-- Memo to New York City Mayor Giuliani: In March, more than a thousand police officers in India completed a 10-day retreat at which they practiced traditional Vippasana meditation, with top officers lauding the session as a way to prevent brutality on the job. Said one newly mellow cop, "Today I bear no malice or ill will to anyone." In addition to 12 daily hours of meditation and introspection, the retreat required total silence, no sex and a regimen of fruit and cereals.

-- Still Rather Dine With Her Than With Him: In February, a court in London, England, convicted restaurateur Sarah Kyolaba Amin, 42, the ex-wife of former Ugandan dictator (and, reportedly, sometimes-cannibal) Idi Amin, of several major health code violations in the eatery (named "S") that she owns. Authorities cited "heavy and active" cockroach and mouse infestation and "filth" throughout the kitchen and inside a refrigerator.

In separate incidents over a 48-hour period in March, a fuming Spring Hill, Tenn., man fired about 90 rounds from an AK-47 point-blank into his car alongside a major highway after it died on him, and another man was turned down at the courthouse in Knoxville, Tenn., when he applied for a marriage license to make his 1996 Mustang his bride, following a depressing split with his girlfriend.

In December, the Kirkwood, Mo., home of Dennis and Bonnie Miller suffered extensive fire damage when the turkey they tried to deep-fry on a grill for Christmas burned a hole in the pot and ignited a propane cylinder. And in February, Canadian fugitive Allen Charles Whitequill, 42, on the lam for two years on murder charges, was captured in Carrizozo, N.M., during a burglary when he attempted to cook a frozen turkey in an office microwave oven. (He badly undercooked it and became sick, and when he sought a restroom, he accidentally locked the door behind him and could not get out before police arrived.)

-- In March, former Fairfax County, Va., school principal Anthony M. Rizzo Jr., 62, escaped with a hung jury on charges that he had repeatedly raped a 10-year-old girl in the 1980s. The jury had not been allowed to know one fact about Rizzo: In 1998 he had won a permanent disability retirement from the state of Virginia, worth three times what ordinary retirement is worth, with the "disability" being a "psychosexual disorder" that makes him unable to supervise females without also trying to force sex on them. (At the time Rizzo was fighting for the disability, he was also denying the claims of eight female former co-workers who said they were victims of Rizzo's "disorder.")

-- Charlie Smith, 45, told authorities in Austin, Texas, in February that he might plead guilty to crimes in connection with a yearlong series of scams that bilked people out of more than $1 million, but that he wanted people to know he wasn't a bad person. He told the Austin American-Statesman that his nearly lifelong urge to rip people off traces back to a day in 1969 when his car slipped off of the jack while he was working on it, landing on him, cracking his skull and changing him morally.

-- Recent Explanations: Richard Davis, 51, defending his bankruptcy filing in London, England, in March, said it was a nasal decongestant by Novartis Pharmaceuticals that made him extravagant and irrational. And Gregory DeLozier, 35, explaining the attempted murder charge against him in Trenton, N.J., said in January that it was the sediment from a bottle of iced tea he drank that produced the weird side effects that made him stab his wife. And in January, inmate (and former gardener) James R. Moore, 64, tried to get his 1962 Rochester, N.Y., murder conviction overturned, pointing out that it was his exposure to the insecticide dieldrin that made him lose his head and commit the murder.

-- The Rhode Island Supreme Court publicly reprimanded lawyer John F. Pellizzari in March for having had a three-month sexual relationship with a divorce client while continuing to represent her in negotiations with her husband. Pellizzari admitted the relationship but blamed it on the client, who he said had a "premeditated plan" to "coerce" him into sex, removed his clothes against his will, and physically forced herself on him.

-- In March, the city of Yenshui, Taiwan, held a fireworks show to commemorate stamping out the plague bacteria by fire more than 100 years ago. Villagers wearing bulky, protective clothing stand in front of the fireworks, which this year consisted of bottle rockets, hoping to be hit by the missiles, which would bring good luck. Apparently, some of the rockets exploded only after being propelled into the bulky clothing, creating serious injuries to about 30 lucky people.

-- A March Los Angeles Times story reported on the royal Siamese cat family (numbering about 50) of Thailand, which is said to be special because they are direct descendants of the cats of the beloved King Rama V. The family is believed to be the last of the pure khao manee breed ("diamond eyes") in the country and generally live in luxury, in teak-paneled quarters with gold and silver dishes, and three specially prepared meals a day. Six years ago, a Thai khao manee was reportedly sold for about $4 million.

-- The Washington Post reported in January that the trendy elective surgery in China now is nose enlargements, by young people seeking to Westernize their faces. Said one young woman in Beijing, "I want to become beautiful," as she was about to undergo surgery that would leave her with a nose twice as large as what she had. Said Mr. Wen Biao, 26: "If I have a bigger nose, I think I will find a wife. I already have a good job."

A supermarket customer was shot to death in New Orleans in December, allegedly by the boyfriend of a cashier; police believe he responded to the cashier's call for help because the rowdy customer was in the express line with more than 10 items. And a 22-year-old Northfield, N.H., man was arrested in January and charged with shooting his 26-year-old brother to death in a fight that began when the older brother objected to the younger's opening a bag of potato chips by cutting it instead of pulling it apart.

News of the Weird reported on St. Paul, Minn., bookie Max Weisberg in 1994, just after he had been picked up for illegal gambling but released because the prosecutor was pessimistic about a conviction due to Weisberg's diminished mental capacity. Though Weisberg is a genius with numbers, he is reported to have an IQ of 80, and in fact, a jury in 1990 had acquitted him of a similar charge, finding that he just could not seem to understand that gambling is illegal. In February 1999, police raided Weisberg's home once again, seizing $127,000 in alleged gambling proceeds, running the total seized from Weisberg in 10 years to about $600,000, and the prosecutor did not rule out trying once more to convict him.

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

-- In March, the Seattle Police Department ordered the 26 employees in its fingerprint unit to attend a mandatory, half-hour safety class in how to sit down. Recently, three of the unit's employees had filed worker compensation claims for injuries that occurred as they were attempting to sit in chairs with rollers. The proper technique, according to an internal memo, is, "Take hold of the arms and get control of the chair before sitting down."

-- Only in California: In March, the Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto began offering sushi (a vegetarian version, wrapped in seaweed) in its lunchroom on Wednesdays.

Constable Carol Hashimoto told the Edmonton Journal in January that she had recently ministered to, over the phone, a man who was severely guilt-racked that he had driven home to Valleyview, Alberta, four hours away, without his driver's license, which he had accidentally left in an Edmonton hotel room. And in Charlotte, N.C., at his February sentencing for laundering money others had taken in a robbery, John Calvin Hodge Sr., 69, revealed that indeed he had declared his $40,000 laundering fee on his IRS return and had paid the tax on it.

William L. Straiter, 26, was arrested in Durham, N.C., in December and charged with robbing the Centura Bank. The robber had presented a teller with a note demanding money and containing a finely detailed drawing of a gun, but Straiter did not actually have a gun and was not charged with armed robbery. However, Terry Williams, 23, was arrested in Oakland, Calif., in March after a road-rage collision in which he allegedly clasped his empty hands as if he had a gun, pointed at the other driver and yelled "Bang!" The prosecutor charged Williams with making a terroristic threat, in that his gesture would likely "provoke a retaliatory response from someone with a weapon."

-- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced in February that it would scale back its terrorist-combating safety inspections of nuclear power plants, despite the fact that the companies fail inspections about half the time and that in 14 of 57 inspections since 1991, the breaches have been so severe that terrorists could have caused a core meltdown. (Furthermore, in each inspection, the power company even knew the exact date of the "surprise" inspection, although it did not know exactly what area or tactic the NRC would use to test the plant's security.)

-- In November, the mayor of South Gate, Calif., adjacent to Los Angeles, proposed an ordinance banning the colors "wild orange, rose, lavender and turquoise" on houses. One resident said he'd paint over his colorful house only if the mayor had a good reason, "like if cars were crashing into each other because the drivers were looking at (my house). Or if it hurt people's eyes." However, in January, the Joliet (Ill.) City Council passed an ordinance requiring builders to make houses less boring by mixing up their aesthetic features and colors. Said City Councilor Joseph Shetina, who supported the ordinance because too many row houses look alike: "(Y)ou go home drunk, and you'd never know which house was yours."

-- In October, Washington State Ferries, over the protests of left-behind travelers, announced it would cut back the number of walk-on customers it would accept between Vashon Island and Seattle from 250 to 230 because of insufficient bench seating. The benches' 250-capacity was determined by the 50-year-old standard of 18 inches per person, but according to spokeswoman Susan Harris-Heuther, "It's just not realistic. We have all expanded, and 18-inch butts are a thing of the past."

-- A February Associated Press report described the 18-point, government-designed tests that injured Israeli housewives must fail before they can be granted disability payments. A medical exam by itself can prove disability for any other occupation, but married female homemakers (men and single women are not eligible for disabled-homemaker status) must step into a simulated home and, in front of three officials, show that they cannot wash or iron laundry, mop the floor or slice bread, among other tasks.

-- While the IRS Has Become Kinder and Gentler: In December, the Hungarian parliament created a special tax-collection unit to go after recalcitrant citizens and which will be equipped with cattle prods, Mace and handcuffs. And in November, the Agence France-Presse wire service reported the death of Luo Changlong near Chongqing, China, as the result of a beating by eight revenue officials who had gone to his home to collect back taxes of about $60.

-- Recent Proposed Legislation: Missouri state Sen. Sam Gaskill's bill to require hospitals to provide a neck-to-knee "dignity gown" instead of the standard, open-back gown. And a Tennessee Alcohol Beverage Commission's rule to allow retail liquor stores to conduct "consumer education" "seminars," basically consisting of in-store tasting. And Arkansas state Rep. Stephen Simon's bill to allow licensed gun-owners to bring weapons to church. And Vermont state Rep. Robert Kinsey's bill to require CPR training as a condition for a marriage license. (Kinsey said he has no idea why such a law is necessary but that he routinely introduces bills at constituents' request.)

-- In March, the animal control officer of Pickens County, S.C., threatened to enforce a county snake-handling ordinance against collector Roy Cox, proprietor of the Reptiles of the World exhibit of rattlesnakes, boa constrictors and cobras. Cox, said the officer, needs a county license, which he can get only if he has federal and state reptile-handling permits. However, as an Associated Press reporter pointed out to the officer after investigating, no federal or South Carolina agency issues any such thing as a reptile permit.

In February, a 17-year-old, 300-pound girl in Baltimore had a benign ovarian tumor the size of a beach ball and weighing 80 pounds removed at Franklin Square Hospital Center. Four people were needed to carry the tumor out of the operating room. Three weeks later in nearby Lancaster, Pa., a 52-year-old woman had a 75-pound benign tumor removed. The largest ever reported, which made News of the Weird in 1991, was the 303-pound cyst taken from a 34-year-old, 513-pound woman at Stanford University Medical Center.

A 46-year-old bass-baritone for the Cleveland Opera hanged himself in December, reportedly distraught over a bad rehearsal for "Lucia di Lammermoor." And a 53-year-old man shot himself to death in Anderson, Ind., in January because, according to a 911 tape, he thought his wife was having an affair on the Internet. And in November, a 26-year-old man in southern Thailand leaped from a sixth-floor window to his death, reportedly because his wife had refused to let the two additional wives he had just brought home stay with the couple.

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

-- In March stories by Knight-Ridder news service (in Honduras) and The Wall Street Journal (in Russia), the latest U.S. disaster relief efforts were revealed to be rife with ill-conceived aid. Honduran hurricane victims still need cooking utensils and medicine but are receiving old clothes, cans of largely unappreciated foods like artichoke hearts, and items like microwave popcorn, dog food and dental floss. Food commodities donated for starving Russians tend to lower the prices of similar Russian food, angering farmers, and, even so, the American food usually winds up being sold on the street rather than given to the poor.

-- In March, a federal judge in Syracuse, N.Y., rejected the latest lawsuit by Donald Drusky of East McKeesport, Pa., in his 30-year battle against USX Corp. for ruining his life by firing him in 1968. Drusky had sued "God ... the sovereign ruler of the universe" for taking "no corrective action" against Drusky's enemies and demanded that God compensate him with professional guitar-playing skills and the resurrection of his mother. Drusky argued that under the federal rules of civil procedure, he would win a default judgment if God failed to show up in court.

In March, Cairo, Egypt, school superintendent Maryann Maurice, 57, was jailed for illegal street begging; she said she earned about $150 a day, the same amount the school paid her monthly. Also in March, retired Russian army Col. Dmitry Setrakov, 69, was arrested after a brief standoff at a downtown Moscow bank; he had pulled a shotgun in an unsuccessful attempt to withdraw about $22,000 from his own account, which, like nearly everyone else's, is frozen. And the London Daily Telegraph reported in March that Russian soldiers in Chechnya had sold off at least 100 of their colleagues to the other side for as little as $17 each; the Chechens ransom the Russian soldiers back to their families.

-- Among the reasons given by an unidentified Buffalo, N.Y., police officer in February in his request for full disability pay based on psychological injury was his having walked into a stationhouse in 1997 to find other officers celebrating an Easter Sunday mass. According to the officer's lawyer, visualizing the stationhouse now causes him such emotional turmoil that he is not able to perform his duties.

-- After All, He's an Olympic Athlete: According to records released in January by the world track and field organization IAAF, U.S. medal-winning sprinter Dennis Mitchell denied he had taken performance-enhancing drugs, despite a positive test result. Mitchell said his testosterone was high only because he had had sex four times the night before.

-- Bruce Charles Davis, 36, explaining in November to an employee of a U.S. Bank branch in Sacramento, Calif., why he had just robbed the place: "I only wanted to teach you a lesson. I want a job in bank security." Davis would have been more plausible had he not already had five bank robbery convictions and another one pending.

-- Alaskan gubernatorial candidate John Lindauer, during a debate in Ketchikan in October, tried to explain why he had been inconsistent as to when his wife had donated to his campaign. (If given in 1997, the donation would be legal; if given during the campaign, illegal.) According to Lindauer, "I said, and (my opponents) took this shot through a radio station mirror, I believe, and took one sentence I was saying." (Lindauer never explained what a radio station mirror was, lost in November, and as of March was facing an ethics investigation about the gift.)

-- Leo Koskela, 62, was rescued in Gresham, Ore., in November after being trapped underneath a train. According to police, he was standing between two tracks and was hit by a slow-moving westbound train that dragged him 15 feet before he broke free, but then fell into the path of a slow-moving eastbound train that dragged him 18 feet, thus leaving him in just about his original position.

-- In February, David Ibrahim filed a lawsuit in San Diego against several law enforcement agencies for $125,000 to cover the inconvenience and humiliation he suffered when jailed for seven days when police discovered methamphetamines in the gas tank of his Dodge Ram truck. Eventually, authorities came to realize that the meth had been placed in the truck by a drug dealer before the Drug Enforcement Administration seized it in a raid, but that DEA failed to find the stash before Ibrahim bought the truck at auction. (On the other hand, police got a search warrant for Ibrahim's home, based on their truck stash, and in a startling coincidence found 93 grams of methamphetamine that did not come from the truck.)

-- Turf 'n' Surf: Sergio Gutierrez, 22, was rescued by farmers near Santa Rosa, Calif., in December after his tractor-trailer collided with an exceptionally large bear and spun out of control. Gutierrez was thrown from the cab, but the truck slid toward him and a door ripped open, spilling the huge cargo of frozen mackerel on top of him.

In September, Jonesboro, Ga., high school science teacher Doris Walker, 43, proved her innocence of a student's charge that she had had an affair with him, by baring her breasts to show the jury a surgical scar that the student failed to mention when asked if Walker's breasts had any unusual characteristics. And in October, a 12-year-old girl in Phoenix, who said she had been molested by her grandfather for four years, convinced police to arrest him when she handed officers a bottle in which she had gathered his sperm; she said she got the idea from an episode of TV's "NYPD Blue."

-- In a high-profile trial in St. Paul, Minn., reported in News of the Weird in 1997, members of the well-to-do family of Gerald and Judy Dick were charged with hiring a personal shoplifter to steal expensive goods from Dayton's department store (although ultimately only Judy was convicted, and on a lesser charge). In February 1999, the Dicks' son Jim, 34, who had been accused in 1997 of paying a shoplifter $800 for $6,000 worth of Dayton's clothing and who now works as a professional model, was hired for Dayton's new spring fashions advertising campaign, apparently without Dayton's executives realizing it.

-- News of the Weird reported in October 1998 on the on-the-job death by snake bite of serpent-handling preacher John W. (Punkin) Brown Jr. Because Brown's wife died three years earlier (also of a snake bite during services in Kentucky), the Browns' three children were objects of a custody fight between the two sets of grandparents. In February 1999, the wife's parents won primary custody, in a Newport, Tenn., hearing, in part because Mr. Brown's parents had allegedly violated an earlier court order never to take the children to a snake-handling church.

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