xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Are We Safe?
(1) Congress’ Government Accountability Office reported in March that, mainly because of gun owners’ privacy rights, the FBI or state officials were unable to stop 47 of the 58 gun purchases by people who were on the FBI’s own terrorist “watch list” (during a nine-month period last year).
(2) A February report of the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general accused the agency of intentionally disbursing seaport-security grant money widely across the country instead of greatly increasing inspections at the 10 ports through which nearly 80 percent of trade moves (a practice that resulted in maritime grants for Oklahoma, Kentucky, New Hampshire and Tennessee).
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported in April that last year’s hurricane season in Florida caused 123 storm-related deaths, but that 315 families managed to convince the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for their relatives’ funerals as storm-related.
In April, the scheduled elections for town offices in Monticello, Wis., never took place because, as Town Clerk Walt Weber told Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel, “We forgot.” (According to Weber, none of the incumbents, including himself, would have been challenged anyway.)
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD