xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In July, an Australian family was convicted in Melbourne of defrauding the Tax Office, after converting its farm in Victoria into the “Principality of Ponderosa,” claiming it was an independent kingdom that owed Australia nothing for its income from polystyrene box manufacturing. Virgilio Rigoli and his sons (including “Little Joe,” 25) had issued a Declaration of Independence in 1994 and required passports for anyone crossing the border “from” Australia. According to their lawyer, what initially angered the Rigolis was the Department of Agriculture’s bulldozing a crop that had become infested with a pest.
The Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area in Alameda County, Calif., with more than 5,000 windmills producing pollution-free electricity for 120,000 homes a year, was challenged by environmentalists in July because an estimated 1,700 to 4,700 birds a year get chopped up by the turbines, including birds of dwindling species.
( In June, two employees of North Carolina People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were arrested for illegally dumping 80 carcasses of euthanized dogs and cats into trash containers at a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Ahoskie. (PETA condemned the dumping but defended its use of euthanasia. However, a North Carolina county health director said she had understood that PETA would work harder to find animals homes before resorting to euthanasia.)
An official monitor in the online role-playing game Second Life told BBC News in April that he knows of spouses of game players who have actually paid money to online-game detectives to learn whether their mates are committing “virtual adultery” with other players’ characters in the course of the game. (Second Life encourages players to create a character and live out a made-up existence, which can of course include having an affair with another player’s made-up character.)
(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
