xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

Alaska is reputed to be the state most laden with congressional overspending (thanks to its powerful U.S. Rep. Don Young and U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens), and an April New York Times dispatch described two proposed, marginally useful bridges for the state that will eventually cost taxpayers more than $2.2 billion. One, almost as big as the Golden Gate bridge, would connect Ketchikan (pop. 7,800) with a 50-resident island and the town’s modest airport (and would replace a five-minute ferry boat ride), and the other, a 2-mile-long span, would connect Anchorage, according to the Times, to “a port that has a single regular tenant and almost no homes or businesses.”

Universal Health Care (for Prisoners): A judge in Wilmington, N.C., had to officially “release” accused murderer Shirley Spaulding in May, as a ploy, to get the state to start picking up her medical bills. Brunswick County was running out of money because it has paid nearly $400,000 to treat her respiratory illness while she awaits her death-penalty trial. (Fortunately, she was too sick to depart custody.)

Donnie Newsome, the chief administrator (called the “judge-executive”) of Knott County, Ky., was convicted in October 2003 of buying votes, then denied bail during his appeal because the judge found him a “danger” to the community, and then sentenced in March 2004 to two years in prison. But Newsome still manages the county’s affairs from a detention facility in Lexington, getting briefings from an assistant during visiting hours. (Kentucky law does not require the resignation of convicted officials until their appeals are exhausted.)

The West Virginia secretary of state ordered the polls still to be open in the town of Littleton for the June 8 municipal election, even though no candidates ran for any of the seven offices and write-ins were disqualified. (The town will probably disband.)
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