• In January, a New York City judge dismissed the original indictment of John Kennedy O'Hara, 55, who had been convicted in 1996 of the crime of "felony voting" -- the only person convicted under that state law since Susan B. Anthony, who cast a ballot in 1872 even though females were barred from the polls. O'Hara was indicted for voting in 1992 and 1993 after registering in Brooklyn elections from a "bogus" address -- a basement apartment that was considered uninhabitable. (A judge in 2017 determined that the apartment "could" have been habitable.) O'Hara paid $15,000 in fines and did 1,500 hours of community service. [New York Times, 1-13-2017]
• A University of Kansas professor and two co-authors, in Journal of Finance research, found that children age 10 and under substantially outperformed their parents in earnings from certain stock trading. A likely explanation, researchers said, is that Mom and Dad were buying and selling in their children's accounts if they had illegal insider information -- because they feared getting caught by regulators if they used it for their personal accounts. The kids' accounts (including those held by babies) were almost 50 percent more profitable than their parents'. (The study, reported by NPR, covered 15 years of trades in Finland, which, unlike the U.S. and most other countries, collects traders' ages.)
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