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News of the Weird

Staff
Friday February 01, 2002

Students ‘won’t eat if it smells like feet’ 

 

PITTSBURGH — Middle school students at Schiller Classical Academy are taking a bite out of history in an effort to improve the quality of their lunch. 

The students, who were inspired by civil disobedience in the Boston Tea Party and the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., have started their own revolt of sorts. 

Since mid-December, students have begun a boycott of the lunchroom and adopted the slogan: “We won’t eat if it smells like feet.” 

They complain their pre-packed provided meals often include half-thawed frozen peaches, watery macaroni and cheese, greasy pizza and discolored meat. School officials say Schiller is limited in its offerings because the school lacks a cafeteria. 

“They’re not good ... and every other day it’s the same thing,” said sixth-grader Brittany Ford, 11. 

The protest was sparkedby students in Antoinette Jones’ eighth-grade history class after Jones urged students to take action, instead of just complaining. 

“I told them to find a cause, document what they feel is wrong, document the steps they will take to change it, and I told them they must be willing to make a sacrifice,” Jones said. 

 

Anthrax is pink flour 

 

PITTSBURGH — A quirky running club that uses pink flour to help guide its joggers has run into a sign of the times. 

Anxious calls to police were made Monday when residents discovered the flour at locations across the city and feared it might be anthrax. 

“It was an error in judgment,” said Jerry Agin, 60, an official with the Hash House Harriers running club. He called police and quickly explained. 

The Harriers began its noncompetitive social runs in 1938. Over decades, the club has developed a worldwide underground following. 

A leader, known as a hare, gets a head-start and marks a course which other runners, known as hounds, follow.  

The course is marked with checkpoints and false-trails to create general confusion. 

This isn’t the first time Hashers have run into trouble using flour. 

On New Year’s Day, a mall in Fayetteville, N.C., was evacuated for two hours when another Harriers running club marked its trail with flour. And in October, a pair of runners in Oxford, Miss., were arrested after using white powder to mark their route through a busy downtown square. 

“I guess we’re just going to have to stay away from flour for a while — at least in the urban settings,” Agin said. 

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GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Shorty the dog should probably consider a career in law enforcement. 

Duane Palmer was playing fetch on Jan. 16 with his 11-month-old Labrador-Huskey mix when the dog returned with a wallet instead of the ball that was thrown. 

Palmer turned the wallet over to police and told them where it was found. 

Police said the address also was the location from which a woman called to report she had seen a man peeping into her living room window on Jan. 9. 

North Huntingdon Patrolman Theodore Kukich said he found footprints in the snow and what appeared to be an impression left by someone laying down — but the man had fled before he arrived. 

The woman who owned the apartment said she could identify the man if she saw him again. 

When police showed her a picture from the driver’s license found below her window, she positively identified a 23-year-old man, who was charged with loitering, prowling at night and disorderly conduct. 

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DANBURY, Conn. (AP) — Edward Ackell was in a hospital room, recovering from emergency surgery with tubes protruding from his body. But that didn’t stop him from casting a vote that forced a tie in the 138th House District election. 

Republican Rich Antous and Democrat Grace Scire each won 1,166 votes in Tuesday’s special election. A re-count is scheduled for Friday. 

The Danbury voter registrar’s office said the 71-year-old Ackell filled out the last absentee ballot issued Tuesday. Deputy Registrar of Voters George Schmiedel took the ballot to Danbury Hospital and left with Ackell’s vote at about 6:15 p.m., less than two hours before polls closed. 

Ackell won’t say who he voted for, although he is a Republican, according to his wife, Beverly. She said that for some reason she believed her husband’s vote was going to be important. 

“I said to him, ’Ed, you know I just have this feeling that this vote is going to do something for the election,”’ she said. After she called City Hall for help, Schmiedel delivered an emergency absentee ballot application and then returned with the ballot. 

Ackell was ready. He put on his glasses, found something solid to put between the ballot and the bed sheets, and said, “OK, give me the pen.”