Lead Stories
In January in Toronto labor activist Dan Craig, 25, accepted a plea bargain that will keep him out of jail. Craig protested layoffs at an aerospace plant by suspending himself from a factory ceiling and playing Amazing Grace on a bagpipe for four hours.
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In West Union, Ohio, last winter, Berry Baker, 54, protested the school district’s placing sculptures of the Ten Commandments on school lawns by demanding equal space for statues promoting his “Center for Phallic Worship,” which he said is based on an actual religion. In February Baker filed a lawsuit against the district; in June the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill allowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed on public property.
Sean Barry, 23, was arrested in Chandler, Arizona, in May after summoning police for help when he couldn’t unlock the handcuffs he had put on for fun. When officers arrived, they ran a routine check on Barry and discovered there was an outstanding warrant on him for failure to appear in court on a traffic charge. They decided to leave the cuffs on until they got him to the station.
Ew, Gross!
Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: Annual riots in Bangladesh, first reported in News of the Weird in 1988, in which students demonstrate for the right to cheat on national placement exams. Hundreds are injured and thousands are arrested yearly. After this year’s riots in May, 11,000 students were expelled. Also no longer weird, the person who goes on a national TV talk show while on the run from criminal charges, making it easy for police or parole officers to find him, as Willie Johnson, 22, did in May. He appeared as a drag queen on The Jerry Springer Show while wanted in Houston for stabbing his sister’s husband.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Shawn Belschwender.
