-- September reports in the New York Post and the Toronto Star, quoting parents' Web site "reviews" of the Mattel $19.99 Nimbus 2000 plastic-replica broomstick from the latest Harry Potter movie, highlighted its battery-powered special effect: vibration. Wrote a Texas mother: "I was surprised at how long (my daughter and her friends) can just sit in her room and play with this magic broomstick." Another said her daughter fights her son for it but complains that "the batteries drain too fast." A New Jersey mother, sensing a problem, said her daughter could keep playing with it, "but with the batteries removed." Still another mother, age 32, said she enjoyed it as much as her daughter.

-- In Perth, Scotland, in September, Edwin Young was ordered to pay Yvonne Rennie the equivalent of $10,000 for a 1998 accident that was caused when Young had an epileptic seizure while driving and lost control of his car. In an un-politically correct twist, almost $6,000 worth of the compensation was to pay Rennie for the post-trauma stress, including having to endure watching Young while the seizure continued.

In the June debate between Republican candidates for Alabama secretary of state, Dave Thomas heatedly challenged Dean Young to a fistfight. And immediately after a June Democratic Party meeting in Atlantic City, N.J., the head of a challenging faction and the head of the eventually victorious incumbent faction pulled knives on each other. And East Palo Alto, Calif., school board candidate Leland Francois said he would remain on the November ballot despite disclosure that his only legal residence in the district was a vacant lot that housed his van, sleeping bag and portable stove. And disbarred lawyer Mike Schaefer announced he was running simultaneously (and legally) for a county office in Las Vegas, Nev., and the GOP nomination for an Arizona congressional seat.

-- Among the 11 proposed constitutional amendments on the November ballot in Florida is one to make pregnant pigs more comfortable by forbidding farmers to house them in "inhumane" 2-foot-by-7-foot cages, even though, reportedly, only two farmers in the state still use the cages, and they say the cages prevent injury to the pigs. If it passes, it will likely be the only animal right enshrined in a U.S. constitution.

-- In August, the state attorney in Palm Beach, Fla., began investigating psychic Linda Marks after two former clients accused her of exploiting them. Veronica Lynn Boys admitted that she had paid Marks $1.1 million over a seven-year-period, including $150,000 cash on the spot at their first session, when Marks warned Boys of bad luck as a small snake emerged from an egg Marks had placed on a table. Also, an 88-year-old woman said she signed over her condo to Marks, and paid $22,000 for furniture and improvements to it, under similar circumstances.

-- Don Bates, 55, running for the school board in Inverness, Fla., as one of the self-proclaimed "God guys" who would beef up religion at board meetings, resigned in August when it came to light that he had been arrested in 1994 for masturbating (while naked from the waist down) in a parking lot in nearby Crystal River. The day before the story broke, he had asked supporters for unusually large campaign contributions, citing "the scriptures."

-- In Gainesville, Fla., in August, accused drug dealer Marcus Isom, 26, was convicted of ordering the murder of Lemuel Larkin, who he believed stole from him. According to testimony, Isom had consulted both Georgia spiritual adviser "The Root Man" and "Miss Cleo's" psychic hotline to find out who scammed him, and both gave descriptions that led Isom to finger Larkin. Investigators believe a man named Truth Miller was the hit man, killing Larkin as he emerged from Boobie's Bar in Archer, Fla.

-- Four of the five county commissioners in Pensacola, Fla., were indicted for land-sales corruption in April, and by September, two had agreed to testify against a third (the alleged leader, the former dean of the state senate, C.D. Childers). Among the principals are a commissioner who owns a funeral home with a drive-through window (and who, as a payoff, arranged for bedroom furniture for his paramour, who rejected it as too cheap); a man who needed the bribe money to buy his son's wife breast implants because she said she was "tired of wearing a training bra"; a huge, cigar-chomping car salesman who always carries thousands of dollars in cash; and two commissioners who denied they violated the state open-meetings law during their private scam sessions, in that one of them was always careful to remain silent.

Turkmenistan's president Saparmurat Niyazov made two decrees five days apart in August, first changing the names of the seven days of the week and the 12 months of the year, e.g., April became "Gurbansoltan-edzhe" (the name of Niyazov's mother), and Tuesday became "Young Day." In the second decree, 12-year life cycles were created, beginning with "childhood," "adolescence" (up to age 25), on up to "wise" (age 73 to 85) and "old" (to 97).

The Lost Art of Disguises: Hit man Paul Bryan, 41, was sentenced to life in prison in May for three shootings after witnesses were able to identify him under his mask because he had cut the eyeholes so large (Leeds, England). And Michael Steven Pavlich, 48, was charged with trying to rob a Circle K store in September wearing a plastic foam cooler on his head; he was unsuccessful, in part because the cooler made it impossible for the clerk to understand what Pavlich was saying (Augusta, Ga.).

Cats whose guardians smoke are up to three times more likely to develop lymphoma, according to a Tufts University Veterinary School researcher (August). And Yvonne Stubbs told a reporter she was trying hard to quit smoking because her Jack Russell terrier, Patch, has developed a 20-butt-a-day chewing habit from raiding her ashtrays; Stubbs said she was considering nicotine patches (for Patch, not for herself) (Middlesborough, England, July).

A 23-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man were found dead and nude in a car in his family's garage, in a love clench, with the garage door closed and the car's engine running (for the air-conditioner) (Corona, N.Y., June). And a 21-year-old woman, hiding in a closet to surprise her boyfriend, made a noise that provoked him to fearfully grab his pistol, and when she flung open the door, he fired, killing her (Council Bluffs, Iowa, June). And when a 43-year-old man insisted on driving home despite being drunk, his best friend shot out the air in the man's tires, so angering the drunk man that a fight ensued, during which the drunk man was accidentally shot to death (Bastrop, Texas, August).

The Australian version of AAA (the NRMA) reported that, following a morning headlights tribute to the victims of Sept. 11, "thousands" of forgetful motorists called in with dead batteries. An inebriated man was convicted of firing his handgun down through the floor of his upstairs den (after an argument with his wife of 32 years) and fatally hitting her as she stood in the kitchen, pouring his booze down the sink (Savannah, Ga.). A 24-year-old man was cited for littering after he allegedly shaved his head and tossed the clippings over a fence into his neighbor's yard (Cedar City, Utah). A female official of Sweden's conservative Christian Democratic party publicly advocated more freedom for pornography, on the ground that it might improve the birth rate.

(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 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/.)