From: Travis
From: Chuck Shepherd
Date: Sun, Jun 14, 2009
Subject: News of the Weird, June 14, 2009
WEIRDNUZ.M114 (News of the Weird, June 14, 2009)
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Terrorism Gets Pizzazz: A physical-fitness video, purportedly
made in April by a U.S.-based al-Qaeda operative, gives workout
tips to jihadists, urging that they "train as hard as possible" to
inflict maximum damage on "the enemies of Allah," according to
an ABC News report. Exercises such as crawling long distances
on hands and knees are demonstrated by people in flowing robes.
The narrator discourages using gyms and fitness centers because of
the "un-Islamic" music and "semi-naked" women. And a video
released in May, purportedly from al-Qaeda in Somalia, features an
English-speaking rap singer making a recruitment pitch to U.S. and
European youth, including such verses as: "Mortar by mortar /
Shell by shell / Only going to stop / When I send them to hell."
[ABC News, 4-21-09] [CNN, 5-4-09]
Can't Possibly Be True
* When a son, angry that his father had ordered him to clean up his
room, screamed at Dad and threw a plate of food across the dinner
table, Dad called 911. The son is 28-year-old Andrew Mizsak,
who lives rent-free with his parents in the Cleveland suburb of
Bedford, Ohio, and is a member of the Bedford School Board (and
whose mom is a city councilwoman). After police arrived, the
habitually untidy son apologized and, according to their report,
"was sent to his room to clean it. He was crying uncontrollably."
Subsequently, the School Board punished Andrew by removing
two of his duties. [Plain Dealer (Cleveland), 5-17-09]
* When courts in Nashville, Tenn., get too backed-up, a local
tradition allows judges to appoint well-known local attorneys to act
as "special judges" to help clear dockets. According to a months-
long investigation by WTVF-TV, broadcast in April, it appears that
at least some of the "special judges" used their power largely to
dismiss speeding tickets, including at least one instance of a
lawyer's dismissing his own client's ticket. The station found that
of almost 1,800 speeding tickets dismissed by courts during the
time investigated, 1,300 were by the "special judges." [WTVF-TV,
4-29-09]
* The U.S. Air Force has spent an estimated $25 million training
combat pilot Lt. Col. Victor Fehrehbach but is about to discharge
him involuntarily because he is gay. Born of military-officer
parents, Fehrenbach has earned 30 awards and decorations, with
tours flying F-15Es in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and was one
of the elite fighters called on to patrol the air space over
Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. Also about to be
discharged solely for being gay is Army infantry officer Daniel
Choi, a West Point graduate and Arabic speaker, who would be
(based on a 2005 Government Accounting Office report) at least
the 56th gay Arabic linguist to be dismissed from the U.S. military
since the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
[Dayton Daily News, 5-28-09] [ABC News, 5-13-09; New York
Times, 3-29-09]
* In September 2003, Lisa Strong was hospitalized for a kidney
stone, which was not treated properly, and by the time the
resultant, massive, life-threatening infections had been dealt with,
both her arms and both her legs had been amputated. She filed a
lawsuit against the doctors in 2005, but in May 2009, a jury in
Broward County, Fla., somehow could not find any fault at all by
doctors. (An incredulous Judge Charles Greene reversed the
verdict, dismissed the jury, and ordered a new trial.) [WFOR-TV
(Miami), 5-29-09]
Unclear on the Concept
* London's celebrated high-end restaurant Nobu still serves a
bluefin tuna entree for the equivalent of about $51 but is apparently
ashamed that it has a fresh inventory ready to carve, according to a
May report in the Daily Telegraph. Printed on the menu is this
advisory: "Bluefin tuna is an environmentally threatened species
please ask your server for an alternative." [Daily Telegraph, 5-29-
09]
Inexplicable
* They're Studying What? Where? (1) Doctors and specialists
from the New York Psychiatric Institute are in the middle of a two-
year investigation, on a $400,000 grant from the National Institutes
of Health (NIH), on why gay men have risky sex in Argentina.
Researchers visit gay bars nightly in Buenos Aires and question
men about their behavior and substance abuse. (2) Wayne State
University (Detroit, Mich.) researchers, operating on a $2.6 million
NIH grant, are now "training" prostitutes to drink alcohol
responsibly, to reduce the women's willingness to engage in risky
sex. However, the training is taking place in Quangxi province,
China. [Fox News, 5-8-09] [Fox News, 5-14-09]
* Challenges of Geography: (1) In March, China's Minister of
Railways Liu Zhijun acknowledged that the government has plans
for a rail line connecting Beijing and Taipei, Taiwan (which would
involve traversing the Taiwan Strait, which is 108 miles across at
its narrowest point). (2) The Czech Republic newspaper Lidove
Noviny reported in May that, as late as 1975, the Communist
government of Czechoslavakia was actively planning to dig a
tunnel from that landlocked country underneath Austria and the
part of Yugoslavia that is now Slovenia, to give it rail access to the
Adriatic Sea, 250 miles away. It is not known what the Austrians
and the Yugoslavs thought of the idea. [Taipei Times, 3-13-09]
[BBC News, 5-13-09]
Fine Points of the Law
* Kerry Fenton's pub, The Cutting Edge, in Worsbrough, England,
initially complied with the 2007 Smoking Act, which prohibits
lighting up inside. However, since smoking research is generally
carried on indoors, "research" was exempt from the law. Fenton
ultimately re-named part of the bar the Smoking Research Centre
and allows patrons to smoke provided they fill out questionnaires
about their habit. So far, according to a May BBC News report,
neither Britain's Home Office nor the local Barnsley council has
intervened. [BBC News, 5-13-09; Daily Star (London), 5-13-09]
The Aristocrats!
* (1) Timothy Martin, 44, was arrested in Federal Way, Wash., in
May for felony indecent exposure after he was spotted standing
partially nude with a string attached to his penis and, according to
police, apparently "manipulating it with the string like a puppet."
(2) Two workers at Yellowstone National Park were fired in May
after being caught on surveillance video urinating into the Old
Faithful geyser. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5-20-09] [MSNBC-AP,
5-14-09]
Least Competent Criminals
* Police in Indianapolis charged Fifth Third Bank manager
Dwayne Roberts, 31, with arson and theft after the failure of his
scheme to cover up embezzlement. Police said that Roberts
elaborately staged a fire inside a locked vault so that an
undeterminable amount of money would burn up, thus perhaps
covering his cash shortage. However, after Roberts had set the fire
and locked the vault, he realized he had left his keys inside and
could not re-open the vault or lock the bank's doors or drive home.
[Indianapolis Star, 5-12-09]
* Donny Guy, 31, was arrested in Hickory, N.C., in May and
charged with burglary of the Captain's Galley Seafood restaurant in
a caper caught on surveillance video. Guy was immediately a
suspect because he lives in an apartment about 50 yards from the
restaurant, and there were two paper trails from the restaurant
almost to his front door. The video revealed that, in carrying away
the two cash registers in the dark, the burglar failed to notice that
the spools of paper in each machine had snagged on something in
the restaurant and were unraveling with each step he took.
[Hickory Daily Record, 5-16-09]
A News of the Weird Classic (May 2002)
* Most Helpful Bureaucrat: When Hermilo Mendez, 28, found
himself behind bars on a minor charge early 2002 in Dilley, Tex.,
he realized that he finally had time to work on his long-desired
divorce and wrote the county clerk in San Antonio to start the
paperwork. First, though, he needed the clerk's help, in that he
could not remember his wife's name. The couple had married in
1992 after a one-week courtship, and she cleared out shortly
afterward. The clerk researched it and informed Mendez that he
had been joined in holy matrimony with "Violeta Sanchez Juarez"
and that she had apparently long ago returned to Mexico. [San
Antonio Express-News, 3-10-02]
Thanks This Week to Dan Karchmer, Janene Hols, David
Musheff, Caroline Lawler, Doug Miller, Alice Sullivan, Perry
Levin, Reid Branson, Stan Adams, Chris McDivitt, and Mark
Hazelrigg, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial
Advisors.
* * * * *
Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at
http://www.WeirdUniverse.net <http://www.weirduniverse.net/> (or
www.NewsoftheWeird.com <http://www.newsoftheweird.com/>) or
mail [email protected] / P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL
33629.
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