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News Of The Weird
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
June 09, 2005
The agency that oversees Spain's stock market announced it will implement a rule starting in July requiring each director of an exchange-listed company to disclose not just names of family members but of any other "affectionate relationship," straight or gay, that the director may have. The purpose is to help monitor insider trading. Also, in Nanjing, China, municipal officials were ordered in May to disclose any extramarital affairs, as a way of reducing officials' payoffs to mistresses, according to Xinhua news agency.
CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE
Among the most striking federal government "pork" grants funded in November was $1.5 million for a new bus stop (several times more than the typical cost) in front of Alaska's Anchorage Museum of History and Art. To replace the current kiosk, the city's transportation director said he imagines a generous upgrade, including perhaps a heated sidewalk to deal with the snow: "We have a senator [Ted Stevens] who gave us that money, and I certainly won't want to appear ungrateful."
INEXPLICABLE
An undercover sheriff's deputy—whose name was not disclosed in a May news report—filed a lawsuit recently against the Florida Hospital in Orlando because, he said, in October 2000 medical staff injected his hip with what appeared to be cosmetic makeup glitter instead of pain medication. The deputy said a four-inch mass was removed and appeared to contain specks of green and red sparkle, and that pain at the site continues.
JUST PLAIN NUTS
Police in Springfield, Ore., charged Pamela Ann Hemphill, 51, with theft in April after she allegedly snatched neighbor Walter Merritt's Charles Schulz-signed, original Peanuts cartoon strip, locked herself in a bathroom, removed her clothes, got under the shower, wet the cardboard thoroughly and finally flushed the pieces down the toilet. Hemphill declined to explain and Merritt said he had no clue as to motive.
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS
Police in Hackettstown, N.J., charged Juan Vargas, 29, with public intoxication at a Dunkin Donuts shop after spotting him speaking into his wallet as if it were a cell phone (February). And in Danbury, N.H., in March, Steven Metallic, 39, was arrested after a two-hour standoff in which he filled his mother's home with propane gas and threatened to blow it up. Metallic finally fell for a police ruse when they pretended to leave. Officers who remained behind captured Metallic tiptoeing out of the house.
CREME DE LA WEIRD
Four former patients of clinical psychologist Letitia Libman sued Delnor-Community Hospital in Geneva, Ill., in March and April for malpractice, including claims that Libman's hospital treatments for neurological disorders included tarot cards, love potions, DNA-based hexes, patient nudity and self-mutilation. Libman also allegedly bragged of her travels among space aliens. In May, the lawsuits were amended to include Libman herself as a defendant, a move that the plaintiffs initially resisted because they feared Libman's witchy retribution. MTW