-- The 12-story, earthquake-proof, $190 million Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels was dedicated in Los Angeles in September, celebrated not only for the obligatory gift shop ($24.99 for house chardonnay), the ATM, and the $12-a-day parking garage, but for the private crypts underneath at prices of $50,000 to $3 million. ("(That's) kind of like selling sky boxes," said a Notre Dame theology professor; a Loyola Marymount University professor defended the steep price, saying, "I don't think that the poor are terribly worried about where they are going to be buried.")

-- While Chile copes this month with the first murder in 15 years on its remote Easter Island (pop. 4,000; 2,370 miles from the mainland), Great Britain was reportedly preparing to build a jail and a courthouse on Easter's closest neighbor, Pitcairn Island, after investigators from Britain and New Zealand said they suspected as many as 20 of the 47 residents had engaged in sex with children. According to a July report in Britain's The Guardian newspaper, if charges are eventually filed, trials might be held on Pitcairn or in New Zealand using a special satellite video hookup from the island.

A 34-year-old woman from Texas was attacked by three lions in a pen at a game park in South Africa after she started petting one of them (Pietersburg, June). And a 30-year-old woman from Texas was critically injured by a car as she stood on the shoulder of Los Angeles' Hollywood Freeway to snap a photo of the "Hollywood" sign (June). And a 40-year-old man from Georgia, who had locked himself out of a 10th-floor, Alabama-beach condo, decided that shimmying down from the 14th-floor roof was faster than asking security guards for help, but fell 200 feet into the 4-foot-deep swimming pool, breaking three ribs (Orange Beach, July).

-- Former Jehovah's Witness elder Bill Bowen charged in June that the sect manages a secret database of 23,720 members who have been accused of sexual abuse but that little if anything happens to those named unless a witness comes forward (a stipulation supposedly commanded by Deuteronomy 19:15, requiring witnesses to prove a sin). When Bowen complained, he was expelled from the sect for "causing divisions." Furthermore, Bowen charged, even confessed abusers are "punished" only by being kept from proselytizing door-to-door unless accompanied by another Witness.

-- Officials in Livermore, Calif., apparently weary of breakdowns in the city's sewer system, made a formal apology in August to American Indian Adam "Fortunate Eagle" Nordwell, who had placed a curse on the system in 1969 after city workers chopped off a portion of the totem pole he had donated for the city's centennial celebration. Some residents have routinely attributed any sewer breakdown over the years to the curse.

-- Tucson (Ariz.) Heart Hospital was cited in June by the state Department of Health Services for having illegally locked its emergency room from the inside, and employees told an Associated Press reporter that that was to prevent patients from leaving before payment had been arranged (although a hospital vice president denied that).

-- Samuel Greenbaum, 58, one of five "mohels" in the Detroit area (qualified to conduct the Jewish circumcision ritual), was charged with DUI after being stopped on June 18 on his way to perform his craft on a boy in West Bloomfield Township. He told police he was en route from another circumcision, at which he might have had a couple of glasses of wine, but felt (despite failing a Breathalyzer test) that he was alert enough to wield the scalpel-like instrument.

The performance "XXX" by the Spanish theater group La Fura dels Baus opened in May in the small town of Lorca, Spain, the only venue available because the play's rawness continues to keep it out of mainstream European theaters. Its nude, sexually acrobatic troupe performs a work by Marquis de Sade ending in a woman's staging the rape and mutilation of her mother as punishment for having sheltered the daughter's life (about which one actor said, "(W)e have achieved something essential, which is to leave nobody indifferent"). The show opens with a nude woman picking up a pen between her buttocks cheeks and scrawling (in Spanish) "A better world is possible" while squatting over a video projector.

Inmate David Ivy escaped through a hole in the fence at the Shelby County (Tenn.) jail in May; officials discovered that Ivy had escaped through the same hole in 1991 and that the hole had not since been repaired. And police in Cleveland picked up Betty Horton, 44 (and with no criminal record), in July, for the third time in eight months when they were really looking for Bettie Horton, 37; an official said he couldn't guarantee it wouldn't happen again.

More Creative Smugglers: Border Patrol officers arrested two Texas men who drove back from Mexico with 11 pounds of marijuana but also with a dead body whose chest cavity had been cut open as if the men had originally tried to plant the drugs inside the cadaver (Falfurrias, Texas, July). A Belgian woman, 23, traveling by ferry from Greece to Italy, was detained for trying to smuggle her boyfriend in a large suitcase (Brindisi, Italy, July). A 17-year-old woman, whose plane had just landed in England from Dubai, was detained when agents realized that the mock chameleon design on her hat was a live, endangered-species chameleon (Manchester, England, July).

Church youth minister Hartley McWhite, 29, was convicted in August of killing his mistress (despite his defense that she choked to death accidentally during rough sex) (Tampa, Fla.). Raymond Rock, 37, was arrested in July and charged with killing a 40-year-old woman he had met in a bar (but said it was an accident after she asked him to choke her during rough sex) (Pittsburgh). Jeanette Daniels, 40, was arrested in July and charged with killing a 62-year-old man (but said he accidentally asphyxiated during rough sex) (Chicago).

Coca-Cola and Pepsi signs were painted on many rocks on a 35-mile stretch in the picturesque Manali-Rohtang area of the Himalayan mountains in India; the India Supreme Court took supervision of the cleanup in August. And Vancouver (Wash.) Mazda-Dodge agreed to make restitution to settle charges that it sold a string of 18 new cars (in 14 months) to a 70-year-old, mentally impaired man (August). And California's program to encourage mothers to turn in unwanted babies to hospitals has drawn widespread praise, except from Waste Management Inc., which objects to the state's signs on its Dumpsters ("If we (have to tell people) not to throw babies in Dumpsters, (we) have reached the lowest point we can get to as a society") (August).

Germany beat Lithuania, 4-1, to advance in the European under-21 soccer championship, after Lithuanian players accidentally kicked three goals into their own net (Vilnius, Lithuania). A fourth-grade teacher was reprimanded for teaching her kids the correct use of "niggardly" ("stingy") because school officials said it was a nonessential word that could be highly offensive to some students (Wilmington, N.C.). A couple filed a lawsuit against Air Canada for losing their cat, asking $5 million but insisting, said the man, "It's not about the money" (San Francisco). Greece banned playing all video games because legislators said they did not know how to ban only video gambling, which was their intention; one court has overturned the ban (Thessaloniki).

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

-- The 60,000 delegates (from 182 countries) to the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, luxuriated not only in four- and five-star accommodations but an elegant food and drink layout, including tons of lobster, oysters, filet mignon, salmon, caviar, pate de foie gras, champagne, fine wines and mineral water. (An estimated 60 African children a day die from contaminated water.) The conference center (which cleared out hundreds of nearby trees to accommodate delegates' limousines) is only a few miles from the squalid neighborhood of Alexandra, one of Africa's poorest. (Poverty in Africa is up 35 percent since the last such summit, in 1992.)

-- In San Francisco, two adult dodgeball leagues have been formed recently (the San Francisco Bombardment Society and the S.F. Blood Warriors), with rules similar to the kids' playground game. According to one organizer, the game "is a nice way of pegging people in the face (with the soft rubber ball) and getting away with it." And, he said, "Certain things never change. Some people look like they're going to get hit, so you go after (them)."

Sophia Reitan fell and broke her arm when a Pentecostal Upper Room Tabernacle minister pushed the evil spirits from her forehead, and no one caught her when she swooned backward; she settled with the church for $80,000 (Dix Hills, N.Y., February). And even though Clarence Cromwell, 29, fully confessed to police that he had killed a man, a judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., set him free because officers forgot to read him his Miranda rights (May). And according to a police report in the Hesperia (Calif.) Star: "An elderly man who lived on the 10700 block of 'G' Avenue suffered a heart attack while engaged in sexual intercourse and died April 2."

-- Researchers at England's Cambridge University, and others in Tallahassee, Fla., and Cleveland, are training dogs to screen patients for prostate and lung cancers by detecting distinct smells of tumors in patients' breath. One researcher reported a success rate of 87 percent, which rivals that of some expensive technology. (The genesis of the research was a 1989 journal article reporting that a border collie attacked a woman's mole that turned out to be a malignant melanoma and ignored her after the mole was removed.)

-- Among Recent Animals in the News: the Asian paradise tree snake, which actually flies (by thrusting itself from high places, flattening out and undulating its body) (reported in Singapore in August), and a species of millipede from the West Indies, which, when zoo-dwelling capuchin and owl monkeys rubbed them on their fur, caused the monkeys to go into a delirious frenzy (an "ancient primate form of hallucinogen," according to one millipede expert), similar to the way cats react to catnip (August).

-- Supposedly Lower Orders of Animals: Recently, the journal Science reported that chimpanzees in West Africa have learned to smack certain nuts with specially chosen stones at precisely the correct strength that will break open the delicate shell without obliterating the food inside (June), and that crows have been observed bending discarded wires in just the right configuration for use in retrieving food from hard-ro-reach places (August).

-- In a three-month period this summer, three 5-foot-long sturgeons have jumped from Florida rivers directly onto anglers, sending them to hospitals with injuries (all together: a cracked sternum, five broken ribs, two collapsed lungs, several broken teeth and various lacerations). According to a wildlife expert, sturgeons are docile, have no predators, and apparently jump only "because they can."

An apparently harmless passenger (college student Maxim Segalov) forced an unscheduled landing of an American Airlines flight in Salt Lake City (and his subsequent ejection) when he alarmed the crew by trying to recharge a size-AA battery by heating it with his cigarette-lighter (August). And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in July that a passenger was detained at St. Louis' Lambert Field because for some reason he had packed in his checked luggage (which happened to be chosen for random inspection) his cute, personal alarm clock, which is an old-fashioned clock outfitted with six toy sticks of dynamite.

-- Loxley, Ala., street preacher Orlando Bethel, who was scheduled to sing at the June funeral of his wife's uncle, was beaten by parishioners and physically tossed from the Pine Grove Baptist Church after he screamed from the pulpit that the deceased was a "drunkard" and a "fornicator" and was now "burning in Hell" and that the parishioners would be right behind him. Bethel defended his outburst by claiming that the "Holy Ghost" had ordered him to tell the truth.

-- Among the problem motorists cited in a July Toronto Star roundup: (1) a 26-year-old man who gave the finger to an only-trying-to-help driver who had motioned for him to fasten his seat belt (but the Samaritan was a police officer in an unmarked car, and he took umbrage, stopped the man, and discovered his license has been under suspension since 1999), and (2) a middle-aged man who was let off with a warning for swerving across the road because his dog was licking his ear (and who, the officer discovered, was also shoeless, with banana peels wrapped around his feet, supposedly a remedy for bunions).

DNA was used to convict a man for bestiality after two dogs were found dressed in women's underwear in his garage (Winnipeg, Manitoba, July). A 34-year-old man was sentenced to a year in prison for three counts of approaching women in a supermarket, bending down and aggressively licking their feet (Woonsocket, R.I., July). A man accused a couple of restraining him at their home and forcing him to ejaculate while the couple looked on (Cape Town, South Africa, August).

A 25-year-old man was shot and killed by a friend as the two were acting out their favorite scenes from movies; the dead man was said to have been portraying Al Pacino (Melbourne, Australia, July). A 19-year-old worker at the Kargher candy factory suffocated when he accidentally fell into a 1,200-gallon vat of chocolate (Hatfield, Pa., July). A 47-year-old man stumbled as he was removing his trousers for bed and fell out a second-story window in his home, landing fatally on his head (Aptos, Calif., July).

A half-ton bull broke loose from his handler at a show and battered a portable toilet that a 51-year-old woman had just entered, but she was not seriously hurt (Dorset, England). Anglers off of Florida's east coast encountered a floating, severed human head and turned it in to authorities several hours later after they finished their outing (Fort Pierce, Fla.). Doctors examining rugby star Jamie Ainscough's lingering arm injury finally located the problem: Opponent Martin Gleeson's tooth was found embedded in Ainscough's arm, from a July match (London). Firefighters acknowledged a particularly pesky fire, which burned for more than 50 hours before being extinguished, at a Kingsford Charcoal plant (Pulaski County, 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/.)

-- 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/.)