-- News of the Weird last year ran the announcement that an Australian scientist was working on growing human sperm cells inside mouse testicles, and in February 1999 a team at Tottori University in Japan announced it had actually grown some that way. But just when science was making men obsolete, prominent British fertility researcher Lord Robert Winston told reporters that his book (due in April) would show how an embryo could be planted in a man's abdomen, develop to full term by massive infusion of female hormones and attachment to certain organs for nourishment, and be born by Caesarian section.

-- Despite his high-profile job, Tarrant County (Fort Worth, Texas) Sheriff David Williams has apparently stopped meeting with the Fort Worth police chief and county commissioners and even his own administrators, and rarely goes to his office, according to a February Houston Chronicle report. His defenders say he is merely extremely shy, but critics say he hasn't taken criticism well (his too-close ties to the Christian political right, his eccentric new projects such as a helicopter fleet, and his earlier attempt to acquire sovereign powers from the county under the law of the Republic of Texas as it was in 1836).

In December, a telephone company in Ukraine cut off service to the Russian naval fleet patrolling the Black Sea because of unpaid bills of about $150,000. Additionally, the fleet owes about $3 million for heat and electricity to the port city of Sevastopol. And in December, the chief surgeon at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn Hospital told reporters that Thailand is now the pre-eminent country in the world for sex-change operations, which could, if exploited, help the nation's anemic economy, considering that more than 35,000 transsexuals worldwide are now on Thai surgeons' waiting lists.

From recent police reports: Fort Lupton, Colo., December, woman tried to rob a Bank of Colorado wearing a large garbage bag over her body. Huntsville, Ala., December, man robbed a Circle C convenience store with his face swathed in toilet paper. Bexley, Ohio, January, man robbed a National City Bank while wearing checkered pajamas and bedroom slippers.

A top Columbia University law student, Zolton Williams, 29, was convicted in December of running a cocaine-smuggling operation to help finance his studies. And in January, University of California at Santa Cruz National Merit Scholar Emma Rose Freeman, 18, was charged with robbing a beauty salon and a Costco store at gunpoint (along with her philosophy-major boyfriend). And Berkley, Mich., honor student and athlete Sarah Plumb, 16, was charged with the armed robbery of a gas station in December (on her way to gymnastics practice), allegedly to feed a 2-year-old heroin habit.

-- Carmel Valley, Calif., grocery cashier Sandi Lewtschuk was fired in October after 20 years at Safeway because, though she had no customer complaints, she was deemed deficient by management in executing the company's "smile" policy. (Lewtschuk and other Safeway employees have criticized required smiling as phony, and some female employees in San Francisco said the policy encouraged male customers to believe the women were flirting.) And in January, flight attendants for Cathay Pacific Airways (Hong Kong), feuding with management over automatic pay hikes, threatened to violate that company's smile policy by frowning for one hour per flight.

-- Brian Mills, 20, was charged with malicious destruction of property in December after he returned to a fast-food restaurant in Lincoln Township, Mich., where he used to work and urinated into the deep-fat fryer. (Local health officials said the risk to the public was minimal because the frying temperature is so high.)

-- In January, a union filed a complaint on behalf of a male civilian employee at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida who was recently barred from wearing earrings, makeup and a bra to work as an airfield management specialist. On the other hand, the Canadian armed forces last year approved the application of a 35-year-old male combat leadership instructor to continue his career as Sgt. Sylvia Durand by undergoing hormone treatment and surgery.

-- Inmate George Davis, 58, filed a lawsuit in February against the federal correctional center at Fort Dix, N.J., for its failure to treat his sleep apnea, a condition that causes loud snoring. He said he needs treatment especially because he is vulnerable to getting beaten up by inmates whom his snoring keeps up at night. (At his last facility, he says, he was knocked from his bunk, had water dumped on him, and once had his bed set on fire.)

-- The lawyer for suspected Dayton, Ohio, Bank One robber Donnie D. Tunstall said she might challenge a police search that turned up a shotgun. Tunstall and the gun were found in January in a downtown Dempsey Dumpster, which the lawyer said is actually Tunstall's home (and which contained bedding and other personal items), and police need a judicial warrant to search someone's home.

-- Mr. Wim de Nijs had his piloting privileges restored by the airport in Groningen, Netherlands, in August after a court ruled the airport had gone too far in punishing him for abusing radio frequencies. De Nijs was notorious for tying up air traffic controllers' channels by singing the theme song to "The Flintstones" in English for up to 20 minutes at a time.

Fort Smith, Ark., police arrested James Newsome, 37, in January and charged him with taking money at gunpoint from the Gas Well convenience store. The robber was easily identified from the surveillance tape, plus, the coat worn by the robber was found in Newsome's car. Also, Newsome's wife said the family car had a radiator leak, and a puddle of antifreeze was found beside the store where the robber parked. Also, the robber wore a hard hat with "James Newsome" on it.

News of the Weird has reported several times on people who have swallowed large quantities of metal objects for various reasons (suicide, mental illness, showing off). In Ankara, Turkey, in February, Mr. Omer Faruk Cetinkaya reported to a hospital with abdominal pains, which turned out to have been caused by the screwdriver, 20 nails, six magnets, and several lengths of wire in his stomach, which were removed by surgeons. The patient's father said his son had recently undergone counseling but that it had not been successful.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- The Louisville Courier-Journal reported in February that the Louisville Free Public Library is tied up in probate with the family of the late Audrey Jean Knauer over a $290,000 bequest and that the outcome might depend on whether the actor Charles Bronson wants the money. Ms. Knauer died in 1997 and inexplicably willed her money to Bronson, whom she labeled a "talented character actor" but whom in all likelihood she had never met. Ms. Knauer's mother wants the money; the library says it could buy 20,000 books; and Bronson has not yet responded.

-- Rev. Henry Lyons, head of the nation's largest organization of black Baptists, went to trial in St. Petersburg, Fla., in January, accused of defrauding two firms that thought they were purchasing an 8.5-million-member mailing list from Lyons' National Baptist Convention. Prosecutors insist the number was wildly inflated, and Lyons' former administrative assistant testified that after one such deal was made, Lyons instructed her to use a telephone-book software program to create a membership list by selecting names that sounded black. The assistant said she eliminated last names that began with "z" and also names that ended in "ski." Among the names that wound up on the list was an imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

-- In December, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, president Carol Harter moved the offices of most of the school's English composition teachers out of the campus's historic Houssels House and into a group of double-wide trailers in order to make room for a new Consciousness Studies Program, which investigates near-death experiences and other new-age topics. That program was recently created with a large donation from a prominent real estate developer.

-- In January, Fort Worth, Texas, murder defendant Robert William Greer Jr. agreed to plead guilty to a 1988 killing if the judge would keep him in the local jail for two more weeks before sending him to the penitentiary so that he could be assured of seeing the Super Bowl on TV. (Greer thought TV privileges in prison were less certain.) Greer said much of his enthusiasm for the game would be to see his favorite team, the Minnesota Vikings, win it all. Two days later, the Atlanta Falcons beat the Vikings to deny them a Super Bowl appearance, but Greer's guilty plea stands.

-- The New York Times reported in November on the recent but growing competitive sport of "musical canine freestyle" (dancing with dogs) in which costumed owners and their matching-collared pooches exhibit choreography to such tunes as "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Get Happy." (Holding dogs' paws, as in at-home dog-dancing, is forbidden.) The World Canine Freestyle Organization has a mailing list of 8,000 aficionados.

-- The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in October that LuLu, a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, saved the life of her owner, Jo Ann Altsman of Beaver Falls, Pa., by alerting a passing driver that Altsman was in trouble. Altsman was groaning with a heart attack and said later that LuLu first whimpered in sympathy, then squeezed through a very small doggy door, pushed open a gate that she had never opened before, walked to the road, and according to a witness, lay down in the middle only when a car approached. The driver stopped and then heard Altsman's cries.

-- In November, the Westchester County (N.Y.) Feline Club voted its Cat of the Year award, from among 300 entrants, to Ginny, a dog. Ginny was honored for befriending numerous stray cats, bringing them home and sharing her food with them.

-- Recent Surgeries: A Caesarian section delivery of six eggs by a turtle in Thunder Bay, Ontario (June), after veterinarians used a dentist's drill on her shell, later patching it with epoxy. And root canals performed on several Kodiak bears appearing in the movie "Grizzly Falls," shot in Toronto (November), after anesthesia delivered by a blow gun.

-- In August, the family of the late Russell U. Shell filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against The Other Side nightclub in Fitchburg, Mass., charging that Mr. Shell choked to death on a miniature plastic penis that allegedly had been placed into his drink glass as a prank by an employee. (The club owner said Mr. Shell merely suffered a seizure and that the charm was found on the floor beside Mr. Shell's body.)

-- In January, Minnesota computer component manufacturer Innovex Inc. agreed to pay former executive Mary E. Curtin $750,000 to settle her sex discrimination lawsuit. During the time Curtin faced the alleged bias and sexist epithets, her husband, Thomas W. Haley, was Innovex's chairman and CEO and presumably had the power to put an end to the practices of which Curtin complained, but he did not.

-- The Chicago Sun-Times reported in November that local businessman David Israel, 51, filed a defamation lawsuit against his mother, Miriam, 77, who had allegedly told his brother and sister-in-law that David "is a thief and stole us blind." Said David, "It's not fun suing your mother."

In January in Modesto, Calif., Bernardo Arroyo, 26, was convicted of distributing methamphetamine and faces a minimum 10 years in prison at his sentencing in April. Before the trial, Arroyo rejected a plea bargain that would have given him two years in prison because a psychic he consulted had assured him that he would be acquitted. (In fairness to the psychic, however, Arroyo had an opportunity to purchase an additional curse upon the prosecutor, for $8,000, but declined.)

Bennie Casson made News of the Weird in 1997 when he filed a $100,000 lawsuit against PT's Show Club in Sauget, Ill., for its negligence in allowing stripper Susan Sykes (a.k.a. Busty Heart) to repeatedly "slam" her allegedly 88-inch bust into his neck and head during her performance, thus aggravating an old neck injury. In January 1999, a judge dismissed the lawsuit because Mr. Casson still couldn't find a lawyer to take the case, and a few days later, Mr. Casson died of a self-inflicted gunshot.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- Only the Falcons Were More Disappointed: On Super Bowl Sunday, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times profiled local resident Joffre Leggett, 80, as he prepared for the Publishers Clearing House prize patrol that would later that day, he was certain, be arriving at his house with $31 million. He proudly displayed the roomfuls of magazines he had bought over the last two years ($5,000 worth, though he complained to the reporter about his lack of food and heat and his broken-down car) and pointed to the latest PCH mailings, which Leggett says "(read) like I'm gonna win. They've sent me plenty of (literature) that says I will (win)." He didn't.

-- Edward L. Bodkin, 56, was arrested in February in Huntington, Ind., and charged with performing surgery without a license. Police said Bodkin removed the testicles of at least five consenting men and was ready to perform again when a patient got cold feet and handed over to police a videotape Bodkin had loaned him, of some of the surgeries. Allegedly, some of the testicles were in jars in Bodkin's apartment. As to the patients' motives, prosecutor John Branham said, "I can't sit here as a reasonable human being and give you an intelligent answer to that."

In January, the Toronto Sun published office photos of surgeon William G. Middleton's nurse, inexplicably straddling an unconscious female patient, who subsequently filed a complaint against the doctor. On the same day, in Tulsa, Okla., dentist Donald C. Johnson pleaded guilty to sexual molestation of young girls, behavior that came to light when lewd Polaroid photos of apparently anesthetized girls were discovered in Johnson's office. And in December, a Waynesboro, Va., woman filed a $350,000 lawsuit against physician Dale A. Stinespring for allegedly tricking her into posing topless for photographs under the guise of producing evidence in her car-crash lawsuit.

-- German retiree Jost-Burkhard Anderhub, 59, who spent several days in the Newport, Ky., jail last year before pleading guilty to a federal gun charge, was so impressed with the service that in October, he sent the jailer (elected official Greg Buckler) $200 as a tip. Wrote Anderhub, "The treatment by the officers was absolutely flawless."

-- An October Chicago Sun-Times story revealed that local attorney David G. Harding, executor of the estate of his office co-tenant D. Rex McBride, discovered that McBride for 18 years right up to his death had been leasing his two rotary-dial telephones from AT&T for $110 a year (vs. about $15 each to buy the phones).

-- Sports News: In November, Japanese billiards player Junuske Inoue, 58, was suspended from competition for two years for testing positive for a muscle-building hormone. And in September, Torquay, England, lawn bowler Griff Sanders, 25, was banned from outdoor competition for 10 years for excessive obscene language. (Sanders reportedly considers himself "the John McEnroe of lawn bowling.")

-- According to a September San Francisco Chronicle report, New Orleans T-shirt printer Ricky Lewis, 42, says 95 percent of his business comes from relatives and friends of men who have been slain in gang violence and who want the victims' faces commemorated on T-shirts. The city has such a high homicide rate, Lewis says, that several of his customers have later been murdered and memorialized with their own T-shirts.

-- New Product Delivery Systems: In December in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Wendy Cashaback opened what she believed was Canada's first drive-thru shop selling only sex toys and lingerie. Also in December, the New York company Joe Boxer placed 10 vending machines in the city to sell men's underwear in pop-top cans and said it hoped to roll out 100 more in 1999.

-- New Products: In December in Overijse, Belgium, horticulturalist Luc Mertes introduced a line of skirts and dresses made of live grass, still growing as long as the material stays damp. And in January, Heather Joy of Glenpool, Okla., showed an Associated Press reporter her handcrafted bags made from bull scrotums, priced at $110 and up. And in January, a Melbourne, Australia, company called Liquor Pops drew criticism when it announced its intention to market Popsicle-type products with 6 percent alcohol, in melon, pineapple and orange flavors.

-- Kenneth Adams, 37, was arrested in Peoria, Ill., in November and charged with soliciting an undercover police officer posing as a prostitute. The officer said Adams offered her a stolen shower head and a stolen water purifier if she would have sex with him.

In January, three young men broke into a house in St. Paul, Minn., with a shotgun and beat a man who they say owed them money. They left after firing a shot over the man's head to scare him, but on the way out, the shotgun accidentally discharged again, hitting one of the three in the buttocks, and all were arrested when a police officer saw the distinctly wounded man later on the street. Three days later, in Newark, N.J., Andre Gordon, 27, was arrested when, after pistol-whipping a 25-year-old man, his gun accidentally discharged, firing a bullet through his own arm and into his leg.

News of the Weird has reported several times on the phenomenon of houses that are inexplicably, almost pathologically, cluttered, but tragedy struck twice around Columbus, Ohio, recently. A 70-year-old man in the Clintonville neighborhood shot himself to death in February rather than face the consequences of a health department order to clean up his house and yard. Said the man's wife, "I'm not a good housekeeper, I grant you that." Six weeks earlier, a 60-year-old man in nearby Whitehall, Ohio, had died of a heart problem after his wife declined to call 911 for him because she was afraid authorities would discover the couple's too-cluttered house and arrest her.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (31) The discovery of gobs of undelivered mail at the home of a postal worker (usually after he got behind on his deliveries and needed to hide it), such as the 10-year-old, unopened mail found at retired postal worker Ralph Horvath's home after he was killed in a fire in Chicago in January. And (32) the bank robber who wants a worry-free getaway (no parking problem, no driving while jittery, no forgetting the keys or to have the car gassed up, etc.) and decides to hail a taxicab (much higher profile than a getaway car) outside the bank, as police say Mary Barrera did after robbing a NationsBank branch in Kansas City, Mo., in November.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com.)