-- More than 500 accidental electrocutions were reported in Russia last year from people stealing power line electrical cables for resale as scrap metal. According to an April New York Times dispatch, more than 15,000 miles of power lines have been pulled down in recent years, rendering millions of households dark for weeks at a time. One recent victim, interviewed in intensive care, said he was confident when he saw a single line left on a pole, believing that thieves had taken the other lines safely; he is now without his left arm, right leg and colon.

According to a January Associated Press report, China has a government-sanctioned UFO research organization with 50,000 members, processing 500 alleged sightings a year, which is to be expected, said the director, because extraterrestrials, too, are interested in the country's rapidly developing markets. And Professor Liu Dalin opened a sex museum last year in Shanghai, with 1,000 exhibits, including a historical, imperial-palace stamp used to mark the derrieres of virgin girls. And according to an April Wall Street Journal story, there has been a recent "explosion" of successful litigation in China by elderly parents suing their children for failing to care for them in old age.

-- The British supermarket chain Tesco announced in January that its film-processing department had collected a total of 24,000 photographs over the years in which customers had accidentally snapped shots with a finger on the lens (the right middle finger being the most popular).

-- Hussen Farah Mohammed, 46, was released from jail in Bloomington, Minn., in January after 16 months' incarceration for entering the U.S. illegally from Canada; he said he had accidentally wandered across the unmarked border while in the woods birdwatching, but after he was captured, Canada refused to take him back. And Houston car mechanic Edgar Garfield Gibbons, 41, returned to the U.S. in March after nine months in jail in Georgetown, Guyana, to which country he had been mistakenly deported when he was confused with a New Jersey man of the same name.

-- In December, former Gastonia, N.C., prison guard Timothy Ramey filed a legal challenge to his dismissal, saying the precipitating incident was merely a minor mistake. Ramey was arguing with his superintendent about something and became so frustrated that, in an effort to "ignore" what his boss was saying, Ramey reached into his briefcase, "pulled the first thing out" that he found, and pretended to concentrate on that. It was a copy of Playboy magazine, which infuriated the superintendent.

-- In December, a joint committee of the Colorado Legislature approved an emergency grant of $75,000 to Morgan Community College in Fort Morgan, Colo., after it dawned on administrators that, because of "an oversight in the plan for the project," the just-finished student center building had no restrooms.

-- Latest Unsuccessful DUI Excuses: John B. Byrnes, Windsor County, Vt. (January): claimed he was in the passenger seat, and that it was his setter ("Becky") that was driving. Ronald McDonald Jr., 40, Norristown, Pa. (November): claimed he drove a short distance only so his girlfriend could clean her hands after changing a diaper so she wouldn't dirty the steering wheel. A 76-year-old man, Milwaukee (February): claimed he was under a doctor's orders, driving or not, to have two drinks a day.

-- In 1996, a federal court in Miami ordered Cuba to pay $187 million to the families of three Cuban-American men on protest flights shot down by Cuban military jets in open waters. In November 1999 (three weeks before Elian Gonzalez was rescued off the Florida coast), in perhaps a retaliatory court proceeding at Havana's Provincial Popular Tribunal, the United States was found to have harmed Cuba through 40 years of "aggressi(on)" and was ordered to pay the Castro government $181 billion.

-- In February in Largo, Fla., James Brian Kuenn, 40, was convicted of killing a teen-age girl, despite his claim that she had accidentally fallen and hit her head; Kuenn said he was so embarrassed at the accident that he made it look like murder to throw police off. And Thomas Storey, 27, was sentenced to 26 years in prison in Santa Ana, Calif., in December for murdering his wife, despite his claim that she had actually killed herself; he said he stabbed her dead body 25 times only to simulate murder to spare their son the shame of his mother's suicide.

Saskatchewan legislator Brad Wall, lamenting in December the invasion of bats at Regina General hospital: "I'm not sure what is more disturbing: the fact that nurses spend part of their day catching bats or that nurses were advised not to catch these particular bats because they could be rabid."

-- Twice in the last five weeks, News of the Weird has reported on dental-office abuses in the U.S. In November, a Melbourne, Australia, dentist was accused by the Victorian Dental Board of professional misconduct for allegedly engaging in the unauthorized (but not unheard of) facial-pain remedy of administering ozone through the patient's rectum, including 15 treatments to one patient in a three-week period. Advocates of the treatment say it can also be administered in the ear.

At a village near Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, police said a Muslim woman beat her 10-day-old son to death in January because he preferred to be breastfed by his father's other wife. And in Tokyo in March, Mitsuko Yamada, 36, pled guilty to killing a 2-year-old girl, apparently solely so that Yamada would no longer have to face the girl's mother, who had allegedly ignored Yamada during the neighborhood playground's social hour when mothers gather while their kids play.

A German shepherd police dog was caught shoplifting a slab of prime rib from a grocery store (Waukesha, Wis.). Police said two arrested drug dealers had been routinely issuing customers receipts but also charging them sales tax (Victoriaville, Quebec). A man pled guilty to burglary and the theft of Big Mama, a 50-pound halibut that was the main attraction at a showcase hatchery (and which the man also ate) (Redondo Beach, Calif.). Police phone taps of computer hacker "Mafiaboy" inadvertently uncovered an unrelated plot by the hacker's father to beat up a business associate (Montreal). Honolulu Heart Program researchers linked consumption of tofu during middle age to subsequent decline in brain function.

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

-- In April, the Orange County (Calif.) Register revealed that human tissue banks, which are widely believed by the donating public to be either government- or non-profit-operated, are highly profitable commercial concerns, with annual revenues of $500 million and rising. Today, a cadaver "donated to science" actually brings up to $200,000 for tissue banks and their contractors. The companies argue that if they paid for cadavers, the costs would rise to tissue recipients (who range from blind people receiving corneas to makeup models who want fuller lips).

The I Am Hurt Corp. lawyer-referral company filed a lawsuit in Edmonton, Alberta, in March against a competing lawyer who advertises his phone number, 428-HURT. And in November, a New York grand jury indicted three principals in a Maryland distributing company for fraudulently substituting common fish eggs for caviar. And in March, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against four Georgetown University law students, accusing them of recommending an obscure stock on an Internet bulletin board and then exploiting people who bought that stock, even though the buyers put their money down apparently knowing nothing about the stock except that these anonymous strangers recommended it.

-- Exciting New Products: the Vast-ity Belt, which contains a microchip that flashes and beeps when the wearer has eaten too much at a meal (from Piero De Giacomo of Bari, Italy); The Gooser, a computer program that automatically inflates lawyers' billed hours (according to a November federal indictment against the developer, a Wayne, Pa, consultant); and sliced peanut butter, packaged like single slices of cheese, from researchers at Oklahoma State University.

-- Latest from the Restaurant Industry: A Nazi-themed restaurant called The Third Reich (with Gestapo-clad waiters) has been open for about a year in downtown Seoul, to little criticism, perhaps because of South Korea's minuscule Jewish population. However, an unaffiliated eatery called Jail (with a prison motif) in Taipei, Taiwan, was forced to apologize in January for including Holocaust prison scenes on its walls. Yet another Taipei theme restaurant opened in January, built on a smokestack at the city's biggest garbage incinerator, with picturesque views of trucks bringing in the trash.

-- In London, England, in December, a completely automated tavern, Cynthia's Cyberbar, opened, featuring a robot that mixes drinks perfectly and carries on recorded conversations to simulate a friendly bartender.

-- New York City psychotherapist Marilyn Graman recently offered a $9,600-per-person set of classes that she describes as "a step-by-step intensive program designed to lead (a woman) down the aisle." According to a December Philadelphia Inquirer report, the course covers 276 hours over six months, full of such tips as how a woman can visualize herself as a wife and how to make your closet "man ready," but she offers no nuptial guarantee.

-- Wilhelm Krumwiede asked the Nebraska Supreme Court in December to rule that his estranged (and possibly dead) wife is also liable for the $120,000 in legal fees he has amassed defending the charge that he murdered her. (She has been missing since 1995, but in two trials, Krumwiede has not been convicted.) And in December, after estranged wife Cora Caro was arrested in Ventura County, Calif., and charged with murdering three of her four children, she demanded $550,000 from her husband (the kids' father) as a "loan" from the future division of the community property in order to fund her expectedly elaborate defense.

-- In November, testifying before the state gaming commission in Indianapolis, principals of Caesars Indiana apologized for falling far short of the commission rule requiring that 10 percent of casino contracts go to minority businesses. Caesars said it had greatly improved over 1998's dismal one-half of 1 percent, but then revealed that that improvement was produced by counting its major engineering firm as minority-owned because its owner claims to be 1/16th American Indian.

-- Ronald Bell Jr., 18, was convicted of murder in Shalimar, Fla., in March; part of the evidence against him was a surveillance video from a Target store showing Bell and two accomplices returning the murder weapon (a $9.99 meat cleaver) for a refund.

A brand-new, $1 million fire station in Charleston, W.Va., as well as the Southampton Street headquarters of the Boston Fire Department, were closed (in January and November, respectively) because of fire-code violations. And fires demolished a fire station in Allentown, Fla. (in January), the Mercury Candle Co. factory in Newark, N.J. (in January), and the Argo Co.'s fire-extinguisher plant in Detroit (in November).

-- In 1992, News of the Weird reported the onstage death of a nightclub comedian in Tempe, Ariz., who keeled over from a heart aneurysm while emceeing a show. In March 2000, a performer who worked as Uncle Ron the Magician collapsed and died during a show in Hamilton, New Zealand, and as with the 1992 incident, some in the audience applauded, thinking the collapse was a pratfall that was part of the show.

Easy IDs: Four men escaped in March after robbing a Mellon-PSFS Bank in downtown Philadelphia, but police got a clear photo of one of the men, who had inadvertently stood on the sidewalk directly facing the bank's surveillance camera while getting up the nerve to put on his mask. And Cedrick Washington, 33, was arrested in November and charged with robbing a Kenner, La., sandwich shop; according to police, he had stood in front of the shop (again, inadvertently facing the surveillance camera), repeatedly practicing pulling his shirt over his head as a disguise.

Four kindergartners were suspended for three days for pretending to shoot each other with their fingers (Sayreville, N.J.). The real name of a man charged with attempting via the Internet to lure an underage girl into a sexual tryst: Mr. Dirk Lust (Merrimack, N.H.). A 38-year-old inmate, who might have been released next month, was sentenced to 50 more years for assaulting a guard (Huntsville, Texas). Clyde Charles, 47, was freed from the Angola prison in Louisiana (after serving nearly 20 years for rape) when a DNA test implicated his brother Marlo, instead. A Tucson, Ariz., schoolteacher who claimed an Hispanic student shot her confessed that she had shot herself to draw attention to school security problems.

(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 chief justice of oil-rich Brunei ruled in March that Prince Jefri, the 46-year-old brother of the Sultan of Brunei, was entitled to an allowance of about $300,000 a month while awaiting trial on the Sultan's lawsuit that Jefri misspent $15 billion while in charge of the country's investments. A preliminary audit showed that playboy Jefri had bought himself $2.7 billion worth of toys in 10 years, including 17 airplanes, 2,000 cars, and a huge yacht that he named "Tits," and whose two dinghies he named "Nipple 1" and "Nipple 2."

Two years ago, in a bogus Internet news story, a South African hospital with a high fatality rate had discovered that a cleaning lady had been plugging her floor polisher in each night by briefly unplugging an appliance that was, unknown to her, a life-support machine. In November 1999, Chicago's TV Channel 7 lost sound for 25 minutes on the final night of the crucial ratings "sweeps" week when cleaning-service personnel plugged a floor buffer into the station's master control outlet, overpowering an audio circuit and driving away 40 percent of the prime-time audience.

-- After Ivory Coast's soccer team was eliminated from the African Nations Cup in January, the country's military ruler, Gen. Robert Guei, had the team arrested and put in a military prison for two days. Addressing the players, Guei said, "I asked that you be taken there so you reflect awhile. Next time (if you play badly) you will stay there for military service ... until a sense of civic pride gets into your heads."

-- In January, a Philadelphia city-funded community organization published a pamphlet on health and safety tips for prostitutes, which recommended always getting on top, negotiating price before getting into a car, and getting the money in advance. Also in January, a member of the Canadian Parliament released a list of recent pamphlets directly funded by the government, including "How to Communicate With the Dead," "How to Stimulate the G-spot," and "How to Understand and Enjoy an Orgasm."

-- Despite many anti-smoking programs sponsored by the U.S. government, a Senate subcommittee found last year that the Department of Housing and Urban Development had spent $4.2 million since 1996 to help American Indians build discount cigarette stores as part of the federal community block-grant program. (In April 2000, legislation was introduced in the Senate to end the practice.)

-- In January, a New York state administrative law judge ruled after four hearings in three years that Krystyna Maliszewska, 51, of Brooklyn was not eligible for worker compensation because she had not provided the proper "medical evidence" that her leg had been amputated (even though voluminous hospital records were in her file). Maliszewska attended each hearing and could have shown her artificial leg and the stump that ends at her right knee but was never asked even to speak. (After a February New York Daily News story, the state quickly reopened the case.)

-- Wynema Faye Shumate, 65, was arrested in Ladson, S.C., in March on two charges of mishandling a dead body. The case came to light when a 27-year-old Englishman flew to America to marry Shumate after a hot Internet romance but discovered that Shumate was not the age-30ish woman she had portrayed online. According to police, when the man asked Shumate if she had other surprises, she told him about the carved-up body in the freezer, which was that of her male former housemate, who Shumate said had died the year before of natural causes. Shumate was cleared of causing the death, but, according to the Englishman, the wedding is off.

-- In a case unique among women who keep too many cats at home, a judge in Fairfax County, Va., told U.S. Navy program analyst Kristin Kierig in November that she could keep the 104 cats that share her Annandale, Va., townhouse because the house is apparently clean and the cats groomed and in good health. Kierig produced medical records on the cats, showed that she cleans the 101 litter boxes twice a day and keeps the 15 water bowls and 20 food bowls stocked, and said she can recognize each cat by name (but she did confess that her house might have an "odor").

-- In March, Benjamin Thomas Douglas, 34, was sentenced to 180 days in jail for the latest in what police call serial public masturbation incidents in the middle of department stores in Dallas and its suburbs of Plano and Mesquite. And the month before that, Philadelphia police were hunting a man in his early 20s for seven incidents of public masturbation at area fast-food outlets over a four-month period; in each case, according to the police reports, the man reached a climax quickly and then left without his order.

-- News of the Weird has regularly reported highway truck spills over the years, but a December spill in Providence, R.I., interwove another News of the Weird theme: the tacky, wayward public official. Rhode Island Department of Transportation maintenance supervisor Thomas E. Jackvony Jr. was charged with larceny because, according to police, when he was supervising the cleanup of grocery-store items from an 18-wheeler's spill, he also grabbed whatever items he could and put them into his car. Police recovered 15 packages of cookies, 15 home electronic scales and 20 cassette tapes.

-- More Divine Dentistry: A News of the Weird roundup in July 1999 listed several cities in which worshipers recently have claimed that, following prayer, gold teeth and fillings appeared in their mouths in place of the previous porcelain and silver. Later that year, similar divine outbreaks occurred, at a New Life Community Church revival in Weatherford, Texas, and with Pentecostals in Orangevale, Calif. As with the earlier instances, some of the faithful stuck to their claims even when their own dental records showed they had gold fillings all along.

A 57-year-old Halifax, England, man, distraught at his wife's death, decapitated himself with his homemade guillotine (December). A 30-year-old man attempting suicide in Rustenberg, South Africa, put a firecracker in his mouth and lit it; the explosion shook his house and mangled his face, but he survived (January). A 29-year-old man, driving to work at rush hour near Washington, D.C., and arguing with his fiancee on his cell phone, shot himself to death, with the resulting collision tying up traffic for hours (February).

A man in a wheelchair and wearing a beanie robbed a Wells Fargo Bank, instructing the tellers to fill the beanie with cash (Pleasant Hill, Calif.). A woman won $171,000 from a jury for slipping on a piece of broccoli in a Grand Union supermarket (Bennington, Vt.). A Washington, D.C., police officer was found guilty of sexual assault, becoming the 16th officer on the force in 15 months to be convicted of a crime. The Ohio liquor control agency banned as offensive the Belgian ale Manneken Pis because its label features a boy urinating. At least two viewers smashed their TV picture tubes trying to kill the high-definition cockroach crawling across the screen as part of a recent Orkin commercial.

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