xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

The Miami Herald reported in April that BellSouth called state Rep. Julio Robaina three times by cell phone on the floor of the Florida legislature during debate on a massive telephone rate increase and ordered him to abandon his Democratic Party cohorts and vote for it; BellSouth had influence with Robaina because for the nine months a year that the Florida legislature is not in session, Robaina is an installer for BellSouth, and he was described as close to tears at BellSouth’s lobbying.

In Tennessee in January, state Sen. John Ford, faced with a claim for increased child support from the mother of his 9-year-old daughter, formally challenged the constitutionality of the state’s child-support rules; however, among the rules challenged were those ushered through the state General Assembly last year by Sen. John Ford.

After an investigation, the FBI concluded that a motion sensor found on the tracks near Philadelphia’s 30th Street rail station just after the Madrid train bombings was not related to terrorism but was put there by a employee trying to sleep on the job but worried about a supervisor catching him.

In March in Hartford, Conn., Rebecca Messier, who was convicted with her husband, Joseph, in 1998 of giving $8,500 to a prosecutor to get a lenient sentence, petitioned in Superior Court to get her $8,500 back.
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