xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

In August, St. Louis, Mo., school board member Rochell Moore sent Mayor Francis Slay an open letter, criticizing his school-closing management reforms and advising him that because of his obstinacy, she had placed a curse on him. According to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Moore’s curse was modeled after Deuteronomy 28:21, in which Moses told the Israelites what would happen if they strayed from God, e.g., “The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto Francis Slay …” (When a former city comptroller later told reporters he thought Moore had “mental problems,” Moore allegedly threatened to kill him.)

The 2003 valedictorian of Alcee Fortier Senior High School in New Orleans failed (for the fifth time) the state’s mandatory exit exam, and she cannot graduate until she passes (August).

Workers tearing down the reactors at the old Hanford, Wash., nuclear reservation discovered dozens of radioactive nests of mud dauber wasps, but so far no wasp had mutated into a monster (August).

The district attorney of Watauga County, N.C., frustrated at the light sentences judges hand down for methamphetamine producers, announced that he will begin to charge defendants instead (via a recent anti-terrorism law) with manufacturing a “nuclear or chemical weapon” (August).
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD