-- An April Wall Street Journal report highlighted several states' elementary school "anti-bully" policies that have banned rough-housing, name-calling, and even "mean looks" and pointed gossip, and encouraged teaching the little kids a language of sensitivity and tolerance. However, one problem some kids fear from such training and language is that, as they move up to middle schools and run into other kids who will be baffled by such sensitivity, the tolerance-trained kids are even more likely to get beaten up.

-- In mid-March, as war started in Iraq, a resolution was introduced in the Seattle City Council offering support for U.S. troops. However, some council members wanted to use the resolution to express opposition to the war, while others wanted to go beyond troop support to commend the war itself. When the Council finally agreed on a politically bland-enough resolution on April 14, it meant that the members had been fighting over the wording of the resolution for a longer time than it took U.S. troops to enter Iraq and capture Baghdad.

A 17-year-old boy lost sight in both eyes in a "potato gun" accident in Denton, Texas, in April. The "gun" (a length of pipe in which a household explosive is ignited, propelling a potato out the other end, although in this case, it was not a potato but a frog) was being experimented with by several teenagers but failed to fire, and the victim, who had been a mere bystander, stepped up to have a look down the pipe to see what might have gone wrong, just as the gun finally fired.

-- According to an Associated Press report, six candidates for city offices in Charleston, W.Va., misspelled their party affiliations in their official filing forms in January. Among the variations were "Democart," "Democrate," "Repbulican" and "Repucican." In fact, one of the city council incumbents had, four years earlier, also declared himself to be a "Democart."

-- In Center Township, Pa., in January, Mark Ferrara called for paramedics when his daughter, 7, couldn't resist trying to lick a frozen metal pole at her school bus stop, and got stuck. And according to a BBC News report about a colder-than-normal January in Russia, a young man in the southern city of Stavropol, answering a call of nature behind a bus stop shelter, turned abruptly so that his exposed organ inadvertently stuck to the metal siding; a bystander hustled up a kettle of warm water to unstick him.

-- The Rent Stabilization Board of Berkeley, Calif., which regulates residential rates and fights landlord abuses but which is increasingly frustrated by the sky-high cost of local housing, adopted a tactic in February that could not be successful in many places besides Berkeley: It sponsored a "poetry slam" that invited local citizens to rant against the problems of tenants. The winner of the $100 first prize attacked the "platonic master/slave relationship" and recalled how his last landlord so traumatized him that he "chose to be homeless for nine months just to escape the memory."

-- Hopeless Recidivists: Eduardo Rivera, 43, in court awaiting a hearing on a charge of receiving stolen property, was rearrested after he carved his name into a courtroom bench (Reading, Pa., February). David Joe White Jr., 32, having just pleaded guilty to 42 burglary charges, was rearrested after swiping his lawyer's portable tape recorder from the defense table (Attalla, Ala., February). Chan Kwok-keung, 34, was sentenced to four months in jail for stealing a court interpreter's purse; he was in the courtroom at the time on theft charges (but had just been cleared) (Hong Kong, March).

-- In December, Saskatchewan's Court of Queen's Bench upheld a ruling of the province's human rights commission that four Bible verses (referred to in a newspaper ad) created illegal hate speech because they subjected gay men to "ridicule." The ad consisted of citations to verses that are considered by many Christians to condemn homosexuality, and a silhouette of two men holding hands, inside the symbol for prohibited behavior (a red circle with a red line through it).

-- Jeannie M. Patrinos, 32, was sentenced in February to five years' probation for sexual assault. A judge in Lancaster, Wis., found that Patrinos, who was estranged from her husband, broke into his home, climbed into bed with him, and was "having sex" with him, against his will. The husband's girlfriend was asleep in the same bed, until the man's protests woke her up.

In February, Wesley Fitzpatrick applied to a Kansas City, Kan., judge for, and was granted, a temporary restraining order against a female whom he said was stalking him (making him "scared, depressed and in fear for my freedom"). However, the order was rescinded when Fitzpatrick showed up to ask that it be made permanent, in that the "stalker" was actually his parole officer carrying out her lawful supervision. In fact, Fitzpatrick was immediately arrested for not having met with her. (Temporary restraining orders are usually granted by judges without investigation.)

Palmer, Mass., construction contractor Anthony Morales, tired of fighting customer Gail Kapulka over payment of his bill, planted the freshly severed head of a deer on the front seat of her car on Christmas night, according to police. And a frozen sheep's head was left inside a car owned by a Democratic political official in Lake Station, Ind., in January. And in March, at a rock concert in Oslo, Norway, the part of the act in which the lead singer of the death metal band Mayhem carves up a dead sheep went wrong, and the sheep's head was knocked into the audience, where it struck a fan in the head, requiring hospitalization. (Fan or not, he pressed charges.)

Door-to-door salesman Gerald L. Thompson, 19, was arrested in a neighborhood near St. Augustine, Fla., in February after he had become exasperated that no one was buying his magazine subscriptions; allegedly, he forcibly prevented one homeowner from closing the front door, then screamed obscenities, pounded on the door, and refused to stop ringing the doorbell. And Robert M. Suszynski, 47, was arrested in Rochester, N.H., in February after he allegedly slugged a neighbor with a baseball bat because he got tired of listening to the guy tell how much pain he was in from a recent fire.

A 77-year-old man drowned in February while fishing, after a tire flew off a car in a nearby auto accident, hitting him on the head, and knocking him into a canal (North Highlands, Calif.) And boulders estimated at 5 tons each rolled down hills and killed people near Honolulu in August (a 26-year-old woman asleep in her bed) and Navajo Lake State Park, N.M., in February (a 20-year-old man). And a 67-year-old man was crushed to death in Shamokin, Pa., in January when two paramedics, carrying him in his wheelchair up about 20 steps, accidentally dropped him, and one fell on top of him.

A British rock music fan offered to sell his own flu germs derived from Paul McCartney's recent bout of the flu (which the fan said he caught from a backstage session with McCartney), via either a coughed-into plastic bag or a vial of mucus. And a British designer introduced a 135-foot-high plastic inflatable church that he said Anglican Church vicars could carry around with them to recruit parishioners (inflatablechurch.com). And to express their new religious freedom, Iraqi Shi'ite pilgrims celebrated a long-suppressed holy day by the traditional, bloody slashing-open of their heads with swords (Karbala).

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

-- The Palo Alto, Calif., City Council scheduled for a final vote in May a proposed code of conduct that includes (in order to coax civility among members) an official admonition to avoid even nonverbal forms of disagreement with each other, such as rolling one's eyes or shaking one's head or frowning. One former resident told the San Jose Mercury News that the proposal is a prime example of the "Palo Alto mind-set."

-- At the height of the war in Iraq, Army chaplain Lt. Josh Llano, 32, a Southern Baptist, commandeered 500 gallons of water to fill his baptismal pool at Camp Bushmaster near Najaf and offered exhausted, grimy soldiers a chance for a refreshing dip, provided they agreed to formal baptisms following a 90-minute sermon. Llano told a Miami Herald reporter: "It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized." (The Army's chief of chaplains said he would investigate.)

(1) "Indian Testicle Attack 'Is Murder'" (a January BBC News report of the Supreme Court of India ruling that a fatal kick to the testicles in an assault should not be regarded as mere manslaughter). (2) "Doctor's 32 Percent Error Rate 'Not Unusual,' Says Inquiry" (a February London Independent story interviewing medical experts who defended an accused physician by pointing out that epilepsy diagnoses are easy to get wrong). (3) "Mayor Denies Claims She Masturbated Businessmen" (a February Brisbane, Australia, Courier-Mail story on the mayor of Maroochy, Queensland, who was a masseuse before being elected to office and who some people suspect had "known" some of the town's influential businessmen).

Wilma Bennett, 79, carrying a .22-caliber revolver and increasingly agitated at having to wait in line at a grocery store, was arrested after brawling with a 31-year-old security guard who tried to calm her down (Akron, Ohio, January). Gertrude Raines, 84, was charged with shooting her son-in-law dead at 200 yards in the midst of a longstanding family feud (Murfreesboro, Ark., January). Deer hunter Clinton Hurlbut, 89, pleaded guilty to reckless use of a gun after accidentally shooting the horse that a 12-year-old girl was riding (Browns Valley, Minn., November). On the bright side, J.C. Adams, 74, owner of a Pac A Sac convenience store that was being robbed, propped himself up on his walker and fired his shotgun at the three perps, killing one, wounding another and causing the third to flee (Decatur, Ga., January).

-- Widow Maggie Smith and her two adult children won $1.2 million late in 2002 (reduced from an August jury award of $3.5 million) in their wrongful death lawsuit against Dr. Franklin Price, having convinced a jury that Price did not do enough to help the late Lawrence Smith avoid his fatal heart attack. Mr. Smith, of University Heights, Ohio, was 54, overweight, a long-time smoker who ate a poor diet, got little exercise, had diabetes and high cholesterol, and admitted to being stressed at work; Dr. Price said he gave Smith repeated admonitions about his bad habits, but apparently not enough of them.

-- In Riverhead, N.Y., in December, Oscar Novick, 69, filed a $5.5 million lawsuit against the New York Dinner Theater of Manhasset for injuries he suffered when a dancer from the show (being performed on location at an Office Depot employee holiday party) slipped and fell on top of him during an audience-participation number. The bigger-than-he-is dancer had convinced Novick to step out onto the floor, where she twirled him around to a fast number, "bounced (my head) back and forth into her breasts," and "lowered me down into a dip," but then lost control, with both falling to the floor (Novick with a fractured ankle).

-- Expensive Boo-Boos: Ann Laerzio filed a lawsuit against the Octavia Hair Design in Clinton Township, Mich., in February, claiming a shop technician nicked her finger with cuticle scissors (allegedly causing the loss of a nail) and asking for $500,000. And in March, Ms. Robin Laybutt won her lawsuit against her former employer, the Australian doughnut maker Balfours, because of a cut on her finger (which she now says makes her unable to use her arm for any gainful employment) caused by the alleged malfunction of a doughnut machine; she was awarded about US$240,000.

-- In a January ruling on the federal Tariff Code, the U.S. Court of International Trade declared the Marvel Comics X-Men characters to be "nonhuman creatures," thus enraging the characters' fans, who know perfectly well that the X-Men are humans. However, it was a Marvel Comics affiliate that called them nonhuman to begin with; the company was importing X-Men figurines, and at the time that the dispute with U.S. Customs arose, imports of "human" re-creations (called "dolls") were taxed at 12 percent while imports of nonhuman re-creations (called "toys") were taxed at 6.8 percent.

-- In March, a jury failed to convict Dr. Raul Ixtlahuac, 41, of sexually assaulting patients at his practice in Gilroy, Calif. (acquittal on one count, a hung jury on the other five). Ixtlahuac's lawyer believes the key evidence for his client was testimony by another doctor, who had measured Ixtlahuac's erect penis at 5 1/2 inches, which the lawyer argued made it impossible, due to the doctor's height and that of the examining table, for him to have committed the assaults in the manner that the victims described (unless, said the lawyer, he was an "acrobat").

In Lufkin, Texas, in January, Cody Carver, 19, was sentenced to eight years in prison for impregnating a 13-year-old girl but continued to insist that he and the girl could raise their child "if the world would only back off." The girl's mother knew the pair were sleeping together, according to a Child Protective Services report, but since she herself had had a baby at age 14, and her mother had had a baby at 14, and her grandmother had had a baby at 14, she thought there was nothing unusual. In a polygraph test, Carver admitted that his sexual partners had included two other underage girls, as well as a dog.

In Hamlin, W.Va., in January, a 19-year-old driver survived having her car hit by trains on two separate tracks (being knocked off one track onto another and then hit while on that track). She was in that predicament only because she had followed safe-driver guidelines by pulling off the road to make a cell-phone call, but the place she pulled off onto was a railroad track.

At a recent oral argument at the Missouri Supreme Court (reported in The New York Times in February), in response to a hypothetical question as to whether a death row inmate who had a thoroughly proper trial should nonetheless be executed even if there were new (but inadmissible) evidence of his innocence, the state's assistant attorney general answered, "That's correct, your honor." And an Associated Press report on convicted Nebraska murderer Carolyn Joy is the latest case to frame the debate over who deserves organ transplants; Joy was conditionally approved in February to join the 117,300 people nationwide waiting for a liver, raising again the possibility that a more socially productive or well-behaved person will not get one in time if Joy is medically judged more needy.

In Penn Hills, Pa., in March, a 42-year-old man was attempting to tighten screws on his granddaughter's crib using a knife, despite his wife's admonition that he use the more appropriate Allen wrench. The next thing his wife knew, according to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he was running to her, bleeding at the throat and screaming, "Call the paramedics! I fell on the knife!" The man died of his wound at a hospital shortly afterward. The wife (who had assembled the crib and asked her husband only to tighten the screws) later said she could not even imagine how he could have fallen on the knife.

Hong Kong Tourism Board ads (promising that the city would "Take Your Breath Away") debuted in several British magazines just as the SARS epidemic broke. And the Utah Supreme Court upheld the right of an atheist to pray aloud at a city council meeting (prayer of choice: to be delivered from "weak and stupid politicians"), since the council always opens with a public prayer (Murray, Utah). And four city council members in Mount Sterling, Iowa, proposed an ordinance to forbid its townspeople to tell lies.

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

-- Two American Legion posts and two other veterans' groups in Pleasanton, Calif., sponsored a class on dowsing in March to study whether domestic terrorists could be identified by pointing sticks at suspicious people to see if the sticks move. One of the veterans' leaders (who vouched that "the government" and oil and mining companies regularly use dowsing) told the local Tri-Valley Herald, "You can't wait for the FBI and police to come up with solutions when you have the bad guys living among us." Following the 9-11 attacks, some Pleasanton veterans received training in so-called "remote (psychic) viewing" and are now reportedly bringing local families up to speed on their missing-in-action relatives from past wars.

-- In March, London's Daily Telegraph reported that North Korea's Kim Jong Il is so terrified of triplet babies that the government places them all in special orphanages. Quoting diplomats who have visited North Korea, the Telegraph said Kim might feel threatened because the number 3 in Korean mythology is associated with rapid rises to power. However, a North Korean official told the United Nations Human Rights Commission that Kim is actually helping the triplets by raising them in better circumstances than the parents could (because of the country's dire economy).

Brian J. Samdahl, 41, charged with stabbing a stranger 15 times at a Wal-Mart, told police he thought the problem was that his government-implanted computer chip was broken (Bridgeview, Ill., February). And Jesus Santana, charged with marijuana possession, told the arresting officers, "I guess God got y'all to get me," since Santana had been rolling his joints using pages torn from a Bible (Athens, Ala., February). And William Veach, charged with scamming friends and family members in a securities scheme, insisted that he truly believed (albeit erroneously) that, as per his sales pitch, he had indeed sold a high-tech keyboard idea to Microsoft for $17 million (Provo, Utah, March).

-- A jury concluded in February that Lonnie W. Hinton Jr., father of a 2-year-old girl who was severely injured when she fell into a swimming pool at an apartment complex in Hollywood, Fla., was responsible for only 1 percent of the incident, with the complex responsible for 99 percent because the gate to the pool area was broken. According to trial testimony, the faulty gate was fairly common knowledge among the residents, and Hinton had left the girl alone near the gate while he took barbecued food upstairs to the family's apartment. Far from being censured for his lax parenting, Hinton and his wife were awarded $10 million for their own pain and suffering resulting from the girl's injuries.

-- The town council in Enfield, Conn., was criticized in December for letting its insurance company pay settlements in two incidents last year to softball players who claimed they hurt themselves sliding into bases in city parks. Mark Brengi said he tore ligaments sliding into third base and settled for $45,000, and one week later, his brother Scott broke an ankle sliding into second base on the same field and settled for $90,000. Said one Enfield taxpayer (and former pro baseball player), "You're supposed to slide before you hit the base."

-- A jury awarded $51.1 million from the New York City budget in March to Darryl Barnes, who was paralyzed by an off-duty police officer's gunshot after he refused to drop his gun. (Barnes, a member of the "Five-Percenters" anti-police group, claimed he was shot in cold blood.)

-- A house cat named Princess survived after being stabbed in the head with a knife whose blade penetrated the skull down to the frontal sinus (Green Township, Ohio, February). And another cat, Fila, taken out of a family home in Yuba City, Calif., in December by a daughter who wanted Fila to live with her in Sacramento, escaped and made the 60-mile trip back to Yuba City five days later, winding up on the parents' doorstep. It was not known if Fila took one of the three roads from Sacramento to Yuba City (state roads 99/70 or 65, or Rio Linda Boulevard) or just walked across farms.

-- BBC News reported that officials at a prison in Sombor, Serbia, shot to death two guard dogs, execution style, in February after concluding that they had been lax recently in failing to bark when five inmates were escaping.

Michael J. Corbett and his wife, Sharon, were arrested in Beckley, W.Va., in March and charged with peddling copies of 53 different obscene videos on the Internet. The Corbetts' specialty: nude women answering nature's call. According to Justice Department and Postal Service investigators, customers bought 100 or more tapes a week (such as "Outdoor Pooping Paradise" or tapes using the Corbetts' inventive "bowl cam") at around $50 each.

Luis Chavez, 33, was arrested in Cypress, Calif., in February after he allegedly set off aerial fireworks in his condominium bedroom (motive unknown), leading to a $135,000 fire. And Patricia Martin burned down her Kings Mountain, N.C., house in February after she lit a piece of paper, then extinguished the flame, to create smoke to get rid of a nest of spiders in the house but failed to completely extinguish it. And a Massapequa, N.Y., high school student inadvertently set a fire that gutted the second story of the family home in January after he, in frustration, tried to burn some school papers on which he had done badly (and tossed them out a window, but an ember blew back in).

Jeffrey Lee Daniels, 27, confessed to killing a 58-year-old male acquaintance who had paid him $10 just to let him sleep next to Daniels but who then, to Daniels's apparent horror, touched him "in the area of his butt," according to a police officer (Barstow, Calif., December). And Robert Carnathan, 54, was charged with the beating death of a 79-year-old man in a fight over collecting lost balls on a golf course; it was Carnathan's regular turf, but the victim wanted one ball for his grandson (Quincy, Mass., November).

Arrested for murder: Randy Wayne Richards, 40, Courtenay, British Columbia, February; Curtis Wayne Pope, 40, Fort Worth, Texas, February (arrested in Watertown, N.Y.); Ralph Wayne Grimes, 26, Russell Springs, Ky., November; Joseph Wayne Cook, 30, Wilmington, N.C., January. Convicted of murder: David Wayne Pallister, 18, South Shields, England, November. One previously reported arrestee, Mark Wayne Lomax, 33, made history in March by actually getting convicted of "felony murder" even though his offense was causing a traffic death while intoxicated, which is usually treated merely as manslaughter (Houston, March).

Jerry Thomason, 41, was charged with aggravated assault in San Antonio, Texas, in April after police found his 45-year-old wife at home with a heavy chain and padlock around her neck. According to a witness, Thomason said he loves his wife and so regularly chained her at home to keep her from leaving.

A 6-year-old boy was permanently expelled from elementary school (after 18 months of failed discipline) as being too unruly and dangerous (but who, at home, is an angel, according to his dad) (Ashton, England). Officials of the prestigious Crufts dog show began an investigation of whether its current Supreme Champion (the Pekingese, Danny, which beat out 20,000 challengers) had had an illegal facelift (London). Florida family welfare officials finally put their foot down and suspended a woman who had become the fourth child protection investigator recently dating or marrying accused or convicted criminals (this one a convicted killer and accused child-support dodger) (Largo, Fla.).

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