-- Warning to Dorks: Two British researchers told New Scientist magazine in December that they have developed prototype software to assist in crime-prevention by monitoring surveillance cameras and electronically identifying, by image pixels, people who are moving around in suspicious ways. As an example, said one of the developers, someone awkwardly approaching a car is probably up to no good. However, privacy advocates were alarmed at the news, fearing that police would target people who are merely gawky.

In January, two University of South Carolina professors released a study of high-speed police chases that concluded that pursuits are more dangerous the more cars that are involved, the higher the speed, the darker it is, and the more crowded the streets are; they came to these conclusions using a "pursuit decision calculus." And the research organization Statistics Canada concluded, in a study by R.O. Pihl and six others released in December, that the more alcohol that mothers drink, the more emotional and behavioral problems their kids tend to have.

-- Police in Upland, Calif., charged Darlene Bourk, 31, with the murder of her husband, Robert, and said she had covered up the crime for three years by stuffing his body in a wardrobe box in her rented storage locker. The scheme came to light in September when Bourk missed the third straight monthly payment, causing the landlord to auction off the locker's contents (for $20). Bourk realized the impending catastrophe just a few hours too late, and her frenzied attempts to buy back the wardrobe box aroused the suspicion of the buyer, who called police.

-- Bethel AME Church, owner of the Beech Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, paid Rosa Lee Bentley $27,500 in October to settle Bentley's lawsuit over her mother's missing body. The cemetery said it had lost track of the body and that after a long search above-ground and below, it could not find it.

-- Adventures in Poland: A 51-year-old seamstress in the town of Stawold Wola, Poland, reporting for a routine mammogram in October, was found to have four sewing needles inside her left breast, probably the result of their having migrated in over the years from her habit of sticking them on the front of her apron. And USA Today reported in November that a funeral in a cemetery in western Poland was disrupted when a cell phone started ringing from inside a grave because attendants had failed to notice it in the deceased's suit before burial.

-- In July, inexperienced sailor Richard Stewart and his family set out from Newport, R.I., on their 65-foot ketch, headed for Florida, where it had been scheduled for repairs. After a friend lost contact with the Stewarts, he called the Coast Guard, which tried unsuccessfully for 30 days, covering 85,000 square miles, to find the vessel. In August, the disabled boat limped into Ocean City, Md., with the Stewarts completely unaware of the massive, $75,000 rescue mission. Three months later, the Stewarts set out for Florida again, and again became disabled, and on Dec. 19, the Coast Guard found them (cost: $38,000) near Cape Fear, N.C.

-- Kendall Breaux, serving a life sentence for killing two bank tellers during a 1998 heist, filed a lawsuit in October in Thibodaux, La., against his getaway driver, James Dunn, for injuries Breaux suffered when their car crashed into a slow-moving train during the police chase.

-- Marlene Hoffman filed a $1 million lawsuit in Georgetown, Texas, in December against the Dr Pepper Co., which sponsored a college football halftime punt-catching promotion that she didn't win. Hoffman was selected to stand on the 50-yard line and receive punts from a kick-simulation machine (catch one, $50,000; two, $250,000; all three, $1 million) and was told that balls would come down in the general vicinity of the 50-yard line. She caught none because, she said, her three balls came down too far away: on the 44-, 45- and 42-yard lines.

-- In November, a jury awarded Andrea Karlen of Milford, Conn., $500,000 for injuries incurred in what all parties acknowledge was a mere "fender bender" in 1991. Karlen's medical witnesses said the accident triggered post-traumatic stress disorder (from her memories of childhood physical abuse), sending her into a major depression and panic attacks, and resulting in at least 400 psychiatric sessions. The unlucky auto-accident defendant was a state judge who has now been nominated to a federal court.

From a pamphlet distributed by the new Russian anti-materialist group, Union of Revolutionary Writers (according to a September New York Times report): "The half-eaten hamburger left by the dead man on the streets is now a revolutionary hamburger."

The Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law filed papers at a court hearing in Toronto in December, intervening on the side of a 23-year-old man who had been charged with, among other offenses, sodomy on a 14-year-old girl. According to Sheena Scott, the foundation's director, the anti-sodomy law should be nullified because it does not except consensual sodomy and thus discriminates against teens over the age of consent (14), who are thus being denied their right to engage in anal intercourse. Said Scott, "We (are) intervening with respect to the interests of children in general."

On Nov. 23, a 42-year-old auto body shop worker was killed when the ambulance he was working under fell on him. Three days later, a 35-year-old worker at the Chartiers Cemetery was killed when a backhoe slipped and its front bucket struck the man in the head, knocking him into the newly dug grave.

New York City finally removed "telephone psychic" from the list of jobs it subsidizes for its welfare-to-work program. A woman filed a lawsuit against a flamboyant obstetrician who carved his 3-inch initials into her abdomen after a particularly pleasing Caesarean section (New York City). Miracles were attributed to apparitions in Port Sulphur, La., and Houston (dried ice-cream splotches, resembling the Virgin of Guadalupe, on a basement floor). The University of Florida introduced the U.S.'s first Doctor of Plant Medicine degree program, to rival those for veterinarians and physicians. Federal drug agents busted a 2,000-customer cocaine-home-delivery business ($25 "small" order; $150 "large"; Domino's-like, 30-minute delivery) (New York City).

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

-- The Futile (and Dangerous) Getaway

If the cops are coming, you look for the most efficient escape route. But being intense about avoiding arrest on a relatively minor charge (here, possession of a stolen credit card) put Christopher Bobby, 25, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in even more peril. He estimated that his best escape route at 1:30 a.m. was the Red River. He leaped from the squad car, tore his clothes off and jumped in. The water was quite cold (October), and he was somewhat inebriated to begin with, and after a few minutes, reached the admirable conclusion that his safest bet was to swim back to the cops waiting on the shore.

[National Post-CP, 10-18- 99]

-- Taking Your Wallet with You

It could be the cardinal notion of robbery: You won't have occasion for your wallet while you're robbing the bank or the convenience store, so why take it? (What -- you think you'll need to buy something during the heist?) But hardly a month goes by without one such report. Abdullah Yuzon, 29, was arrested in New Britain, Pa., in August after leaving his wallet (with photo ID, no less) in the Wawa store he had just robbed.

[McDonald County (Mo.) Press-AP, 8-25-99]

-- When "Breaking and Entering" Becomes "Breaking and Staying There"

In 2000, many burglars will go to some trouble to get into buildings they don't belong in by coming through an outside vent, certain that it will be easy enough to traverse the length of the vent and plop down inside. Almost as many will get stuck in the vent and still be there when the cops arrive. Just one of the many recent ones was the guy who was discovered in an overhead vent at Ruby's Pizzeria in Deerfield Beach, Fla., in September. Furthermore, when the cops arrived, he thought he'd beat the rap by just refusing to come down, but cops went to the roof and poured grease down the vent until he slid down enough that they could pull him out.

[National Post, 9-9-99]

-- The Bank Robber With Bad Handwriting

In the movie "Take the Money and Run," Woody Allen got great mileage out of the robber embroiled in a dispute with the teller over whether his note read "I have a gun" or "I have a gub." Life imitates art. A robber walked into a National Bank of Canada in Pickering, Ontario, in September and presented his note, and a teller responded by giving him a single $50 bill, whereupon our guy said that wasn't what the note demanded, so he walked out. He did the same thing two more times that day and as far as we know, his bank-robbery income is still zero. We still don't know what the note actually said.

[Toronto Sun, 9-15-99]

-- The Lost Art of Checking Out Your Target

Two teen-age boys, ages 17 and 18, were arrested in Farmington Hills, Mich., in October after trying to open a nondescript car parked along Nine Mile-Haggerty Road, allegedly looking for easy ones to break into. They failed to notice there was a man inside. (How could they miss that? He happened to be an undercover officer so he wasn't in uniform, but they didn't even see the guy at all.) I imagine cops fantasize about just sitting around and having criminals walk right up to them, all fresh and ready to arrest.

[Detroit News, 10-21-99]

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

-- According to London's Daily Telegraph, U.K.-funded research revealed in January indicates that within 10 years, countries could require car manufacturers to install $300 electronic governors that would use satellite technology to control the maximum speed that cars could travel, varying it depending on amount of traffic, highway design and driving conditions.

Convicted murderer William "Cody" Neal, at his sentencing hearing in Golden, Colo., in September: "I (accept) responsibility for the (murder). If I lose my life, I can live with that." And an unnamed woman, when police in Appleton, Wis., came in December to remove her children because of a complaint that she had given her 11-year-old daughter a "swirlie" (holding her head in

a flushing toilet): "I haven't had a vacation in 13 years. Go ahead and take them."

-- At a meeting of African leaders in Tripoli in September, Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy unveiled a prototype of the car of the future that he said he had personally engineered in his spare time: the low-slung, five-passenger "Rocket of the Jamahiriya," featuring bottle-shaped front and rear ends to deflect collisions and make it the world's safest car. Libya would produce 50,000 cars a year priced in the "upper-middle-class" range.

-- A private company, leasing land rights from the Israeli government, plans to build a $6.6 million entertainment complex in Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee to include an 80-yard-long platform just below the water's surface to allow visitors to re-create Christ's walk on water (at $5 a head). However, according to a December Austin American-Statesman report, Roman Catholic priest and Holy Land scholar Jerome Murphy-O'Connor predicted the walkway would be used only by "drunk tourists, not serious pilgrims."

-- A September Deutsch Presse-Agentur report profiled Mr. Rainer Thoenes, 33, from the German village of Kalkar, who earns a nice living as a hairdresser for cows being readied for cattle shows. "The trick," said Thoenes, "is to highlight the cow's strong points (straight back, slim legs, plump udders) and hide the weak ones," but Thoenes's professional standards prevent him from supplying artificial parts such as more attractive tails.

-- In a December profile, the Village Voice touted the hand-carved potato dildoes of California artist Pommela de Terre, who said spuds are more sensual than carrots or cucumbers, than clay or Play-Doh, or than candles or commercial dildoes. De Terre adds lemon juice to prevent color change and olive oil for flexibility and said she's never had a potato break during use.

-- A November Associated Press report on Jacksonville, Fla., stabbing victim Michael Hill, 44, showed him progressing slowly after the April 1998 incident in which a neighbor mistakenly jammed an 8-inch, serrated blade all the way into the top of his skull. Doctors pulled it out without major damage, and Hill now takes pain and seizure medication and still has trouble with emotions and short-term memory. Hill's sister, at whose house Hill was staying when stabbed, believes the attack was intended for her husband.

-- A Palm Bay, Fla., engineer renewed his call in September for testing his theory that bombarding developing hurricanes with nuclear weapons would disrupt their circular wind flow and cause them to dissipate, saving lives and curbing property damage. Henry Payne first made the claim in 1997, but a federal weather official said too many bombs would be needed, resulting in serious nuclear fallout even if the bombardment took place far from land.

-- Recent Addictions: Daisy Hales pled guilty in Haymarket, South Yorkshire, England, in September to stealing books to feed her habit of eating paper. And researchers told a conference in Los Angeles in October that more men than women suffer from "body dysmorphic disorder" -- people who imagine themselves horribly ugly and deal with it by radical plastic surgery and peculiar disguises. And Canada's National Post reported in October on polydipsia ("self-induced water intoxication"), which causes addicts to guzzle water to the point of getting high (at which point it becomes life-threatening), including some who furtively drink from toilet tanks.

Subtenants Stuart and Susan Levy were at last fined $8,000 in December by a New York appeals court, but not before they had refused to move from their rented Manhattan apartment for 11 years after being given their 30-day notice to vacate by the tenant, who said in March 1985 that she needed to move back in. Because of the Levys' delay tactics, it took seven years for the principal tenant even to get a formal ruling that the Levys had to move. After that, the Levys stalled for four more years by claiming that the principal tenant should pay all of their legal fees for the 11-year battle.

Just before hurricane season in 1998, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told his "700 Club" TV audience that the city of Orlando, Fla., should not have sponsored that year's "Gay Days" festival, that touting homosexuality would cause God to visit hurricanes and tornadoes upon the city. (In fact, 1998's first hurricane hit Robertson's headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va.) In November 1999, the supreme Islamic leader in Afghanistan said that if Americans did not "cease hostility against the Taliban," the United States would suffer earthquakes and storms, and in fact took credit for September's Hurricane Floyd.

In unrelated incidents, Jesus Gutierrez, 17, was arrested in Springfield, Ore., in October, and Lawrence Eaddy was arrested in Charlotte, N.C., in July, both charged with carjackings rendered unsuccessful because the perpetrators realized too late that they couldn't drive cars with stick shifts. And the man who robbed the First American Bank in Columbia, Tenn., in December managed enough luck to escape; his getaway plans had been set back when he ran out to the stolen car he had left idling, only to discover that he had locked the key inside.

A Canadian judge denied a work permit to an "unqualified" immigrant stripper, saying she had worked only topless in Romania while the Canadian job required full nudity. A 792-square-foot home on a 2,800-square-foot lot in Palo Alto, Calif., went on the market for $409,000 and was expected to be bid upward. Britain's nuclear agency said a Christmas kids' exhibit built by Dounreay nuclear power employees was safe despite its consisting of containers that once held radioactive waste. A 1-year-old girl, idly punching numbers on a telephone key pad, hit 911, bringing police to her home, where her father was hiding out on a parole violation (Winnipeg, Manitoba). A 20-year-old man, picked up on a bad-check charge, was re-arrested, for swiping a squad-car door knob as a "souvenir" (Crossville, Tenn.)

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)