-- Police in West Vancouver, British Columbia, said in April that they had stopped a three-year petty-crime spree in a neighborhood of upscale homes when they arrested multimillionaire Eugene Mah, 64, and his son, Avery, 32. According to police, the two are responsible for stealing hundreds of minor and even tacky items, such as garbage cans, marginal lawn decorations, and even government recycling boxes, and keeping them at their own posh home. Mah's Vancouver real estate holdings are reported at about $13 million (U.S.), but among the items he allegedly stole were one family's doormat and, subsequently, each of the 14 doormats the family purchased as replacements.

-- In April, the Washington (D.C.) Humane Society pled guilty to a charge of illegally euthanizing three mockingbirds in violation of the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the prosecutor said the society actually illegally euthanized more than 800 protected birds during the previous four years. In the latest incident, the society (which claimed it never realized it needed a permit to treat protected birds) was trying to eliminate a threat of mockingbirds dive-bombing pedestrians near the State Department headquarters.

-- In a lawsuit deposition reported in April in the New York Daily News, the dismissed assistant to a prominent cancer surgeon charged that the doctor loaned out blood samples of the late New York City Catholic Cardinal Terrence Cooke long after his death so that parishioners could pray over them for good luck. The New York Archdiocese said it did not authorize the surgeon, Dr. Thomas Fahey, to safekeep or to lend the blood. (Catholic tradition says praying over the "relics" of "saints" brings good look, but the relic blood in this case was actually the cause of Cooke's death in 1983, of leukemia.)

Scott Hanko was arrested in April in Central Islip, N.Y., and charged with making lingerie purchases by phone with other people's credit-card numbers, a practice he said he did (according to police) because he is "an introvert and very shy." Police said Hanko called to converse with female order-takers and that to legitimize the calls, he ordered merchandise, which would be sent to the homes of the credit-card holders. Sometimes, he said, he would have to call as many as 15 catalog operators before he found one whose voice was engaging enough to talk to.

Recent Events, Inexplicable Except for Alcohol: Raymond Garbaldon, 19, was charged with breaking into a stranger's home, apparently for the sole purpose of turning on an outside light so he could see on the porch to shave his friend's head with electric clippers (Albuquerque, February). And Ms. Dale A. Sunday, 49, was discovered in her car on the right field warning track at the then-under-construction Pittsburgh Pirates' ballpark, which was accessible from the street only through a complicated-to-navigate construction tunnel (March). And Iris Martinez, 24, was found alive in her car at the bottom of the 200-foot Rio Grande Gorge in Taos, N.M., despite a large rock barrier that supposedly prevents cars from going into it (March).

-- In February, an exhibition opened in Berlin, featuring about 200 unatrophied body parts and skinless corpses, dismembered in various designs and gaudily displayed with super-preservatives to highlight what developer Gunther von Hagens says is every last sinew, cell and vein, and to show "the beautiful interior of the body." Among the most startling pieces from this "Body Worlds" "plastination"-process exhibit: a five-months-pregnant woman whose cross-sectioned abdomen reveals a curled-up fetus and dark, smoker's lungs.

-- Opening at the Custard Factory arts center in Birmingham, England, in March was an exhibit basically consisting of no exhibit at all: no paintings, no sculptures, only whitewashed walls in a 2,500-square-foot hall that is empty except for a few scattered captions and the sign "Exhibition to Be Constructed in Your Head." Said a co-organizer, "It's an experiment to see how people react to it."

-- Cincinnati photographer Thomas Condon, 29, was indicted in February (along with a deputy coroner) on corpse-abuse charges following the revelation by a film-processing firm that Condon had photographed morgue corpses oddly posed and holding such things as a syringe, sheet music and an apple. Said a man familiar with Condon's art, "(This work) is insensitive to the family members (b)ut from an art perspective, there is precedent for it."

-- In March, a California consumer group, analyzing information supplied to the Federal Trade Commission by auto manufacturers, reported that the companies buy back about 100,000 of their cars every year (95 percent with one or more safety defects) under federal "lemon" laws, but then resell all but a few thousand of them after supposedly "repairing" them, even though they could not successfully repair them when the original consumers owned the cars. According to Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, most of the repurchased cars are sold at auction in the states in which it is the easiest to hide the fact that the car was a "lemon law buyback."

-- In April, Ms. Annika Oestberg of Denmark successfully defended her international ice golf championship at the annual tournament before 35 challengers on Uummannaq Fjord, Greenland, beating American Tom Ferrel by 10 strokes. The temperature this year was a balmy 17 degrees (Fahrenheit), but the greens were still called "whites."

Vandals active in March near Williamsburg, Va., have not yet been apprehended despite their lack of sophistication: They spray-painted eight cars with slogans such as "White Power," "KKK" and "High (sic) Hitler."

A 21-year-old man lost control of his car and was killed while driving to court for his trial on previous reckless driving charges (Virginia Beach, Va., March). And three people were killed recently after confrontations as samaritans tried to prevent drunk friends from driving: A 46-year-old woman tried to keep an intoxicated friend from driving, but he drove off anyway and accidentally struck and killed her (Fairfax County, Va., January); and a Carrollton, Texas, man accidentally suffocated to death while being held down by seven friends to keep him from driving drunk (October); and an intoxicated 29-year-old man was struck and killed while walking across a busy highway after a friend had taken away his car keys (Morgan Hill, Calif., December).

Marlene Lincoln passed her driver's test, after 12 failures and 200 lessons, costing about $6,800 (Sprowston, England). A 54-year-old forgery suspect was released from jail after his wife presented a certificate showing that she had posted bail; however, the certificate turned out to be a forgery (Edwardsville, Ill.). A federal appeals court ruled that a state university in Pennsylvania had the right to fire a professor who refused to issue a passing grade to a student, even though the student skipped most assignments and 12 of 15 class sessions (Philadelphia). Christian Anders, 56, a semi-prominent German singer, said he and his girlfriend accepted an "indecent proposal" to lend her to millionaire Michael Leicher because Anders needs the money for a liver transplant (Berlin).

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

-- West Hempstead, N.Y., high school guidance counselor David D'Amato, 39, was convicted in April of e-mail-disabling mischief against three universities, crimes motivated by revenge when certain male students at those schools tried to break off their association with D'Amato. Their relationships consisted of D'Amato's paying them each hundreds of dollars over the years for their making videotapes of themselves being tied up and tickled, for D'Amato's viewing pleasure. D'Amato, who was known as "territickle" in his online community, was not charged with sex crimes because the boys were at all times clothed and their activity limited to tickling.

-- Crime Pays: Federal and most states' laws require that prisoners be furnished adequate medical care, but Larry Causey has sought benefits of the laws more deliberately than most previous inmates. He pled guilty in March, after being arrested in his car outside the post office in West Monroe, La., which he had just held up, apparently for the sole purpose of being incarcerated so that he would get treatment for his cancer. Upon being jailed, Causey was immediately prescribed three drugs and scheduled for a colonoscopy.

-- Latest High Tech: Researchers at Northwestern University reported recently that they have developed a light-seeking machine that is operated solely by signals from the extracted brain of an eel-like lamprey, which is preserved in an oxygenated saline solution; the technology could be used to develop sophisticated prostheses. And the Office of Naval Research reported in April that the Marines are developing a 4-pound, hawk-sized, unmanned aerial vehicle that can be assembled and launched anywhere and cruise quietly for about 6 miles at 45 miles an hour to transmit video back to, and return to, a hand-held ground station.

In March in Montreal, pro boxer Davey Hilton, 37, was convicted of sexually assaulting two girls (age 12 at the time), after having a judge reject his claim that the girls were lying. Hilton said that since 1983, he has suffered from a "wandering testicle," which tends to migrate into his abdomen when he has an erection, which he routinely contains by fastening a rubber band around his scrotum every time he is preparing to have sex (including masturbation); since neither girl ever mentioned the rubber band, he said, they must be lying about the encounters. However, Hilton has repeatedly claimed a foggy memory about the past, confessing that he spent much of that time period intoxicated.

-- In March, Sussex County (N.J.) officials billed Chrissy McMickle, 18, and her brother Michael, 21, for part of their father's mental hospitalization costs, as required by state law. However, the only reason the father is hospitalized is because another state law requires him to be committed upon completion of his sentence as a sexual offender, and the only victims of those sexual offenses were Chrissy and Michael, starting when each was age 5. Said a county official, "Children are legally responsible for parents in state facilities."

-- Maria Iguina-Medina spent much time in March lobbying to retain her municipal job in Middletown, Conn., from budget cuts, especially since the mayor is a woman and might be sympathic to Iguina-Medina's argument. Iguina-Medina certainly fears that she will not find comparable work in other cities, in that she is the city's official (part-time, $13,240 a year) "breast-feeding counselor."

-- Bernard Landry, a leading candidate to be Quebec's next premier, proposed in February that the province increase spending, by about $11 million (U.S.), to remedy a shortage of clowns and other circus performers turned out by Quebec's National Circus School. The current eight to 10 graduates a year are quickly placed in circuses around the world, and Landry would like to increase the number to 25 to better serve Quebec's own Cirque du Soleil and to "maintain and enhance our leadership position" in clown training.

-- At the Feb. 21 County Commission meeting in Wichita, Kan., Commissioner Ben Sciortino objected to the procurement of Scott paper towels at $8.06 per thousand when another brand was available at $3.67. However, commissioners Betsy Gwin and Tim Norton, who have perhaps seen too many TV commercials, knew immediately what to do: They sloshed down some water on the commissioners' table and tested the absorbency of each towel, with the Scott towel reportedly picking up at least twice as much water. Commissioner Sciortino quickly withdrew his objection.

-- New York City's AIDS support office budgets $180,000 a week to shelter about 200 homeless AIDS patients, and in late March, according to a report in the New York Post, the city's high hotel-occupancy rate forced the office to rent 20 rooms at the four-star Sofitel hotel, at $329 per room per night (which of course annoyed some of the paying guests in rooms adjacent to the AIDS patients).

Missouri State Hospital in Fulton opened an entire 20-room, 11-guard wing last year for one patient, Angela Coffel, 23, who has just finished her five-year sentence for molesting two teen-age boys but must be hospitalized as a sexual predator until doctors release her. And the government's St. Mary's hospital in Mussoorie, India, located on a steep incline, has not had a patient for three years but continues to pay the full staff to report to work every day, according to a February report in the Indian Express; part of the problem is that the hospital has no ambulance and access on foot is treacherous, especially to sick patients.

Several Pittsburgh neighborhoods have been plagued recently with parking-meter thefts (214 since September), which sets the city back $350 each in replacement cost but is otherwise thoroughly perplexing in that meters are both difficult to get into once stolen and low-yielding, as thefts go. According to the city's parking director, the thieves need either a sledgehammer or crowbar to open one, or a blowtorch to melt the glass dome (which would still leave much jiggling to do to free up the coins), and a day's average take per meter ranges from $1.14 to $15.78, meaning that stealing and opening two mid-range meters would net the thief about the same money as the hourly wage made by the city employee who collects from the meters with a key.

A 22-year-old man, who told his friend he needed "something to do," climbed from balcony to balcony at a London highrise in January until he lost his grip and fell seven floors to his death. And a 48-year-old man was asphyxiated in Zebulon, N.C., as a 36-year-old man held him down in a fight over which of the two men "was the baddest." And the body of a 41-year-old man, who was last seen alive on Dec. 1, was found on March 2 in the chimney of Magna Tool Corp. in Racine, Wis.; authorities say he probably got stuck and died in a burglary attempt.

Feuding, obscenity-screaming twin sisters (age 22 and aspiring models from Michigan) forced the diversion of a China-bound 747 to Anchorage, Alaska, after they wrestled, punched and choked a pilot and flight attendants who tried to calm them. Vorarlberg province in Austria finally banned a longtime, inexpensive practice of cattle-carcass disposal on its picturesque Alpine pastures; from now on, any cattle that die must be helicoptered from the mountain instead of merely being blown up by explosives where they lie. Juror Brian Harvey was jailed for contempt of court after a lunch break, claiming the shooting trial testimony made him so queasy that he had to have a few drinks (Canton, Ohio). Israeli authorities announced that Miss Israel would wear a Galit Levi-designed, diamond-and-pearl, bulletproof evening gown at the Miss Universe pageant this month in Puerto Rico.

(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 the March mayoral primary in St. Louis, three deceased city aldermen and a dog were among those registered to vote, but the election was nonetheless an improvement over the November 2000 contest. That Election Day featured, among other things, a successful lawsuit by a man petitioning a judge to have the polls stay open late because crowding and poor record-keeping were preventing him from voting, even though it was subsequently discovered that he (the lead plaintiff on the petition) had been deceased for a year himself.

-- The Seattle (Wash.) School District agreed recently simply to pay Kathy Harris $180,000 to take her 16-year-old son out of the school system altogether rather than to carry out its legal obligation to educate the boy. The kid is blind and so mentally challenged and violent that he poses constant disruptions everywhere he goes, but the law requires the school district to educate any "special needs" students who request it, at whatever cost, until age 21.

-- Over a six-day period in April, careless people in Los Angeles, Trenton, N.J., and San Diego blew out windows and caused other damage to their homes when aerosol cockroach foggers accidentally ignited. In the first two incidents, the residents, also, were severely burned, but in San Diego, despite $50,000 worth of damage to the home, there were no reported injuries, including to any cockroaches.

In April, a Ralphs supermarket in Livermore, Calif., promised a free ham to anyone buying $50 worth of groceries, but Rachael Cheroti, 33, raised such a fuss when her total came to only $48 that the manager gave her one, too. However, apparently feeling empowered, Cheroti, according to police reports, demanded even more hams, on the basis that she spends so much money every month at Ralphs. When the manager declined, Cheroti then allegedly pinned him against the wall with a shopping cart and wrestled with him on the floor and later with a police officer (who suffered a hand injury and was placed on medical leave) before being arrested.

In March, District of Columbia police alerted the U.S. Marshals Service that it might need to protect a D.C. Superior Court judge after discovering that he had been "hexed" by a drug dealer's friends (tipped off by a symbolic human skull). And in February, the Secret Service checked out an editor at State University of New York (Stony Brook), who wrote a column asking Jesus Christ to "smite" President Bush. And in January, the governor of Bangkok, Thailand, said that sterner measures were necessary in his demands that police officers stop extorting money from street vendors, and he took action by reciting a "curse" against violators.

-- In March, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated Carolyn Humphries' lawsuit (based on the Americans With Disabilities Act) against Memorial Hospital in Modesto, Calif., for having fired her despite her obsessive-compulsive disorder. Humphries says she cannot work a set schedule because she needs so much time to groom herself for work, sometimes taking hours before she pronounces herself ready (and sometimes still not being ready to leave home until her shift has ended), even after the hospital told her she could create her own shift.

-- Buddhist officials in Nepal are having a difficult time recruiting 5-year-old girls to be official goddesses, to live in palaces and be waited on hand-and-foot, according to a March Associated Press dispatch from Katmandu. The problem is that the goddesses' jobs end automatically at puberty, and the girls increasingly are unprepared for the rest of their lives, untrainable because of how sheltered and pampered their early years were. (Mere tutors are not permitted to tell a goddess to study, and legend has it that men who marry ex-goddesses die young.)

-- In a February dispatch from Beppu City, Japan, The Wall Street Journal described the fading job of chicken-sexer, an occupation formerly done by highly skilled, deft-fingered people who can identify chicks' gender by touching a specific underbelly muscle (females' is smaller). Last year's speed chicken-sexing champion was Junichi Goto, who sorted 100 hours-old chicks in 3 minutes, 34 seconds, still well off the world record. Chemical and hormone tests of chicks are now alternatives to the touch model and can be performed by unskilled people.

-- Hillsborough, England, was the site of a soccer stadium disaster in 1989, in which 96 fans were crushed to death. In March 2001, it was revealed that a police officer who worked at that site nine years after the disaster nonetheless acquired post-traumatic stress from imagining the 1989 carnage and thus received a disability settlement from the government of about $560,000. That amount, according to a report in The Guardian, is more than 100 times what was paid to any of the families of the 96 people who were killed at the site.

-- In February, a jury in Sydney, Australia, awarded Dr. Paul Hogan, 30, about $1.25 million (U.S.) for injuries he said he suffered when he was punished with a strap in 1984 while a student at St. John's College in Sydney. That breaks down to about $156,000 for each time (eight) he was hit; he said some of the blows were on his hand, which to this day still hurts, even though no abnormality is present in X-rays.

Dr. Craig DuMond was dismissed from practice at a Saranac Lake, N.Y., medical facility in March after mistakenly operating on the wrong knee of his patient. Five years earlier, Dr. DuMond had operated on another patient's wrong hip, and as a result, the medical center at that time initiated a safety procedure requiring the staff to write "yes" on the correct body part for surgery. Since Dr. DuMond operated this time on a part that did not contain the word "yes," the medical center has concluded that the previous rule was inadequate and now requires the staff additionally to write "no" on the body parts that will not be operated on.

In March, Mr. Su Chun-min immolated himself, according to family because of depression over the uncertainty of whether the space station Mir would hit anyone while descending to Earth (Pingtung County, Taiwan). A week earlier, a middle-aged man in Umuahia, Nigeria, fatally poisoned himself; he had threatened suicide if Nigeria didn't beat Ghana in their World Cup qualifying match on March 10, and in fact the teams drew, 0-0. And in December, Maine State Prison inmate Dennis R. Larson, serving 50 years for pushing his third wife off a cliff, leaped to his death from a third-story window onto rocks and granite; officials said Larson had sealed his mouth with duct tape, on which was the word "Geronimo!"

A sex-shop robbery failed when the holdup man, trying to fire his gun at the recalcitrant clerk, couldn't because he had loaded it with the wrong-caliber bullets (Wheeling, W.Va.). A high school teacher (who is apparently behind on current events) assigned several students a class project of making a high-tech bomb, which the students delivered, even though inert (Tampa, Fla.). A man purposely contaminated a restaurant's salad bar with a spray mixture of human waste, upon which police are running DNA tests to see if it's his own waste so that they might be able to close 12 similar cases (New York City). The city council president in Elizabeth, N.J., had a councilman handcuffed and arrested for interrupting her too often.

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