-- During the last four months, an unidentified motorist in a maroon Volvo has been reported by construction workers in the California cities of Fremont, Hayward, Brentwood and Dublin to have approached them and requested that they fill his car with concrete or hot asphalt. An employee of Independent Construction (Concord, Calif.) honored the request in May in Dublin, with concrete up to steering-wheel level. The man allegedly said that he was trying to get back at his ex-wife. Police want to question him, according to an August Oakland Tribune report, although they admit he has not committed any crime.

-- LifeGem Memorials (Elk Grove Village, Ill.) announced in August that, using available technology, it can turn a loved one's cremated ashes into a diamond by pressing and heating the ashes to 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit. A chemistry professor cited by The New York Times agreed that the plan was sound; carbon from the ashes converts to graphite, which can be pressurized into a diamond. LifeGem prices start at $4,000 for a quarter-carat.

Among recent District of Columbia government mishaps: Twice in June, firefighters had to battle house fires with garden hoses because pumper trucks were out of service. And apparently many police officers were not told about D.C.'s new vehicle registration program, resulting in their ticketing cars without the old (now invalid) stickers, even though owners had conscientiously affixed the new stickers. And D.C.'s Board of Elections ruled in August that Mayor Anthony Williams' name could not be printed on the primary ballot this month because his election workers forged too many signatures (e.g., "Kelsey Grammar," "Robin Hood") on his qualifying petition.

-- Order in the Court: Edmonton, Alberta, lawyer Maurice Prefontaine was arrested in March for skipping his contempt-of-court trial, which came about when he referred to Justice Gerald Verville as a "slithering mass (of) vipers." And a judge in Columbus, Ohio, declared a mistrial in July when lawyer Christopher T. Cicero rushed the phalanx of deputies surrounding his murder-defendant-client Michael Gordon and smacked Gordon in the head (in response to Gordon's threat, according to a bailiff, to "kick (Cicero's) fat ass."

-- In July, a federal judge ruled against lawyer Milo J. Altschuler (Seymour, Conn.), who claimed that his across-the-knee, bare-buttocks spanking of client Leslie Cerrato in his office was a legitimate trial-preparation tactic (and thus that when she recovered a $250,000 settlement against him for the assault, Altschuler's insurance company should pay it, as "malpractice"). Altschuler claimed that he thought the spanking would improve Cerrato's credibility as a witness.

-- The U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled in June that lawyer-plaintiff Richard Barrett of Mississippi was entitled to about $30,000 in government reimbursement of legal fees for challenging the protest-permit process in Morristown, N.J., for his small, white-supremacist organization. Barrett admits that court-ordered expenses (from 21 recent favorable decisions) are a major source of income. Barrett showed a few minor defects in the Morristown permit process, for which he originally asked reimbursement at $275 an hour, including 30 minutes' worth of "discussions with client" (presumably, $137.50 for talking to himself).

-- Football player Dennis Johnson, now an Arizona Cardinals rookie defensive end, began his high school football career at age 6 as a 5-foot-7, 170-pound second-grader playing for Harrodsburg (Ky.) High School, according to an April Los Angeles Times profile. (Nowadays, only ninth-graders and up can play, by national rule.) Johnson appeared in several games that year (after Harrodsburg had built up big leads), apparently holding his own against 18-year-olds.

-- According to a BBC News dispatch from Harar, Ethiopia, in June, Mulugeta Wolde Mariam ("the hyena man of Harar") has trained about 80 local wild hyenas to congregate around him at night and be fed by grabbing pieces of meat out of Mulugeta's mouth with their teeth. Said he, "There is no danger unless you are scared, as the hyenas sense fear."

The Japanese enterprise of paying strangers to come to private homes, pretend they are the occupants' relatives, and exchange family gossip was reported by News of the Weird in 1995, and apparently business is still booming. According to an August Miami Herald dispatch from Tokyo, Kazushi Ookynitani's "convenience agency" supplies "friends" for weddings and funerals and even to sit in at college lectures (to keep a professor's spirits up). Recent wedding-party "friends" of one bride (who were paid about $500 each) were given detailed biographies of who they were to pretend to be, so as to mingle more interestingly with the bride's actual relatives.

-- A homeowner in Amarillo, Texas, found one of cross-country spree-bomber Luke Helder's active explosives in May but for some reason brought it into his house before calling police. And a woman found a bomb along the Columbia River near Woodland, Wash., in July but for some reason carried it directly to the police station to show the officers. And a member of the cabin crew on the December 2001 American Airlines plane carrying accused shoe-bomber Robert Reid confiscated Reid's shoes and put them in the cockpit for safekeeping.

-- Twice in a two-week period, what authorities believe to be the same yearling bear was roughed up by tourists in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee because each time he had a fawn in his grasp and was about to have dinner. Floridian Michael Shaw, 38, was charged by park rangers with interfering with wildlife for kicking and roughing up the bear (even though he insisted that saving the deer was the right thing to do), and in the second attack on July 7, a group of visitors drove the bear away by pelting him with rocks (until an animal researcher in the group explained to them the way nature works).

A pregnant woman told a New Zealand TV audience on July 12 that she had agreed to let adult filmmaker Stephen Crow film her childbirth for a sequence in an upcoming pornographic movie (Auckland). Idaho's Medicaid manager told reporters (who were questioning him about new restrictions that denied many clients dentures) that the elderly "can (just) gum their food" (Boise, May). At least 23 eighth-graders in the Rockford (Ill.) School District failed every single class last year but nevertheless were promoted (July).

A judge set a 19-year-old man for trial in a revenge-shooting, allegedly in retaliation for the victim's having given him a "wedgie" at a concert (Southampton, Pa.). A 37-year-old woman received probation-only after being charged with attempting to kill her husband by placing poisonous spiders on him while he slept (Rutherford County, Tenn.). A pregnant woman in the middle of a Caesarian delivery at the Waitakere Hospital had her legs catch on fire (from the alcohol-swabbing solution), but mother and eventual baby received only minor injuries (Waitemata, New Zealand). Police, citing federal forfeiture law, demanded that McIntosh College give up ownership of one of its dormitories to the city because so much drug activity was taking place inside (Dover, N.H.).

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

-- A Fortune magazine-commissioned study reported in August that officers and directors of the 1,035 companies that have fallen the most from their recent bull-market peaks cashed in $66 billion worth of stock before the crash, at a time when those companies' non-insiders (and in many cases, employees) were suffering devastating investment losses. Among the "shrewdest" executives were those from AOL-Time Warner ($1.79 billion), Enron ($994 million) and Charles Schwab ($951 million).

-- One proposed remedy for the sexual frustration of Iranian men who avoid marriage because of financial cost is to permit temporary, Islam-endorsed "marriages" with prostitutes inside designated brothels. About 300,000 prostitutes are active in Iran, and the number is rising, as is the typical cost of marriage and the "corrupt" influence of Western society on Muslim youth. Those circumstances have caused at least one prominent cleric to back the idea, according to an August Reuters dispatch.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (55) The robber who carefully, purposefully smashes a store's security camera (while looking directly at it), oblivious to the fact that destroying the camera does not affect the remote video recorder that it's hooked up to, capturing his face on tape, as with the 5-foot-9 man whose picture has been circulating in Edmonton, Alberta, since July. (56) And the hard-luck checkbook thief whose victim, by chance, is an employee of the very store or bank in which the thief later tries to cash one of the checks, as happened at the Farmers State Bank, Stockbridge, Mich., in June, resulting in the arrest of a 20-year-old man.

-- Responding to his latest call-up for jury duty, habitual San Antonio jury-slacker David Williamson sent the federal judge a serious bill for $16,800 because the court had advised Williamson to be ready to serve at any time during August (21 business days, 8 hours a day, at Williamson's consultant's rate of $100 an hour). Williamson also wrote that if the judge did not pay by Aug. 31, interest would accrue at 2 percent a month, and that if the judge would like to discuss the matter, he should call Williamson for an appointment. (A few days later, Judge John H. Wood Jr. ordered Williamson to his courtroom for a contempt hearing, the result of which was pending at press time.)

-- Child-sex-assaulter Kevin R. Hill, 36, filed a lawsuit from prison against St. Clair County, Ill., in July, demanding $100,000 because county officials caused him and his family "grave personal and professional financial devastation" when they charged him with the crime (even though he ultimately pleaded guilty). And in June, inmate Kenneth Bianchi (the "Hillside Strangler" serial-killer in California and Washington in the 1970s), filed a lawsuit against Whatcom County, Wash., demanding up to $100 a day for the 23 years he has been imprisoned (for lost wages and emotional distress); Bianchi said prosecutors caused him to misjudge the strength of the case against him at trial, and that's why he pleaded guilty to the murders of seven women.

-- Matthew E. Hooker, 30, filed a $200 million defamation lawsuit in May in Los Angeles against actor Nicole Kidman because she (and many other persons and media outlets named in the lawsuit) refer to Hooker as Kidman's "stalker" (even though a judge has entered a three-year stay-away order against Hooker because of numerous past harassments of Kidman). Hooker told reporters that the "stalker" label was likely to hurt his 2004 presidential campaign.

-- In Winnipeg, Manitoba, in July, David Dauphinee, 52, and his brother Daniel, 51, both retired senior members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, were convicted of bombarding local police officers with oranges and onions while standing on a 19th-floor balcony, while the local officers were investigating a break-in on a ground floor nearby. The brothers have had other recent confrontations with law-enforcement officers, and David's ex-wife Debbie described the men as "dumb and dumber."

-- Ex-lawyer Mitchell Rothken, 44, is serving a three-to-nine-year prison sentence in New York in connection with an embezzlement scheme, which he told a judge in February he concocted to win the favor of stripper Kimberly Barbieri, with whom he was utterly obsessed. In an August interview in New York magazine, Rothken said that although his secret, four-year bond with the dancer ultimately cost him his 21-year marriage, his three sons, his real-estate law practice, and more than $1 million in gifts, Barbieri and he never actually consummated the relationship.

In May in Brisbane, Australia, suspended police officer James Arthur Mariner, 42, was set for trial on charges that over a seven-year period, under the guise of helping people qualify for the police force, he solicited pubic hair, blood and urine samples and mouth swabs from people for his own gratification. Other victims claimed that Mariner got them to make a sex video (allegedly for police training), and another said Mariner put a wrestler's "headlock" on her.

Unfamiliar With the System: Andrew Cameron was arrested in August and charged with stealing Jacqueline Boanson's debit card in Cheltenham, England. Cameron had used the card to place a horse-racing bet, and the horse won, but since he could not collect without a photo ID that matched the debit card name, the winnings (about $495) were automatically transferred to Boanson's account.

A 40-year-old man, finishing off the last of his champagne on an apartment-house rooftop, climbed down a ledge as a shortcut to go get another bottle but fell and was fatally impaled on a fence (Chicago, June). And an 18-year-old high school student, attempting to prove that heroin is not addictive, overdosed and died on his first-ever experience (his impressions of which he had just begun to chronicle on his computer before he passed out) (Fort Worth, Texas, May).

In 1999, police in Tulia, Texas (pop. 5,100), arrested 40 blacks (more than 10 percent of the black population) for alleged drug trafficking and somehow obtained convictions, with no physical evidence and no corroboration, based on the testimony of one N-word-using officer, Tom Coleman, who kept almost no records (except that he sometimes wrote notes on his leg) and who swore that he had bought drugs from several people who later proved they weren't even in town. The "ringleader" (now serving 90 years) was an impoverished farmer who lived in a dilapidated shack; a few local whites with connections to the black community were convicted as well, with one receiving a 300-year sentence. The latest coverage of the convictions (now being appealed) was by a New York Times columnist who visited the town in July.

A female suspect being questioned by police managed to fatally shoot an officer who had permitted her a bathroom break, using a gun the woman had probably concealed between her buttocks (Minneapolis). An orthopedic surgeon's license was suspended after he, in mid-operation, allegedly left the OR for 35 minutes to run to his bank and deposit a check before returning to finish up (successfully) (Cambridge, Mass.). An ex-cop awaiting trial for molesting one stepdaughter dropped dead of an aneurysm in an X-rated peep-show booth while in a compromising position with his other stepdaughter (El Paso, Texas). A woman who two years earlier had a house built on the edge of a golf course fairway filed a lawsuit against the course because balls keep landing in her yard (Ossipee, N.H.).

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

-- Plastic surgeons told The Wall Street Journal in August that requests for designer navel and nipple surgery are increasing (probably brought on by the skin-revealing tops women wear), with slim, horizontal-oval navels preferred (a preference also found by panelists in a 2000 surgical journal article), and firm, prominent nipples seen almost as an "accessory" for the excitingly dressed woman. (Almost all such U.S. surgery is in conjunction with tummy tucks or breast enhancement, but navel sculpting as stand-alone surgery has been popular for several years in Japan.)

-- Update: In July, a Texas district judge ruled that any professional thoughts that software engineer Evan Brown had in his head during his 10 years with DSC Communications (now Alcatel USA Inc.) belonged to the company even though they may never have been expressed in any tangible form. (News of the Weird reported DSC's filing of this lawsuit in 1997.) Brown had signed a contract agreeing that DSC owned any "invention" or anything "conceived" on the job but said he actually began thinking about his high-level source code solution 12 years before he started work at DSC.

Nathan A. Williams, 18, admitting that he robbed a convenience store in White River Junction, Vt., in July, told the judge, "I still don't know quite to this day why I did it." And Gerald Fitzgerald, 73, pleading guilty to a series of petty crimes in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in July: "I don't know why (I did it)." And Ms. Rie Fujii, 24, pleading guilty in Calgary, Alberta, in June to abandoning her children while she partied: "I don't know why." And Darlene Eva Gallant, 41, sentenced to two years in prison in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, in May for maliciously injecting her grandson with insulin: "I hurt someone more precious than my life, and I don't even know why." And pharmacist Robert Courtney, pleading guilty in Kansas City, Mo., in February to diluting customers' cancer drugs: "I keep asking myself, 'Why?'"

-- The several African nations' soccer teams that rely on witchcraft to give them an edge were confounded at this year's World Cup when Senegal almost made it to the semifinals after supposedly rejecting that strategy and competing solely on ability. Teams from Ivory Coast and Mali have been in the news this year for their relentless black-magic beliefs (e.g., animal parts buried on the soccer field at midnight; hexing spells by witch doctors on a team's sideline). In February, a Cameroon assistant coach was dragged off the field by Mali military personnel after he was suspected of wielding a lucky charm.

-- The traditional, manure-based "Many Weed Tea," taken by generations of rural black families in Alabama as a cold and flu remedy, is fading away despite continued testimonials to its effectiveness, according to a June Birmingham News story. Its recipe calls for forming a tea bag of cloth and filling it with two open lemons, stalks of the lavender plant, honey and several dried cow patties, preferably containing visible, undigested leaves and twigs. The brew is supposedly safe for humans provided that it is boiled long enough before steeping.

-- A group of Christian protestors disrupted a pagans' spring equinox ceremony in Lancaster, Calif., in March by blasting their car stereos to drown out the songs and chants of 300 witches and warlocks. What apparently really set off the Christians was the pagans' merry attempt at "animal sacrifice," which they accomplish by fonduing a candy bunny. When a pagan leader yelled "Sacrifice the chocolate rabbit," the Christians leaped from their cars and advanced on them, but violence was averted.

-- Bishop C. Vernie Russell's Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church (Norfolk, Va.) has raised $340,000 from his congregation in 14 months for the specific purpose of helping randomly chosen members (59 so far) to get out of debt by having their credit-card bills paid off by the church, according to a June Wall Street Journal report. At the special, monthly "debt liquidation revival," congregants dance and chant, "stomping" the devil, who is believed to be the cause of the credit-card debt in the first place. Lucky winners must cut up their cards and attend counseling, and Russell believes "cured" borrowers are much better tithers.

-- More Violence in Jerusalem: In July, Ethiopian Orthodox Christian monks brawled with monks from the Coptic Christian Church of Egypt at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the site of Jesus' burial and resurrection) after an Egyptian on the roof moved his chair into the shade. The roof space and all other space and furniture in the church have been allocated by agreement among various Christian organizations, and the Egyptian was said to have crossed a line, provoking the Ethiopians to respond by throwing rocks, iron bars and chairs. Seven Ethiopians and four Egyptians were injured.

Greeting the arrival of singer R. Kelly ("I Believe I Can Fly") at the courthouse in Chicago on Aug. 7 for a hearing on the 21 counts of child pornography he has been charged with were 40 children, yelling support and wearing T-shirts reading "Not Guilty," "Case Dismissed," and "Kill his name/Kill the fame/That's the game," among other messages. Said organizer Janet Edmond, "(People) need to stop looking at all the negative stuff and start looking at the good things R. Kelly is doing. (K)ids need something to reach for. They have no role models."

Aztar Corp. casinos in Evansville, Ind., Atlantic City, N.J., and Las Vegas have recently featured tic-tac-toe games in which gamblers compete with chickens that punch in X's and O's with their beaks, and in June, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals made a formal protest, both of the oppressive conditions under which the chickens labor and the "disrespect" of the chickens that the game represents. Also in June, traveling Alaskan circus artist Emily Harris had her expensive bicycle mistakenly sold while she visited a second-hand shop in London, and the resulting news stories called attention to her particular circus art, which is that she hypnotizes chickens and makes them play a piano.

Taketomi Miura, 30, was arrested and charged with killing a newspaper carrier, allegedly because Miura thought that a murder conviction would help obscure the shameful fact that he had been embezzling from his employer (Tondabayashi, Japan, June). Shane Sloan, 29, was convicted of killing his mother, supposedly because he was angry at her for interrupting his suicide attempt (and Sloan indeed killed himself in his cell 10 days later) (Pittsburgh, June).

Angel Martinez, 36, was only recently released after serving 17 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, 13 of those years after another man had confessed; Martinez's lawyer had never told him about the confession (New York City, June). A 22-year-old church pastor and his brother were arrested for administering an hour-long beating with a rod to an 11-year-old boy (resulting in kidney failure) because he allegedly cheated in Bible study class (San Antonio, July). Colombian rebels wounded eight humans and destroyed 20 homes with a bomb strapped onto a horse (Guadalupe, Colombia, July).

A 15-year-old girl won a talent search by "jumping" rope 100 times while seated (by raising her butt for each pass) (Keller, Texas). Witnesses said a 39-year-old youth-league soccer coach rushed onto the field during a time-out and aggressively elbowed the other team's star player (an 11-year-old girl) in the stomach (but the league has specific penalties only for coaches who attack referees) (Mississauga, Ontario). A 44-year-old man, angry that a check he was expecting didn't come, beat up the postal carrier (Shreveport, La.). A catwalk collapsed at Aquarium of the Americas, sending 10 VIP visitors into a tank with 24 sharks (but which, fortunately, had just been fed and were docile) (New Orleans).

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