NEWS OF THE WEIRD
Kim + Donald, sort of
Visitors to Merlion
Park in Singapore on June 8 were startled to see Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump enjoying a casual walkabout, hand in hand. On closer inspection, however, they would have seen the two men were Howard X, a Kim impersonator, and Dennis Alan, a Trump impersonator, who traveled to Singapore in advance of the summit between the two real leaders.
Janette Warokka of Indonesia was fooled: “It’s so shocking for me. I don’t know why those two famous guys come here,” she told the Associated Press.
Airport officials were less amused when Kim’s doppelgänger, whose real name is Lee Howard Ho Wun, arrived at Changi Airport. Wun said police officers searched his bags and detained him for two hours before releasing him with stern warnings to stay away from the summit.
Cheesy lawsuit
If you’ve ordered a Quarter Pounder recently and specified “no cheese,” you may be interested in a $5 million class-action lawsuit brought against McDonald’s on May 8 by Cynthia Kissner of Broward County, Florida, and Leonard Werner of Miami-Dade.
According to the Miami Herald, the two are angry that they’ve been paying for cheese even though they order their sandwiches without it. The lawsuit contends “customers ... continue to be overcharged for these products, by being forced to pay for two slices of cheese, which they do not want, order or receive.”
Also, Kissner and Werner “have suffered injury as a result of their purchases because they were overcharged” and “McDonald’s is being unjustly enriched by these practices.” While attorney Andrew Lavin admits the mobile app ordering option does offer a Quarter Pounder without cheese, he notes in-store customers have no such choice.
Everest vs. stairs
Charlotte Fox, 61, an accomplished mountain climber who summited Mount Everest in 1996, met an unlikely death
May 24 when she fell down the hardwood stairs at her home in Telluride, Colorado. Fox was part of the infamous 1996 Mount Everest expedition chronicled in “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer, when eight climbers died. Friends called her fall “shocking,” according to the Aspen Times. Climbing partner Andrea Cutter said of the news, “It made me think, ‘Jeez, it’s just so wrong.’ ”
Doing shots
Things got wild June 2 at Mile High Spirits and Distillery in Denver when an unnamed off-duty FBI agent accidentally shot patron Tom Reddington, 24, in the lower leg. According to the Denver Post, the agent was dancing and did a backflip, which caused his firearm to come out of its holster and fall to the floor. When he bent to pick up the gun, it discharged.
“I heard a loud bang,” Reddington said, “and I thought some idiot set off a firecracker. All of a sudden, from the knee down became completely red, and that’s when it clicked in my head, ‘Oh, I’ve been shot.’ ”
A man at the bar applied a tourniquet to Reddington’s leg. The FBI agent was taken to Denver police headquarters and released to an FBI supervisor. Mile High Spirits has promised “complimentary drinks forever” to Reddington.
Fired up and out
In a bid to unseat his boss, Bon Homme County, South Dakota, Deputy Sheriff Mark Maggs thrashed Sheriff Lenny Gramkow in the June 5 Republican primary by a 878-331 vote. So Sheriff Gramkow didn’t waste any time: Less than a minute after the polls closed, he fired Maggs, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported.
Maggs, a 31-year-old father of four, will not become sheriff until January, but he is confident the county commission “will stand with my family … and ensure that my family will not be left hanging without an income or insurance,” Maggs said. “We’re going to be fine.”