-- In December, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered Maria Wigent, age 37 and a 32-year resident of New York City, deported (thus breaking up the home she shares with her husband and two teen-age sons) after her third shoplifting conviction, involving about $25 worth of items. And a December New York Times story recounted the plight of a Guatemalan-American in Virginia facing deportation this month for the single act of biting her husband ("domestic violence") during a fight.

Police in Pittsburgh identified a 31-year-old man as the person who was too lazy to lug his Christmas tree down to the street and thus simply tossed it out his sixth-floor window on Christmas Day. The tree hit a power line on the way down, knocking out electricity to about 400 customers and deadening the 911 line briefly until a backup generator kicked on.

-- From a report by psychologist N.G. Berrill, to a New York City court in November, quoting former police officer Justin Volpe on how he came to brutalize Abner Louima's rectum with a mind-of-its-own toilet plunger in the notorious 1997 assault: "I couldn't believe (that Louima didn't apologize for cussing him, Volpe said). The next thing I know, the stick was in (Louima's rectum)." Volpe continued: "I was terrified. When the stick seemed to pop in, I said to myself, 'I cannot believe this.'"

-- The president of Oklahoma City's Fraternal Order of Police told reporters in November that the six recent incidents of on-duty sexual misbehavior by officers is attributable to "stress" emanating from their anguish working in the aftermath of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building.

-- Born-again Christian David Strein, 44, announced in November that he would appeal his 1998 dismissal from a New Mexico state government job for misusing his computer because he was actually powerless to stay away from Internet pornography. Strein contended that after he first discovered online porn, "Satan told me to check it out some more." Also, said Strein, once at a porn site, he was trapped on a virtually endless loop of sex sites that had taken over his computer. (The administrative law judge had ruled that Strein had visited too many sites and given them his credit-card number too many times to have been blameless.)

-- In August, an industrial tribunal in England upheld the firing of reporter Ian White, 36, who had been warned several times over the years about his bad hygiene, which he blamed on depression over his marriage. It was Britain's first such official decision after several that seemed to suggest that workmates had to tolerate diverse body odors.

-- Fireproof Workers: An arbitration panel ruled in July that Toronto Transit Commission janitor Winston Ruhle had been improperly fired and deserved about $115,000 (U.S.) in damages; he was fired in 1995 for padding his recuperation time after surgery, improperly missing 203 days during a 244-day period. And English chauffeur John Forbes, 55, won an employment tribunal ruling in September that it was unfair to fire him simply because he had twice dressed in women's clothing on the job and flashed his underwear to passing motorists.

-- In a September profile of a purgatory-like room at Tokyo's Sega Enterprises building, The Wall Street Journal described the daily activities of disfavored employee Toshiyuki Sakai during the four months between his first negative evaluation and his ultimate firing. Sakai was assigned to an empty room with a desk, chair and incoming-calls-only telephone, where he was expected to remain every day, with no assignments yet also without personal diversions. Observers cited by the Journal called Sega's room a compromise between the U.S. preference for ruthless termination and the Japanese commitment to stick with workers longer.

-- The lawyer for a former Fort Lauderdale, Fla., phone-sex worker told reporters in November that he had won a workers' compensation settlement for his client based on her claim of carpal tunnel syndrome due to masturbating on the job as much as seven times a day. Steven Slootsky said his client accepted the settlement to avoid the embarrassment of testifying, even though the money is not enough to reimburse her for the surgery she required on both hands.

Three times during the last two months of 1999, a parent passed away unexpectedly, leaving a small child alone in the house to figure out what to do next. Travis Butler, 9, Memphis, Tenn., went to school as normal for a month, trying to hide his mother's body because he feared being put in a foster home. Lydia Hanson, 7, Peabody, Mass., told her teacher the next day of her mother's death, but the teacher just shrugged, forcing the girl to spend another night caring for the body before finding a grown-up to believe her. Karina Pistorio, 4, Oklahoma City, attempted to nurse her dead father through the Christmas weekend before the police came, having been called by her father's friends concerned that he was missing. (No foul play is suspected in any of the deaths.)

When News of the Weird introduced Rev. Richard A. Rossi Jr. in December 1994, his wife had just emerged from a coma and recanted her accusation that he beat her to a pulp near their Pittsburgh home. He had repeatedly denied the charge, saying the attacker must have been someone who looked just like him, driving a car just like his. Nonetheless, he pleaded no contest to the assault and the couple moved to Long Beach, Calif., where he became pastor at the Immanuel Baptist Church. In November 1999, Rev. Rossi threatened to file slander lawsuits against Immanuel members who circulated news of Rossi's Pittsburgh background after he changed Immanuel's by-laws to free up church money for himself.

James Velez, 25, died of infections caused by his lifelong habit of violently scratching himself as if thousands of bugs were crawling over him (New York City, October). Wendy Scott, 50, died of cancer after recovering from Munchausen syndrome, in which the afflicted complain of bogus illnesses and undergo unnecessary surgeries (42, in Scott's case) (South London, England, October).

A lifeguard was rushed to intensive care after drinking from an open Coke bottle in a clubhouse refrigerator, having overlooked the label "Do not drink / Jellyfish tentacles" (Cairns, Australia). On Christmas Eve, Patricia White Bull, 42, abruptly awoke from a 16-year coma and regained most of her faculties (Albuquerque). Twelve people in a high-rise for seniors were hospitalized on Christmas Eve after a woman took Oprah Winfrey's advice and lit an "inspirational" candle, which toppled over and started a fire (Chicago). Seven noodle-making shops were closed after inspections revealed they were preserving their inventory in formaldehyde (Hanoi). Tim Book beat a DUI charge by telling a judge that he had just come from a hypnotist's show and was still in a trance when police stopped him (Bruderheim, Alberta).

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

-- Among the new dog designer fashions unveiled at the 12th Pat Pet Friend Festival in November in Bangkok: a red-and-black, Michael Jackson-style military coat; a yellow-and-black bike racing jacket with bike-style helmet; a silver space suit-like cape; and a blue silk gown. According to designer Vasinee Apornpanit, the biggest market by far for dressing up dogs is Japan, where pet owners are now asking for cell phones and other high-tech gadgets to be sewn onto the dogs' outfits.

In October, a first-grade teacher in Rialto, Calif., taped a disruptive student's head to the wall of the classroom. And seventh-grade teacher Carrie White was accused in October of flinging a dictionary and a calculator at two disruptive students in Lodi, Ohio. And in June, high school substitute teacher Steven M. Catena was fired in Keansburg, N.J., after reports that he wrapped one student in masking tape and butcher paper in class and implored students to give another classmate a "swirly" (dunking in a toilet). And in Durban, South Africa, in May, a high school teacher and a principal pulled guns and opened fire on students who were protesting higher fees.

-- In an August dispatch from Katy, Texas (near Houston), the San Francisco Chronicle featured "Forbidden Gardens," P.H. Poon's 80-acre, $20 million, 1/20th replica of the Forbidden City in Beijing (shown as life-size in the 1987 film "The Last Emperor"), "what must be," according to the Chronicle, "one of the world's least known theme parks." The reporter noted only one vehicle in the parking lot and only a group tour of 16 kids in attendance.

-- After arresting Teri Harrington, 31, and Deana Watson, 28, in September, Sacramento, Calif., police told reporters that the women had apparently stolen large numbers of items from local stores at least 14 times in the previous two weeks, casually walking out each time with 20-gallon bins filled with clothes, videos, CDs, games and cosmetics.

-- In Windsor, Ontario, in August, the small wheel of a man's wheelchair got stuck on railroad tracks as a train was heard in the distance, and a female passerby in a wheelchair rolled out to help him, but her small wheel got stuck in the same rut. Both suffered minor injuries when the oncoming train could not completely stop.

-- In October, Argentina exiled former Paraguayan military leader Luis Oviedo to remote Tierra del Fuego for violating the rules of his political asylum, which it had given him six months earlier. Oviedo had unsuccessfully requested a stay of his banishment, arguing that he had recently undergone a hair transplant and felt the windy, sunny weather in Tierra del Fuego would disrupt his new plugs.

-- In November, Robert Horton, 52, walked into a Phoenix courthouse carrying his wife, Belinda, who was bound at the legs, arms and mouth with gray duct tape. He told a security officer that she was due in court that day on a charge of assaulting a police officer, that he had posted bail for her, that she had threatened to skip the court hearing, and that he had taped and lugged her downtown to make sure he got his bail money back. Unknown to the Hortons, the charge against Belinda had been dismissed earlier that day, but prosecutors are still deciding whether to file charges against Robert for kidnapping his wife.

-- Convicted killer Kenneth D. Williams escaped from prison in Arkansas in October by hiding in a 500-gallon barrel of hog slop being towed to a prison farm; he was apprehended 36 hours later. And two weeks later, robbery suspect Roderick King, 19, was found in a Dumpster full of fetid garbage in Knoxville, Tenn., where he had been hiding from police who chased him after he had gone to the home of the victim's aunt to convince her he was innocent.

-- Diana Thorneycroft's government-supported art exhibit, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in September, consisted of 12 dead rabbits, hung from trees and rotting, in the woods outside town; said the artist, "I'm celebrating the gloriousness of putrefaction." And in November, an unnamed male artist, submitting a project for an Accrington, England, show aiming to revitalize the local village, acceded to sponsors' wishes and redesigned his live-maggot exhibit, which was opposed by environmental officials.

Elderly Margaret Barrs filed a lawsuit in Houston in November against Jack in the Box restaurants because she lost a fingertip when a heavy restroom door slammed on her hand in 1998. And Toronto lawyer Edward Skwarek, 37, filed a $1.5 million lawsuit in November against Starbucks for his restroom injury in one of the chain's New York City restaurants; Skwarek said he was seated on the commode, and when he turned to reach for toilet paper, the seat slipped and trapped his penis between it and the top of the bowl, mangling it.

-- News of the Weird has reported several times on successful surgeries to remove unusually large benign tumors, most recently in February 1999 in women in Baltimore (80-pound tumor) and Lancaster, Pa. (75 pounds). In December 1999, doctors at the University of Chicago hospital, working for 18 hours, removed a 200-pound tumor from a 40-year-old woman who weighed 120 pounds just 12 months earlier when the tumor's growth began. The largest tumor-removal on record, 303 pounds, occurred at Stanford Medical Center in 1991.

Insufficient Reasons to Kill Someone: Resisted taking a shower (Joseph Meehan, charged with strangling his son, 8, Toronto, November). Violated chess etiquette by moving a knight to a new square but then moving it back, even though he did not lift his hand (Mr. Buth Ratha, charged with clubbing his opponent to death with a wooden pestle, Prey Veng, Cambodia, July). Got accepted to kindergarten while her playmate did not (Mitsuko Yamada, 35, mother of the rejected, charged with strangling the accepted child, Tokyo, November).

A black man defended a bank robbery charge by claiming a 44-year history of brain damage owing to racism (Pittsburgh). A 23-year-old woman climbed down after two years high atop an ancient redwood tree where she had prevented a logging company from clearcutting the site (Stafford, Calif.). A Filipino man received 75 lashes for having two liquor-flavored chocolate bars at an airport in alcohol-dry Saudi Arabia. A man was arrested with a stolen TV and VCR, having called attention to himself by hauling them on the street in an obviously stolen U.S. Postal Service cart (York, Pa.). A Wicca-store owner at a mall sued a psychic-store owner at the mall for slander in their heated business rivalry. (Cape Cod, Mass.).

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

-- Erik Sprague, 27, a doctoral student in philosophy in Albany, N.Y., has undergone several body modifications (teeth sharpened, tongue forked, forehead bumps implanted, "scales" tattooed) in order to appear like a reptile, according to December wire service reports. Sprague, described as an "excellent" student by a professor, told reporters that he knows of four other people who have made such "single-theme conversions" (as a zebra, tiger, leopard and a giant puzzle called "The Enigma"). He will appear on the TBS show "Ripley's Believe It or Not" in January.

After resisting for five years, Missouri was forced by a federal judge in November to allow the Ku Klux Klan into its Adopt-a-Highway program, publicly recognizing the organization for keeping clean a one-mile segment of Interstate 55. And the Army revealed in September that its new lead-free combat bullet will not be ready before 2003 (although some local police departments already use a less-powerful model); the Army needs the bullet because 1,000 indoor military firing ranges are currently shut because of lead contamination. And in June, researchers at Ontario's University of Guelph reported genetically engineering a pig that produces manure 20 to 50 percent lower in the pollutant phosphorous than ordinary pig manure.

-- Latest from Weird Japan: Nonordained "pastors" in Tokyo are exploiting the Japanese fascination with Christian weddings (1 percent of Japanese are Christian, but 70 percent of all weddings are), according to a September Reuters news service report; the fake ministers' justification: The Bible condemns holy marriages of a believer to a nonbeliever, but does not mention marriages of two nonbelievers. And in May, a Times of London story reported the frequent installation in Nagasaki and other cities of "unwanted-dog postboxes" into which pets can be directly placed for pickup if the owners tire of them.

-- As with weddings in Japan, Christmas shopping in Singapore is a huge national pastime despite the fact that only 13 percent of the people are Christians. Half of the country's annual retail sales come during the season; shopping malls turn into extravagant theme parks; traditional hymns saturate cities. Explained an interdenominational leader: Singaporeans merely use the Christmas season as a long year-end celebration leading up to the Chinese New Year in January.

-- Among those caught up in the consequences of Florida's Marriage Preparation and Preservation Act of 1998 (which requires license applicants to read a 16-page booklet heavy on parenting techniques and responsibilities and gives a $32.50 license discount for taking a four-hour course): Max Gordon and his bride, Mollie Levy, who planned to marry in Delray Beach last September until Max had trouble reading the book because of his cataracts. Max is 90, Mollie 82, and between them they have six children and 31 grand- and great-grandchildren.

-- When government minister Yuksel Yalova attended the grand-opening ceremonies at a veterinary hospital in Izmir, Turkey, on the symbolic World Animal Day in October, he was treated to the traditional tribute to a visiting dignitary: the ritual slaughter of a healthy sheep.

-- After protests in October, Grand Canyon University, a small Christian college in Phoenix, canceled its scheduled "Assassins" fund-raising game, in which gun-carrying players pay for the privilege of shooting colleagues with Nerf darts, with the last one standing getting a restaurant certificate. Many students originally failed to connect the game to recent school violence, such as the freshman woman who told a reporter, "This is a Christian university, so we know the difference between right and wrong."

-- In June at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, a tarantula the size of a salad plate underwent two CAT scans to save her from an infection from a coin-sized abscess and survived in fine shape, expected to live another 10 years to age 20. According to the aquarium's senior herpetologist, the tarantula's only problems now are her bad habits of showing her fangs and ejecting barbed hairs from her posterior.

-- In July, police in Dhaka, Bangladesh, rescued two spider monkeys that were chained up in a drug seller's house. To reduce human intervention in drug sales, said police, signs ordered customers to pay the monkeys in either of two denominations, which the monkeys could distinguish by color, after which the monkeys would fetch the appropriate quantity of drugs from their hiding places.

New Jersey entrepreneurs recently proposed a series of memorial theme parks ("The Final Curtain") in which creative people's self-designed tombs, urns and sculptures will house their remains in world venues attractive enough or spectacular enough to compete for the public's entertainment dollar. One proposal: A man wants to be buried with a camera that will televise his decomposition to spectators.

News of the Weird reported in 1996 on the then-brand-new testicle implants for dogs ("Neuticles," invented by Gregg Miller of Independence, Mo.), thought to be helpful to neutered dogs that somehow would feel embarrassed after castration. In November, Miller said he had scheduled his first human for an FDA-approved Neuticle implant: Californian Jim Webb, who had had a testicle removed to relieve chronic swelling.

Ski-mask-wearing Floyd Brown, 24, was charged with robbing a Holiday Inn in Anchorage, Alaska, in November, apparently oblivious of the 40 police officers just off the lobby in a law-enforcement training conference (advertised on the marquee out front). And in December in Las Vegas, robber Emilio Rodriguez, 19, was shot to death as he rushed into Mr. D's bar, which is a favorite haunt of (and was filled with) off-duty police officers.

Hormel Foods announced it would open a 16,550-square-foot Spam Museum and Visitor Center next year (Austin, Minn.). Miss America of 1998 took a job waiting tables at Artie's deli in New York City. A 41-year-old man carrying his unwrapped shotgun to a pawn shop innocently stopped by a bank to make an inquiry, provoking a major police response (Athens, Tenn.). Two sociology professors announced a new "Journal of Mundane Behavior" for rigorous study of the inconsequential (Fullerton, Calif.). Robert Wald obtained a patent for boxer shorts with built-in briefs, sewn inside in a shared waistband (Toluca Lake, Calif.).

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