-- Mixed News for Women: Twenty wives petitioned for divorce in Cairo, Egypt, on March 1, the inaugural day in which wives were eligible to file without elaborate proof of abuse. (They must still wait three to six months for a ruling, whereas a husband who files gets his divorce instantly and with no reason required.) And in February, South Korea's national police announced it would begin placing unarmed female troops on the front lines in potentially violent street demonstrations, hoping to calm protesters. One rowdy labor union leader, acknowledging the wisdom of the decision, admitted, "How can we attack females?"

By government estimates, 6,500 religious cults operate in Japan, according to a December Boston Globe story. Included are the $600 million organization Honohana, whose leader was accused by the government in January of defrauding disciples of up to $100,000 to alter their negative fates as revealed by his examinations of their feet, and Life Space, whose founder died in August but whose body was discovered by police in a Tokyo airport hotel room four months later, being ministered to by followers as if he were still alive (and in fact, the followers insisted to the media that the dried mummy was responding nicely to their care and had recently enjoyed some tea).

-- According to a January Boston Globe report, 3 million residential customers still lease AT&T telephones (from Lucent Technologies) at rates of $53 to $252 a year, virtually all of whom have been doing so continuously since the breakup of AT&T in 1984. Most of the customers are elderly, and when a Globe reporter asked whether they were being exploited, the Lucent spokesperson said, "As long as there is demand for the service, we will continue to provide it."

-- Craig J. Ziegler, 35, was sentenced to five years' probation in Pittsburgh in November for impersonating a law-enforcement officer and then forcing a woman (a self-described former prostitute) to perform a sexual act. The victim was outraged that Ziegler got no jail time for the assault and pointed out to reporters that the last time she was in court for prostitution, she went to jail for seven months.

-- Zhang Guoqiang, 27, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in February for swindling 50 people out of about $100,000, promising U.S. visas to people in the northern port city of Tianjin by showing them a photo of him with his bud Bill Clinton. An Associated Press reporter in Beijing said the photo shows Clinton in a green casual shirt with Zhang in a business suit pasted in next to him as if they posed together, with the two men's images "clearly out of proportion" to each other.

-- Terry Johnson, 36, received a fine and driver's license suspension in a Nova Scotia court in December over his refusal to take a Breathalyzer test at a DUI stop in 1999. Johnson's excuse was that he was belching too much at the time, as much as several times a minute for nearly two hours after being stopped, and that belches throw off the machine's readings. The police officer listed each burp, with the time, but finally just gave up and wrote the ticket. (In 1986, Johnson beat a similar charge by belching repeatedly.)

-- In December in Alberta, John Ebeling, 40, lost control of his pickup truck, crashed into a speeding freight train (onto which the truck hooked and was dragged along the tracks), freed himself from the truck onto the side of the train, held on for about 12 miles until he managed to uncouple the car he was on (causing the train to brake and his rail car to smash into it), and rode the out-of-control car into a ditch. Thirteen cars were derailed, and power lines were downed, but Ebeling walked away with only minor bruises.

-- Nathan King, 12, is recuperating in Helena, Mont., after early-March open-heart surgery to remove a pencil that he had fallen on lunging for a football. All told, before surgery began, King spent more than two hours with the pencil embedded in his heart, and if anyone had removed it, he would have died almost instantly. (King's welcome-home present from neighbors: a sweatshirt reading "Tougher Than Dracula.")

-- According to a December Agence France-Presse report from Budapest, Hungarian physicians are increasingly relying on tips from patients to supplement their falling wages in the country's free health-care system. The practice is so common that the phrase "one final checkup" is widely used to indicate a brief visit to the examination room for the discreet money exchange.

-- In February Bloomberg News reported that the $23 million Internet company NetJ.com, which went public in November, had seen its share price double in recent weeks, to nearly $4, despite the fact that the company plainly disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission documents that it not only had no profits but no revenues, and in fact that it did no business of any kind. The company told the SEC that it might begin doing business soon, but maybe not, but if it did, it had no specific idea about what kind of work it would do.

In 1998, News of the Weird touted the increasing popularity of therapeutic self-trepanation (drilling a hole in one's head to improve blood flow around the brain) for stress relief. In February 2000, after unsuccessfully soliciting doctors to drill in her native England, Heather Perry, 29 and suffering from what she believed was a physiologically induced exhaustion, flew to Philadelphia to seek guidance from prominent trepanist Peter Halvorson. After boning up on the technique, Perry performed the 20-minute procedure that was witnessed by a camera crew from ABC News. Said Perry afterward, "(T)here's definitely more mental clarity. I feel wonderful."

In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in October, a policeman shot a tipsy motorist to death at a traffic stop to prevent him from exposing himself to the officer, which according to local culture is a grave insult. And a 30-year-old repo man and a 19-year-old man behind in car payments killed each other in a gun battle in Miami, Fla., in February; the car that cost the two lives was a 1987 Chevrolet Caprice.

A 62-year-old woman thought a stranger punched her in the neck, but it was a stabbing, and the 4-inch knife remained in her neck for 40 minutes while she grocery-shopped before a passerby pointed it out to her (Darby Township, Pa.). A Maryland state senator introduced a bill to make it illegal for one woman to breastfeed another's baby. Las Vegas police burst into an apartment and arrested a Florida murder suspect while he was watching "America's Most Wanted" on TV, believing that his crime would be featured that night. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals targeted an anti-milk campaign to college students, urging them to drink beer instead. At a routine traffic stop, police found 22 pounds of cocaine hidden in a car's center console, with a lock controlled by a magnet inside a passenger's bra (Enon, Ohio).

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

-- Prescription drugs suitable for both humans and animals usually carry different price tags, even though they may be exactly the same product, and are usually much more expensive for humans, according to a February report by the U.S. House of Representatives Government Reform Committee. For example, Medrol, an arthritis remedy for humans and an anti-inflammatory for dogs, is about one-fifth the price when intended for dogs. Critics say the pharmaceutical houses charge more for humans because most sales are at least partially reimbursed by insurance.

At his booking on drug charges in December, Norman Hardy Jr. was asked by Brattleboro, Vt., police what his occupation was and answered defiantly, "Selling drugs." And at his booking in connection with a carjacking in November, Rafael A. Jackson, 28, was asked his occupation by East St. Louis, Ill., police and responded, "Homicide and robbery."

-- After a 35-year-old man reported to a Brunswick, Ga., emergency room in January complaining of abdominal cramps, doctors removed 55 thin glass cocaine pipes (one of them 4 1/2 inches long) from his stomach; the man said he did not realize they were there because he was always high when he accidentally ingested them. (In September, according to a New Delhi, India, newspaper, veterinary surgeons removed 100 pounds' worth of plastic bags and other litter from the stomach of a cow during a four-hour operation.)

-- The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in October that Pennsylvania's lawsuit settlement with the tobacco companies included a $42 million windfall for the two law firms chosen by the governor to represent the state (about $1,300 an hour per lawyer), even though the case's research and arguments were largely copied from other states' lawsuits and the negotiations were streamlined because the tobacco companies had begun settling those cases. Among the expense-padding: $62 to one lawyer for 12 minutes' work (reading The Wall Street Journal) and $290 to another for an hour he spent ordering books.

-- In December, a court in Lusaka, Zambia, approved Dorothy Mapani's strategy to settle the dispute with her husband, Effas Ondya, over which of the two is more responsible for the couple's lack of a sex life. Ondya said he is uninterested because he believes Mapani is infertile, and Mapani has accepted Ondya's challenge to get pregnant, with any man, within 90 days. The $300 bet, said the court's two justices, seemed a reasonable way to resolve the issue.

-- Gay adult club owner Keneth McKeigan was convicted in Toronto in December of running a bawdy house and sentenced to 100 hours of community service. McKeigan's crime was running a three-month promotion at the club during 1995 and 1996 called "Sperm Attack Mondays," in which male dancers would masturbate on stage and for which some front-row customers donned raincoats.

-- An October New York Times report referred to the 75-mile stretch of I-95 between West Palm Beach and Miami (plus its connector freeways) as the "impalement capital" of the country because of the frequency with which unsecured cargo flies off of speeding trucks and cars, including the three times recently when metal rods skewered motorists' bodies, tacking them to the insides of their cars (though all survived). Drivers complain also of having to dodge, among other things, flying car parts, surfboards, lawn mowers and washing machines.

-- In December, the publisher Benedikt Taschen debuted a 480-page, 70-pound "coffee-table" book by renowned photographer Helmut Newton that is only available with its own coffee table, designed by Philippe Starck, for about $1,700.

-- In March, the venerable San Francisco Art Institute disciplined student Jonathan Yegge, 24, for his 10-minute performance-art piece, which he said "explores Hegel's master-slave dialectic" and Kant's theories on freedom of thought and action. However, what 20 observers and two instructors saw was Yegge and a blindfolded volunteer engaging in oral sex, then Yegge administering an enema, then the two men exchanging excreta. Complained Yegge, "They say you can do whatever you want as long as you can justify it artistically. I was given no chance to do that (before being disciplined)."

In February, Dawn Marie Sprinkle, 29, was ordered by a judge in Helena, Mont., not to get pregnant for the next 10 years; she had failed several drug tests after her conviction for giving birth to a girl with amphetamines in her system. And in February, Kathy Looney, 29, was ordered by a judge in Monroe, La., to choose between sterilization and 10 years in prison, following her conviction for the extension-cord beatings of three of her eight children (all of whom she has now been denied custody).

In June 1999, News of the Weird reported that Palestinian researcher (and 15-year U.S. resident) Mazen Al-Najjar had just completed his second year of federal incarceration in Bradenton, Fla., having never been charged with a crime and never told of the "evidence" against him. In February 2000, the FBI's General Counsel told a House immigration subcommittee that four other men are similarly incarcerated with no chance to present favorable evidence or to cross-examine witnesses against them. These exceptions to fundamental American rights are apparently permitted under a 1996 anti-terrorism law even though the "terrorism" evidence is known only to a few people in the U.S. government.

A 24-year-old man accidentally shot himself to death in London, Ohio, in February while doing a scene with two friends in a rap music video. In other horseplay tragedies, a 22-year-old man fell to his death after sliding backward down a banister at America West Arena during the Phoenix Suns' basketball game on Dec. 20, and a 26-year-old standout amateur wrestler fell to his death from a Las Vegas light pole he had climbed in order to celebrate New Year's Eve better.

A land developer filed a lawsuit against a former city councilman for the return of the $25,000 bribe he paid (and for which both had gone to prison) (Kansas City, Mo.). A sixth-grader won a $1,500 judgment in small claims court against his school, which lost his 161 Pokemon cards after confiscating them (Pittsburg, Calif.). Twenty-one mayors and more than 100 other officials lost their jobs when a new provincial law in Newfoundland took effect, tossing out any officeholder who owes back taxes. A couple on a Valentine's Day holiday lit romantic candles, accidentally setting a major fire in their hotel (Hull, Quebec). Two teen-age boys fled police rather than stop for a minor equipment violation but were caught when they accidentally crashed their car into a police station (Modesto, 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/.)

-- Mr. Kamla Jaan, 50, was elected mayor of Katni in central India in December, and Mr. Shabnam Mausi was elected to the legislature in the state of Madhya Pradesh in February, in political breakthroughs for eunuchs, who have run for office in large numbers recently as a reaction to perceived widespread corruption among India's traditional politicians. Until now, the genitalless "hijras" have been relegated to being either prostitutes or professional pests who trespass and then demand fees to leave the premises.

In October, high school teacher Edward R. Kotwica committed suicide by walking in front of a train in Bergen County hours after he was charged with fondling a 17-year-old female student. Two weeks later, piano teacher Samuel S. Aster, 59, hanged himself in Teaneck; he had been charged with molesting seven of his young students. Less than a month later, Adam Victor Reed, 53, a former board of education member in Monmouth County, was arrested and charged with possession of 12 boxes of child pornography.

-- A 45-year-old man was identified by police in February as the one who had recently taped as many as 100 vials of water to trees in Milwaukee and suburbs (though at press time, he had not been charged with a crime). He told police that he was testing the frequencies of radio stations because one of them had been bombarding him with signals. Though he did not explain the role of the vials, he vowed to send the test results to the FCC. The man's son, 17, said he was a good father but that sometimes he neglects his medication.

-- Joseph Sherer, 41, was arraigned in Bozeman, Mont., in January on 11 felony charges, including aggravated assault and impersonating a physician, stemming from what police believe were from 40 to 200 phone calls he made from his Sunrise, Fla., home to women in Montana, advising them to perform harmful procedures on themselves (such as persuading one woman to cut off a nipple and flush it down the toilet). According to police, Sherer had episodes of similar, but not as dangerous, phone calls in other cities in the 1980s.

-- E.H. Dennis, 77, was convicted in Greensboro, N.C., in January of scaring attendees at a 1998 Guilford County Commission meeting by making an explicit bomb threat against commissioners if he didn't get his way in a land-use dispute. According to a videotape of the meeting, Dennis calmly described how commissioners' body parts would be strewn around the area after the bomb went off. During a break in testimony at his trial, Dennis left the courtroom and stepped over to the elections office, where he left a $147 cashier's check as filing fee to run for a seat on the commission.

-- New York City firefighter Albert Hohmann was arrested in February after being identified by police as the man who, naked, sneaked into a restaurant at night and snacked on expensive food and wine. Hohmann's lawyer denied the charge despite the fact that the restaurant's surveillance camera was running and that the intruder sported an easily identifiable tattoo of "Mr. Peanut" on his derriere.

-- Trauma therapist Karen Frogley complained in January to Reverse Bungy New Zealand about the company's installation of a 130-foot-high tower with a bungee-attached capsule in downtown Wellington, outside Frogley's office building. Frogley says the jumpers' blood-curdling screams make her rape and car-crash patients anxious during their sessions.

-- In December, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals offered 350 homeless shelters in the U.S. and 34 more in Canada holiday "tofurkeys" -- tofu shaped to resemble turkey parts. Said the PETA coordinator, of the campaign to save hapless turkeys, "Homeless people especially can empathize with those who are oppressed."

-- In December, the Education Ministry in Turkey asked a math publisher not to use the letters "p" and "k" in algebra equations because they could form the acronym for the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party ("PKK"). The ministry suggested instead the letters e, f, g and h.

Because of an inexplicable rash in mid-1999 of newborn babies being abandoned on the street, Child Protective Services in Houston bought 75 billboard ads in December to beg reluctant mothers to take unwanted babies to hospitals or social services agencies. And at the Berea Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa, at least four newborns have been deposited recently through its oversized mail drop for unwanted babies. South African authorities are equally baffled at the sudden upsurge in abandoned babies.

Barely six months after the murder conviction of San Diego surgeon John Ronald Brown (whose patient died while voluntarily having a healthy leg removed), a hospital in Scotland announced that it has been the site of two similar but successful surgeries in the last three years, on patients so dissatisfied with their bodies that they have a psychological need ("apotemnophilia") to have a healthy limb removed. Surgeon Robert Smith said he was troubled by his patients' (one British, one German) needs but ultimately performed the operations at no charge because the patients were so distraught, one having earlier shot himself in the leg to improve the chances a surgeon would agree to amputate.

A 37-year-old man who tried to get out while backing up his van fell to the ground and was run over (Silver Spring, Md., December). And a 22-year-old man who decided to push his asphalt-filled truck up an off-ramp as it was sputtering to a halt after running out of gas, slipped as the truck started to roll backward (Jacksonville, Ill., January). And a 30-year-old man who got underneath his truck at a service station to adjust the starter was crushed when the truck lurched forward on top of him (Sugar Land, Texas, December).

A 58-year-old man got 12 months in jail for forgery; it was his 151st criminal conviction since 1961 (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario). The publisher of the "For Dummies" book series donated $350 million to MIT for brain research. "Mountain man," the escaped murderer from Bulgaria who spent 12 years burglarizing houses in Washington state, received $412,500 from Snohomish County because a police dog bit off part of his foot during the arrest. A furniture store floor collapsed, injuring 161 shoppers (13 seriously) in a frenzy to buy one of 36 $229 armchairs marked down to $18 (Dos Hermanas, Spain). A 51-year-old man, out of work 14 weeks with broken ribs after being hit by a bus, was billed $850 for damage to the bus (London, England).

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