Lead Stories
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In 1997, News of the Weird reported on a lawsuit filed by DSC Communications, Inc., against software engineer Evan Brown, claiming that it owned his idea for converting binary code into high-level source code. Brown had signed a contract granting DSC ownership of any invention or idea he created on the job but argues that he’d actually begun thinking about the source-code solution 12 years before he was hired by DSC. Last month a district judge in Texas ruled against him, stating that any professional thoughts he’d had during his ten years with DSC (since acquired by Alcatel USA) belonged to the company whether or not they’d been expressed in tangible form.
In this year’s World Cup several soccer teams from African nations were confounded when Senegal almost made the semifinals without resorting to black magic. Teams from Mali and Ivory Coast have made news by burying animal parts under their soccer fields at midnight and stationing witch doctors on the sidelines to ward off spells, and in February a Cameroonian assistant coach was dragged off the field by Malian military personnel on suspicion that he was wielding a lucky charm.
Last month 11 people were injured when monks from the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church brawled with monks from the Coptic Christian Church of Egypt at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, believed to be the site of Jesus’s burial and resurrection. By agreement, the church’s seating and open spaces, including its roof, have been divided among various Christian organizations, and after an Egyptian monk on the roof moved his chair into the shade, the Ethiopians responded by throwing rocks, chairs, and iron bars.
In the Last Month
