Remove ImagesNews of the Weird
March 05, 2009
THAT'S IT, WE'RE MOVING TO BELGIUM
Belgian workers take sick leave nearly four times as often as U.S. workers. This is mostly attributed to Belgian law, which grants full salary the first month and then government-guaranteed 80 percent pay indefinitely. A recent study, noted in a January Wall Street Journal report, found that only 5 percent of Belgian leave-takers were proven malingerers, but that the biggest medical problem now is easily-diagnosed "depression" (exacerbated by the worsening economy), leading to free-form medical leave-taking and creative treatments that often go unchallenged, such as for the man who frolicked on the soccer field, bought an Alfa Romeo and reconnected with old friends (all of which, not surprisingly, said his doctor, lessened his depression).
LEGAL INCONSISTENCY
On successive days in January in the courthouse in Sheboygan, Wis., 17-year-old Alan Jepsen and 17-year-old Norma Guthrie were each charged with sexual assault for having consensual sex with their respective 14-year-old, opposite-sex companions. However, Jepsen was charged with a felony (maximum: 25 years in prison), and Guthrie was charged with a misdemeanor (maximum: nine months).
WITNESS PROTECTION
In January, a judge at Britain's Bristol Crown Court dropped the case against a 20-year-old man accused of robbing a driving instructor because the victim-witness was "too believable" in her testimony to the jury. Judge Jamie Tabor explained that the victim had only seen the defendant for a split-second, but that she appeared so sincere and courageous that the jury probably regarded her courtroom identification of the man as more authoritative than the mere glimpse deserved.
FINAL DESTINATION
Australia's Queensland Rail agency disclosed in January that it would quickly offer refunds to passengers on a Cairns-to-Brisbane train that crashed just outside Cairns, but reiterated at the same time that it would not pay refunds to survivors of a November 2008 Brisbane-to-Cairns train crash that killed two and injured nine. The difference, according to a Queensland Rail general manager, was that the 2009 trip was just getting underway from Cairns when it crashed, but that the 2008 trip, also near Cairns, was "95 percent over" by the time the deadly crash occurred (and thus, the survivors had basically reached their destination).
TRAGIC IRONIES
The $500,000 top prize in Alaska's January statewide lottery, to benefit the organization Standing Together Against Rape, for victims of sexual assault, was won by Alec Ahsoak, 53, who coincidentally is a twice-convicted sex offender. (2) Sweden's Hallands Nyheter newspaper reported in January that a police officer had endured four operations at a private clinic in Gothenburg to correct a birth condition that made one leg shorter than the other, but operations on the longer leg cut off too much, so it is now shorter than the leg that used to be the shorter one.
COACH-ON-COACH ACTION
In January, assistant coaches Scott Coy and Darren DeMeio, of the Westminister College (New Wilmington, Pa.) football team, who were in Nashville, Tenn., for a coaches' convention, were seriously injured during 4am horseplay-wrestling at their hotel. The men, who weigh a combined 525 pounds, crashed through the double-paned window in their fourth-floor room and fell to the ground in their underwear. MTW