but experts now believe that six men in a single case, and four in another, confessed to group crimes they did not commit, even though some described their roles in vivid detail.

In several European countries, identifying the naughty kids at Christmastime is not Santas job but is left to unsavory legendary icons who have endured for centuries (according to a December series of articles in Germanys Der Spiegel).

One of the worlds best-known strategists on the game of checkers passed away in November. Richard Fortman was Illinois state champion six times, and in the 1970s and 1980s published a seven-volume handbook on rules and tactics.

The Christmas Nativity scenes in northeast Spains Catalonia region have, for three centuries, featured not only Mary and the Three Wise Men but the ubiquitous caganer icon, always portrayed with pants down answering a call of nature (and often so obscured in the scene as to popularize Wheres-Waldo-type guessing by children).

Change Oregonians believe in: The voters of Sodaville (pop. 290) elected Thomas Brady Harrington, 33, mayor in November, notwithstanding his criminal rap sheet showing robbery, eluding a police officer, felon in possession of a gun and other crimes (with his electoral success perhaps due to voters’ confusing him with his father, a respected town elder).

The Brazilian designer Lucia Lorio introduced womens lingerie in October containing a global positioning device to enable the wearer to be tracked by satellite. The creator said the password protected lace bodice would make it easier for women kidnapped by thugs or terrorists to be located and rescued.

When a four-bedroom house inhabited by 50 tenants partially collapsed in October in Honolulu, at least 10 of the residents said they had been pressured to let the property manager give them experimental stem-cell injections.

Dutch designer Eric Klarenbeek, 29, has developed jewelry consisting of tiny crystals or flowers that hang directly from the eye via micro-thin medical wire attached to either prescription or blank contact lenses and, in the light, give the appearance of tears streaming down the cheek.

Recent research in the Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy sheds light on the thorny social issue of why females continue to earn less money than males, even in similar jobs. Competing hypotheses have been advanced: Its either gender discrimination or simply that more women than men de-emphasize career aggressiveness in favor of family.

Donna and Joel Brinkle of Deltona, Fla. raised a family and held respectable jobs until, in the 1990s, they declared themselves a sovereign nation and stopped paying taxes.