Lead Stories
The New York Daily News reported in November that 71-year-old twin sisters Ynette Sapp and Olvette Mahan had just had plastic surgery to remove moles and wrinkles from their faces so that they would continue to look exactly alike. The doctor said such a situation is not unusual; another set of twins was scheduled the next day.
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Where’s Barry Scheck when you need him? In North Charleston, South Carolina, Malvin Marshall, 27, was finally released from jail on October 29 after being locked up for six weeks because a police field test identified material found in his pants pocket as heroin. When the state lab finally analyzed the substance, it was determined to be vitamin pills that had gone through a wash cycle while in his pocket. Said a police lieutenant, “The field test [is] not foolproof.”
In September a wristwatch depicting the prime minister of Malaysia on its face went on sale at the main parliament building in Kuala Lumpur, retailing for about $470. And in June the state of Louisiana reported that it had sold 100,000 of its own Royal brand condoms in the year since it had started manufacturing them. State health officials claim it is more economical to make their own than to subsidize higher-priced, brand-name condoms for high-risk patients.
In October Italy’s highest appeals court ruled that the breakup of a marriage was not the wife’s fault even though she had abandoned her husband. The wife said that after two years of battling and a fistfight, she was no longer able to tolerate her mother-in-law’s presence in the couple’s home. Rome’s largest newspaper, La Repubblica, was sympathetic, calling the typical Italian mother-in-law “unstoppable as a panzer, omnipresent, overbearing, meddlesome, and mischief-making.” And in August a Tokyo district court cited changing times when it rejected a $38,000 claim by a man who said his ex-wife had an obligation to do all the housework even though she had a full-time job.
Send your weird news to Chuck Shepherd, Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611.
