-- Among the diversionary shipboard classes serving U.S. Marine combat-expeditionary units on the USS Peleliu warship in the Arabian Sea are an anger-management class taught by a chaplain and an English class taught by intelligence officer Chris Picado, delving into poetry from World War I. In an October Reuters interview, one admiring student in Capt. Picado's class (who might be minutes away from combat), explained: "Just by what (the poet wrote), you can actually feel (the war), or you can get a mental picture of (death)."

-- Sexual assaults by adults against children in South Africa have almost doubled in two years, prompted probably, say officials, by a growing belief in the countryside that having sex with a virgin will cure an HIV-positive man. According to a health official in Durban: "We have no idea where this idea has come from, but it has been around for a few years and has certainly taken hold," especially in view of the country's sharp increase in AIDS cases. The country was stunned in early November when six men, attempting to "protect" themselves, were charged with the rape of a baby.

Jack Wilke filed a lawsuit in August against the police in Reedsburg, Wis., because, when he asked for his wife's "personal effects" back after her suicide, they gave him only a container holding some actual internal organs. And as part of a Charleston, W.Va., wrongful-firing lawsuit, it was revealed in August that the box of remains of murder victim David Allen Williams, which the medical examiner sent to his sister in 1998, were by mistake deer bones, which the sister unknowingly had cremated. And the parts (nose, scalp, teeth) that startled a woman when she found them in her attic in September were later revealed to be her late husband's souvenirs of his 1981 plastic surgery (Mohegan Lake, N.Y.)

-- Emma Ness of Fargo, N.D., passed her driver's license-renewal eye test in September despite the fact that she is so severely vision-impaired that her nurse must drive her around. Ness, 79, said she had 75 percent blockage in one eye, 25 percent in the other, and sees spots in the middle of road signs, according to a report in the Fargo Forum, but she bet the nurse that clerks would renew her license, anyway, and they did. ("We're only human," said a state transportation official.) (In October, a 34-year-old legally blind man, who did not have a license, died when he accidentally smashed his car into the back of a tractor-trailer in Lenoir, N.C.)

-- Port of Oakland (Calif.) commissioners ordered a full inquiry in October on why 1,000 secure-area access badges to Oakland International Airport were missing. However, the FAA had come down hard on the airport only because 1,000 badges was too many, in that regulations permit that airport to have only 500 unaccounted-for access badges.

-- During the summer, cell-phone users who dialed 911 in Northern California and who were placed on hold for the next available operator did not receive the traditional, calming recorded messages of reassurance. Rather, the often-panicked callers had to listen to tapes of either energy-saving tips or job-recruiting notices for the California Highway Patrol. After the San Francisco Chronicle publicized the messages in an August story, the traditional calming messages were returned to the line.

-- For reasons not yet explained in the British press, when David Devlin of Glasgow, Scotland, retrieved prints from his four rolls of Greek-vacation photographs from a film processing shop in August, he found that his package contained not his photos but rather year-old snapshots taken by Cherie Blair (wife of the British prime minister) of husband Tony and their children on holiday in Italy. Devlin returned the photos to the shop, and Blair's office said only that the prime minister was grateful to have them back.

-- Mark Wayne Toon, 24, was arrested in September and charged with breaking into the Van Alma Tire Center in Fort Smith, Ark., and stealing some things. Police investigators learned that Toon had not only accidentally dropped his wallet at the scene but, in the course of urinating against a front window, had had occasion to rest his buttocks against the pane, leaving two sets of what police described as buttocks-shaped prints.

A September San Francisco Chronicle profile highlighted the several victories of free-lance postal-customer advocate Doug Carlson in getting sluggish or recalcitrant postal supervisors to do their jobs better, but also described Carlson's lifelong fascination with the post office: "As a kid, he followed the postman around. He got his first post office box when he was 15. (H)e toured mail-processing facilities." "It's fun to watch," he said. A law-school graduate and now a university administrator, Carlson reads the postal manual as a "hobby," he said, to be able to cite instances in which the USPS doesn't follow its own procedures.

According to police in Brockton, Mass., among suspected DUI driver Edward T. Petit's first words to officers after fatally hitting a 24-year-old woman in June were that he was just bragging to his buddy a few minutes earlier that he could "drink him under the table any day." And in September, inmate Timothy Mize, 43, was beaten up by cellmates in jail in Enid, Okla., after he started bragging about his crime of molesting a 15-year-old girl. And on being informed that Canada had chosen a secluded rural retreat for next year's Group of Eight summit, possibly because the area's grizzly bear population would discourage the usual protestors, Alberta activist Alan Keane said the protestors would be out in force, anyway, because grizzly bears "are our friends."

Arrested for murder in Shelby, N.C., in August: John Wayne Moses; and in Hastings, Minn., in October: Steven Wayne McBride; and in Ehrenberg, Ariz., in October: George Wayne McBroom; and in Bangor, Maine, in October: Carl Wayne Heath; and in Irving, Texas, in October: Darrell Wayne Wright; and in Toledo, Ohio, in October: Mark Wayne Jones. Sentenced to life in prison for murder in Dallas, in September: Michael Wayne Henry; and in Wellington, New Zealand, in October: Richard Wayne Gorrie. Executed for murder in Raleigh, N.C., in August: Ronald Wayne Frye.

The Human Blockhead (Melvin Burkhart, 94), a carnival star who hammered spikes into his face through a cavity behind his nostril, passed away (Riverview, Fla.). British researchers found that a sheep can distinguish and recognize as many as 50 other sheeps' faces for up to two years, even in silhouette. A San Francisco motorcycle cop ordered a Fire Department Toys for Tots van, actively collecting for the holidays, towed for having expired license plates. A 49-year-old computer programmer was sentenced to two years in prison for hacking into a town's waste-disposal system to divert millions of gallons of raw sewage onto land, out of frustration that the town wouldn't hire him (Maroochy Shire, Australia).

-- A couple of days after the problem was highlighted in a Reuters news story (but several weeks after it had been going on), the Pentagon decided to change the color of the food packages it was dropping in Afghanistan, from yellow to blue, so recipients would be less confused. For several weeks, it had been dropping yellow packages of food and yellow packages of cluster bombs, along with fliers that explained that the square yellow packages were food and the cylindrical yellow packages were bombs, and urging people to open the former but avoid the latter.

-- In Contrast to Those Who Hold Grudges for Five Centuries: An October San Francisco Chronicle dispatch from Cape Town, South Africa, reported that the parents of Amy Biehl (who was murdered by a mob of South African black kids in a racially motivated attack in 1993) have come to grips with their tragedy to such an extent that they have established a foundation in Cape Town to help rescue kids in poverty and have hired their daughter's two principal killers to work for the foundation in order to rehabilitate their lives.

A judge rejected both the ex-wife's and the biological (from-the-womb) son's demands for the ashes of the late Patrick (formerly Pauline) Corn, and disposed of them according to the directions in Corn's will (Monticello, Ind., October). And former police captain Scott Cote said he would help prosecutors and testify about his estranged wife's worker-compensation fraud scheme but would only do so as Stacey Cote, his new identity (Miami, September). And Australia's Green party was represented in November elections in a Melbourne district by candidate Tony Briffa, 31, an open hermaphrodite who recently began living as a man.

-- Arson and Nakedness: The property-eschewing religious sect Doukhobours were in the news again recently. (The sect's breakaway Freedomites ritually burn property and ritually remove their clothes.) Mary Braun, 81, was convicted of setting fire to a college building in Nelson, British Columbia, in October. Her rap sheet for this type of thing is lengthy, and this episode appeared to be another of her revelations. She tried to attend court sessions nude, but staff members covered her with blankets.

-- Israeli security agents scrambled to high alert in September over what they feared was a suicide parachuter from Jordan, landing near the airport in the town of Eilat, Israel. It turned out merely to be Rabbi Shimon Eizenbach carrying out a pre-Yom Kippur ritual of kapparot, floating down in an ultralite glider while holding a hen in one cage (to atone for women) and a rooster in another (for men). Security forces held their fire, and the town was duly blessed.

-- In August, following an Israeli helicopter raid on the offices of the radical organization Hamas, the High Islamic Council in Saudi Arabia decreed for the first time that females would be allowed to be suicide bombers. (Two days later, a 23-year-old mother of two was arrested with 15 pounds of explosives at Tel Aviv's central bus station.)

-- In August, a Yorba Linda, Calif., Catholic official told the Los Angeles Times that a recent $5.2 million pedophile-priest settlement included a requirement that the church begin to install confessional doors that have windows, to help protect parishioners from priests. Said the official, "Building a church that creates a safe and open environment will be very important to (us)."

-- In western Kenya near Lake Victoria, the Wanga faction of the Luhya tribe continue to practice "wife inheritance," in which a woman who becomes a widow is obliged to marry another family member (or risk acquiring a curse), a practice that opponents say is particularly bad in light of the region's high HIV-infection rate. According to a May Agence France-Presse dispatch, tradition provides that if a widow refuses to remarry, the family upon her death pays any available man to have sex with her corpse so that she can be posthumously "inherited" and her soul saved.

-- According to an October Knight Ridder dispatch from Vietnam, a favorite trysting place for prostitutes and their customers is the museum that used to be part of the "Hanoi Hilton" prisoner of war compound, and one of their preferred museum rooms is one in which U.S. pilots were held and tortured. Despite recent government attempts to curtail it, sex (under the street name "boom-boom") still flourishes.

Several Canadian tax-evasion defendants have recently resorted to a language called "In the Truth" (invented by American David Wynn Miller) when they defend themselves in court. However, only true believers can distinguish the language from gibberish (one example: "With the sovereign, hyphen, authority of the Andrew, hyphen, William, colon, Sereda (the defendant) is for the stating of the authority of the noun"). Miller said he created the language to replace the "flawed syntax" of English. So far, according to an October Canadian Press report, most judges' preferred response is to award the "In the Truth" speakers a government-paid mental examination, and Canadian Immigration's response has been to keep Miller out of the country.

William Stewart finally died of his injuries in November, three weeks after hanging himself in his jail cell, the latest tragedy to befall his Parma, Ohio, family. His wife, Joyce Stewart, died a month before William, allegedly murdered by him. William had been stopped on suspicion of DUI but then invited arrest by snapping gratuitously at the officer, "You can't get into my car without a warrant." The garbage bags in his back seat contained pieces of Joyce. Her son, Mark DiMarco, was serving 94 years for rape and murder before he hanged himself in his cell in 1999. Joyce had served time for obstructing justice in his case after having become sort of a house mother to Mark's gang of delinquents, and after Mark's death, Joyce treated Mark's bedroom as a shrine.

A 20-year-old female karate black-belt, after bragging that she could catch in her hand an arrow shot from a bow, failed, merely deflecting it into her eye, which she lost (Jersey City, N.J.). Life-imprisoned Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols (whom many people would like to see dead, anyway) threatened to starve himself if he didn't get a higher-fiber diet. Researchers reported that a woman undergoing in-vitro fertilization had also become pregnant the old-fashioned way, thus producing two fetuses (Palo Alto, Calif.). The 17-year-old winner of a high school Halloween costume contest was suspended for breaking his promise to retire the costume (a full-body-length vagina) (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

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

-- In September, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiled desolate Echols County, Georgia (between Valdosta and the Okeefenokee Swamp), well-known to the state's judges because that is where they encourage lawbreakers to go when they really want them to leave the state altogether. The Georgia constitution prohibits banishing people from the state as punishment for crimes, so judges merely banish them from 158 of the state's 159 counties, trusting that they would never voluntarily settle in Echols, anyway, and such strategy seems always to work.

-- While most of North America endures a fear-of-anthrax frenzy, the Ontario Health Ministry in October fired its only five biohazard scientists for budgetary reasons, replacing them with three lab technicians with community-college degrees. Liberal Party spokespeople blamed the decision on the health minister's long-standing philosophy of smaller government, irrespective of consequences.

An April story from the official newspaper of the People's Republic of China reported that convicted killer Fu Xinrong had indeed had his kidneys illegally harvested after execution, by a company in Nanchang. And in October, a man walked into a Porsche dealership in Palo Alto, Calif., and through smooth-talking and luck, convinced an employee that he was the owner of the $125,000 Turbo 996 that the real owner was scheduled to pick up 20 minutes later. And in an incident reminiscent of a partially made-up June Slate magazine story, two men pleaded guilty in Corpus Christi, Texas, in July to having illegally "fished" for coyotes on federal land by reeling them in with fishing poles baited with deer meat.

-- Britain's Legal Services Commission granted imprisoned murderer Shaun Armstrong, 39 (whose victim was 3 years old), legal aid for his privacy-rights lawsuit for about $25,000 against the friend to whom he confessed in writing and who turned him in. Armstrong wants back the letters he sent the friend, claiming ownership of his confession (which reads, "Yes, I'm responsible for the crime, but please don't tell anybody.").

-- An Ontario Superior Court judge ruled in May that spouses have no legal duty to inform each other of their adulterous affairs. A 52-year-old man had sued his estranged wife for about $210,000 (U.S.) for breaching her duty of "good faith" and "honesty" by hiding her affairs from him for 21 years, but the best the judge would do is agree only in cases where "hazardous" sexual activity outside the marriage would subject the spouse to health risks.

-- London's Daily Telegraph reported in July about a recent job opening in Exeter, England: The Austern Electric Circus' knife-thrower Jayde Hanson's assistant had just walked off the job after being nearly hit in the foot, which would have been her third serious wound this season, which is also the number of wounds Hanson's former girlfriend took before she walked off the job last year.

-- Nolan Lett was awarded $17,000 from his former employer, Aramark Corp. (Oak Brook, Ill.), in October. He had fallen and broken his wrist after being chased by a goose as he arrived for work one day at Aramark's building, which he proved in court was a "high-goose" area, encouraged by the company's elaborate pond and garden. "It was very ferocious," Lett said. "It started acting crazy."

-- Municipal clerk Anne Frank filed a lawsuit against Greenwich, Conn., in August for back pay owing to her boss's having had an 11-year affair with his secretary. According to the lawsuit, the trysting couple were so often going at it that much of the secretary's work was passed down to Frank, and it was work that she was expected to complete in uncompensated overtime.

-- From the police column of the weekly Leonard Graphic (Leonard, Texas, 35 miles north of Dallas), May 3, 2001: "A man claiming to be a medical student was charged with theft of service and given a trespass warning after it was discovered he lied about his reasons for being in the local nursing home two months ago. He told aides there he had permission from the home to 'live the life of the patient' and be bathed and diapered as part of a learning experience. However, when he returned to try the scam again on April 17, police were waiting for him. He was found to be a registered sex offender living in Melissa (Texas)."

Six men were indicted in New York City in October for operating a drug ring, which came to the attention of firefighters, and then police, when one of the men curiously refused to evacuate his apartment across the street from the World Trade Center in the late morning of Sept. 11, despite the area's fires, falling debris and widespread panic. The reason: Inside, police found large supplies of drugs and paraphernalia.

An elderly man was accidentally struck and killed by a fire truck that had been dispatched to take him to a hospital (Jacksonville, Fla., July). And a 41-year-old man ejected in a bar fight was accidentally struck and killed by a sheriff's patrol car responding to the bar's call for help (Fort Worth, Texas, August). And a 52-year-old woman was accidentally struck and killed by a friend driving to help her after she fell from her horse due to a bee sting (Middleburg, Va., September).

A mother, frustrated that a Sallie Mae loan office would not believe that her debtor-son was deceased, mailed them the cremation certificate and two teaspoons of his ashes, which not only was inadequate proof but caused a full anthrax panic (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.). Descendants of the 19th-century feuding Hatfields and McCoys resumed battling, in court, over whether McCoys are being blocked from a cemetery whose main access is controlled by the Hatfields (Pikeville, Ky.). Model (Ms.) Julian Fallon was awarded about $8,500 for career-stifling injuries from the collapse of a second-floor rehearsal studio, which left her straddling a beam and with disfiguring nail holes in her derriere (Dublin, Ireland). Deputies subdued a man after a 10-minute shootout, which he provoked, he said, because he was irritable after a long bout of constipation (Bloomington, Ind.)

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