Lead Stories
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The Times of London reported in January that 10,000 current or former Irish soldiers have filed claims seeking compensation for hearing loss they suffered while in the military, either because of noise from firing ranges or because they played in army bands. Judges have been awarding them about $33,000 per claim, on average. The Times also reported that an Irish soldier on a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon has filed a claim against the army because he developed skin cancer. The soldier said he should have been issued sunscreen.
Seeds of Our Destruction
Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, who visited Scotland in October, left without accepting the invitation of British gay-rights leaders to be hooked up to an erection-measuring machine to determine whether his rabid antigay bias is really a cover for homosexual feelings. (Mugabe has called gays “lower than dogs and pigs.”) Research by a University of Georgia professor indicates that as many as 80 percent of gay-hating men become aroused at gay erotic videos.
In January Vanity Fair reported that death-row inmate Larry Wayne White got his preferred last meal before his execution in Huntsville, Texas, last May, but not a last cigarette. The prison is a nonsmoking facility.
In 1988 Iranian Merhan Nasseri, then 46, landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris after being denied entry into England because his passport and United Nations refugee certificate had been stolen. French authorities would not let him leave the airport, and there he has remained ever since. With his luggage by his side, Nasseri reads, writes in his diary, studies economics, and receives food and newspapers from airport employees. Charles de Gaulle spokeswoman Danielle Yzerman said, “An airport is kind of a place between heaven and earth; he has found a home here.” News of the Weird has also been around since 1988, and with this column begins its 11th year.
