-- According to an April New York Times analysis, Verizon Communications executives, faced with a $1.4 billion loss last year (a situation which would have denied them performance bonuses), created a $389 million profit merely by deciding to value the company's pension fund "income" at $1.8 billion even though the pension fund was actually "swimming in red ink." Securities regulations apparently permit such quixotic valuations provided that they are explained to shareholders (which the executives did in a footnote in the firm's annual report). Thus, though having underperformed on the actual delivery of communications services (according to investors), Verizon executives nevertheless got their performance bonuses.

Widower Jeffrey Post filed a lawsuit against Lynn University (Boca Raton, Fla.), whose mortuary science program allegedly used bodies from a local funeral home for embalming practice without permission of the deceaseds' families (March). And Lake Elsinore, Calif., funeral home owner Michael Francis Brown, 42, was arrested and charged with illegally selling cadaver parts to several major university research institutes (February). And following an internal audit, Greenlane Hospital, New Zealand's premier heart facility, revealed that in the last 50 years, it had taken, for research and without permission of the families, the hearts from at least 1,350 babies who had died on the premises (but offered to return all those hearts it still had on hand) (February).

-- Once again, in March, the annual South Korean justice ministry test (required of those vying for appointment as judges) was administered in Seoul in a three-hour session during which, to prevent cheating, restroom breaks were not permitted. As in previous years, for those who absolutely must answer nature's call, the justice ministry provided plastic bags for men and skirt-like covers with plastic pots for women, for use in the back of the exam room.

-- In April, the U.S. Patent Office awarded patent number 6,368,227 to Steven Olson, age 7, of St. Paul, Minn., whose father had filed to help him protect a method of swinging on a swing. The Olsons' discovery: While seated, if you pull alternately on one side's chain/rope and then on the other side's, while gradually introducing a forward-backward thrust, you can swing in an oval-shaped arc, as long as the side-to-side motion is greater than the forward-backward motion. According to the Patent Office, licenses to use the patented method are available from the inventor.

-- Among those whose public displays recently either garnered Guinness Book of Records recognition or are being considered: Wang Chuntai, 49, who pulled a sedan 47 feet with cables attached only to his eyelids (Yaan, Sichuan, China); Monte Pierce, who propelled a coin more than 10 feet by using his elastic-like earlobe as a rubber band; and B.D. Tyagi, who was certified to have the longest ear hair in the world (4 inches) (Bhopal, India).

-- Police in Plymouth, Conn., arrested lawyer Christopher W. Boylan in March and charged him with defrauding a client who had paid him $2,500 to get his money back on the purchase of a defective car. According to police, Boylan's crime was that he told the client falsely that he had won the case (and drew up a bogus judicial order certifying that) and that the client should expect a settlement of $733,000 soon. So far, no explanation has emerged of how Boylan thought he would get away with the crime (in view of the fact that the order was so transparently fraudulent and that the client would eventually start to hang around Boylan's office and hound him about the money).

-- In Ottawa, Ontario, Christopher Laurin, 15, was suspended from school for two days in March and ordered to drug counseling when a police dog perked up while sniffing Laurin's locker, even though no traces of drugs of any kind were found in any of Laurin's belongings. The police claim that its dogs can detect lingering smells on clothing, but Laurin's parents were incredulous that their son could be disciplined for having something that didn't exist (and merely on the "say-so" of a dog).

Derrick A. Cobb, 25, was charged with tricking teen-age girls into removing their shoes and socks so he could run off with them (Upper Marlboro, Md., March); David William Christensen, 40, was charged with harassing three women by leaving them Keds shoes with sexually explicit messages on them (Denver, April); Donald J. Ruther, 33, was charged with stealing girls' shoes because, he said, sniffing them relaxed him (Medina, Ohio, February).

News of the Weird reported in 1999 on an annual Hindu festival in Singapore in which worshipers of Lord Murugan reaffirmed their faith by sticking skewers through their skin, with the amount of pain endured taken as the gauge of devotion. Apparently, similar celebrations continue in other countries (though India has banned them as too barbaric). In January 2002, Murugan worshipers in Malaysia celebrated at the annual Thaipusam festival at the Batu Caves, eight miles outside Kuala Lumpur, by hooking and kebobbing their skin to the accompaniment of hypnotic, deafening music that helped create pain-softening trances.

Juanita Konold-McIntosh, 55, testifying on behalf of her "husband" of 15 years, Eduardo G. McIntosh, who was on trial for fraud in Boston in January, said she is still devoted to him and hopes they can turn their lives around together. Konold-McIntosh had just heard the government introduce solid envidence that McIntosh (to her surprise) is not an Air Force general; that he is not legally married to her (because of a still-valid earlier marriage); that the reason he had spent only one night a week with her during their marriage was not because he was on secret intelligence missions; that the reasons for thousands of dollars in and out of her bank account during their "marriage" was to serve his real family and various scams; and that the reason she had not heard from him during a four-month period in 1994 was because he was in prison.

A state legislative committee in Victoria, Australia, recommended that habitually glue-sniffing children as young as 7 be placed in special homes where they could be tutored on less-lethal sniffing practices (January). The British high-end apparel shop Argos started selling padded bras and g-string underwear for girls as young as 9 in its "Babies and Kids" section (April). An Associated Press investigation found that more than 100 physicians are currently working at federal facilities (such as Veterans Administration hospitals) despite having been convicted of crimes or disciplined by state medical boards, including one woman who was convicted in Switzerland of aiding a terrorist organization (April).

The British firm Drinks Merchants said the government had finally issued it a permit to import a Czech Republic vodka that contains cannabis seeds (Nottingham). A judge ordered a man to tear down his brand-new $300,000 (U.S.) home because it was 14 feet too close to a park boundary, a fact the owner's lawyer failed to notice (Ottawa, Ontario). A psychiatrist was acquitted of sex abuse when a jury apparently believed him when he said that his multiple-personality accuser must have planted his DNA by breaking into his house and stealing his dirty underwear (DeLand, Fla.). In an online auction, two fans bid $525 and $600 to acquire a piece of bubble gum once briefly chewed by Arizona Diamondbacks baseball star Luis Gonzalez.

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

-- "Splosher" parties are growing in popularity in San Francisco, attended by quasi-sexual fetishists who joyously wallow on floors and furniture, semi-nude, in gobs of mud, cream, and a wide variety of foods such as soups, salads, syrups, ketchup, cakes and pies. According to a March report in SF Weekly, playfulness and lack of inhibition are more important to most participants than overt sexuality. In one couple's intimate scene, the man is a waiter who repeatedly spills food orders on the woman's lap and on her head, causing her to squeal with delight.

-- In scholarly papers delivered at conferences in Japan and the United States in March and April, Japanese researchers from Okayama University and Japan's National Cancer Center announced that beer inhibited liver, prostate, colon and rectal cancers in rats by as much as 50 percent. Professor Sakae Arimoto said beer works on pre-cancers by controlling heterocyclic amines and that unlike other cancer-inhibiting foods (such as spinach and broccoli), only small amounts need be consumed to acquire the beneficial effects.

Among the candidates for county sheriff in the May primaries in Kentucky are four former sheriffs forced from office after being convicted of crimes: Roger Benton (Morgan County), convicted of accepting a bribe; Paul Browning Jr. (Harlan County), convicted of plotting a murder; Douglas Brandenberg (Lee County), convicted of obstructing justice; and Ray Clemons (Breathitt County), convicted of failing to report drug activity. But the situation was more acute in the February legislative elections the state of Uttar Pradesh, India: 910 people with criminal charges against them ran for 403 seats, and 122 were elected, including an accused contract killer (who won perhaps because his opponent was himself the subject of 43 criminal charges).

-- How Japanese Men Spend Their Money: Among the shops recently opened in several Japanese cities, according to a December Irish Times dispatch from Tokyo, are "cabaret clubs" (for drinking and permissible touching of the waitresses), "fetish clubs" (where patrons can act out fantasies, such as groping women on a stage set up like the inside of a train car), and "couples' coffee shops" (where women select from among many men for free, anonymous sex in a back room). Also doing brisk business, according to a December story in Mainichi Daily News, are "mania shops" that specialize in selling the used panties of mostly B-list TV actresses. Said one clerk, "We'd give (a star's panties) a three-month use-by date and put (them) up for sale. (Actress) Hanako's cost 6,000 yen (about $46 U.S.) and sold like hotcakes."

-- A Malaysian businessman in the city of Jalan Beserah, intending to warn others who employ household help, told reporters in December that he had recently dismissed his maid because he had acquired hidden-camera proof that she boiled her underwear in the soup she served him. According to the businessman, a witch doctor in her hometown had told her that such soup would convey a magic spell that would cause the employer to appreciate her more.

-- A major recent influence on child-naming in Papua New Guinea is U.S. pop stars, according to Australian medical student Lisa Thompson, who addressed an Australian government conference in March on her recent health-care-assistance experiences in the country. "My favorite was Elton Travolta," she said, although she also met an Olivia Newton-John and a Bill Clinton, among others.

-- Three Muslim men in their early 20s from the Washington, D.C., area have formed the rap music group Native Deen, whose signature beat resembles mainstream angry rap but whose music is restricted in other ways by their faith, according to a February Washington Post report. They must, of course, dress respectfully, and do not expect their audience to dance, nor women to sing along. Also, they use only drums since they believe string and wind instruments are offensive to Muslims. Their lyrics contain no sex or drug references but rather exhort followers to virtue.

-- God's Will: A van carrying Hindu pilgrims to worship the god of destruction crashed near Calcutta, India, in April, killing 21. And a Baptist preacher, his wife, and two of their children were killed in December when an oak tree toppled over (in perfectly calm weather) onto their Lincoln Town Car, prompting the preacher's deacon to say, "There's no other explanation for this other than this was an act of God" (Cumberland, Ind.).

A Brooklyn, N.Y., housing judge ruled in March that a 71-year-old retired Chinese immigrant had too much stuff in his federally subsidized apartment and that if he didn't get rid of half of it quickly, he would be evicted. Fei Xu, 71, had so many items crammed into his 500 square feet that he had only a 14-inch-wide path by which to walk from one side to the other. Said Xu, of his accumulation (computers, typewriters, 17 suitcases, 13 clocks, 15 folding chairs, seven fans, two each of most appliances, etc.), "'Many' is such a subjective word. For me, many is not too much. (I) thought this was a free country."

Maryland lawyer Peter Angelos decided in March that he would accept the state's offer to pay him only $150 million for his firm's work (instead of $1 billion) in representing the state in the massive 1998 multistate settlement with tobacco companies, in which Maryland was awarded $4 billion of tobacco money over 20 years (for which Angelos' firm had contracted for a 25 percent fee). On the one hand, Angelos accepted 15 cents on the dollar from what Maryland originally agreed to pay him. On the other hand, even the smaller amount compensates Angelos' work at many times his firm's typical hourly billing rate, and for work that in large part was based on investigation and litigation already developed by other states.

Proposed legislation in this session of the Washington Senate would require a $100 deposit by anyone filing a formal complaint about any aspect of the dairy industry (after one free unsuccessful complaint); other businesses in the state would not be subject to complaint deposits. And in February, the managing director of South Africa's Milk Producers Organization demanded that the country's Advertising Standards Authority condemn a beer ad that "discriminates against milk" by implying that it is "dull and boring." (In the ad, three demure milk-drinkers at a cricket match become envious of rowdy beer-drinkers and eventually join them.)

-- An ABC News investigation found that people with terrorist ties, including two defendants in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, have funded their work with $100 million a year from illegally redeeming grocery store coupons (January). The head of the Vatican's agency for humanitarian aid, elaborating on a papal message, said it was a "fundamental law" that illness is a consequence of sin (February). A well-known Toronto panhandler ("the shaky lady") denied a press report that she takes in hundreds of dollars a day, rather than the $25 to $30 (U.S.) she claims; the denial came through her personal lawyer, a member of a prestigious downtown ("Bay Street") firm, in a press briefing in the firm's luxurious conference room (March).

A 22-year-old man was arrested and charged with shooting his long-time friend during an argument over which of the two was the better friend (Gary, Ind.). Two confused Japanese tourists, laden with cameras and guidebooks, wandered to within yards of the West Bank's under-siege Church of the Nativity, oblivious of the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, until flak-vested journalists beckoned them to back away (Bethlehem). A thief came across a malnourished dog during a home burglary and called in an animal-abuse report on the owner (Bolton, England). Researchers said they found what could be considered one massive ant colony, consisting of many nests of ants living (oddly) in harmony, stretching 1,000 miles from Spain to Italy.

(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 recent months, two different Hindu cults in India have begun to embrace ancient sacrifice rituals, one using horses and the other using the "Nara bali" practice of human sacrifice. In the village of Juna Padia, Assam, 150 priests participate in ceremonies to slaughter 10 horses and collect their deified blood for, they say, peace and prosperity. And in the state of Orissa, because of a paucity of human volunteers to sacrifice, the Kamakhya Temple cult uses human-size effigies made of flour, which its leaders insist are just as powerful in impressing divine forces.

-- South Korea's baby-boomer parents in increasing numbers recently are sending their preschool youngsters for outpatient mouth surgery to snip the tissue under the tongue because they believe more tongue freedom will permit the children to pronounce the difficult "l" and "r" sounds that have long stigmatized many Asians when speaking English. "Learning English is almost the national religion" in South Korea, according to one educator quoted in a March Los Angeles Times report, but many authorities in South Korea say Asians' pronunciation trouble is purely cultural and that only a very few people are born with tight-enough tongues to be helped by these "frenectomies."

IRS admitted to a Washington Post reporter in April that it had paid out $30 million in fraudulent refunds in the last two years to black taxpayers claiming (at about $40,000 each) the nonexistent slavery reparations credit (and 12 of those were IRS employees). (However, IRS did catch $2.4 billion of slavery claims before refunds went out.) And the agency filed formal charges against at least two accountants who have been advising clients to use "Section 861" of the tax code to claim (preposterously, according to every court that has heard the claim) that income tax only applies to Americans who work for foreign companies. (That scam reached prominence in March when the agency revealed that actor Wesley Snipes had asked IRS to refund the $7.3 million he paid in 1997 taxes, citing Section 861.)

-- Spanish inventor Andres Diaz made the first U.S. sale of his $20,000, side-loading, automatic cat-washing machine late last year to a Miami company, PetClean USA. The three-cycle, 37-nozzle machine processes the cat in 30 minutes, and Diaz swears the cat doesn't mind it. (And in March, Antrim, Northern Ireland, inventor Trevor Graham was awarded about $8,500 from the Winston Churchill Foundation to study mobile dog-washing equipment in the U.S.)

-- Other Recent Inventions: Vladimir Markov's "anti-rape" jeans, with a locked, coded steel top button designed to discourage attackers who haven't time to figure out how to open it (Croatia). And college-student inventors' pulsating vest composed of eight cellular phones' vibrating units sewn in to touch acupuncture-friendly parts of the abdomen (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore).

-- New Management Incentive Structures: Tyson Foods' CEO John Tyson was awarded a $2.1 million bonus for last year despite a dismal economic performance and a federal indictment for smuggling in illegal aliens to work at 15 plants in nine states; headquarters officials said the alien problem must have been 15 individual managers out of control. And federal government bonuses to its managers increased by 25 percent for the last fiscal year to an average of $11,000, despite, to put it gently, widely varied agency performances in meeting goals.

-- "Quorn," an edible, nutritious fungus that its manufacturer says looks and tastes "like chicken," made its U.S. debut in January from the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical house AstraZeneca. Quorn (also known as mycoprotein) is sold as chickenlike nuggets or in lasagna or as a ground beef-like substance and is high in protein and fiber and low in calories. Said a sports nutritionist quoted by the Associated Press: "I think it's got a lot of potential. We just have to make sure 'fungus' is not going to appear on the label."

-- A Manitoba, Canada, farmer filed a lawsuit in January against four doctors and the Brandon Regional Health Authority after he contracted the flesh-eating-bacteria disease while undergoing colon surgery. The man had to have his buttocks amputated.

At press time, the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board was still considering what to do about Pittsburgh Common Pleas judge H. Patrick McFalls Jr., based on recent alleged incidents: creating a disturbance at an airport ticket counter (while visiting Charlotte, N.C., late December); "giving" his $60,000 car to a young man and not remembering it so that he later called in a stolen car report (Feb. 5); being arrested for creating a disturbance with a cab driver about the fare (while visiting Miami Beach, Feb. 11); removing his pants at a restaurant (Feb. 14); being arrested at a theater for becoming boisterous during a movie (March 30); allowing his pants to fall down several times while having an animated conversation on the street (March 30).

Recent Reasons Given: victim (his own mother) wouldn't pay the $1,850 fee he promised his date from an escort service (Dean Glick, 41, convicted in Scottsdale, Ariz., March); victim fought him over a can of Natural Light beer (Armando Galvez, 36, arrested in Fort Myers, Fla., March); schoolteacher-victim called him a "queer" (Ronnie Worley, 22, convicted in rural Winfield, W.Va., in March); roommate-victim disagreed with him over whether to turn the lights off (Joseph Rich, 56, arrested in Broward County, Fla., January); victims (his own wife and son) had to be killed in order to keep them from learning he was about to be arrested for rape (Kenneth Hairston, 50, arrested in Pittsburgh, December).

"For almost 20 years," wrote a Boston Globe reporter in March, "convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer (imprisoned at the MCI-Norfolk facility in Massachusetts) has waged a public campaign maintaining his innocence," most recently demanding DNA tests that would clear him of a brutal attack on an elderly woman. LaGuer's supporters raised $30,000 for the test, and on March 22, the results came back: The sperm was LaGuer's. (But even worse off was rape suspect Marshall Thomas, 44, who early this year finally received his long-begged-for DNA test that he was sure would free him from a 1999 rape charge. That case is still pending, in Belleville, Ill., but Thomas's DNA was matched to an earlier, unsolved rape, and prosecutors said they planned to file additional charges.)

The Girl Scouts recently began offering merit badges in stress-reduction to scouts aged 8 to 11, but the girls, of course, had to complete a schedule of activities to earn one. And a Colorado artist created a line of hand-painted figurines in the images of serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Ed Gein (March). And Britain's Medical Research Council reported that British men's sperm counts continued to drop, probably because of exposure to industrial pollutants, and are now proportionately about one-third the level of hamsters' sperm counts (March).

The premiere of Thailand's version of "The Weakest Link" TV show was deeply controversial because the show's trademark brutality and selfishness so much contravened the country's alleged sensitivity and generosity (Bangkok). A 32-year-old man, fleeing into the woods on foot after a police traffic stop, was quickly captured after being incapacitated by a skunk's spray (Lewiston, Maine). Police shut down what an officer called a "full-service (drive-through) drug window" at an apartment house (Syracuse, N.Y.). The Sioux City, Iowa, city council made yet another official request to the Federal Aviation Administration to change its airport designation, which is SUX.

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