Magicians Sue Brazilian TV Network:
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Magicians claiming they nearly went broke after a television program aired the secrets of their trade have won a legal fight against Brazil's largest television network.Yes, Virginia!
TV Globo must pay damages to 21 magicians in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul because of a program that revealed how magicians perform such tricks as pulling rabbits out of hats and sawing women in half, Judge Eduardo Kothe Werlang ruled recently.
The show featured Leonard Montano, an American magician known as "Mister M" who always hid his identity with a scary black mask and was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
"Mister M took all the magic out of magic," Paulo Roberto Brito Martins, one of the magicians who sued, said Friday. "It was like depriving a child of happiness and the right to fantasize when you tell him Santa Claus does not exist."
Wife Held on Using Perfume to Harm Spouse:
STUART, Fla. - A woman was arrested for dousing herself with perfume, spraying the house with bug killer and disinfectant, and burning scented candles in an attempt to seriously injure her chemically sensitive husband, prosecutors said.If he's a faker and the wife wants half, what does that make her?
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David Taylor, 46, is disabled due to allergies that resulted from exposure to toxic mold and hazardous chemicals as a construction worker, his doctors say. That exposure netted him $150,000 in a recent workers compensation settlement.
The fragrant incident occurred on April 4 during a conversation the couple were [having] about separating after three years of marriage. Taylor told investigators that his wife became enraged when he refused to give her half of his settlement.
"Lynda came in the kitchen wearing perfume and applied some to (her daughter). Then went around the house spraying Lysol and even sprayed some in my face," David Taylor wrote in his complaint.
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Lynda Taylor's attorney Karen Steger said the charge is a misuse of the criminal justice system.
"The guy's a faker," she said. "He just wants to gain an advantage in the divorce case."
