-- A court in Council Bluffs, Iowa, will rule in early December on whether to admit "brain fingerprinting" evidence that might free Terry Harrington, who has been in prison for 22 years for a murder he says he did not commit. Iowa psychiatrist Lawrence Farwell developed the technique, which he says measures brain activity (or inactivity) following attempts to trigger memories; tests on Harrington showed him with no memory of the murder or the crime scene but with memories of attending a rock concert with friends on the same night.

-- High school student Brandi Blackbear filed a federal lawsuit against the school district in Broken Arrow, Okla., in October for suspending her twice during the previous school year, once for her Stephen King-type writing journals and once after the assistant principal implied that Blackbear's Wiccan "curse" actually caused a teacher to become ill. "I, for one," said the Oklahoma director of the American Civil Liberties Union, "would like to see the (evidence) that a 15-year-old girl made a grown man sick by casting a magic spell."

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution database match proved that 5,412 dead Georgians had voted since 1980, with 15,000 more potentials this year. Tom Wesson, an Anglo running for constable in Dallas, lost even though he had given himself an edge by renaming himself "Tomas Eduardo Wesson." Kari Brandenburg, the Albuquerque district attorney, won re-election easily over a man who had sent her a syrupy, flirtatious e-mail message in October but later claimed it was really meant for his wife. To comply with residency requirements, a school board candidate in Miami tried to claim he lived in a 9-by-11-foot storage shed on his father's property, but a judge dropped him from the ballot. And "psychic" Jacqueline Stallone, interviewed before Election Day, said her dogs had told her telepathically that Bush would win the presidency by "200" votes.

-- France's communist party, once serious opponents of capitalism and religion but lately in severe organizational decline, hosted a glamorous fund-raising party in Paris in October with the fashion house Prada (featuring supermodels and other trendy guests), and then a week later staged an art show featuring 30 works portraying a heroic Jesus Christ.

-- The Birch K9 Health & Fitness Centre opened earlier this year in Heywood, England, providing hydrotherapy, whirlpool, treadmill and magnetherapy to dogs under the direction of trainer Dave Burdon, according to an August report in The Washington Post. Despite the club's success in rehabilitating dogs' natural muscles that have weakened through dog owners' indolence, one British newspaper quipped that Birch K9 is the kind of thing that could only happen in America.

-- So important is the vodka industry to the Russian economy that in August, police in Moscow forcibly entered the Krystall (Stolichnaya Vodka) factory, ostensibly to seek tax documents but actually to install an insurgent board of directors to commandeer tax revenues and profits. And so important is the tequila industry to the Mexican economy that earlier this year, federal police moved into the western states that grow agave (the cactus-like plant that is the main ingredient in tequila) to guard the crops; recent agave thefts have sent the tequila price out of range for many Mexicans, from about $11 a bottle to about $33.

-- Prostitutes in Romania's dismal economy have been forced to spruce up their services, according to a June Reuters dispatch from Bucharest, by agreeing to cook and clean up after making house calls. And an exclusive Tokyo club has gone even further: For about $1,000, the customer can visit a brothel decorated as a traditional Japanese man's "home" fantasy, of a beautiful young "wife" who waits on him hand and foot, watches the TV shows he wants to watch, listens to him brag about his day, refrains from mentioning her own problems, cooks him a meal and has sex with him.

-- Latest Survived Impalings: A 22-year-old Spokane, Wash., pizza delivery driver was hit in August by a 2-foot-long piece of rebar that shot through the windshield and penetrated his skull, protruding from the back; he requires extensive rehabilitation. And an 18-year-old University of Southern California student fell out of a second-story apartment window in September and skewered her buttocks on two wrought-iron security bars; four USC football players rushed to help, pushing her body upward to relieve the pressure until paramedics arrived.

-- Christines: A 1982 Chevrolet Citation (faulty wiring) in Winter Haven, Fla., and a 1991 Eagle Talon (ignition came on when the trunk was slammed) in Milton, Ontario, reportedly started up on their own in incidents in August and October, respectively. Firefighters were hosing down the Citation when it mysteriously lurched away from them; the Talon suddenly ran down a bystander (hospitalizing him in serious condition) during a car auction.

News of the Weird has reported cases of severe motherhood envy in 1992 (Texas), 1996 (Alabama) and 1998 (Illinois), when pregnant women were killed and their abdomens slashed open so that the fetuses could be stolen. In September 2000, according to police in Ravenna, Ohio, Michelle Bica killed a pregnant woman and stole her baby, but because police suspected her, Bica shot herself to death several days later. In all four cases, the babies survived.

Retiree Neal Terry, 78, profiled in an October Dallas Morning News story about his "hobby": "I've dedicated my life to irritating people. It's a special gift that I have." "I tell my grandsons, 'You're not going to like everybody you run across, so go ahead and irritate them.'" (Terry insisted that no one has ever gotten really angry at him, even the times he sang the Partridge Family song, "I Think I Love You," over and over at work.)

Troy Carlisle, 28, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in October after being convicted in Brandon, Miss., of forcibly taking the life jacket of a 7-year-old girl and leaving her to drown in a Arkabutla Lake; Carlisle told police, "I was thinking I was gonna die or she was gonna die." And in July, Alvin Latham was charged with second-degree murder after he survived the sinking of a shrimp boat in a storm off of the Louisiana coast; police said Latham stabbed the captain to get the ship's only life vest.

The president of the Caesars Atlantic City casino resigned, seeking treatment for compulsive gambling. A married couple, both with doctorate degrees, shot each other to death in a gunfight while their young daughters were watching TV in another room (Sacramento). Home-invading robbers tied up a family on Halloween night and loaded up their valuables, diligently pausing several times to pass out candy to trick-or-treaters (Westminster, Calif.). Jailers confiscated Derrick Echols' artificial leg after he used it to beat a cellmate with and said they probably wouldn't give it back to him until he is released (Peoria, Ill.).

(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 attorney for alleged San Francisco dog-abuser Steven Maul said in November that Maul only bit the dog in the neck as part of an unorthodox but loving discipline method and that in fact Maul "is very oral" and "has French-kissed his dog." According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Boo, an 80-pound Lab, had darted out into traffic in November (again), and Maul, intending to teach against that, clamped down on Boo's neck in a way he said dogs signal dominance to each other, but did not break the skin. (Researchers have written about bite-training, but the method is currently far out of favor.)

-- In October, Rev. Derek McAleer revealed to his 350 small-town St. Marys (Ga.) United Methodist parishioners that their church had become the recipient of what is believed to be the largest one-time church donation in history: $50 million from the estate of the recently deceased man who founded the local telephone company. Actually, the donor, Warren Bailey, was a long-time church supporter but was also known in town for not having attended services in more than 20 years.

In the Sept. 19 primary in New Ashford, Mass., none of the town's 202 registered voters cast ballots, including the disgusted town clerk, who manned the polls for 14 hours. And a Green Party candidate for the Maine legislature failed to vote for himself in the June primary, leaving him with zero votes and forcing him to return his public financing. And Texas Lt. Gov. Rick Perry sent a fund-raising letter in July that not only shook down lobbyists but asked lobbyists to rank their clients as to how much they could be expected to be shaken down for (from $1,000 to $25,000). And the money flowed so freely at the GOP convention in August that Philadelphia Inquirer reporters discovered an accidentally discarded $5,000 lobbyist's check to a congressman stuck to the bottom of a utility cart outside the hall.

-- The Golden Tower Project, an installation by Seattle artists at this year's Burning Man festival, consisted of 400 jars of urine from other artists, stacked and electroluminescently lighted ("gorgeous," "faintly blue and gold," "warm, kind of like biological stained glass," according to Seattle's The Stranger weekly). (In 1993, News of the Weird reported that New York City artist Todd Alden had asked 400 art collectors worldwide to send him samples of their feces so he could offer them for sale in personalized tins. Said Alden, "Scatology is emerging as an increasingly significant part of artistic inquiry in the 1990s.")

-- News of the Weird has reported on scientists who borrow the jellyfish's "green protein" for medically productive genetic modifications, but Chicago artist Eduardo Kac created controversy in September by proposing to create embryos with the jellyfish's green-light-producing gene just to make visually appealing organisms, such as a glowing rabbit. (Kac's major work so far is "Genesis," a sentence from the Old Testament, translated into Morse Code, transposed onto DNA, inserted into fluorescent bacteria, and lit up when anyone accesses the piece on Kac's Web site.)

-- In a summer contract with the city of Montreal, artist Devora Neumark performed "The Art of Conversation," which consisted of her standing at the entrance to a subway station from noon to 4 p.m. every Tuesday and "conducting spontaneous interchange with interested parties on a variety of topics."

Frontiers of Science

-- A U.S. Forest Service researcher announced in August that her team had discovered the largest living thing ever found, a 24-centuries-old fungus, covering 2,200 acres in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon; DNA testing confirmed that the underground, stringlike structure was all the same organism. And three weeks later near Lake Okeechobee, a University of Florida biologist discovered what he called an "evolutionary relic," a previously unknown, carnivorous, flowering plant that grows entirely underground but by photosynthesis.

-- An August British Broadcasting Corp. documentary, "Brain Story," featured a man whose cranial lobes were surgically severed in order to treat epilepsy and who now is able to do what he calls the "party trick" of drawing different designs, with each hand, at the same time.

-- Japan's Mizuno Corp. has developed a synthetic material for men's underpants that would keep the covered area one Celsius degree cooler than cotton underwear and therefore helpful, for example, to skiers (and, say doctors, to those desiring increased sperm production), according to an August New Scientist report. However, Canadian polyester-mesh underwear manufacturer Stanfield's Ltd. disputed Mizuno's claim of superiority; said a spokesman, "We just haven't got up the guts to measure the temperature of someone's crotch yet."

Thomas Lavery, 56, was indicted in Akron, Ohio, in August on nine counts of roughing up two of his high-achieving, home-schooled daughters when they performed worse in their endeavors than he expected. According to the indictment, when one daughter came in second in the National Spelling Bee, botching "cappelletti," Lavery threatened to kill her and had to be physically restrained. The girl told the Akron Beacon Journal that Lavery would punch them in the head for their failures and that screaming and profanity were common. Lavery complained to the Associated Press that he was "easier on (his kids) than my father was (on me)."

News of the Weird reported in 1999 on the lawsuit by 5,400 descendants of the 18th-century Welsh pirate Robert Edwards, claiming ownership of 77 acres of lower Manhattan (including the World Trade Center and the New York Stock Exchange). In August 2000, four descendants claimed to have found a copy of a 1778 lease for the land, which had been given to Edwards shortly before by a grateful King George, stating that Edwards' heirs would get the land back in 1877. The value of the land now is conservatively estimated at $750 billion, or $140 million per descendant. Courts in South Wales, New York City and Pittsburgh have opened proceedings.

Customs Agent Adventures: Cocaine "mule" Jose Antonio Campos-Cloute was arrested at the Melbourne, Australia, airport, in September after a momentary lapse; as he was filling out the Customs form, he absentmindedly checked the "yes" box on whether he was carrying illicit substances, and that led to a search. And Briton Alison McKinnon was sentenced in August to five years in prison in Turkey for attempting to smuggle six pounds of heroin out, strapped to her chest; she was ready to board a plane home from Istanbul but was designated for searching only because one of her body-piercings set off a metal detector.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to overturn a Californian's drug-possession conviction even though one juror admitted he decided guilt by flipping a coin (which the juror defended by noting that he did two out of three). An Atlantic City casino introduced a row of stationary bicycles rigged with 25-cent slot machines. In separate incidents four days apart in Chicago, two cab drivers accidentally drove off with customers' toddlers sleeping in the back seat and required police help in reuniting the families. Doctors revealed that transplanting part of a woman's ovaries into her arm was successful in growing new eggs, for in vitro fertilization (San Diego).

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

-- Officials at the Paralympic Games, held in Sydney two weeks after the Olympics, said performance-enhancing drugs were a concern, certainly, but that some athletes with spinal-cord injuries presented yet another problem in their quest to get an edge: Some jabbed pins into their legs, or sat on tacks, or blocked their catheters to overfill their bladders, which research shows improves athletic performance (by raising blood pressure) by an average 10 percent. Even though such abuse is pain-free, it is dangerous, a Canadian team doctor told the Globe and Mail newspaper. "(B)ut," he said, "like every other athlete, (these abusers) feel invincible."

-- The New England Journal of Medicine reported in October on apparently the first-ever transfer of a food-poisoning virus during a football game. Florida State beat Duke, 62-13, in the 1998 game, but 43 nauseous Duke players and assistants got some measure of revenge by inadvertently making 11 FSU players violently ill during and after the game by passing the virus via their unwashed hands and the fresh vomit on their own uniforms. The cause was contaminated turkey sandwiches.

Re-release of the 1973 movie "The Exorcist" in September is but one event fueling a recent flurry of Satan-dispatching attempts. The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago revealed in September 2000 that it had, for the first time, appointed a full-time exorcist. And the Vatican revealed in September that Pope John Paul II had failed in his own exorcism of a 19-year-old woman after the church's chief exorcist had also failed. And in a July investigative piece, the New York Post reported that the $1 billion annual donations worldwide to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (Brazil-based, but with 15,000 members in the United States) are made largely under the church-created fear that such giving is the only way to obtain exorcisms.

-- Bismarck, N.D., police reported in October that a man recently telephoned two fast food restaurants posing as a police officer and instructed the manager to strip-search employees for contraband. The caller's persuasiveness caused an adult male to strip for a female manager and an adult female to strip for a male manager.

-- An unidentified man was finally caught by police in August, in Stafford County, Va., after two years of sightings in which he would lie on mountain-bike trails camouflaged with dirt and leaves in hopes (sometimes successful) of getting run over by an all-terrain vehicle. (Last October, according to one sighting, he staggered away from such an incident, bloodied.) The man, who lives in Burke, Va., was not arrested but was ordered to stay off bike trails.

-- Toes in the News: In August, sheriff's deputies in Pineville, Mo., arrested truck driver John Hooker, 54, and charged him with sexually abusing two underage boys by a seduction scheme that started with his fetish for sucking toes and culminated with oral sex. And a different person was reported (but not apprehended) in a St. Louis suburb in October after he forcibly sucked a woman's toes in a hotel hallway. And a police officer in Central Point, Ore., was placed on medical leave in June for forcibly sucking the toes of two women after they had rebuffed his request to submit to the sucking voluntarily.

-- The U.S. Department of Agriculture is now formally considering (following a public comment period that ended in September) new regulations that would reduce the minimum size of Swiss cheese holes in Grade A cheese from 11/16ths of an inch in diameter to 3/8th of an inch. The dairy industry said it could provide the cheese more efficiently if the holes were smaller.

-- Heavy-Handed Regulatory Reform: A sausage factory owner grew tired of repeated visits by federal food-safety inspectors and, according to police, shot three of them dead (San Leandro, Calif., June). A man angry at his treatment at a Social Security office opened fire, killing a guard (Sacramento, Calif., September). Two city officials were shot dead by a homeowner when they tried to cross his property to attend to a sewer problem (Bunker, Mo., September). Five Miami-area homeowners, fearful they will lose their trees, have been charged in 2000 with brandishing guns at state inspectors looking for an infectious citrus disease.

-- In October, the large psychic-hotline company, Access Resource Services of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., promised in a settlement with the state attorney general not to engage in fraudulent practices. One provision of the settlement absolutely forbids the company to hire bogus counselors, but contains the exception allowing telephone psychics to be hired if they swear in writing that they can read people's minds.

New York University instructor (and accused shoplifter) Elizabeth Ayres filed a lawsuit in August against Lord & Taylor in New York City, claiming that when security guards found an unpaid-for bra in her bag, it must have been because they planted it there so that they could accuse her of theft and "torture" her until she confessed to stealing it. At NYU, Professor Ayres teaches creative writing.

-- Among the latest Muslim "fatwas" (religious rulings): Men and women must use separate checkout counters in supermarkets (Malaysia, April). Husbands may hit their wives "gently," "as a warning," but must take care not to hit them in the face (Turkey, July). Having a spouse who smokes is a legitimate ground for divorce (Egypt, July). No shopping at a discount store (Egypt, June). Women caught working for British-funded aid organizations will be kidnapped and forcibly married, in order to keep them at home (Pakistan, August). And an October fatwa by the Egyptian Islamic Group instructed disciples to "kill Jews wherever they are found."

In September, a 34-year-old man drowned in his car after he drove through well-marked barricades and plunged into a 15-foot-deep sinkhole in Eau Claire, Wis. In August, a 42-year-old man drowned in Lake Erie near Painesville, Ohio, diving in to retrieve his favorite fishing lure. A 54-year-old man drowned in September after diving into Joe Pool Lake near Dallas after his hat.

A 36-year-old hunter shot and killed a state-protected mountain lion, but according to witnesses had no choice because the lion attacked him while he was squatting with his pants down, answering nature's call (Siskiyou County, Calif.). In a study, 43 percent of doctors said they would have no problem being the one to kill a death-row inmate by lethal injection (Chicago). Angered by his country's soccer loss in the Asian Cup games, Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, imprisoned the team's three most disappointing players and had them whipped on the soles of their feet (Baghdad, Iraq). The mother of a girls' high school softball player sued a teammate's father because his daughter hit a foul ball into a parking lot, damaging the roof of the woman's convertible (Bristol Township, Pa.).

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