-- More News From the Front Lines: The Jammu and Kashmir State Cable Car Corp. continues to run its gondolas at the mountain resort of Gulmarg (according to a July Washington Post dispatch), passing within 3 miles of the "Line of Control" that separates Indian and Pakistani forces in Kashmir (and despite the gondolas occasionally picking up ground fire); business is down considerably for skiing, hiking and golf, but still, frolickers show up. And according to a June report in Lebanon Daily Star (via The Wall Street Journal), Israeli and Hezbollah forces on the Lebanese border, on stand-down from live ammunition, recently exchanged "fire" with a paint-gun blast, pingpong balls and eggs.

-- In June, retired British actor Michael Fabian was sentenced to six months in jail for duping an employment agency into sending him 12 actors for a job he had, before leaving town without paying. Fabian had been on trial for harassing a prosecutor and had acted as his own lawyer, presenting a lavish, theatrical defense, for which he thought he needed the inspiration of a good audience, i.e., the 12 actors, sitting in the gallery. (Still, he was convicted.)

Among people who have recently forgotten that they had kids locked up in hot cars (which Centers for Disease Control said has killed at least 27 toddlers since 2000): Tarajee Maynor, age 25 (her two kids died while she kept a three-hour hair salon appointment, Southfield, Mich., June); Jorge Villamar, 59 (left his 16-month-old granddaughter in a sweltering car for an hour and a half, Central Islip, N.Y., July); and two parents who on July 8 had left kids in hot cars in Fort Worth, Texas (fatal to a 6-month-old boy), and Scarborough, Ontario, but whose names had not been released at press time.

-- Simply Dapper, age 6 months, won four prize ribbons at the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association show in Costa Mesa, Calif., in May. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the rodent's "shiny beige coat, sweet temperament, and a blood line dating back 12 generations" were the main factors in his success. Contest rats have fancy names (e.g., "Himalayan" rat) but cost only a few dollars to acquire and are genetically the same as ordinary, Dumpster-diving Norwegian rats.

-- During the same week in February that the Westminster Dog Show opened in New York City, United Arab Emirates held its first-ever beauty contest for camels in Abu Dhabi, with total prize money of about $27,000. And in June, an Interlachen, Fla., farmer named a goat (which he said came from a long line of show goats) Li'l Dale when it was born with a white marking in the shape of a "3" on its brown coat (and which the hundreds of Floridians who flocked to see it thought was surely a divine sign about the late NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt). (Babe Ruth also wore number 3, but the visitors seemed certain the goat did not refer to him.)

-- To deal with the city's mounting dog litter problem, officials in Anchorage, Alaska, proposed in May to help call recalcitrant dog owners' attention to the problem by squirting a dab of peanut butter on each pile of dog poop in the parks and on sidewalks. (The idea is that owners would more conscientiously clean up so that their own dogs would not be tempted to try to eat the peanut butter.)

-- In June, Harvey, Ill., Baptist minister Rev. Roland Gray was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for faking at least 14 auto accidents to defraud insurance companies of more than $450,000; "I consider myself a man of God," Gray told the judge, "(but) I got a little confused." Also in June, Mr. Andrea Cabiale, 40, of Turin, Italy, was charged with arranging at least 500 bump-and-stop car accidents involving young female drivers, in largely unsuccessful attempts to date them; in Cabiale's apartment were 2,159 photographs of female car owners and their damaged vehicles.

-- John Patrick Bradley, 56, and three women were arrested in March in Los Angeles for an ambitious scheme in which recent U.S. immigrants were charged as much as $25,000 for the promise of becoming citizens. The ruse involved an almost full-scale replica of the official immigration service process, including elaborate materials and tests and a swearing-in ceremony, with Bradley dressed as a judge, leading everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Christopher Watt, 15, who it is believed entered a 9-foot-diameter pipe in the Ottawa, Ontario, sewer system on a dare, was swept deep into the foul waters for five hours on June 10 before rescue crews got to him on an inflatable raft. And a 12-year-old boy, helping his father clean the family's backyard sewer in Chicago on June 6, got stuck in the muck for several hours until 28 firefighters and 10 paramedics freed him.

Eight-year fugitive John Thomas Boston, 39, who mailed a note in March to Louisville, Ky., police just as he crossed into Canada, informing them that they would never catch him, was arrested in April in Dallas and charged not only as a fugitive but for the first time with three 1994 rapes. Boston's main error (other than returning to the U.S. from Canada) was to lick the envelope containing the taunting note; his DNA allegedly matched evidence from the rapes.

Arrested for murder: Kenneth Wayne Hall Sr. (Gaffney, S.C., March), David Wayne Satterfield (Dallas, March), Shelly Wayne Martin (Baltimore, May), Jason Wayne Petershagen (Alvin, Texas, May), David Wayne Crews (Knoxville, Tenn., June), Mark Wayne Lomax (Houston, April), Jeffrey Wayne Paschall (Draper, Utah, June). Convicted of murder: Mark Wayne Silvers (Anderson, S.C., April), Darren Wayne Campbell (Coquille, Ore., May). Sentenced for murder: Michael Wayne Cole (Goldsboro, N.C., March). Murder conviction overturned and new trial ordered: Michael Wayne Jennings (Contra Costa County, Calif., May).

Melodie Morsicato, 45, was arrested in New Britain, Conn., in March after she crashed through the front door of a Target store at 4 a.m. in her Nissan Stanza and, once inside, continued to drive around the store. And a 37-year-old woman drove into the Ginger Inn Chinese restaurant in Durham, N.C., in April in her Honda SUV and, once inside, continued driving around the dining room. And two men in their early 20s were arrested in El Dorado, Ark., in April for riding their horses into a Wal-Mart and around the store for a few minutes; police said alcohol was involved.

Bell South telemarketer Maria del Pilar Basto became a hero, calling Leonardo Diaz to sell him more minutes for his out-of-minutes wireless phone, and happening to reach him as he was trapped in a blizzard in the Andes Mountains and had almost given up hope of being rescued (Bogota, Colombia). Health inspectors arrested a 57-year-old man and charged him with manufacturing 30 pounds of "bathtub cheese" (Napa, Calif.). Pakistani officials arrested leaders of a tribal council that had ordered an 18-year-old woman gang-raped as revenge against her brother, who had been seen walking beside a woman of higher status (Punjab province, Pakistan). Vandals struck the First United Methodist Church with hate graffiti, but had trouble with Satan ("Satin") and Rebel ("Reble") (Prestonburg, Ky.).

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

-- "Dozens" of money-making Web sites have recently been created by parents who post photos they have taken of their adolescent daughters (as young as age 6) frolicking in frilly clothing or swimwear, according to a May New York Daily News report. The sites are operated like pornography businesses, with some free teaser photos, but with $30-a-month "members" getting access to the photo archive and "personal" messages from the "model." Some sites operate chat rooms where members discuss the girls in great detail. One "typical" site has 3,000 daily users, and another had 32 million page views in nine months. The parents say they are helping their daughters with modeling careers or with future college expenses.

-- China's youth and young adults are increasingly beyond the communist government's control in their spending and leisure habits, according to a May dispatch in Toronto's Globe and Mail. Although party leaders still appear on "most-admired" lists, so do Bill Gates and pop stars such as the Taiwanese boy band F4, and older Chinese complain that superficial, amoral kids know more lyrics of Michael Jackson than sayings of Mao Tse-tung. (The government recently banned an imported, 15-episode TV show starring F4, but had to back down because of the boys' popularity among screaming teen-age girls and because of complaints by government TV stations that they needed the advertising revenue the show would bring in.)

Middle-school teacher Timothy Thomure, 46, admitted rubbing a knife blade along a student's finger (and other acts of intimidation) to "loosen (students) up and get them to interact" (Sedalia, Mo., March). Parents of an 8-year-old boy recently asked school officials for counseling help to deal with a lingering 1999 incident in which a teacher disciplined him by dumping a cup of cockroaches on his chest (Houston, April). A middle-school teacher was fired for allegedly throwing a chair at a student during a "behavior management" class (Pflugerville, Texas, May). A Sunday school teacher was convicted of a misdemeanor for counseling a teen-age boy that a good way to curb his masturbation habit was to write "What would Jesus do?" on his penis (Andover, Minn., June).

-- Donna Beck filed a wrongful death claim in April against the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department following the death of her son James Allen Beck in a barricade-shootout last year (in which one deputy was killed). Beck was prepared for a long stand-off, having stockpiled weapons in his home (which caught fire from a tear gas canister, resulting in Beck's death and the destruction of his body).

-- A jury in New York City recently awarded $14.1 million to a 38-year-old woman who was badly maimed after she was hit by a subway train after lying down purposefully on an underground track in a probable suicide attempt. According to a New York Law Journal report summarized in a June New York Times story, the jury found that the train conductor, who had already slowed to 15 mph following a report of someone lying on the tracks, should have been going slower. (The judge lowered the award to $9.9 million after finding that it was 30 percent the woman's fault.) [New York Times, 6-25-02]

-- Scottish train driver Jacqueline Morrison, 29, filed a lawsuit in April against her employer, ScotRail, asking about $25,000 because she bruised a fingernail (which eventually fell off) when she went to adjust her seat in the cab.

-- In April, a court in New South Wales, Australia, awarded a 20-year-old man the equivalent of $525,000 (U.S.) as a result of his being knocked out in a 1995 Narrandera High School fight that he apparently participated in willingly and in which he threw the first punches. Although he was medically cleared the next day, he said serious headaches and neurological problems have developed and that the last seven years have been physically and financially tough for him.

-- June Bond, 34, filed a $300,000 claim against Ventura County (Calif.) because her husband (on a work program for violating probation) stomped a palm frond down into a Dumpster, and it snapped back and severed his ear, causing him, she said, to no longer be affectionate. And Tim and Donna Vogle filed a lawsuit against a restaurant in St. Joseph, Mo., in June, claiming that the owner slapped Mrs. Vogle in the head with a raw steak (after she complained that it was overdone) and that as a result, the couple's sex life has been 75 percent diminished.

Edward O. Green, 24, was arrested in LaPorte, Ind., near the front desk at the sheriff's station shortly after he had arrived to bail out a friend. A deputy had told him to take a seat momentarily, but apparently Green, who was probably inebriated, quickly dozed off and began to snore. As deputies approached to awaken him, they noticed several small plastic bags (which tests later revealed to contain cocaine) in his mouth.

Correction Service of Canada recently touted some prisons' successful model programs of allowing inmates who request it to live in certain wings designated as drug-free zones (even though all sections of all prisons are supposed to be drug-free). And Suffolk County (Mass.) has begun to pay its prison guards a $1,000 yearly bonus if they test clean for illegal drugs. (The programs in both of these stories were enticements to get inmates and guards to agree to random drug-testing, which would otherwise be prohibited.)

A 49-year-old Kingman, Ariz., inmate was killed when he slipped on feces he had expelled in his cell and struck his head on the floor (April). A 60-year-old Tucson, Ariz., model-airplane enthusiast was killed when he was accidentally hit in the chest by his own radio-controlled, 6-pound, 5-foot-wing-span plane (May). A 47-year-old female car passenger was killed when the driver accidentally smashed into a "Welcome to Minnesota" sign on Interstate 94 (April).

Imprisoned Brazilian drug king Fernandinho Beira-Mar somehow arranged for a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile to be delivered to his cell at Bangu One prison before the government confiscated it (June). A high school senior who plagiarized a paper and whose English teacher failed her was nonetheless given a last-minute makeup test in order to graduate, after her parents' lawyer threatened the school district with lengthy litigation (Phoenix, May). A federal environmental official warned of another serious danger of home methamphetamine labs, that they create 5 pounds of dangerous toxic waste for every pound of meth (Bulls Gap, Tenn., May).

Four women were taken in by a man who persuaded them to stand topless at their windows so that cutting-edge global satellite technology could give them at-home mammograms (Algarve region of southern Portugal). The "Barbasol bandit," a 44-year-old convenience-store robber whose "mask" consisted of slathered-on shaving cream, pleaded guilty (Vernon, Conn.). A 280-pound sea lion arose from San Francisco Bay, crossed two runways, and made it to a terminal at SFX airport before security detected it. A Columbus, Ohio, suburb proclaimed that residents with odd street addresses should sit in their yards on Friday nights so that people on the other side of the street can visit them, with the situation reversed on Saturday nights (Worthington, Ohio).

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

-- About 2,500 festive marchers turned out for Jerusalem's first gay pride day in June, including a few Palestinians. And according to reports in The New York Times, The Times of London and The Scotsman, U.S. and British troops fighting in Afghanistan have been hit on by that country's apparently numerous (and decreasingly closeted) gay farmers. (Afghan men's brazenly taking boy lovers was a major impetus for the Taliban to take power in 1994, and press reports say that practice is slowly re-emerging.)

-- In June in Rotherham, England, Gaak the robot, who is part of a research project into equipping robots to think for themselves, escaped from the lab while it was momentarily unattended and made it as far as the parking lot of the Magna science center before being stopped by a visitor's car. It had forced its way out of a small pen used to house units scheduled for repair. Said Professor Noel Sharkey, "(The robots) have all learned a significant amount and are becoming more intelligent by the day."

Smugglers With Bright Ideas: A woman's snakeskin "belt" was confiscated by airport customs officials when they realized it was an actual snake (exotic and endangered, yet harmless, which had been sedated by chilling but which had heated up) (Glasgow, Scotland, February). Authorities in Chicago and Orlando recently confiscated shirts from Thailand and Colombia, respectively, that had been "starched" with heroin and which would later be chemically soaked to extract the drug. And since Sept. 11, Customs officials say drug cartels' Mexico-to-U.S. tunneling activity has increased, with five new tunnels recently raided, including one that ended near the parking lot of the Customs office in Nogales, Ariz.

-- In June, the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, awarded Damien Keller, 31, the equivalent of $313,000 (U.S.) for injuries he suffered while robbing a taxi driver at knifepoint in 1994. Although the driver had fled the robbery, Keller chased him until the cornered driver was forced to hit Keller with a stick and punch him in the face. Keller suffered brain damage because, he said, the police and ambulance service did not treat him speedily enough.

-- On May 6, a 32-year-old woman apparently attempting suicide plunged 14 stories from a window at the Four Ambassadors condominium in Miami, but walked away with only a broken arm when she landed on the roof of a late-model Honda. She had been hospitalized three days earlier after taking an overdose of pills.

-- Russ and Sandy Asbury of Whitewater, Wis., told an Associated Press reporter in February that their two cats, Boots and Bandit, now each 2 years old, have driven up the couple's water bill recently because they have learned to flush toilets. Said Russ, "We have to shut the bathroom door when we go to bed. Otherwise one or the other of the cats are in there flushing away all night."

-- Robert Daniel Irving was cleared in May to receive the equivalent of $28,500 (U.S.) in standard spousal death benefits from the Manitoba (Canada) Public Insurance fund. There had been speculation that he would be denied the award in that the way his 22-year-old wife died was as a passenger in Irving's car when he crashed while drunk-driving. Irving pleaded guilty to impaired driving, but the Manitoba agency said the plea was irrelevant to his eligibility for benefits.

-- The Agence France-Presse news service reported in April that a severely disabled boy (believed to be about age 7) had been taken in by a children's home in Kano, Nigeria, in 1996 after having been abandoned by his nomadic parents and raised with chimpanzees for 18 months. The nursing staff at the Tudun Maliki Torrey home said the kid now no longer drags his hands on the ground as he walks but still often springs at people and makes chimplike noises. The nomadic Fulani people of Nigeria have been known to reject disabled children as too difficult to travel with.

The Doctors Were Wrong: Apparently angry because local doctors kept telling him nothing was wrong with him, Shawn Eric Bird, 40, allegedly mailed more than 100 envelopes containing notes with childlike insults and smeared cat feces and urine to medical offices and other establishments around Belleville, Ontario, before being arrested in May. Police finally caught him when Bird (referring to himself as the "Spiderman" character, the Green Goblin) called a station house to chide them for incompetence, and officers surmised from the background noise where Bird was calling from.

Edward Brewer, 47, serving a 10-year sentence for raping a cerebral palsy patient in a Sandusky, Ohio, hospital, sued the hospital for $2 million in May, claiming that his own predicament came about because the hospital did not protect its patients well enough. For some reason, Brewer also sued his attorney, who had recommended he take a plea bargain in the 1999 case, which got Brewer a five-year sentence; an angry Brewer had then appealed that plea bargain, blaming his lawyer for it, but then on retrial, Brewer was convicted and sentenced to his current 10-year term.

A year ago, News of the Weird reported that a library's resident cat had attacked Richard R. Espinosa's assistance dog, whose injuries have so discomforted Espinosa that he believes he needs $1.5 million to recover from the stress (i.e., his "terror, humiliation, shame, embarrassment, mortification, chagrin, depression, panic, anxiety, flashbacks (and) nightmares"). In April 2002, Espinosa amended his complaint (which is against the city of Escondido, Calif.) to take account that, with his disability, he is in a law-protected class and thus that the cat's actions should be considered a "hate crime" attributable to the library.

-- At least 10 people were killed after steady rains waterlogged and toppled a huge mountain of garbage (tens of thousands of square meters' worth) piled adjacent to a workers' dormitory (Shandong, China). Because of police department budget cuts in Argentina's miserable recession, residents of Junin (population 93,000) have been lending their cars, gassed up at their own expense, for officers' patrolling (May). No brewed coffee could be sold in Berkeley, Calif., unless it came from "organic, shade-grown" (or "Fair-Trade-certified") beans, according to a 2002 voter initiative advanced by 35-year-old lawyer Rick Young (June).

-- A jury concluded that Suzanne Vasquez's epilepsy was not caused by the 13-pound Wal-Mart ham that allegedly fell on her head from over the meat cooler while she looked up to check its price (Bradenton, Fla.). Canadian officials said they could not find a crime to charge a man with after catching him selling "upskirt" videos, in that the female victims could not be identified by just their legs (Toronto). An Australian National University research team succeeded in teleporting (disassembling, then re-assembling) a several-billion-proton laser containing a radio message a distance of about one meter (Canberra). Desperate after a prolonged drought and heat wave, Indian villagers performed a "marriage" of two donkeys in an ancient Hindu ritual to appease the god of rain (Sakkayanayakanur, India).

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