Vietnam veteran Ronald Flanagan, in the midst of expensive treatment for bone cancer, had his medical insurance canceled because his wife mistakenly keyed in a “7” instead of a “9” in the “cents” space while paying the couple’s regular premium online, leaving the Flanagans 2 cents short.
Said the administrator, Ceridian COBRA Services, that remittance “fit into the definition in the regulations of ‘insufficient payment’” and allows termination.
Ceridian said it warned the Flanagans before cancellation, but Ron Flanagan said the “warning” was just an ordinary billing statement that did not draw his attention.
But,
did
it work?
McCaskey East High School in Lancaster, Pa., established a dynamic new program to improve their students’ educational outcomes: racial segregation.
At least three of the 11 junior class homerooms were designated as black-only with black girls “mentored” during homeroom period by black female teachers and black boys mentored by black male teachers — on the theory that kids will learn more from people who look like them.
Who’s
to say
they aren’t
as good? 
Among the annual events marking the New Year (similar to the ball-dropping at New York’s Times Square) according to a CBS News report: a pickle dropped into a barrel in a North Carolina town; a dropped bologna in Pennsylvania; a dropped frozen carp in Wisconsin; and, in Brasstown, N.C., the dropping of the opossum.
However, according to Clay Logan, founder of the event, the opossum is merely lowered, not dropped.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)