-- Harold Camping, the host of a moderately prominent international Christian radio call-in show, recently told his listeners that Satan has taken over "all" churches and that people of faith should do their worshipping elsewhere. Apparently, pastors all over the United States are outraged, with some attributing drops in attendance (and contributions) to Camping, whose Oakland, Calif.-based organization reported donations of $12 million in 2000.

-- Among the rap lyrics penned by condemned murderer John Taylor, 38 (convicted of killing five New York City Wendy's employees in a 2000 robbery), during his two days on the lam before his arrest (and revealed by prosecutors in January) (Taylor's spelling): "so now you know how I go / They got my face on the worlds most wanted show / on chanel five showing live / you'll think I'm famous / I'm airing world wide / I'm a stick up kid so swift you see / in and out like 1 2 3 / I said give me the doe you say no, no? / Is it no you said stick some lead to your head / guess what punk now your dead / with all that blood bursting out your Head." Taylor now says he's sorry for the killings.

If it hadn't been for the metal detector at the Regina, Saskatchewan, airport, the woman might still wonder why her stomach pains, following June 2002 surgery, were persisting. When the detector relentlessly beeped but no metal could be found on her, she scheduled an X-ray and discovered that a 12-inch-long surgical retractor had been left inside. (A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in January estimated that 1,500 items were left inside surgery patients in 2001.)

Matthew and Elaine Sweetapple recently invented a "game of skill, power, speed and endurance," consisting of a biodegradable ball (smaller than a golf ball) placed in a urinal, to be disintegrated by a urinator (either alone or in "competition"). The product, Peeball, was launched for sale (equivalent of $1.70) late in 2002 by Great Britain's Prostate Cancer Charity, which hopes the novelty will call attention to its cause, in that players with prostate problems are typically poor at the game. Player strategies, basically, are (1) direct stream and (2) intermittent stream.

-- Two British zoologists and a psychologist started a business consulting firm in November to teach executives to handle risk based on lessons from animal behavior. Founders Alex Kacelnik and Sir John Krebs (University of Oxford) said it was their work with starlings and crows that told them that animals, including humans, approach risk in similar ways (e.g., a petroleum company exploring for oil is similar to a bird foraging for food).

-- In December, the British subsidiary of the German firm Condomi selected 10 men from among 10,000 college students across Great Britain to be condom testers, paying them a rate of about $170 per term to test for comfort and convenience, with unlimited supplies (of condoms, not partners). Newcastle University law student Dave Chapman, one of the 10, told a reporter in December that he thinks the assignment is "to get through as many as humanly possible."

-- Two University of Virginia neurologists told a professional conference in December that an egg-sized brain tumor in the orbifrontal cortex region was likely the only explanation why a 40-year-old, appropriately behaving man suddenly became a pedophile, frequently seeking pornography and making subtle advances to children. After surgery to remove the tumor, the inappropriate urges disappeared for months, but when the urges returned, doctors found that so had the tumor.

-- Researchers at the Jichi medical school in Tochigi, Japan, told New Scientist magazine in December that they had successfully removed the heads of infant rats, held onto them for 90 minutes, and replanted them onto the blood supply of the thighs of adult rats, with the brains continuing to develop for about three more weeks (e.g., mouths began to move, as if expecting milk). The researchers say their work is an "excellent model" for brain function in human babies.

Robert Covey, 21, said he found a bullet at around 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 11 and decided it would be cool to put it on the ground and shoot at it with his BB gun. He hit it on the third shot, causing the bullet to explode, sending fragments into his right forearm and left middle finger. He was treated at a Hot Springs, Ark., hospital and released.

More People a Little Too Chummy With Animals: In November 2002, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts rejected a lawsuit by Robert and Anne Krasnecky of Ware, Mass., for "loss of companionship" of their seven pet sheep, which were killed by a neighbor's dog. The court said "companionship" in the law referred only to humans, even though the Krasneckys considered the sheep their "babies," spent six or seven hours a day with them, gave them names, celebrated their birthdays with special food and balloons, baked snacks for them, bottle-fed them, and allowed them the run of their house.

In January, a 72-year-old woman was found dead in her Washington, D.C., apartment the day after a police officer had searched the apartment and failed to notice the woman's leg sticking out from underneath a bed. (Two months earlier, D.C. paramedics had bagged the apparently dead body of a 49-year-old woman, but later, three morgue employees said they detected a slight pulse; however, she died for real a few minutes later.) On another matter, The Washington Post reported in October that the District's payroll office, having already spent $20 million on a new computer system that never worked, had just spent another $14 million to transfer all the records back to the old, antiquated system, which led the Post to speculate that the squandered $34 million is probably more than the entire D.C. jail population combined had ever stolen.

A cockfight handler, about to release his rooster into the ring to do battle, with both birds outfitted with razor-sharp steel spikes on their legs, was killed when the rooster slashed the man's thigh and groin, causing him to bleed to death (Zamboanga, Philippines, January). And a 43-year-old man died of a gunshot wound shortly after telling his wife he was going to use his rifle to club to death the couple's Chinese shar-pei dog because it had bitten him; with no other explanation apparent, police suspect that the rifle accidentally discharged during the clubbing (Winchester, Va., January).

Joseph Anthony Giannini, 53, who was well-known among neighbors and co-workers as a gung-ho, "war story"-telling retired Washington, D.C., police officer, died of a mysterious gunshot wound on Dec. 31 as he warmed up his truck. The Washington Post reported that Giannini had equipped his truck cab with squad car paraphernalia (siren, flashing lights, ticket books, etc.); held many police badges, ID cards and police academy diplomas; and was a proud member of the local Fraternal Order of Police (which is restricted to officers and former officers). However, D.C. police had no record of Giannini's having served with them, and the Post reporter said "most" of the badges and diplomas "appeared to be falsified" (and in fact, Giannini was once arrested for impersonating a police officer).

Goalkeeper Richard Siddall stayed on the field for 10 minutes after everyone else had left because the fog that caused the soccer game's cancellation was so thick that he didn't see the players leave (Sheffield, England). Toki Holden, 38, was arrested and her day-care center closed when state investigators accused her of giving a crying 5-month-old boy a bottle spiked with Ny-Quil (Durham, N.C.). Paul and Hannelore Richter said they have been keeping a pet eel in their family bathtub for 33 years (transferred to a bucket when the tub is otherwise in use), first because their kids begged them to and later because the Richters feared it could no longer survive in the wild (Bochum, Germany).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

-- Following a religious experience, Michael Braithwaite of the mountain village of Putney, Ky., recently converted his Love World shop (selling vibrators and other porn paraphernalia) to Mike's Place (selling Bibles and other Christian items). (However, according to a December report in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a 31-year-old government lawyer has developed a side business that may bridge both of Braithwaite's lines: The lawyer manufactures and sells high-quality, silicone sex toys in the shapes of religious icons, such as Moses, Satan and a nun, at prices of $54 to $65 each. One sex shop owner in San Francisco's freewheeling Castro district said he might stock the "Jackhammer Jesus" model, but that his Buddhist customers would be offended at the Buddha model.)

Edward Blaine, 61, who served 20 years in prison for a 1963 bank robbery, apparently is becoming even less competent with age, as he was arrested in January and charged with robbing the Union Bank & Trust branch in Port Royal, Va. Police said Blaine fled with the stash while $100 bills were falling out of his pockets, and then he realized as he arrived at his getaway car that he had locked the keys inside. He grabbed a log to smash the window but tossed it away in frustration, only to have it hit Emmett Lowe's truck, thus angering Lowe, who grabbed a gun and chased Blaine for 150 yards. In a struggle, Blaine shot at Lowe but hit himself in the leg, just before Lowe shot Blaine in the same leg.

If you ever run into these people, here's what to do: (1) If you're playing horseshoes with Fred William Leigh, and he says it's a ringer, it's a ringer (The insistent Leigh, 60, was convicted of shooting his disagreeing opponent in the stomach with a .38; Frederick, Md., December). (2) Don't demand fresh bacon with your eggs from Steven Deere, 50, when the rest of his family is having leftover pork (Deere was charged with shooting his stepson with a 9 mm pistol; Pittsburgh, December). (3) Don't insult Amanda Hicks' baby (The 20-year-old and two girlfriends allegedly punched, kicked, kneed, stripped and burned the man, and raped him with two different objects; Panama City, Fla., December).

-- In January, a judge at London's Old Bailey released 31-time recidivist Mark Patterson, 42, after his 32nd conviction, for burglary, because Patterson claimed that he needed drug rehabilitation so he could fulfill his calling as a poet. (His subsequent ode to the judge, in part: "I've now been set free / in a blaze of publicity / so that everyone can see / my great ability.")

-- Ayub Ali Khan, 36, who was held in a Brooklyn, N.Y., jail for 13 months after being detained as suspicious in the aftermath of Sept. 11, told a Washington Post reporter in January, "I feel I am the real victim of (Sept. 11). Just look at how much my family and I suffered." Khan was deported to Hyderabad, India, after pleading guilty to credit card fraud (using and selling fake credit cards and other bogus documents).

-- Richard Hobbs, who solicits tips in public by making balloon sculptures for children, filed a lawsuit against Westchester County, N.Y., for denying him the right to work the crowd at the county's Playland Amusement Park. In the course of defending the lawsuit, the county discovered that Hobbs had been convicted in 1978 and 1982 of sexual abuse of children. However, Hobbs persisted with the lawsuit, and in December, federal judge John Martin ordered the two parties to settle among themselves the issue of which areas of the park are commercial and which are traditional park space, in that Hobbs apparently has a constitutional right to practice his craft in traditional park spaces.

-- A judge in Monroe County, N.Y., denied Jerold Ponder's application for a handgun permit, but Ponder is appealing that decision, even though he is currently in jail charged with the shooting death of his pregnant girlfriend. Ponder's best-case-scenario defense is that it was just an accident, occurring while he and the girlfriend were target-shooting with a rifle, and that that incident is not relevant to whether he is safety-conscious enough to carry a pistol.

-- According to the prosecutor at the Waterloo, Iowa, theft trial of Bradley Steven Bailey, 21, in December, not only did Bailey steal a day's bank deposit for the Hardee's restaurant where he worked and leave town, but after he was arrested and jailed, he wrote a letter to the Hardee's manager saying he was sorry but that he never did get his final paycheck, and could it please be mailed to him.

Margie Schoendinger of the Houston suburb of Missouri City, Texas, filed a lawsuit in December against George W. Bush for a lengthy series of alleged actions while he was governor, including "watching" her and "having sex" with her and her husband. The rambling and non sequitur-laden complaint, filed in Fort Bend County Court and reported on by the weekly Fort Bend Star, names the Sugar Land (Texas) Police Department as corroborating many of the plaintiff's allegations (example: that "plaintiff had seven dates, which became seven lovers, had told no lies, committed no crimes, gotten two traffic tickets, and dated George W. Bush as a minor"), but a department spokesman said no one had any idea what Schoendinger was talking about.

Ron Landon, 32, was captured by police in Belleville, Ill., in December after he ran through a Lone Oak Farm pasture to avoid arrest for several traffic tickets. Landon tried to hide in a shallow, water-filled ditch, but several horses wandered over to take a closer look at him, drawing officers' attention to the ditch. And at the January trial of alleged mobster Billy Rinick in Philadelphia, a narcotics agent described how he came to arrest Rinick at the home of his boss Joey Merlino. The agent had tracked Rinick to the upstairs part of Merlino's house and then, feigning secrecy, playfully whispered to Merlino's 4-year-old daughter, sitting on a bed, "Where's Billy?" The girl innocently pointed to the room across the hall, where Rinick was hiding under a bed.

Latest person to believe he had been beaten up in a mugging when actually, as his doctor informed him, he had been shot in the head (with the bullet still there): Keishun Scudder, Paterson, N.J., December. Latest annual New Year's Eve death toll in Japan from eating the traditional mochi rice dumplings, which are notoriously difficult to swallow, especially for the elderly: six (with 25 more hospitalized).

The Atlanta firm Brighthouse Institute for Thought Sciences regularly runs consumers through MRIs while they look at pictures of products so that researchers can see which parts of the brain are stimulated in order to learn consumers' subconscious thoughts about those products. A Brighthouse spokesman tried to say as little as possible about this "neuromarketing" technology, and which companies pay the bills, and told the Canadian public radio program "Marketplace" (which reported on the Institute in December): "Right now (our clients) would rather not be exposed. We have been kind of running under the radar with a lot of the breakthrough technology."

Fairway Middle School (Norwich, England) barred students from throwing snowballs at anyone without permission of the target. State judge Dan Ballou, complaining that the recommended punishment for two teenage speeders was too lenient, ordered them to drop down and give him some pushups (about 40) before he issued the sentence (Lexington, Ky.). A Tacoma, Wash., woman told police that when she was about to be raped on Jan. 17, she began to pray aloud; the rapist asked if she was a Christian, and when she said she was, he apologized, pulled his pants back up and left.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

-- A Montana district judge ruled in January that for a homicide suspect with apparent multiple personalities, exercise of a Miranda right by one of them carries over to all the others. Tessa Haley lawyered up when police sought to question her about the stabbing death of her roommate, and though police questioning ceased, Haley transformed into "Martha" and spontaneously confessed to the crime, according to officers. Judge Thomas Honzel ruled that Martha's statements could not be used against Haley (although Haley is still free under existing law to argue that she is not responsible for Martha's crime).

-- Among the fashions introduced at the seasonal shows in Milan, Italy, in January was British designer Vivienne Westwood's "Man" collection, featuring male-only items with frilly cuffs and sleeves and bonnet-like scarves, along with tight, knit sweater sets and jumpers worn over male models' fake breasts. Westwood (a pioneer of punk clothing in the 1970s) said her design had something to do with "how men are so attached to the breast of their mother, a symbol of eternal warmth."

Michael Brown, 33, was arrested in Marked Tree, Ark., in January and charged with burglarizing the lobby of the Marked Tree Bank after security cameras caught him hauling away a clock radio, a CD player and a handful of Dum-Dum suckers, which the bank has on hand for customers' children. The next morning, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, police followed a trail of Dum-Dum wrappers down Frisco Street, across the railroad tracks, and into the mobile home park where Brown lives.

A study by psychology professor Barry Jones (Glasgow University) found that men and women who have had three beers perceive people of the opposite sex as 25 percent more attractive than they did before they started drinking (August). And, writing in the Journal of Clothing, Science and Technology, a Southampton University (England) physicist found that many women wear the wrong-size bra because retailers commit a math error known as "spurious rounding" when converting bust and rib-cage size to bra size (December). And studies at Jikei University (Tokyo) found that people who employed seven rules for good health (e.g., adequate sleep, no smoking) had about 6 percent higher blood pressure than people who were not so concerned about their health (October).

-- Australian Supreme Court Justice Barry O'Keefe rejected the challenge of a drug-possession suspect in November that his rights had been violated during his arrest. Contrary to the suspect's contention, O'Keefe said that when Rocky the police dog nuzzled the suspect's crotch, it was merely a "social gesture" that dogs habitually do, rather than an indecent assault.

-- In November, convicted Hawthorne, Calif., rapist Jaime Garcia Padilla, 42, lost his state appeals court case in which he had argued that his girlfriend had unlawfully seized his sperm for testing. The girlfriend's sister had claimed that it was Padilla who had awakened her at night and raped her in the dark, and Padilla's girlfriend needed to find out if Padilla was the one. She had consensual sex with Padilla and turned in his sperm to authorities, and it was indeed matched to both women. California's 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that Padilla, not having "express(ed) any further interest" in his semen at the time that he ejaculated with the girlfriend, "basically lost all possessory interest in (it)," and cited Roe v. Wade as legal authority.

-- A family court judge in White Cloud, Mich., ruled in November for Kristin Hanslovsky, who in a child-custody dispute had tried to prevent her ex-husband, Jonathan Fowler (a member of the Native American Church of the Morning Star), from letting their 4-year-old son use peyote in ceremonies at the church. Fowler said the 4-year-old should decide for himself if he wanted to use peyote, which Fowler personally credited for helping overcome his own alcoholism and to "come into contact with God."

-- The town of Recklingshausen, Germany (near Cologne), which operates a zoo, found out in November that it could not summarily fire its zookeeper, even though it had caught him barbecuing and eating seven of his animals (five Tibetan mountain chickens and two sheep from Cameroons). After a labor court hearing, the town was forced to comply with German law and give the zookeeper six months' severance pay.

-- New York City criminal court judge Gerald Harris ruled in October that drug suspect Vincent Cooper's rights were violated when a police officer pinched his cheeks, causing four bags of marijuana to fall out. The arresting officer had asked Cooper what he was doing in a notorious drug neighborhood, and when Cooper allegedly mumbled an answer, the officer attempted to clear Cooper's mouth so he could understand him.

The Boston Globe profiled homeless philosopher Donald Keaney, 61, in December, describing his Walden-like existence in the woods near Brookline, Mass. Keaney lives under a plastic tarp, warmed by several heavy blankets, but the rest of his possessions consist of about 10 years' worth of newspapers (New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Boston Globe and Boston Herald) that are methodically filed and sealed in plastic bags and strewn around the ground as if they were chairs and tables. Keaney, a political conservative, also attends protests, lectures and concerts, and, by the way, has long been the beneficiary of a trust fund which he has chosen so far to ignore. "Living in the woods, you can see life is very tragic," he told the Globe. "I don't know if I'm a misanthrope, but (people) have a lot of limitations."

Police in New Britain, Conn., confiscated a 50-foot-long pile of stolen items in November, the result of a ritual scavenger hunt of the Canettes, New Britain High School's all-girl marching band drill team. According to The Hartford Courant, police, parents and school personnel were flabbergasted that 42 normally law-abiding girls could wantonly steal so many items in a single evening, but the girls apparently sincerely had a hard time believing that they had done anything wrong. Said one girl, who helped pull a mailbox out of the ground: "I just thought it was a custom ... kind of like a camaraderie thing (and) if the seniors said it was OK and they were in charge, then it was OK."

Florida, after a 4-3 decision of the state Supreme Court in January, became the latest state to rule that a man who initially agrees to pay child support until age 21 cannot shed that obligation just because he subsequently proves by DNA testing that he could not be the kid's father. Cathy Anderson had told police officer Michael Anderson twice that she was sure the kid was his, after which he agreed to pay $8,000 a year in support, but after the DNA test, he claimed that her assurance constituted "fraud," a claim that the Supreme Court thus rejected.

Officials in Rankin Inlet, on the north shore of Hudson Bay in Canada's Northwest Territories, began installation of an artificial ice rink because rising temperatures in the last three decades have reduced hockey season from nine months to five. And a female murder victim was identified (even though her body had been dismembered) when the coroner checked the serial numbers on her breast implants (Nottinghamshire, England). And the town council of Bend, Ore., formally prohibited spitting and defecating on its transit buses, as well as riders who emanate "a grossly repulsive odor."

A man acting as a tree-sitter (to discourage logging operations) in woods south of San Jose, Calif., fell out of the tree and was killed (October). And a 55-year-old man fell to his death from a hotel railing as he was reaching for documents that were being blown away by the wind (Cebu, Philippines, October). And a 72-year-old man accidentally fell to his death from a cliff at Buck's Pocket State Park in Alabama as he thrust into the air the ashes of his recently deceased son (October).