xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

In December, Vice President Cheney led a "hunting" party to the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, Pa., to shoot pheasants, which had been specially bred to be killed by the club's members and guests. Cheney reportedly bagged 70 ringneck pheasants plus some captive mallard ducks, and his party killed 417 of the approximately 500 pheasants released. A Humane Society executive deplored the shoot, suggesting that clay-target shooting would be just as challenging: "This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir."

A two-week spree of five customer holdups in front of ATMs in Cambridge, Mass., came to an end in November with the arrest of Richard McCabe, 38. In four of the five robberies, bank security cameras photographed the perpetrator, and McCabe was apparently so disliked by so many that when police released the photos, more than 100 people called up to rat him out. Said a detective, "Many ... people knew him personally from dealing with him in the past."

Delegates of French "villages of lyric or burlesque names" formed an association in October as sort of a promotional and support group made necessary because so many visitors laugh at the towns' names. Among them are villages whose names, translated into English, are beautiful mad, cuckold hill, filthy pig, my bottom, eat onions, very stupid and double-ass, as well as several names that are merely inexplicable.

Names to Be Read by Immature Readers Only
Re-elected in December as chief minister of Delhi, India: Honorable Sheila Dikshit.
Arrested in May for prostitution in Grove City, Ohio: Ms. You Suk Kim.
Revealed in September to be threatening to use his $5,000 Oakland, Calif., government arts support money to kill African-Americans: artist Richard Aswad.
Killed in August in a village near Sihanoukville, Cambodia, as a result of having his testicles defensively squeezed by his battered wife: Mr. Ouch Yan.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD