-- "Vote for Me, and I'll Fight for You": In January, a 55-year-old member of the Turkish parliament died shortly after being punched in the head about five times by legislators from the far-right Nationalist Action Party who disagreed with him on whether the chamber's rules of debate should be changed. Although it was the parliament's first death, fights are known to break out there, unlike the extraordinary two-judge fistfight in January at the courthouse in New Orleans; according to WDSU-TV, the combatants were judges Steven Plotkin and Charles Jones, and the results were not announced.

-- In January, News of the Weird reported that a North Dakota man had qualified under that state's law for a concealed-weapon permit even though legally blind, but that man had at least satisfied the state's reasonable shooting test by hitting a human-sized target 10 times out of 10 from a distance of 21 feet (after practice shots to get his bearings). However, in February, according to a report in the Louisville Courier-Journal, Kentucky's weapons law has also permitted at least two legally blind people to obtain licenses, and in that state, the shooter must hit the human-sized target, also from 21 feet, only 11 times out of 20.

According to Reuters news service, a January campaign attributed to Venezuelan military dissidents has seen more than 100 pairs of women's panties mailed to current military brass to make the symbolic point that the generals have been pushed around by President Hugo Chavez. And police in Davos, Switzerland, trying to contain protesters at the World Economic Forum in January, loaded their high-pressure water cannons with manure bought from local farmers. And among the chants by union-organizing strippers picketing to keep potential customers away from a San Francisco club (in a new British documentary): "2-4-6-8! Don't come here to masturbate!"

-- In December, the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Fire Department was designated as the year's recipient of a $2,400 donation by a civic group that, for the fourth straight year, raised money by holding an event at a strip club, the motif of which was that dancers had their bare chests rubbed with a ham. (Despite the department's current need for $8,000 to buy a computerized talking fire truck to use in safety exhibits, the fire captain declined the contribution as inappropriate.)

-- Bob Manion, who has appeared as Flasher the Clown at festivals near his home in Clayton, Calif., for nearly 20 years, was rejected in January for this year's Walnut Festival and will probably be rejected as well for Clayton's Fourth of July parade, as organizers of both events say his act has started to worry people. Manion carries a small Yorkshire terrier inside his pants, and for a surprise, opens the costume and allows kids to pet the dog.

-- In February, Girl Scout officials of the San Jacinto Council near Houston announced that this year's father-daughter event would be a "pajama party" dance in which fathers and the girls, aged 11-17, would come dressed in sleepwear; after some complaints ("It would attract every pervert in the city," said one mother), the council changed the dress code to sweatsuits. And The Tennessean newspaper reported in November that the longstanding Halloween tradition of the Morris Levine family near Nashville, to hand out gift "daddy bags" to fathers accompanying trick-or-treaters, was not well-received by all parents because some of the bags contained copies of Penthouse and Hustler.

-- The Museum of Natural History in London decided against creating the scent of the dinosaur because it was just too disgusting, according to a February Associated Press dispatch identifying Dale Air Deodorising Ltd. of Lytham, England, as the company that had the contract to simulate the smell. Said Dale's owner Frank Knight: "The T-rex would have to be the most putrid, foulest thing that ever lived. A hyena times 10 would not even get you close." The odor would have to account for the chunks of rotted meat of its prey caught in its teeth, he said, and probably a few pus-filled wounds, as well.

-- The Ontario Court of Appeal, in the course of its January ruling that drug charges against a teen-ager at a Marilyn Manson concert would have to be thrown out because of police entrapment, described a scene that some concert-goers found gross and scary in its own way: older men (undercover police officers) dressed in Goth garb trying to trick kids into selling them marijuana by saying things like, "Hey, man, it's going to be a wicked concert" and "Hamilton (Ontario) sucks."

Barry Darrell Freeman, 29, was convicted in January of an attempted rape last year near Philadelphia. According to testimony, things started to go bad for Freeman when the victim asked him to take off his own clothes and then chided him until he did. With his clothes off, the woman saw that he was not carrying a gun, and ran away, eventually to outrun Freeman to safety. However, during the chase, according to the woman, Freeman kept muttering something about not being able to trust a woman.

News of the Weird has reported on studies revealing that certain types of water pollution are causing some simpler forms of marine life to change sexes, but in a report in a December 2000 Science News, University of New Brunswick (Canada) researcher Kelly Munkittrick disclosed that most of the large female chinook salmon around Washington state appear to have been born males, although he believes so far that neither escaping nuclear materials from the Hanford plant near Richland nor estrogen-rich pesticides common to the area appear to be the cause.

Excerpts from letters written by convicted murderer Christa Pike, 24, to fellow imprisoned Tennessee Satan-worshipping murderer John Fryman, who apparently believe they can communicate their love for each other telepathically (as reported in the Knoxville News-Sentinel in January): "(Blood) is quite beautiful before it turns brown." "I love the feel of life then lack thereof in my hands. And just knowing the pain I can cause after accepting so much." "I like to see blood and brains fatty tissues and wide-open ripped flesh." "See, I have an innocent baby face, the face of an angel. It disguises me to a lot of people. I need my horns so I'll have something to hang my halo on." "I used to have 3 (demons), now only one. The other 2 were weak. I do wish you'd remove this one. He may be big and tough, but he's stupid, and he's holding me back." "I'm unlike all the others, Johnny. You know that!"

The Arkansas Supreme Court struck down a state law protecting public school teachers from insults, as unconstitutionally vague (though the justices did agree that the 13-year-old defendant was wrong to call her teacher a "bitch"). A 19-year-old zookeeper was mauled to death after answering nature's call too close to the cage of a tiger, which was attracted by the scent (Jinan, China). Rep. Joseph Brooks introduced a bill in the Maine legislature to add a nickel-a-butt deposit (as now with soda bottles) to each cigarette sold. A customer filed a lawsuit against Taco Bell for injuries she suffered during an employee food fight (Nashua, N.H.)

(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 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/.)