Lead Stories
Multiculturalism in Sports
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According to a November New York Times report, Chinese soccer fans now harass opposing teams by yelling a word that is street slang for female genitals. The press has dubbed the yell the “Beijing curse.” And in Lagos, Nigeria, in November, the star player on the Cameroonian women’s soccer team, Gwimotoh Lilian, was disqualified from the championship series because all of her physical features are “male” except for her genitals, according to officials.
Jordan Locke, five, was suspended from elementary school in Pittsburgh in October when he showed up dressed for Halloween in a firefighter costume that included a five-inch plastic hatchet, which the school said was a weapon. And in November an advertising agency in Canoga Park, California, was forced to pull ads for Alterna Hemp Shampoo because an antidrug group complained that hemp should not be portrayed in a favorable light.
Family Values
Kevin Johnson of Chesapeake, Virginia, was convicted in November of attempting to defraud a Lowe’s Home Center store in 1993. According to the prosecutor, Johnson and a friend dropped cans of paint in an aisle to make it look like the cans had fallen from a shelf and knocked Johnson unconscious. Johnson was taken to a hospital and later filed a lawsuit for $250,000. After the judge noticed that the cans weren’t dented and had come from different parts of the shelf, he dismissed the lawsuit, and prosecutors took over.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration by Shawn Belshwender.
