THE SIN OF SLOTH

People sometimes stage ruses to avoid unpleasant tasks, like the student who calls in a bomb threat when he’s not studied for an exam, but Dwayne Yeager’s motivation was just laziness. Yeager, 31, called cops in Brandon, Fla., in March, reporting a “burglary” at his home, but after questioning, officers charged him with making up the “crime” just so he could stay home from work that day. Coincidentally, in Kittery, Maine, three days earlier, the U.S. Navy formally decommissioned its nuclear submarine USS Miami, which had suffered irreparable fire damage caused by a shipyard worker in 2012. The worker started what he wrongly believed would be a small blaze so he could get off work that day — a decision that got him 17 years in federal prison.