xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

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

Upscale pet hotels are open in New York, Hollywood and (based on a December Washington Post report) Fairfax County, Va., where the Olde Towne Pet Resort charges up to $230 a day for pooches’ use of a hydrotherapy pool, state-of-the-art exercise room, beauty parlor and suites with satellite TV, classical music and original, color-pleasing artwork (even though dogs are basically color-blind). (Products and services elsewhere on the pet-care market include gourmet food, heated dog beds, acupuncture and chiropractic treatments, herbal flea collars, water bowls with purifiers, and, according to a December Reuters dispatch from Tokyo, therapeutic mud packs for dogs, using mud from the Dead Sea.)

Freya McDonald, 15, and her family said they would soon file a lawsuit against the Speyside High School (Morayshire, England) for violating the European Convention on Human Rights by giving her 11 after-school detentions in nine months.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in November that the U.S. Department of Justice has for about 20 years blatantly denied attorneys overtime pay in violation of federal law, a practice the department defended merely by arguing that it thought there ought to have been an exception in the law (which is an argument the department usually scoffs at when filing its own lawsuits against lawbreakers). Court of Claims Judge Robert H. Hodges Jr. said the department apparently years ago simply declared itself immune from overtime-pay law for attorneys and has been maintaining two sets of time sheets (one for pay, one to track work on cases).
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Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD