Lead Stories

House of Lords Babylon

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In September the tenth Lord Hardwicke, Joseph Phillip Sebastian Yorke, was suspended by Britain’s House of Lords after it was reported that he tried to sell cocaine to a journalist. Several days before that, Lord Dunleath reported in a speech to the house that he had discovered that photos of naked young men had been posted on the lords’ Web site.

In September lawyer Paula Sage, 39, running for judge in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, offered a $50,000 reward for evidence leading to the person who had distributed photos of her baring her breasts at a party in 1990. And in August Councilwoman Marlane Carr, 68, of Eleanor, West Virginia, was accused by two police officers of sexual harassment after she pulled up her sweater to flash them. Carr said the officers were retaliating for her public criticism of their job performance.

In June Valerie Nordstrom, 40, was convicted of improper driving and fined $35 after a Virginia state trooper stopped her for putting on makeup while driving in rush-hour traffic on a rain-slicked highway. The trooper said he followed her for a mile and a half while she was “stretched forward” so she could see her face in the rearview mirror.

News of the Weird has reported several times on lucky victims of point-blank gunfire who were saved when the bullets were stopped by a Bible in the hand or a stack of coupons in the target’s pocket, or deflected off keys or a golf ball in a pocket. In September Steve Mackins, 41, was shot in the stomach by an unidentified man who pulled Mackins’s truck over on a rural road near Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Doctors determined that the .25-caliber bullet had bounced off his belt buckle.

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration by Shawn Belshwender.