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March 28th, 2024

Diversions

The Continuing Crisis

News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd

By News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd

Published March 16, 2015

The Continuing Crisis

Uh-Oh: The man hospitalized in fair condition in January after being rammed from behind by a car while on his bicycle happened to be Darryl Isaacs, 50, one of the most ubiquitously advertising personal-injury lawyers in Louisville, Kentucky. Isaacs calls himself the "Heavy Hitter" and the "Kentucky Hammer" for his aggressiveness on behalf of, among other clients, victims of traffic collisions. The (soon-to-be-poorer) driver told police the sun got in his eyes. [Associated Press via WKYT-TV (Lexington), 1-27-2015]

Elephants in Love: (1) India TV reported in January that a wild male elephant from an adjoining sanctuary had broken into the Nandan Kanan zoo in Odisha, wildly besotted with a female, Heera. The male cast aside two other females trying to protect Heera and mated with her. The male lingered overnight until zookeepers could shoo him away. (2) A frisky male elephant crushed four cars in 10 days in January at Thailand's Khao Yai National Park -- the result, said a park veterinarian, of the stress of the mating season. (Only the last of the four cars was occupied, but no injuries were serious.) [India TV News, 1-1-2015] [The Nation (Bangkok) via 9News (Sydney), 1-12-2015]

While nearly all Americans enjoy low gasoline prices, residents of sea-locked Alaskan towns (Barrow, Kotzebue, Nome, Ketchikan) have continued to pay their same hefty prices ($7 a gallon, according to one January report on Alaska Dispatch News). Though the price in Anchorage and Fairbanks resembles that in the rest of America, unconnected towns can be supplied only during a four-month breather from icy sea conditions and thus received their final winter shipments last summer. The price the supplier was forced to pay then dictates pump prices until around May or June. [Alaska Dispatch News, 1-2-2015]

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