After an historic site along the lower Jordan River was closed for a day this summer for public health reasons, an environmental group, EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth (Middle East), called for a permanent suspension until the governments of Israel and Jordan (on either side of the river) assure that it is safe from agricultural discharge and untreated sewage.
Facing sites on the river both claim to be where John the Baptist baptized Jesus, and pilgrims flock to the sites to be baptized, as well.
You can’t
argue with that
The New South Wales Australia anti-corruption commission, at a hearing, got engineer Don Gamage to admit that he “exaggerated” his credentials to get a series of government contracts.
Nonetheless, Gamage was defiant: “If I didn’t exaggerate,” he explained, “the people of NSW would have missed out on the service and the benefit that I delivered.”
It was the chips
that got him
Bruce Tuck, who confessed in December to a series of rapes in Martin, Tenn., and was sentenced to 60 years in prison (and who faces still more charges) tried to withdraw his confession, complaining that he was not of sound mind at the time because, though weighing 275 pounds, he was being held in jail on a “lettuce-only” diet.
Thus, he said, he was unusually vulnerable when a detective offered him a bag of chips to admit to the charges.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)