-- In February, the Court of Appeal in Vancouver, British Columbia, began considering Doug Stead's challenge to his 1996 $75 (USD) speeding ticket, which has so far cost Stead about $75,000 (USD) in lawyers' fees to make his point that the province's system of photographing speeders' cars is unfair. Stead, who admits he was speeding, told reporters that his wife does not agree that this is a good way to spend the household budget but that, "If I let it go, I wouldn't feel good."

-- Isn't It "Kill the Referee"?: In February, according to police in Fayetteville, Ga., after a youth basketball game (7- and 8-year-olds) that featured much bickering by a coach over referee Oliver Lewis Wood's "bad calls," the referee pulled out a knife and stabbed the coach. The referee, who by day is a Baptist minister, was arrested; the coach, who by day is a county marshal, needed 17 stitches.

-- According to a February dispatch from an Orlando Sentinel reporter in Sabana de la Mar, Dominican Republic, 16 people attempting to flee to Puerto Rico in a homemade boat without food or water were kept alive for 12 days because one of them, a lactating woman, furnished each one several drops of milk per day (and received drops back, herself, from her sister's lips). The boat was eventually blown back to shore in the Dominican Republic.

"The final taboo" and "a second coming out" are what John Outcalt, a 42-year-old New York City filmmaker, calls the Gainers and Encouragers gay subculture of men who (the gainers) try to transform their bodies by eating all the food they can or who (the encouragers) get a sexual thrill out of enabling the gainers. The of-average-weight Outcalt says (in a December issue of the weekly Time Out New York) he's a "chub chaser" who helps organize conventions (Encouragecons) and who says he likes watching bodies "going from point A to point B, and whether it's gaining hair, getting larger, or getting fat, I find it sexy and exciting."

In December, a parishioner in Dallas recognized Rev. James Simmons as his former minister, Rev. Barre Cox, who had been declared dead 15 years ago after being reported missing (and who now says he started a new life only because of severe amnesia). And two men who were arrested after having bragged in bars that they had shot Paul Higgs to death were released from jail in Doniphan, Mo., in December when Higgs was found in Arkansas, unscathed. And Neal Beaton Jr. was reported dead in Anchorage, Alaska, in January, but after his sister started on funeral arrangements, Beaton turned up alive; a look-alike dead man had been carrying Beaton's wallet. And a January suicide-attempting woman in a bathtub was declared dead and spent three hours in a funeral home body bag before her slight movements were detected by a worker (Ashland, Mass.).

-- In January and February, as many as 70 million people journeyed to Uttar Pradesh state in India to celebrate the 43 soul-cleansing days of Hindus' Kumbh Mela festival, highlighted by spiritual bathing in a relatively sewage-free part of the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. It was reportedly the largest single-purpose gathering in the history of the planet, but controversies included commercialization (Coca-Cola was sold in 115 kiosks); attendance by Hollywood spiritualists Madonna, Sharon Stone, Demi Moore and Richard Gere; and the presence of cars in the rivers as drivers attempted to bless their vehicles against future collisions.

-- Floggings in the News: A court disbelieved a pregnant 17-year-old girl's claim of rape but still reduced her sentence for having sex from 180 lashes to 100 (and later restored her honor, after the man proposed marriage) (Zamfara, Nigeria, January). And education officials in Penang, Malaysia, established a new student code: one lash for each 10 demerits (for gambling, cussing, smoking, etc.; 30 demerits for hitting a teacher) (January). And a man was sentenced to 20 lashes for using a cell phone on an airplane (Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, November). And a morgue attendant was sentenced to death for murder and rape, but a court decreed that first he would be given 80 lashings for drinking alcohol (Sana, Yemen, November).

-- The Apology and Gift Center ("We Say Sorry for You"), which opened in September in the port city of Tianjin, China, is thriving because so many Chinese are reluctant to endure the loss of face involved in a personal apology. A surrogate's in-person delivery costs about $2.50, but misbehavers can also call in their mea culpas on the popular program, "Apologize in Public Tonight" at 10 p.m. on Beijing People's Radio, 828 on the AM dial.

-- Among the reactions to the Jan. 9 lunar eclipse: Eight people were arrested in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, for carrying out what they called the ancient tradition of firing gunshots at the moon during the eclipse. And Muslims in the Nigerian cities of Maiduguri and Barma battled police and burned down at least 40 hotels and bars because they blamed the eclipse on the immorality occurring inside.

-- A drop in the vulture population around Bombay, India, has forced the 50,000-strong Zoroastrian community of Parsees to abandon its preferred "sky burials" (leaving corpses on high platforms to be devoured by the birds) in favor of using solar panels to decompose the bodies within five or six days. Disease and pesticides have reduced the number of vultures by 90 percent, according to a December South China Morning Post dispatch.

Police in Danville, Ky., reported that on Jan. 28 a Dairy Queen customer successfully passed a piece of make-believe U.S. currency in the denomination of $200 and featuring a center picture of George W. Bush. The customer offered the bill to pay a food charge of $2.12, and the DQ employee, luckily unnamed, handed her $197.88 in change. The Secret Service said it would not file counterfeiting charges because the bill was so crude that it would be difficult to prove to a jury that it could be confused with real currency.

-- Latest Reasons Given: Killed her parents because they wouldn't let her go to a dance (Tyler, Texas, sentenced in September). Did not want to leave a witness to the theft of $5 (Hillsboro, Ill., December). Insisted he was a better professional floor-tiler than the victim (Gaithersburg, Md., January). Victim ate his last piece of toast (Evansville, Ind., January).

A 58-year-old University of Minnesota classics professor named Richard Pervo was arrested when 1,000 images of child pornography were allegedly found on his office computer. San Francisco mayor Willie Brown got a restraining order against an Elvis impersonator who had been pestering him for a meeting to discuss how to rid the city of panhandlers and liberals. A London constable provoked a controversy by urging police forces to dismiss their German shepherd dogs as too soft for modern law enforcement. When six escaped maximum-security Alabama inmates were recaptured, one said the highlight of his brief freedom was the outstanding convenience-store bologna sandwich he ate in Bucksnort, Tenn. (near where I-40 crosses the Tennessee River).

(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 San Francisco in January, a 33-year-old woman was viciously attacked and killed by a neighbor couple's dog in the hallway outside her apartment, causing a furor in the city and temporarily running the state's electricity crisis off the front page. The neighbors (husband, 59, wife, 45, both lawyers) were revealed three days later to have adopted the 38-year-old man who gave them the dog, who is serving a life sentence at Pelican Bay prison and who was allegedly directing a dog-training business from his cell, supposedly to supply friendly dogs for companions and as models for his drawings. The prisoner-artist, Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, was also revealed (1) to be a member of the white-supremacist Aryan Brotherhood and (2), according to a San Francisco Chronicle report, to own several sexy photographs of one or both of his new parents.

-- Political Reform: Vermont state Sen. Robert Ide proposed a bill in January to ban "factually incorrect or false" political ads, with the liars paying fines of up to $5,000. And three Puerto Rican legislators said in January that drinking on the job by their colleagues was getting to be a problem and introduced a bill to outlaw it, enforced by four random tests a year, which is similar to a bill introduced in December in the Ontario legislature, requiring members to undergo three random urine tests a year and to report for rehab if they test positive.

-- According to a report in a February issue of New Scientist, a doctor and female patient in North Carolina inadvertently discovered a side benefit of an electrical device manufactured by Medtronic Inc. (Fridley, Minn.) that is surgically implanted near the spine in order to block the pain associated with symptoms of Parkinson's disease: The device can also tap into the nerve that produces orgasm. The doctor, Stuart Meloy, heard one woman's distinctive moan; he had an inkling about a second woman when she complained that the device was useless in blocking pain but nevertheless refused to let him adjust it.

A 45-year-old man pled guilty in January in Dunedin, New Zealand, to stealing huge amounts of mail over the past four years, which he had stored (some of it rotting or rodent-eaten) to a height of about 3 feet over entire rooms of his house, with the explanation that he was "lonely and liked reading other people's mail." Among the stash were lots of checks, but no attempt had been made to cash them; the man appeared motivated only to pass the time by reading.

In December in Las Vegas, Don D. Astorga, 31, was sentenced on federal smuggling charges; airport police had found 12 baby lizards (including two endangered monitor lizards) stuffed in his crotch. And Austrian botanist Johann Zillinger was arrested in February on the way to the airport in Rio de Janeiro; allegedly, he was preparing to smuggle out five parakeet eggs, which he had carefully stored in his crotch to keep them warm. And Providence, R.I., police arrested Frank Corsi, 29, in October and charged him with shoplifting from a Shaw's Supermarket; witnesses said he had stuffed a bag of frozen shrimp down his pants and walked out of the store.

-- Good News for the Incredibly Sensitive: In January, the Scottish Fire Service Fairness and Diversity Forum in Edinburgh declared that the term "firefighter" was "too aggressive," thus deterring women from aspiring to the job, and recommended that the title be changed to "firemaster." And in December, the school board in Cecil County, Md., scheduled a vote early in 2001 on a policy that would ban the game of dodgeball and other "activities requiring human targets," as inappropriate for young children.

-- Latest News From the Lower Intestine: In January, a jewel thief in Perth, Scotland, finally passed (with the help of laxatives) several items of jewelry that he had swallowed during his getaway four days earlier in a home burglary. However, Robert Vienneau, 34, withstood a heavy barrage of laxatives in early December as police in Magog, Quebec, attempted to recover a $10,000 (U.S.) diamond ring he admitted swallowing during a heist of Duvar Jewellery; as of press time, no ring has yet emerged.

-- Lawyer Richard J. Cotter Jr., a member of the genteel Boston establishment (and once a friend of President Kennedy), who died two years ago, was revealed, upon the reading of his will, to have been a longtime (yet closeted) supporter of white supremacists. According to a December Associated Press story, Cotter left $650,000 to pro-Nazi organizations, thus astonishing his friends and colleagues.

-- According to a January London Daily Telegraph dispatch from Rio de Janeiro, there was such demand for silicone breast implants in Brazil last year that surgeons were complaining of the late hours they had to keep, and supply houses ran out of the 250 ml size in November, necessitating a waiting list. Brazilian women's demand for such surgery in 2000 very nearly equaled American women's, despite the wide income difference in the two countries.

-- In November, officials and workers from North Korea began dismantling the 175-year-old Ushers brewery in Trowbridge, England, which their government had just purchased, and made plans to reconstruct its every brick, vat and valve in a suburb of the capital of Pyongyang, in an attempt to improve the quality of domestic draft in the country that might be making a serious effort to join the rest of the world. The deal was arranged when the North Koreans responded to an ad that offered the facility for sale for about $2 million (U.S.).

John Robert Broos Jr., 57, was charged with obstruction of justice in Barron County, Minn., in December after reporting that he had been mugged in a robbery in the parking lot of the St. Croix Casino in Turtle Lake. Broos appeared to have been beaten up, but he was apparently unaware that a parking-lot surveillance camera had recorded the entire "incident." Broos was seen returning to his truck after losing $50 gambling, then walking over to a light pole, banging his head against it three or four times, reaching down for some dirt and gravel, and smearing it against his face. Then, still on camera, he checked his look in the truck's mirror, apparently was not satisfied, and smashed his head several more times before returning to the casino and reporting the "robbery." Said the prosecutor, "In this profession, it's hard to be surprised anymore."

Men at Work: A 31-year-old employee of an antique restoration company was killed when he accidentally fell into a vat of paint stripper (Newtown Borough, Pa., December). And a 29-year-old man delivering a 1,300-pound photocopier was crushed to death when the machine fell on him (Waterford, Conn., July). And a 31-year-old winery worker drowned when he slipped and fell into a large vat of Cabernet Sauvignon (Lodi, Calif., July). And a 27-year-old, world-class water-skier drowned during a race when five swans were scared by his boat's noise and flew into his path, knocking him out (near Grafton, Australia, October).

Artist Michael Landy staged a two-week show during which he pulverized every single thing he owns (7,006 objects, including a Saab) as an anti-consumerist statement (London). Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Antonio Reig said birth-control pills were acceptable for nuns stationed in war zones where the risk of rape is high (Segorbe, Spain). A New Mexico legislator introduced an antifraud bill for livestock shows, banning steer-beautification measures (dyes, wigs) except for natural shampooing and blow-drying. The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the DUI-forfeiture of a man's $40,000 SUV, which was confiscated by police when the man was found drunk, sitting in the driver's seat listening to music, in his driveway, on the day he bought the vehicle.

(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 problems uncovered in a November Detroit News investigation of the city's firehouses was the absence of a central system of flashing alarms or bells to notify stations when 911 calls come in. Rather, each firehouse is equipped with a dot-matrix printer with a lead weight resting on the paper feed on a table and tied to a switch that activates a bell on the wall; when the 911 operator sends a message to the firehouse computer, the "print" function automatically engages, moving the paper feed up, dislodging the lead weight from the table, and tripping the switch, which triggers the bell. Detroit Fire Commissioner Charles Wilson told the News that there are no plans to replace the 15-year-old system, in that it seems to work pretty well.

-- Even though "nonlethal" military firepower might satisfy nations' needs for war, without loss of life, some experts counsel against developing such armament, fearing that such sophisticated weapons might spook Iraq and other countries to step up development of the lethal kind. According to a December report in New Scientist, feasible nonlethal weapons include a dust that would put everyone in an area to sleep (or in a mellow state); bombs dispersing microbes that eat up enemy rubber tires or eat up storehouses of oil and gasoline; and bombs that would suck up oxygen in an area to disable automobile or aircraft engines.

-- Barry and Rhonda Conrad filed a formal, pre-litigation complaint against Hendricks Community Hospital (Danville, Ind.) in February for mishandling the body of their stillborn son last April. The grieving couple had wanted to view the body (and have it examined to help learn the reason for the stillbirth) before it went off to a funeral home, but according to the complaint, hospital employees mistakenly left it in with the sheets to be laundered, and by the time the Conrads could see the body, it had been washed, bleached and dried.

Brian Boone, 29, on probation since June in Lincoln, Ill., for attempting to abduct a child (and written up in News of the Weird last year for his penchant for collecting used socks from teen-age girls), was sentenced to 30 days in jail in November following his disorderly conduct conviction for asking two teen-age girls to give him the gum they were chewing by spitting it into a cup for him. He said he needed it to fix a flat tire. (His probation requires that he stay away from minors.)

Testifying in January in her lawsuit against Dr. James Tyhurst, Jill Gorman joined four other former patients who said that psychiatrist Tyhurst pressured them into sexual master-servant relationships, which included spankings when she was disobedient (Vancouver, British Columbia). And in December, Vermont officials ordered practice restrictions on surgeon Frederick Lord for 11 serious incidents in an 11-year period (e.g., operating on the wrong body parts), including one resulting in death and another in a patient's becoming a quadriplegic (Windsor, Vt.). And according to January testimony, a 65-year-old man died at a Hong Kong hospital last year after being left poorly attended because Dr. Chau Chak-lam failed to write "acute" angina on the patient's chart because, as he later testified, he did not know how to spell it in English.

-- In November, the San Francisco Chronicle art critic remarked that the center of American art seemed to have relocated from New York to the West Coast and that no event demonstrated that more than the recent Christie's auction of contemporary art in New York City, in which a 1990 fiberglass male mannequin sculpture by Los Angeles' Charles Ray, featuring genitalia copied from the artist's own, sold for $2.2 million.

-- According to a September dispatch from Havana, the troupe of seriously overweight ballerinas, Danza Voluminosa, is gearing up for its 12th performance in four years, the Greek tragedy "Phaedra," which it will execute emphasizing arm movements and stretching, while avoiding traditional big jumps. Said one performer, "The world needs things that break conventions of beauty."

-- Performance artist David Leslie's show in October in New York City consisted of him putting on headgear and boxing gloves and inviting audience members to try to knock him out, with any successful patron awarded $1,000. "I'll be covering up," he said, "but people will have, like, 15 uninterrupted shots at me. (I)t'll be cool." In a 1988 stunt, Leslie jumped off a five-story building onto a small cushion, to get "close to that kind of (life-threatening) peril. I just love surviving it."

-- New York City writer William Adrian Milton, 59, and his doctor told reporters in January that his recent CAT scan revealed to his complete surprise that he had a bullet in his head. Searching his memory, Milton recalled a 1976 incident in which he wandered too close to a fight on a loading dock, heard a noise, and was knocked down. He said he staggered home bloody and went to bed, but failed to seek medical treatment because the bleeding soon stopped and the remaining lump was consistent with being hit by a brick. Milton said he'll leave the bullet there.

Police in Bangkok charged Japanese businessman Yukio Tatsuka, 50, with the attempted murder of his son in November in what they say was a plan to eliminate him from the family because of his aggressive behavior. According to police, Tatsuka brought the 19-year-old on a holiday to Bangkok to show him "the best time of his life" so he wouldn't feel so guilty about killing him. A police colonel said Tatsuka might have mellowed just a little during the excursion, but when the son began scolding the father anew, Tatsuka grabbed his gun and allegedly shot the boy in the neck.

In January, Daniel F. Everett, 38, was charged with disturbing the peace after he allegedly pulled down his pants in the busy first-floor lobby of the St. Louis County Courthouse and photocopied his buttocks. From his position atop a machine, he had made two copies and was working on a third when Clayton, Mo., police officers arrested him. According to witnesses, Everett beseeched the officers: "What did I do? What did I do?"

-- A 46-year-old woman was killed in September in Molalla, Ore., when a 2-ton concrete wall collapsed onto the portable toilet she was using. And a 64-year-old man was killed in Reno, Nev., in January, found underneath several hundred pounds of old newspapers that had been stacked to the ceiling throughout his house. And at the airport near Luanda, Angola, in January, an out-of-control airplane managed to land safely, sparing the lives of all seven on board, but its erratic path caused a fatal collision with a pedestrian who was relieving himself too close to the runway.

British pro soccer player Rio Ferdinand went on the disabled list with a strained tendon caused by having his leg propped up for too long on his coffee table while watching the Super Bowl on TV (Leeds, England). A fistfight broke out in the middle of a highway funeral procession when a 20-year-old motorist became angry that he had to wait for the line of cars to pass and began yelling vulgarities and tossed a bottle at a car full of mourners (Florence, Ala.). The fire department had to rescue a 67-year-old man when the ground over his septic tank caved in and trapped him inside the rusty container for nearly an hour (Warwick, N.Y.) An 8-year-old boy was suspended for three days under a school's "zero tolerance" policy, for pointing a piece of breaded chicken at a teacher and simulating gunfire (Jonesboro, Ark.)

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