-- The Swedish navy announced in May that because of slashes in the military budget, it would cut back from around-the-clock operations to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. The army and air force said they have not yet decided whether to remain open on weekends, but that they, also, were hard hit by the legislature's ban on overtime work.

-- Ben Lambert told reporters in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in May that he was forecasting to sell 40,000 pairs this year of his new E2U men's underwear, featuring a "three-hammock arrangement with non-crushing support" that would allow the scrotum to relax, whether the man is standing or sitting. Lambert said his shorts, priced at about $16 to $22 (US), would fit in much the same way that a bra fits a woman and would remove the need for men periodically to adjust their shorts for comfort.

-- Among the holdover Democratic projects recently canceled by the Bush administration was an $860,000 program to teach public housing tenants to reduce stress and improve their self-esteem by the use of colors, meditation, aromatherapy and "applied kinesiology" (in which a practitioner feels a person's glands to determine, for therapy purposes, which of 14 personality types that person is). The career Housing and Urban Development official who had approved the program is a priest of the International Metaphysical Ministry, and the program's chief trainer said she was "shocked" that something so successful was being terminated.

Witnesses to the bar shooting by Luther V. Casteel, 42, in Elgin, Ill., in April, in which two people were killed and 18 wounded by the gun-obsessed ex-con, say they were most disturbed by the fact that Casteel laughed all the way through the ordeal; said one, "How can you laugh when you're killing people?" And according to a police report in the Vail (Colo.) Daily on Feb. 22, a man was arrested for vandalizing a Colorado Mountain College building with a fire extinguisher, motivated, the man later said, because he was being chased by seven men and a baby and that the baby was laughing at him. And according to a Naples (Fla.) Daily News report in March, laughter "clubs" are starting up all over the world, with "certified" laughter "leaders" teaching members the techniques (and psychological and physiological benefits) of the "lion laugh," the "roller coaster laugh," and the "tickle laugh," among others.

-- When sheriff's deputies decided to break routine on April 17 and search not only visitors entering the Daley Center court building in Chicago but also the people who work there and who thus usually enter without inspection, they confiscated several dozen items of contraband from badged employees, including brass knuckles, tear gas and a dagger, and their booty does not even count what some lawyers and judges might have had on them except that they saw what was going on and simply declined to enter until the inspection ended.

-- At the International Beauty Show in New York City in April, Fort Myers, Fla., hairdresser Valentino LoSauro showed off his "Edward-Scissorhands"-type finger scissors, "Clawz," which he has been using in his salon and now hopes to bring to market. By attaching the devices to one or both hands, he can run his fingers through hair, with independent cutting action from each finger, greatly reducing the time for a haircut.

-- In the five years since he moved to Wilkie, Saskatchewan (population 1,300), Louis Harewood, 56, who operates assisted-living homes and who is a former Baptist preacher, has been accused by husbands of seducing local married women, using his charisma to allegedly send the women into voodoo-like hazes in which they reject old friends and otherwise act strange. Harewood denies any sexual contact and blames certain former employees for spreading rumors. Still, petitions recently circulated urging him to go away. Said one woman, "Our biggest worry is that if he can control 40-year-old women, what about our 16-year-old daughters?"

-- A February report in the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle described a local patient's remarkable recovery from botulism paralysis at Park Ridge Hospital. The woman recently recalled that, after the toxin struck her in June 2000, she lay in her hospital bed, able to hear everything around her but unable to communicate in any way with anyone, and that someone had erroneously said she was a big fan of singer Celine Dion. After that, the hospital staff, in an effort to aid the woman's recovery, played the singer's music in her room around the clock for weeks. When the paralysis left the woman, one of the first joys she experienced, she said, was stopping the music because she actually never cared for Dion.

-- In March, Alice Hoppe, 80, of Cheboygan, Mich., settled her lawsuit with her physician for his failure, over 18 months of treatment, to detect that the reason for her difficulty in swallowing was because her lower denture had caught in her throat during knee surgery in 1995. According to the doctor's attorney, the denture was hidden behind some folds of skin and "was very difficult to find."

Beverly Hills, Calif., security consultant Paxton Quigley introduced SuperBra recently, a $30 garment that doubles as a holster for a gun the size of a snub-nosed .38 revolver; said Quigley: "If a woman is attacked, the purse is the first thing taken from her (so) a good place to conceal a weapon is in the chest area." And in March, the British firm Gossard introduced the $40 Ultrabra Airotic that inflates (via accompanying pump) up to two cup sizes for the woman who, according to a spokesperson, doesn't want "huge breasts through the day but (does) want to have them in the evening."

-- In January, Ms. Sierra Kirkpatrick, 15, married Mr. Sauren Crow, 48, of Taos, N.M., after Sierra's mother vouched for her at a Las Vegas wedding (which is required for a minor to marry in Nevada). Sierra's father (the mother's ex-husband) went nuts when he found out, but the mother and others say the couple is well-suited for each other, in that both are artsy types, dress in "Goth" attire, and actually resemble each other, with their all-black clothes and long black hair.

-- As always, many people (375) died from accidents and fights during Thailand's New Year festival in April. And as always, there were several deaths on New Year's Eve in Japan from eating the traditional mochi rice cakes, which are so sticky that about a dozen people choke to death on them every Dec. 31 (eight last New Year's). And as always, many (this year 35) hajj-pilgrimage Muslims at the annual stone-the-devil ritual in Mina, Saudi Arabia, in March were crushed to death by the sheer numbers of those worshipping.

Police in the retirement town of Sun City West, Ariz., said they've been having problems lately with seniors having sex in public (on golf courses, as well as in lovers' lanes). Neighbors convinced Penn State University to close a research lab because they feared the consequences of living next door to its ongoing cockroach experiments. At least a dozen sheriff's deputies and drug officers in vans and SUVs aggressively raided a home because a helicopter patrol had spotted a patch of ubiquitous mulberry weed (mistaken for marijuana, which it vaguely resembles) in a woman's back yard (Spicewood, Texas). China's news agency announced that 3 million of its people practice auto-urine (i.e., drink your own) therapy, to strengthen the immune system.

(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 human-egg-donor business is flourishing in America, with brokers offering tall, athletic, brainy blondes as much as $80,000 for a multiple-egg harvest (though the average woman gets $5,000 or less), according to a May Los Angeles Times report. Several Ivy League women told the Times they pay off a semester's bills in a single doctor's visit to have eggs extracted by syringe (after a several-week hormone regimen). Said a bioethicist, "There is not much difference between those [egg brokers'] ads and what goes on with prize breeding of animals."

-- Saddam Hussein recently ghost-wrote a 160-page romantic novel, "Zabibah and the King," according to CIA sources interviewed by The New York Times in May, which included a rape sequence in which his heroine (whose name translates to "people of Iraq") was invaded, probably as an allegory to the Gulf War. Sample dialogue: The King: "I'm a great leader. You must obey me. Not only that, you must love me." Zabibah: "The people need strict measures so that they can feel protected by this strictness."

-- British researchers, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists in San Francisco in May, reported that a poison used by South African Zulu tribesmen to coat the tips of their spears and arrows appears in trials to deprive human cancer tumors of blood without harming the surrounding tissue and thus could be a major weapon against cancers of the colon, ovaries and lungs. The toxin comes from the root bark of the Cape bushwillow.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (43) People who impersonate teen-agers and return to high school to satisfy various psychological needs, such as Treva Throneberry, 31, who for four recent years was Brianna Stewart (Evergreen High, Vancouver, Wash., Class of '00, GPA 2.83), notable for getting a D in drama class despite her successful ruse and for getting a 45-year-old man jailed for having sex with an underage girl (which, in reality, she was not). And (44) the periodic scares in African nations, in which vigilante mobs are stirred up against outsiders rumored to have the power to make local men's penises disappear, as happened in April (two killed) in Ilesa, Nigeria.

-- Richard L. Greist filed a lawsuit in January against the state mental hospital in Norristown, Pa., where he has been a patient since 1978 because he killed his pregnant wife and stabbed his daughter and grandmother. Greist complained that when officials would not consider him for an in-house job as a clerk, they violated his rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act, in that they were obligated to "accommodate" his severe paranoid schizophrenia.

-- Debby Messer of Livonia, Mich., filed a $1 million lawsuit in February against her late ex-husband, Gordie Milner, claiming that because he allegedly harassed her after their divorce, she still fears him to this day and cannot stop imagining that he is lurking around her. She said she knows full well that he passed away six months earlier but said that he still "continue[s] to hurt me [and] hurt the children."

-- In January, a Canadian court ruled in favor of convicted drug trafficker Khon Ha Tri in his lawsuit against the prison in Peterborough, Ontario, for his 1996 injury when he fell out of his bunk and tore a knee ligament. Tri said that a prison doctor had prescribed him a lower bunk because of a previous prison-incurred injury but that guards ignored the order. Though Tri had been released from prison after the lawsuit was filed, he has since been re-jailed on another charge.

-- In March, the day after a federal grand jury in Philadelphia handed down a massive fraud indictment against him, former U.S. Rep. Edward Mezvinsky sued his doctor, his drugstore and the pharmaceutical giant Roche Holding, claiming the reason he got into trouble with his investment business was because the anti-malaria drug Lariam fogged up his thinking. Mezvinsky, who took the drug for business trips to Africa, was charged with 56 counts, totaling $10.4 million, based, said the government, on a series of lies to banks and clients, including his mother-in-law.

-- Martin Joyce, 20, filed a lawsuit in April against Reese's Tavern in Warminster, Pa., for serving him alcohol, which he says caused him to get shot. According to the lawsuit, if Reese's hadn't served him illegally, he would not have thought it such a good idea to stop a motorist just outside the bar to ask to borrow money to make a phone call. According to a police report, when the motorist declined the request, Joyce became belligerent, reached into the car, punched the motorist and threatened to kill him. The motorist then pulled out his licensed gun and shot Joyce in the stomach.

Questionable Crimes: An adult brother and his sister were arrested and charged with beating up three men who were conducting loud cell-phone calls while standing in front of the siblings' father's home in an early-evening hour (Boston, March). And three men were being sought by Hartford, Conn., police after a 14-year-old boy and a friend got beaten up in February; most likely, according to police, because the boys had been standing in a street, throwing candy at passing cars. And in April, Wisconsin state Rep. Marlin Schneider sought to formally legalize some retaliatory behavior, introducing legislation to permit battery if committed upon someone who is physically abusing a close relative (but local domestic violence officials were opposed to the bill).

In Charleston, W.Va., in April, James Dale Duncan, 38, was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison for having sex with his daughter beginning when she was 13, for the purpose, according to him, of preventing her from ruining her life by getting pregnant with her boyfriend. Duncan insisted he acted only "from a parent's point of view and not a pervert's," and his sister agreed, telling the judge, "He didn't do this for pleasure." Unremorseful, Duncan said, after sentencing, "I'm going to jail knowing she won't end up pregnant."

A 46-year-old toll-booth operator slipped and was accidentally dragged to his death by an 18-wheeler when he reached out of the booth to grab snow on the moving truck to arm himself for a snowball fight with another toll-booth operator (Wilmington, Del., March). Subway "graffiti artists"/vandals were killed on the job in April in Brooklyn, N.Y. (hit by a train), and Chicago (electrocution). And a 19-year-old man was killed as he ran a red light while attempting to flee a minor traffic accident that he caused (Largo, Fla., April).

A judge threw out charges against a couple carrying 560 pounds of marijuana, because the search was triggered by the incompetent police dog "Falco," two-thirds of whose previous discoveries turned out to be bogus (Knoxville, Tenn.). A man was arrested for locking his 5-year-old nephew in a 100-plus-degree car because he feared thieves would steal the stereo if the car were unattended (Los Angeles). A 42-year-old Good Humor vendor was convicted of disrupting a public school, because so many junior-high kids were walking out of classes to buy ice cream (Winnipeg, Manitoba). Glenda Stevens' dog Sweetie was hit by a mail truck and presumed dead, and then ceremoniously buried in Stevens's back yard, but minutes later, Sweetie dug her way out and is now mending (broken leg and jaw) (Park Hills, Mo.).

(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 Mexican government announced that beginning June 15, it would distribute "survival" kits to its citizens crossing the border illegally into California and Arizona because they face such a rugged journey. Included in the kits are bandages, aspirin, drugs for snake and scorpion bites, dry meat, granola, 25 condoms (or birth-control pills), and anti-diarrhea medicine. Said a Mexican official, "Those who've gone to the U.S. have told us (what) they need."

-- According to a petition filed in Common Pleas Court in Dayton, Ohio, in May, Boomer, a golden retriever, is the plaintiff suing the Invisible Fence Co. because the electrical charge to his collar, triggered when he attempts to leave his guardians' yard, was too strong and, according to an Associated Press dispatch, caused him severe emotional distress, for which he asks $25,000. Boomer's guardians, Andrew and Alyce Pacher, who purchased the "invisible fence" and permitted the electrical charge, were not sued.

-- Smoking Gun: Erik Williams, 21, of the 3600 block of South Michigan Avenue, was arrested in Chicago on May 18 and charged with sexually assaulting (forced fellatio) a 42-year-old woman. The victim arrived at a police station in the early morning hours clutching, in her hand, testicles that she had just bitten off. At about the same time, Williams showed up at Michael Reese Hospital missing his testicles. Doctors confirmed that the testicles were Williams' but were unable to reattach them.

The Iowa Court of Appeals ruled in March that an unarmed man who had disguised his face and ordered a convenience store clerk to give him "the money" (and who then took $110 and ordered the clerk to lie on the floor) committed theft but not "robbery" because the clerk was never in "immediate, serious" danger. And a judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., ruled in April that police had no legal cause to stop a young man seen running from a building holding his hand to the side of his hip because there are other explanations than that the man had a gun (although he was, in fact, holding onto a gun). And a judge in Middlesex County, Mass., ruled in February that because of a loophole in state law, disseminating child pornography by computer is legal, but merely storing the same images on a computer is illegal.

-- Inmate Chad Gabriel DeKoven's lawsuit against the Standish prison in Bay City, Mich. (and several other defendants), was tossed out in April as frivolous, despite DeKoven's insistence that he is the "Messiah-God" and rightfully president of the United States (in that, since his name is "Chad," he figures that many thousands of punch-card votes last November were symbolically for him). However, Judge David M. Lawson did compliment DeKoven's typing, his "lengthy expositions" on his deity, and his "disciplined effort" in assembling his 125-page brief's exhibition of numerical analysis and secret codes that prove he is God.

-- Recent Messages Received: A 34-year-old man was stabbed to death in February, allegedly by his mother-in-law at the command of God and a Ouija board (Chickasha, Okla). And a convenience store clerk was hacked to death with a machete in February, allegedly by a man ordered into action (and praised for his good work) by God (Bellefonte, Pa.). And a 39-year-old man was arrested for torching a theater in which 12 mentally retarded adults were watching a movie, also on the command of God, who apparently also told the man he didn't need a lawyer because He would be representing him in court (Vinco, Pa.).

-- Divine Wisdom: Rev. Richard C. Weaver, 55, the Sacramento preacher who penetrated the Secret Service detail to shake President Bush's hand on Inauguration Day, said it was God who had gotten him access to the restricted area; the Secret Service was embarrassed, especially since they were on the lookout for Weaver, who had told them at President Clinton's 1997 inaugural that he would be back in 2001. And passerby Ray Hutcherson, who happened upon a truck spill of processed chicken on a Houston freeway in March, and who stuffed his car with the birds, summed up his good fortune: "Anytime you get anything free, it's got to be the work of God."

-- Following the death in a March auto accident of abrasive Greenpeace founder David McTaggart, the internal backbiting that has long characterized the environmental organization passed on to veteran activists Paul Watson and Patrick Moore, based on Watson's longtime feud with McTaggart and his upcoming Hollywood movie of Greenpeace exploits. According to a National Post report, Watson plans to fulfill his longstanding promise to urinate on McTaggart's grave, and Moore was exploring a lawsuit because he had heard that his character in Watson's film (starring Pierce Brosnan) was a tyrannical bureaucrat. Watson himself is offended that Moore, when he left Greenpeace, went to work for the Canadian forestry industry (a "running lap dog whore to corporate power").

-- In 1986, 15,000 tons of incinerated ash in Philadelphia was loaded onto a barge, which set off for disposal. After seven countries refused to accept it, the captain lied about the contents to get Haiti to take some of it and then outran the Haitian military when they found out the truth. The captain and crew have long since moved on; the barge has been recommissioned (after probably dumping most of the ash at sea); but the 3,000 tons remained on a Haitian beach until April 2000, when Waste Management Inc. was hired to bury it. However, Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and Florida have now rejected it, and in April, the owner of the barge currently holding the ash sued Waste Management for $490,000 in storage fees for the now-15-year-old cargo.

In a February German television stunt, Swiss citizen Roger Weisskopf, 32, won a lifetime supply of toilet paper when he correctly identified several brands blindfolded, by feel and taste. In December, Cambodian university lecturer (and Pol Pot opponent) Pak Leakreasy introduced a line of toilets with facial likenesses, on the side of the bowl, of several leaders of the evil Khmer Rouge regime. And in February, Hong Kong jeweler Lam Sai-wing introduced a solid-gold bathroom (including wash basin and two toilets), constructed as homage to Vladimir Lenin's critique of capitalist waste, telling reporters that he had dreamed all his life to have enough money to build a gold toilet.

Christopher Simms, 34, the father of two small kids, was charged with invasion of privacy in Montgomery County, Pa., for rigging a hidden camera in a room in his workplace used by new mothers to pump breast milk for their infants. Said a neighbor to a Philadelphia Daily News reporter: "You would think he's seen enough of that at home." Said a prosecutor, "This is perversion at its lowest."

On March 24, two East Orange, N.J., police officers fired 38 shots at two unarmed black teen-agers sitting in a stolen car, connecting on eight and sending both, age 14 and 18, to the hospital. A subsequent investigation revealed, according to a report in the Newark Star-Ledger, that the shooting erupted when two officers approached the car and one accidentally shot himself in the thigh. When he uttered, "I'm hit," the second officer assumed the teen-agers had shot him, and he emptied his gun at them; another officer coming onto the scene subsequently fired 25 more shots. The boys survived.

Tye Thomas, 22, resigned as mayor of Gun Barrel City, Texas, a week after he telephoned police to insist that they come arrest him because he was intoxicated in public. A college student threw a pair of cow eyeballs at a writing professor who had undervalued her required-for-graduation essay, which was on the horrors of slaughterhouses (Johnson, Vt.). A 21-year-old man, in court for illegal skateboarding, threatened a judge and others and climbed a table, screaming, "You'll never take me alive!" before being subdued (Santa Rosa, Calif.). At a retirement community, a man allegedly fired shots at his girlfriend's house in a drive-by shooting from a golf cart (Green Valley, Ariz.).

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