xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In March, students at Mount Saint Vincent University in Bedford, Nova Scotia, persuaded the administration to prohibit professors from using any plagiarism-detecting aid, to avoid (said the student union president) a “culture of mistrust.”
Students at Banja Luka University in Bosnia-Herzogovina protested in February the economics faculty’s decision to install surveillance cameras during exams. “Cheating in exams,” said one student, “is a part of our Balkan mentality, and it will take years to change students’ (attitudes).”
Twice in a two-week period, couples were found asphyxiated and enjoined in sexual positions in cars whose engines had been running in closed garages. A New York City couple, ages 28 and 21, who had been dating about a month, died in March, and a Milwaukee, Wis., couple, ages 23 and 17, died in February in a car whose engine had quit (though still with plenty of gas) because the concentration of carbon monoxide had prevented oxygen intake to the engine.
In March, New York Times fashion writers noted that the decision of several designers to shroud runway models’ faces in various ways during the annual Paris Fashion Week in February and March surely must be sending some message. Among the devices designers used: masks (making some models resemble “Hannibal Lecter in drag,” according to one critic), woven basket-like coverings and burqa-type swaddling. Guesses on designers’ motives included a reflection of general world gloom; tributes to the plight of Muslim women; and designers’ fear of beautiful faces’ distracting from their designs.
(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
