-- Prominent Christian conservative psychologist Paul Cameron told Rolling Stone magazine in a March interview that he feared gay sex would supplant heterosexual sex unless a vigilant society repressed it. "Marital sex tends toward the boring," he said. "Generally, it doesn't deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does." If all one seeks is an orgasm, he said, "the evidence is that men do a better job on men, and women on women." "(H)omosexuality," he said, "seems too powerful to resist."

-- In February, based on a prosecutor's complaint that a boy, Ayman Khadari, had roughed up a 2-year-old neighbor girl, a judge in Alexandria, Egypt, declared the boy (who was not in court) guilty of assault. The judge sentenced the boy to six months in jail and instructed the prosecutor to have him arrested. The complaint had not stated the boy's exact age, and only when the father brought him to an appeals court to challenge the ruling was it discovered that the newly convicted hoodlum was only 18 months old. (The girl's parents, who instigated the complaint, had long been feuding with the boy's parents.)

In road-rage incidents in Rochester, N.Y., in February and Delaware, Ohio, in June, the alleged maniacs were judges. Rochester judge William Bristol, reportedly miffed that a confused driver had stopped in the middle of the road, was accused of pounding on her windshield "like a lunatic" and following her home so that he could tell police her address. In the Ohio incident, judge Michael Hoague was convicted of threatening a 24-year-old woman whose car he said he had observed being driven recklessly. According to the woman, Judge Hoague had tailgated her at high speeds while yelling profanities, and he later ordered her to his courtroom despite the fact that no charge had been filed against her.

-- In August, the mother of high school student Justin Burnett filed a lawsuit in Chicago against the school board and shop teacher Philip Rush, who had admitted shocking disruptive students by hooking them up to a spark plug and a current-producing crank, sometimes, according to the lawsuit, for as long as 30 seconds. According to the school superintendent, Rush said the disciplinary stunt was a "teaching tool" for kids to see how electricity worked.

-- In Wichita Falls, Texas, former elementary school principal Terry Hitt said in October he would challenge the state's attempt to revoke his teaching certificate. He said he had a teaching ability that was a "gift from God," despite his having admitted earlier in the year that he had stolen his students' prescription Ritalin, melted it down, and shot up with it.

-- In Lop Buri, Thailand, in November, teacher Sombat Boon-namma was accused of punishing seven students by forcing them to hold their hands over a candle's flame until burned badly enough that they required hospitalization. Ms. Sombat said she was merely trying to narrow down the suspects in a recent theft and thought that an innocent person would have no fear of the flame. And the Cairo, Egypt, daily newspaper al-Akhbar reported in December that a teacher in a suburban elementary school had been accused of punishing a rowdy 10-year-old boy by forcing him to stare at the sun for such a long time that he suffered retina damage.

-- In December, Gina Tiberino, 32, a secretary for the Spokane, Wash., sex-crime prosecutors, was fired, one month after she reported that she had been raped. She attributed a work slowdown to typical post-traumatic effects of the assault, pointing out that she had never received negative job evaluations before the incident. Her superiors, though, said she had become "too focused on (her) personal tragedy."

-- In August at several mink farms in England, animal rights activists surreptitiously "liberated" 6,000 of the aggressive, unruly animals. In the following weeks came dozens of reports of minks killing pets (dogs, cats, hamsters), chickens, birds in a sanctuary and endangered water voles. Many minks themselves were killed, either by people protecting their own animals or in fights with other minks, and some minks were said to have died of the stress of being released into the wild.

-- In December, Texas' Commission for the Blind (which provides workplace support to the visually impaired) was found by the U.S. Department of Justice to have discriminated against two of its own sightless employees and so paid $55,000 to settle the employees' complaints. The commission had previously issued printed employee manuals but had no Braille or large-type versions for its blind or sight-impaired workers.

-- In December, Great West Casualty Co. filed a $2,800 lawsuit against the estate of Ms. Gertie Witherspoon, who was 81 when she was struck and killed near Harrisonville, Mo., by a Vernon County Grain and Supply tractor-trailer insured through the firm. Great West contends that Ms. Witherspoon was negligent in walking in front of the truck and seeks to recover from her heirs the money it had to pay out in front-end damage.

-- In January, a 16-year-old driver and his 20-year-old passenger smashed their car at a high rate of speed through the glass doors of their high school gym in Doylestown, Pa., and into a concrete wall, in what the driver said was a suicide attempt brought on by depression. However, both were wearing seat belts and were not seriously hurt.

News of the Weird reported in January 1998 on a motorist killed by a flying cow (propelled through the air and through the windshield after being hit by another car). In February 1999 the same thing happened to the driver of a pickup truck near Vacaville, Calif., after a car hit a cow on Pleasants Valley Road. (Five days earlier, near Prattville, Ala., a 19-year-old motorist was killed in the same way by a 300-pound flying hog.)

Edmonton, Alberta, February: A 34-year-old man was beaten to death in a fight over whose turn it was at a tavern's pool table. Black Oak, Ark., February: A 65-year-old man was shot to death in an argument over whether the town needs sewer service. Miami Beach, Fla., March: A 66-year-old man was shot to death at a condominium association meeting by a man enraged that someone had stolen his garden hose.

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

-- In January, North Dakota legislators decided against a proposal to crack down on impatient motorists who relieve themselves while driving and then toss their urine- (and even feces-) filled plastic containers to the side of the road. The containers create hazards when cleanup crews accidentally smash them with vehicles and mowers. Said Rep. John Mahoney, "(W)e want to promote tourism, and (such a new law) might be offensive."

-- Installation of the first escalators ever in Nicaragua, in a shopping mall in Managua in December, has terrorized many shoppers who have encountered them, according to a February Miami Herald report. Among the incidents: A frightened middle-aged woman who, fearing her departure at a second-floor landing, leaped from the escalator onto the floor, lost her balance, and staggered through the food court, knocking over tables and landing against a wall.

In December, Chung Kyu-chil, 52, reportedly confessed to a scheme to collect on his disability insurance policy by having both feet severed at the ankles by an acquaintance to whom he promised about $40,000. And in September, Mr. Kang Chong-ryol, 42, was arrested and charged with trying to cheat an insurance company out of about $7,500 by cutting off his 10-year-old son's finger and claiming that a robber did it.

-- Ryan Goodhart, 16, was arrested and charged with roughing up his mother in January in Sarasota, Fla., because she and her boyfriend refused to share their marijuana stash with him. And Nathan Ricketts, 26, was arrested and charged with choking his mother almost into unconsciousness in December in Glendora, Calif., because she had failed to remember to buy food for his two 7-inch-long piranha fish (which are illegal to own, anyway).

-- After a report of her lifestyle was shown on MTV in November, April Divilbiss, 21, of Memphis, Tenn., found herself in a custody fight over her 3-year-old daughter. She is married to Shane Divilbiss, 24, but the couple shares a sex life with Mr. Chris Littrell, 22, and April spoke on MTV of bringing another female into the home because having sex with two men was tiring her out. Her daughter was fathered by yet another man, whose parents filed the custody petition against April, who also argued that her freedom of religion (as a self-described pagan) was being abridged.

-- According to a December Denver Post story, Katy Emery, 27, agreed to a second straight pregnancy for her sister, Judi Conaghan of Chicago, who has been advised against carrying a fetus because of a heart condition. Previously, family black sheep Katy and super-responsible Judi had been estranged, but Katy, trying to shed the image of "the bad kid I'd been through my teen years," agreed to carry Judi's twins to term and enjoyed the experience of pregnancy so much that she signed on again.

-- In October in the Dent de Crolles region in France, sheepherder Christian Raymond, 23, was rescued from a cliff from which he had been hanging by his fingers for about 20 minutes. He had called the emergency rescue operator on his cell phone earlier in the day and managed to make another call from the cliff by pressing "redial" with his nose against the phone, which had fallen down the mountain with him but had landed right beside him.

-- Shirley Lawson, 59, of Marysville, Tenn., survived her Jeep's overturning in Whitley County, Ky., in September, even though the vehicle came to rest on top of her with the 3-inch-diameter drive shaft sticking through her abdomen and both legs.

-- Recent Episodes of Car Surfboarding: Hampton, Va. (November): William Vaughn, 29, jumped onto a car's roof during a dispute to prevent his friend from leaving, but the friend drove off anyway (distance surfed: 25 miles, at speeds up to 60 mph). Chicago (November): Charles Gardner jumped onto his SUV's roof to prevent its carjacking, but the suspect drove off anyway (time surfed: 20 minutes). Ship Bottom, N.J. (January): Gas station attendant Matt Thomas jumped onto the hood of a car to try to prevent the customer from leaving without paying, but she drove off anyway (time surfed: a few minutes, at speeds up to 80 mph).

-- Mathematics professor David Liu of the University of Alberta was named Canadian Professor of the Year in January. The award was based partly on the math clubs he has established for disadvantaged youth, but also partly on his having taught himself to work out equations upside down so that students could follow his explanations from across his desk.

Steve and Michelle Chambers pled guilty in August in Charlotte, N.C., to stealing $17 million from the Loomis, Fargo & Co. armored car firm in 1997, a caper which hit the headlines again in February 1999 when the Chambers' post-theft purchases were auctioned off to help Loomis recover its money. While on the lam from the heist, the couple called attention to themselves when Michelle walked in to a Belmont, N.C., bank with a suitcase containing $200,000 in Loomis, Fargo currency wrappers and asked the manager, "How much can I deposit without the bank reporting the transaction?" The couple had also moved directly from a rural mobile home into a $600,000 mansion and made many other equally exhibitionistic purchases. Said one federal marshal, "It was very much 'The Beverly Hillbillies.'"

Continuing an occasional reader-advisory series of recent stories that were reported elsewhere as real news but which were probably just made up: A late-1998 story in the Internet pipeline, attributed to the "Associated Press," described a current craze in Japan of breweries' replacing carbon dioxide in beer with hydrogen, which leads to such side effects as being able to sing soprano parts in karaoke bars and (with a cigarette) being able to blow flames from one's mouth. As the story goes, stockbroker Toshira Otoma lost a barroom fireball-blowing contest and retaliated by fireballing one of the judges, singing her hair. Apparently, the episode got Otoma fired, and he reportedly is suing the Asaka Beer Co. and the Tike-Take bar. Weird, but not true.

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

-- 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.)