Xxxnews Of The Weirdxxx
Hong Kong Tourism Board ads (promising that the city would “Take Your Breath Away”) debuted in several British magazines just as the SARS epidemic broke.
In a January ruling on the federal Tariff Code, the U.S. Court of International Trade declared the Marvel Comics X-Men characters to be “nonhuman creatures,” thus enraging the characters’ fans, who know perfectly well that the X-Men are humans. However, it was a Marvel Comics affiliate that called them nonhuman to begin with; the company was importing X-Men figurines, and at the time that the dispute with U.S. Customs arose, imports of “human” re-creations (called “dolls”) were taxed at 12 percent while imports of nonhuman re-creations (called “toys”) were taxed at 6.8 percent.
In March, a jury failed to convict Dr. Raul Ixtlahuac, 41, of sexually assaulting patients at his practice in Gilroy, Calif. (acquittal on one count, a hung jury on the other five). Ixtlahuac’s lawyer believes the key evidence for his client was testimony by another doctor, who had measured Ixtlahuac’s erect penis at 5 1/2 inches, which the lawyer argued made it impossible, due to the doctor’s height and that of the examining table, for him to have committed the assaults in the manner that the victims described.
In Lufkin, Texas, in January, Cody Carver, 19, was sentenced to eight years in prison for impregnating a 13-year-old girl but continued to insist that he and the girl could raise their child “if the world would only back off.” The girl’s mother knew the pair were sleeping together, according to a Child Protective Services report, but since she herself had had a baby at age 14, and her mother had had a baby at 14, and her grandmother had had a baby at 14, she thought there was nothing unusual. In a polygraph test, Carver admitted that his sexual partners had included two other underage girls, as well as a dog.
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Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD