Good week, Bad week

Good week for:

Donita Weddle, of East Wenatchee, Wash., after her husband Gary, 50, finally shaved off the scraggly, foot-long beard he vowed 10 years ago to keep until Osama bin Laden was caught. “I wanted him to get rid of it, but it was his vow,” said Donita.

Role reversal, after a prison inmate at the Erie County Correctional Facility in New York broke up a fight between two corrections officers, who began brawling over a bag of chips.

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Baby steps, after the Alabama Senate approved a bill that would eliminate language from its century-old state constitution that calls for poll taxes and separate schools for black and white students. When a similar bill was passed in 2004, it was defeated in a statewide referendum.

Bad week for:

Enlightened management, after the Chinese factories that make iPhones and iPads responded to a wave of suicides by overworked assembly-line employees by forcing new workers to sign pledges that they would not kill themselves.

Judy Buranich, a middle-school English teacher in Middleburg, Pa., who was outed by parents as “Judy Mays”—the author of erotic romance novels. Said one upset parent: “I don’t want my son sitting in her class thinking, is she looking at him in a certain way.”

Delusions, after three Englishmen who tried to sail across the English Channel on a 7-foot dinghy greeted rescuers 11 hours later by saying “Bonjour,” believing they’d reached France. They were just two miles from where they’d started.