-- Jose Lopezes in the Operating Room: In May, Sr. Jose Maria Lopez, 33, had a foot amputated at Whittier (Calif.) Hospital Medical Center. He still has two remaining; what was taken was a 6-inch, footlike growth inside his left ankle that has always hampered his walking and limited his shoe selection. And a few days earlier, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, surgeons removed a miniature bottle from the rectum of a Sr. Jose Lopez, 43. He said he got drunk and passed out and thus has no idea how the bottle got there.

-- No More Inhumane Punishment: In May, controversial Phoenix tough-guy sheriff Joe Arpaio announced he would institute bedtime stories at the Maricopa County jails, consisting of audiotapes of classic novels (e.g., "Little Women") to be read at lights-out every night. The novels replace the previous bedtime fare, which ran for four years: a videotaped lecture series by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

-- According to an April Tampa Tribune story, the following fates have befallen young men who in recent years have recovered the submerged, religiously blessed cross in annual diving competitions during the Epiphany festival in Tarpon Springs, Fla.: One died in a car accident; one suffered a severe spinal injury; one was arrested on burglary charges; and, this year, according to police, two former winners and a third diver were charged with attempted murder for bashing two people's skulls with shovels because their car was going too slow.

-- In Montreal, Quebec, in December, convicted serial killer Allan Legere announced through his lawyer that he had increased the amount of his 1994 lawsuit against the prison for its failure to stop inmates from beating him up. Legere is serving life for five murders, including the rape and torture killings of three women and the beating death of a Catholic priest. One witness against Legere said she once remarked to him, "You like to torture," whereupon Legere allegedly responded, "Yes, I do."

-- In the election campaign of 1998, Fred Morgan, the new Republican leader in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, personally embraced the party's proposal for reforming motor vehicle regulation, including cracking down on residents who drive with out-of-state license plates; in December, Morgan admitted that the car in his parking space at the capitol, with the Arkansas tag, was his (but that he would register it in Oklahoma as soon as his late mother's probate got taken care of). And in February, Katrina Clark, the director of housing code enforcement for the city of Boston, was evicted from her apartment for failure to pay more than $3,500 in rent and for reneging on her repayment plan.

-- In a brawl at a recreation league softball game in Granada Hills, Calif., in March, which started after an umpire changed a call from safe to out, four off-duty Los Angeles police officers on one of the teams were roughed up with softball bats. Things went so bad for the officers that one ran to his car, retrieved his weapon, and held the other team at bay until on-duty officers arrived.

-- Ester Maria Pena, 58, was convicted and fined $100 in Frederick County, Md., in March for a 1998 traffic incident in which police chased her at high speeds for four miles and arrested her at gunpoint. According to police, Pena had sped off after they tried to pull her over for driving too slow.

-- In March, London's second-largest newspaper, the Sun, reported that 70 pages of medical records of Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family were found in a folder, lying on the side of a road near the southwest Scotland town of Ayr.

-- In January, following his transfer from a maximum-security prison to a minimum-security facility in British Columbia, convicted murderer Colin Thatcher persuaded warden Ron Wiebe to let him ship his horse to the prison so he could get in some riding. Wiebe told reporters the prison has in the past helped inmates prepare for post-release careers in ranching, but Thatcher, 60, is serving a life sentence for killing his ex-wife.

-- Prominent New York City chef (and TV cooking-show star) David Ruggerio pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny in March for inflating at least 26 credit-card transactions at his Manhattan restaurant. According to the prosecutor, Ruggerio apparently thought he could add tips of $221,000 to credit-card dinner tabs totaling $4,000 (including one $30,000 tip on a $1,000 check) and not have the cardholders notice it.

The Classic Middle Name (continued, and getting out of hand): Executed for murder, in Florence, Ariz., in May: Robert Wayne Vickers. Convicted of murder, in Frederick, Md., in March: Bruce Wayne Koenig and in Lenexa, Kan., in May, Rodney Wayne Henry. Confessed to murder, in Fort Worth, Texas, in March: Arthur Wayne Goodman, Jr. Sentenced for murder, in Prattville, Ala., in May: Timothy Wayne Barnett. Charged with murder, in Birmingham, Ala., in May: Percy Wayne Froman, and in Houston in April: Bradley Wayne Cagle.

According to a report from New York's Newsday in April, the judge in the Abner Louima trial (in which a New York City police officer ultimately pleaded guilty to brutalizing a Haitian immigrant) permitted juror No. 299 to remain on the panel despite an objection by a defense lawyer that she had been seen reading the supermarket tabloid Weekly World News in the jury lounge (main story, "Woman Pregnant With Mummy's Baby"). After questioning the woman on whether she liked "weird stories," the judge let the matter pass.

-- In incidents one week apart in April, in Morristown, N.J., and Bloomfield Township, Mich., construction workers became trapped in sand pits, and in both cases, quick-thinking co-workers attempted to pull them out with backhoes. In both cases, the backhoe operators accidentally decapitated the workers.

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

-- In February, North Korean Woo Yong Gak, 69, was released from prison in South Korea, where he had been detained since 1958 and was the world's longest-held political prisoner. Still 38 years short of that record, in a jail in Bradenton, Fla., Palestinian researcher Mazen Al-Najjar just completed his second year of confinement without being told of the evidence against him. Al-Najjar, a U.S. resident for 15 years with three American-born children, faces deportation for some sort of association with a terrorist group, the nature of which the U.S. Justice Department has repeatedly refused to disclose, citing national security.

-- In March, for the first time, not only was the Miss Thailand beauty contest televised nationally, but so was the Miss Tiffany Universe contest, which is the equivalent for Thailand's male-to-female transsexuals. An April Associated Press report from Bangkok concluded, after polling many viewers, that at least one of the Tiffany Universe finalists made Miss Thailand look "positively mousy" and that the Tiffany Universe winner was "every bit as feminine" as Miss Thailand.

-- In February, Kahr Arms of Worcester, Mass., a gun manufacturer under the umbrella of the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon (who insists he's doing the work of Jesus), announced it had purchased AutoOrdinance Corp., manufacturer of the Thompson machine gun ("tommy gun"). Kahr (run by Rev. Moon's son) was already prominent for its high-quality line of small, potent handguns. "What's the message?" asked one critic, interviewed by The Washington Post: "Turn the other cheek, or lock and load?"

-- In February in New Westminster, British Columbia, a court acquitted three of the four Sikhs arrested in a 1997 brawl at a local temple that began when newer members started sitting in chairs at tables in the dining hall while traditional members insisted on the holiness of sitting on the floor. (In September, in Broward County, Fla., a traditionalist, no-furniture Sikh opened fire in a local temple, killing one man.)

-- Recent Apparitions: Yuba City, Calif., January: the image of Mary appeared in a knothole in a tree; Wareham, Mass., February: the image of Jesus appeared in the wood grain of a door in an Episcopalian Church; Union City, Calif., March: the image of Jesus appeared in an unfinished concrete wall at the Buddhist Purple Lotus University.

-- In March, Walter Gene Grassie, 49, a former protestant minister whose eight-year affair with a married Mormon woman had recently ended, was convicted of vandalism at several Mormon churches in New Mexico, causing $2.5 million in damages, apparently because he thought the woman's religion was the only thing preventing her from divorcing her husband and marrying Grassie. Prosecutors said he also wrote graffiti calling the woman a "(Mormon) whore." The two had fallen in love shortly after forming the touring musical act, Pecos Valley Yodelers.

-- Ten days apart in April, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority and the official newspaper of the Catholic archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio, issued rulings that miracle and prayer advertisements were deceptive and could no longer be published under their auspices. The British organization spokesman said a church advertising miracles would have to provide proof "just like a company that makes washing powder," and the Cincinnati newspaper banned ads thanking particular saints for answering their prayers.

-- In April, several fire trucks speeding down the Massachusetts Turnpike with sirens blaring and lights flashing, en route to help battle a brushfire around the town of Westfield, were delayed a few minutes when a tolltaker insisted on charging each driver. A turnpike spokesman said the tolltaker had been counseled. Similarly, in February, an ambulance rushing a severely burned man from Gibraltar to Seville, Spain, could not escape the $4 toll.

-- Firefighters in Kawasaki, Japan, freed a 5-month-old girl from a coin-operated, 13-by-13-by-24-inch locker in April after her parents had deposited her there while they had dinner at a nearby restaurant. The parents were reprimanded, but not arrested.

-- Edmonton, Alberta, pizza delivery driver Thomasz Leszczewski, 26, was arrested in April and charged with a hit-and-run fatality. According to police, Leszczewski hit a 43-year-old pedestrian while out on a delivery but merely proceeded with his rounds, and police caught up to him dropping off a pizza a few minutes later.

Richmond, Calif., March: The father of a fourth-grader stabbed the teacher in a disagreement over the girl's progress. Danville, Ky., February: The grandmother of a middle-school student smashed the teacher in the head with the name plate on his desk in a disagreement about the student's progress. Boston, March: The father of a high school student who got a D-minus in conduct, which the father was disputing, punched the teacher in the face, breaking his jaw. (The father is also an associate minister of the Greater Love Tabernacle.)

In Lubbock, Texas, in March, a bomb being made by Robert Keith Hill, 24, intended for an abortion clinic, exploded in his lap, killing him. And in Tampa, Fla., in April, a 28-year-old man in the passenger seat of a pickup truck was killed after he decided to open the door and climb to the back of the truck at 55 mph; he fell and was crushed under the rear wheel. And a 15-year-old boy at the prestigious Eton College in London (attended by Princes William and Harry) was killed in February while playing the "fainting game" between supper and prayer time; the object is for kids put a cord around another kid's neck and tighten it slowly until he faints.

Following news of the March birth in Los Angeles of a baby who was conceived with sperm that had been retrieved hours after his father's death, Pam Reno of Cold Springs, Nev., told reporters that she hopes soon to find a surrogate mother to have her grandchild, using frozen sperm that was retrieved from her 20-year-old son, who died in September. (The procedure is awaiting an ethics panel decision by the Northern Nevada Fertility Center.) However, the genes Reno will be perpetuating (her son's) will be those of a 20-year-old who died playing Russian roulette with his friends.

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

-- A beatification ceremony was held in Rome in May for the proposed saint Padre Pio of southern Italy, who died in 1968. Padre Pio was wildly loved by his parishioners but viewed skeptically by critics, including two popes and other Vatican officials. According to his supporters, his hands bled from the crucifixion holes similar to those of Jesus, to the point where light passed through them; he once had a wrestling match with the devil, who gouged Padre Pio's eyes; and various parishioners (including a friend of the man who later became Pope John Paul II) were inexplicably cured of illnesses after praying through Padre Pio. He will need two posthumous miracles to become a saint.

-- Practicing Up for Yugoslavia: In April, an Air Force pilot training at the Warren Grove Bombing Range in New Jersey missed his target by a mile and a half, landing in a state forest preserve and starting a fire that burned more than 18 square miles.

The government of Hungary recently agreed to investigate massive scams in which 30,000 farmers paid their life savings (totaling about $42 million) for earthworms to breed under fanciful assurances that Western entrepreneurs would buy all the worms they could produce, according to an April London Daily Telegraph report. And in Malaysia, where men rely on snake-blood tonics as their own Viagra, the bounty on cobras is now about $35 each, compared to 75 cents in the 1970s, according to a February Times of London story. And in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., in March, a 60-year-old man was assaulted by a woman after he made a derogatory comment to her while receiving fellatio, for which he had paid $2.

In October, Brandon Lund, 16, was convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his father because, according to the prosecutor, "He just didn't like the way (he) was running the household." And in March, landlord Alvin Weiss, 46, was sentenced to seven years in prison for hiring a hit man (unsuccessfully) to kill two of his tenants so he could re-lease their apartments at higher rents. And in Lahore, Pakistan, in April, according to police, a 32-year-old woman was shot to death by a hit man hired by her father because she had shamed him by seeking a divorce from her husband.

-- In March, two professors reported that results of their identical polls on ethical questions, asked of graduate business students and then of inmates at three Midwestern prisons, yielded remarkably similar results. In fact, inmates were judged more loyal to employers than were the MBAs. And the San Diego Union-Tribune reported in April that 25 business-ethics students at San Diego State University flunked the course, for cheating on an exam.

-- In March, the Burlington Homes housing development near Bakersfield, Calif., rejected the application of attorney Timothy Liebaert and his wife for a five-bedroom home, citing the company's aversion to lawyers, which the company believes are quick to litigate and thus impose higher legal and administrative costs, which frustrates Burlington Homes' efforts to keep its prices down. Of course, when informed of Burlington Homes' rejection of his application, Liebaert sued.

-- In March, John Killick, 57, who was being held in a maximum-security prison in Sydney, Australia, on armed-robbery charges, was sprung from the exercise yard by a helicopter, which his girlfriend had hijacked at gunpoint. The couple are still at large.

-- Three cows escaped from a barn in Ancaster, Ontario, in April, and when cornered by animal control officers, two escaped by leaping over a police cruiser and remained on the lam for two more hours before being tranquilized. And a week later, following a one-truck accident on the Capital Beltway near Alexandria, Va., the driver's dog Tito was found in excellent condition. He could not have crossed the Beltway on foot at that point; the only way he could have been where he was was to have been ejected over a four-foot concrete barrier and four lanes of traffic and to have landed in the soft grass.

-- During an April sunset in Brooksville, Fla., Lucy Dover, 79, was knocked to the ground by a 15-pound red fox, breaking her hip and rendering her unable to get up. Periodically, the fox attacked Dover, clawing and biting her repeatedly, until she grabbed it behind the head and by the tail and held it at bay for the next 12 hours, until her landlord happened by on a routine visit and rescued her.

-- Patricia Dolinska, 27, was arrested for shoplifting from a grocery store in Ottawa, Ontario, in April. According to police, underneath Dolinska's long skirt were three whole chickens, a pork roast, a beef roast and a duck.

-- According to a March report in the London Daily Telegraph, Saddam Hussein has delayed deploying his planned 60-member suicide-pilot task force, saying he does not trust the recruits. (Saddam's strategy is for pilots to lure U.S. and British pilots into range of Iraq's air defenses so he can shoot the planes down and show the world that he has inflicted his first casualties of the Desert Fox confrontation.)

-- In January, Theotis Hall, 51, was arrested in Brunswick, Ga., and charged with assisted suicide after he allegedly complied with a woman's wishes and locked her inside her car's trunk, with the engine running, for about eight hours. According to police, the woman paid $140 to Hall, whom she had recruited from a local labor pool. Said a police sergeant, "She went to a temporary service because it was a temporary job." (She was rescued by her son and is alive.)

-- A 27-year-old man in Springfield, Ill., called the local State Journal-Register newspaper in April to say that he is the one police have been calling "Sock Man" and that he promised to stop his antics if editors would not print his name. According to police, he approached two women and promised them $100 each if they would go home, get some of their socks, and leave them for him at designated points. One took him up on the offer, but he reneged on the payment. Police Lt. Carl Sprinkel said the man would not be charged: "It's no crime to be weird."

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