-- In July, Zoe Bernadette Dawes, 25, and two men were scheduled for trial in September on a charge that they raped a 24-year-old man at a party in Miles, Queensland, Australia, last year. According to prosecutors, the victim was held at gunpoint, tied down on the floor, and straddled by Dawes after he had been given an injection to induce an erection.

A Canton, Ill., physician told the judge in February he didn't know why he filed 150 false Medicare claims. A Calgary, Alberta, man told the prosecutor in June he didn't know why he killed a guest at his sister's wedding. New Jersey murderer Samuel Manzie told the judge in April he didn't know why he killed that 11-year-old boy. Quebec union leader Lorraine Page told a court in April that she didn't know why she left a store with unpaid-for leather gloves. A since-fired lab technician in Palo Alto, Calif., told her supervisor in April she didn't know why she reused needles to draw blood from thousands of patients. Seventy-year-old Marie Noe of Philadelphia told her lawyer in June she didn't know why she killed her eight young children decades ago.

-- Veteran radio reporter Larry Matthews, 55, told a judge in Greenbelt, Md., in March that he really wasn't trafficking in child pornography during the two years he swapped pictures with Internet pedophiles, but rather was working on a story; however, he couldn't produce the name of any editor he had told about the story. And Washington, D.C., vanity-press author Ralph Vitale faces a big tax bill after a U.S. Tax Court finding in April that disallowed $9,000 in prostitute visits as "research" expenses for his novel set in a Nevada brothel; Vitale said he was just a stickler for detail in his characters, but one reviewer said the average woman in the book "has the complexity of a blow-up doll."

-- Pro wrestling's former women's champion Rena "Sable" Mero filed a $110 million lawsuit against the World Wrestling Federation in June, claiming that her sport is too "obscene, titillating" and "vulgar" for her taste. Mero is a sometimes Playboy model whose signature wrestling move was standing over her fallen opponent and grinding her pelvis at her.

-- In March, about 5,400 descendants of a Welsh pirate filed papers to revive their lawsuit in Pittsburgh in which they lay claim to 77 acres of prime real estate around Wall Street in New York City (including the World Trade Center), in an estate valued at about $680 billion. Pirate Robert Edwards supposedly was given the land by the British Crown in exchange for the booty from his raids of Spanish galleons. The descendants argue that the statute of limitations should not apply because of colonial New York record-keeping errors.

-- Just before his Toronto sexual assault trial was postponed in April, former United Church minister Anthony Gifford, 57, admitted having had consensual sex with troubled female parishioners but said he was only counseling them. Said Gifford, "I tried to follow the ways of Jesus," "to get back to the basics of Christianity." Gifford also admitted that he and Mrs. Gifford once did a three-way, and one man testified that the Giffords separately sexually ministered to his girlfriend and him after Rev. Gifford gave him a book titled "Open Marriage."

-- Greater Manchester (England) Police officer Jackie Smithies, 36, recently had breast-reduction surgery so that she could fit painlessly into inside-the-uniform body armor, according to a May report in The Times of London. She went from a 36-F to a 36-C to comply with the armor directive for all officers on the street.

-- Recent Contested Firings: University of Victoria (British Columbia) sociology professor Jean Veevers, fired after being convicted of running a large marijuana-growing operation in her home (December 1998) (now challenging her firing, arguing that the crime was not relevant to her job); hospital secretary Joan Ramprasad, 55, New York City, fired for frequently weeping and speaking in tongues at work (but claiming freedom of religion); and Barry Green, 50, Toronto air traffic controller fired for leaving the tower unattended for 35 minutes (because of a bowel emergency that in fact soiled his pants).

-- A July Wall Street Journal dispatch from Brazil described a $1.2 million employee morale program at the Volkswagen plant near Sao Paulo, which centers around a medieval courtyard in which workers can escape into characters from Camelot and King Arthur's Round Table. A VW executive said the company chose the themes for their inspirational messages in periods of upheaval (e.g., employees' confidence in withdrawing Excalibur from a rock will make them ignore looming layoffs in Brazil and at VW).

The Bangkok Post reported in February that Wang Xinzhang had filed a lawsuit against Red Flag Publishing Co. in China; he wants damages for a shoddy product, specifically the book "Five Thousand Years of China," which had 984 typos. And Texas court reporter Sandra Halsey lost her certification in June for inadvertently helping convicted child killer Darlie Routier's appeals; there were reportedly 18,000 errors in Halsey's 6,000-page transcript of Routier's trial.

Earlier this year, News of the Weird reported on criticisms that private U.S. disaster-relief donations for Russia and Honduras were rife with unwanted contributions (e.g., old clothes and microwave popcorn, instead of cooking utensils and medicines). Then, in June, relief workers in Albania and Macedonia told The New York Times that as much as half of U.S. pharmaceutical company relief donations (which are double-tax-deductible) are useless (either outdated or products such as lip balm or stop-smoking remedies) and that because some of their ingredients are hazardous, their regulated destruction imposes high costs on relief agencies. However, said an executive with Project Hope, "(R)efugees need Chap Stick (and) Preparation H...."

Shawn Socha, 35, was arrested in Huntington, W.Va., in June as a fugitive from justice and now faces bank robbery and other charges in Ohio. He blew his cover when he called the Huntington police to ask if they had seen any arrest warrants out on him.

A 19-year-old speeder was ticketed, clocked at a Toronto-area record 228 km/hr (141 mph). Cocaine that a 28-year-old man stashed in his pants crotch during a traffic stop suddenly began to burn, causing him to shriek and give himself up (Astoria, Ore.). A burglar was killed fleeing a convent he had broken into, shot to death by a 56-year-old nun (Tunja, Colombia). Three workers testing a pistol at a handgun factory were hit by the same accidentally fired bullet (Cocoa, Fla.). A German descendent of one of the Christian knights who conquered Jerusalem in 1099 sincerely apologized to the whole world for the Crusades.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- Adult Pedophiles Unnecessary: According to a July announcement by police in York Haven, Pa., at least 17 kids aged 7 to 16 had created a club over the last two years to teach each other sex, and then practice, on their own with no adult participation. Three days after that, the Washington Post reported an unusually high incidence of oral sex by middle-school students in the Washington, D.C., area, more as the latest trendy thing to do rather than as intimacy by adolescent couples.

-- In April, Rene Joly, 34, filed a lawsuit in Toronto against several drugstore chains and the Canadian defense minister, charging that they conspired to kill him by poisons in his prescriptions and a military microchip in his brain. He told reporters in May, "Genetically speaking, I'm a Martian, yes," having been cloned from material recovered from NASA missions. The college-educated Joly apparently impressed some reporters with his eloquence and calm demeanor, but one defense lawyer said merely that Joly "has watched too many episodes of 'The X Files.'"

-- On Jan. 31, at the annual Hindu festival in Singapore honoring Lord Murugan, worshipers again proved their faith by sticking skewers through their skin, with the amount of pain endured taken as the measure of devotion. According to a Reuters wire service report, the apparently super pious Kalai Arivalagan let relatives push 6-inch stakes through his cheek and tongue, pins into his forehead, and hooks into his chest and back, attached to a frame containing religious symbols. Hundreds more Hindus marched almost three miles with hooks and pins attached. Believers say their pre-festival rituals, including abstaining from sex, help them to create pain-ignoring trances.

-- In March, Angel Luis Montes, 26, was sentenced in Lamar, Mo., to probation for receiving stolen property. Throughout his courtroom appearance, he referred to himself as "Angel Montes Clinton" (the president's son), as well as the Unabomber and the husband of "Prince (sic) Diana," with whom he has fathered 100 children. Though Montes appeared to observers to be not in his right mind, he also claimed to be embarrassed by his father for carrying on with Monica Lewinsky and said his dad needs to keep his "(body parts not identified in the Carthage (Mo.) Press story) where they belong."

-- In May, a Jerusalem Post reporter interviewed an extraterrestrial by telephone through the services of Adrian Dvir, an engineer who develops computers for the Israeli military. The alien, "Fenix," said he was 200 years old and was calling from near Uranus, via electronics that translated his speech into Hebrew. Dvir was chosen for contact because he had enrolled in psychic-training courses that were being monitored by Fenix's Kliendcontlar race. Fenix called Dvir (from a number blocked by Caller ID) and spoke for 85 minutes, answering the reporter's questions as relayed by Dvir.

-- At his June pretrial hearing in Worcester, Mass., on racketeering charges, Vincent "Gigi Portalla" Marino claimed the federal government implanted a tracking device in his buttocks when he was in the hospital in 1996 to have a bullet removed. A Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman denied the charge, even though Marino said it was a DEA agent who once asked him to sign a release form to let the feds remove the device.

-- In Ottawa, Ontario, in June, Richard Hamilton, 29, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for an April robbery of a Harvey's fast-food restaurant. Hamilton had no gun; he pulled a .32-calibre bullet from his pocket, waved it around, said he had more where that came from, and demanded money from the cash drawer. He got about $200 but was apprehended a few minutes later.

-- The Bremerton (Wash.) Sun reported in its April 9 edition that a man was arrested in Silverdale, Wash., on suspicion of stealing a van. According to the police report, the man, who was dressed in a miniskirt, tights and head scarf, was booked at the sheriff's office and then "released on his own recognizance."

-- Ms. Kikui Tomoe, 79, habitual pickpocket arrested in Tokyo in April with the wallet of a 52-year-old woman: "When I see wallets in a crowd, I feel as if they are calling out to me to take them."

-- Republican presidential candidate Dan Quayle, commenting in May on TV's "Crossfire" program about the Littleton, Colo., school shootings: "You're not there to be just the child's best friend. You're there as a parent. (A)nd if you see a sawed-off shotgun or whatever else laying around (his room), take it away."

Throughout the spring in South America, South Africa, Canada and the United States (notably in Omaha, Neb.), hundreds of worshippers have claimed that gold teeth and gold fillings have appeared spontaneously in their mouths, apparently as a result of prayer. However, two of the claimants, Canadian TV evangelists Dick Dewert and William Thiessen, were forced to issue corrections when reminded by their respective dentists that the gold fillings had been installed in the conventional way. Said Thiessen, "I (now tell) people to please check their dental records before they declare a miracle." Ahead of the curve, pastor Dennis Morgan-Dohner of Big God Ministries in Indiana said God gave him a platinum filling.

In 1988, Iranian Merhan Nasseri, then 46, landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris after being denied entry into England because his passport, and United Nations refugee certificate, had been stolen. No country would take him without papers, including France, and there he has been ever since, in Terminal One, luggage at his side, reading, writing in his diary, studying economics, receiving food and newspapers from airport employees. News of the Weird reported on Nasseri in 1991, 1995 and 1998. On July 2, 1999, Belgium granted Nasseri refugee status, but at press time, he had not decided whether he wanted to leave the airport or not.

Police confiscated 800 marijuana plants from a storage locker when the owner forgot to pay the rent (Winnipeg, Manitoba). The robbery of a gun range was foiled when an employee shot the suspect in the shoulder (Santa Clara, Calif.). A dairy farmer, distraught at his son's recent suicide at Niagara Falls, wielded a 3,000-gallon manure spreader in a standoff with Falls police and threatened to hose down tourists. And Americans Billy Mitchell and Steve Keiner quietly added to U.S. sports prominence: Mitchell posted the first perfect game in the 19-year history of Pac-Man (Weirs Beach, N.H.), and Keiner wrested the Mustard Yellow International Belt from a Japanese man by eating 20 hot dogs in 12 minutes (Coney Island, N.Y.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- In June, according to a New York Times feature on the decline of urban male sexuality, author Michael Segell said he found various New York City men who practiced what he called "sexual payback" (seducing a woman but then, on the verge of intercourse, abruptly becoming disinterested), or, as one man in a Segell focus group put it, "The only thing that's more enjoyable than having sex is making a girl want it and not giving it to her." Segell called this a passive-aggressive response to women's increasing sexual power.

The San Jose Mercury News reported in May that because of a housing shortage in Silicon Valley, people are renting attics, basements and storage sheds to live in and that others pay as much as $200 a month for the right just to sleep in a corner of a living room in order to be close to work and avoid a lengthy commute from the family home. And in June, The New York Times quoted a yakuza crime boss in Tokyo, lamenting how his turf has been taken over by immigrant gangs from China: "(T)he Japanese yakuza think of long-term business relationships, but the Chinese mafia thinks just of the short term. Their only goal is money, money, money."

David Sanchez Hernandez, 18, was convicted in June in Punta Gorda, Fla., of egging two police officers on foot patrol. Hernandez, who said he did it in order to win a $2 bet with his brother, was fined $750 and sentenced to 25 hours of community service.

-- In May, "installation artist" Cosimo Cavallaro outfitted room 114 of the Washington Jefferson Hotel in New York City in a cheese motif, using a half-ton of various types from Muenster to Swiss, melted. His only explanation was that his family owned a cheese shop in Canada and that he remembers the rush of liberation he got one day by plastering his father's old armchair in mozzarella. Said former gallery owner Jules Feiler, "When I first talked to him, I thought he was just another in a series of nuts that have entered my life."

-- From a press release on a June San Francisco exhibit by Yukinori Yanagi, who built a giant ant farm in which sand was intricately dyed to create a finely detailed, 15-panel image of a large $1 bill visible through the glass and which the ants would redesign by moving the sand around: "(Yanagi's work) is a dialogue about the fluency of boundaries in the 20th century and the dissemination of cultures through the expanding notions of globalism."

-- At an April show in San Francisco, performance artist Zhang Huan was to "explore the physical and psychological effects of human violence in modern society" by spreading puree of hot dogs on his naked posterior as he lay face down on a cypress branch and permitting eight dogs to enter the room. Immediately, one dog, Hercules, bit Zhang on the butt, drawing blood and causing the show to be suspended.

-- In April, Geraldine Batell filed a complaint against the American Stage in St. Petersburg, Fla., because the characters in the Noel Coward play "Private Lives" were puffing cigarettes (as they were supposed to do), causing smoke to waft to her second-row seat and, she said, violating Florida's Clean Indoor Air Act. And in February, Matthew and Amanda Parrish of Centerville, Utah, filed a lawsuit against their downstairs condominium neighbor because they could somehow smell his smoke when he lit up inside his own apartment. (The local American Cancer Society said it would not support the Parrishes' lawsuit.)

-- In March, six prison inmates in England and Wales were approved for transsexual surgery at government expense (about $18,000 each), but in April, inmate Synthia Kavanagh, who has been repeatedly rejected for such government-paid surgery in Canada, announced she would plead her case before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. (Kavanagh is serving a life term for murdering a transvestite.)

-- In April, after its leaders met with the Indonesian government, the Baduy tribe of west Java was granted the right to refrain from voting in the June elections. During the previous three decades under President Suharto, the government forced the Baduy to vote despite their ancient religious prohibition against politics. (The Baduy have similar prohibitions against using electricity and toothpaste.)

In February, authorities in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Caracas, Venezuela, were dealing with suspected urban cannibals. In Cambodia, an investigator found a bag of orderly arranged human bones and parts and surmised that a woman had been made into soup. In Caracas, Mr. Dorangel Vargas briefed the press on his preferences, including men over women, and absolutely no hands, feet or testicles. And in April, a New York jury ruled that murderer-cannibal Albert Fentress was no longer a danger after 20 years' hospitalization and should be released. (In June, just in time, a state supreme court justice overturned the verdict.)

A leader of a Colombian social service organization, describing the reportedly vicious, murderous guerilla leader Carlos Castano, to a Boston Globe reporter in May: "I think he has a great need to be understood and even to be loved." And Robert Volpe, father of Justin, the New York City police officer convicted in May of brutalizing Haitian immigrant Abner Louima with a toilet plunger, describing his son's depression at being in solitary confinement: "Justin has to get his five hugs a day. He's a people person."

Two female drivers stopped and fought on an Oakland, Calif., street in May after one had become angry and tossed a half-eaten burrito through the window at the other. And Alan Parsons was sentenced in July in London, England, to three years in jail for the robbery of a bakery; his getaway had been slowed when the owner hit him with a bun during the chase. And in separate incidents in June, two San Diego men were charged with assaulting people with large tunas, causing not-insubstantial injuries both times.

A 32-year-old man was convicted of breaking into women's apartments at night and just sitting there, watching them sleep (Edmonton, Alberta). A 26-year-old man missed the mandatory death penalty for heroin trafficking by 0.11 grams; he had 14.89 and got 20 years and 20 lashes (Singapore). A 7-year-old boy accidentally killed his 3-year-old brother in the course of demonstrating the pro-wrestling "clothesline" maneuver (Dallas). A bank's new push-button, upthrusting teller's security shield was successful, trapping a 33-year-old robber by the neck until firefighters freed him (Chester, England). A Harvard study revealed that college students who binge-drink are twice as likely to own guns as non-binge-drinkers.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)