-- Retailers in Los Angeles, New York and Miami say more and more young, urban, heterosexual men are choosing to dress in women's tight, low-slung jeans and to use stylish lotions, fragrances and hair-care colors and products, according to June reports in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Some marketers call men who are eager to embrace their feminine sides "Metrosexuals" and point to English soccer star David Beckham (who braids his hair and paints his fingernails) as an icon. On July 15, the Bravo cable channel will air a makeover show, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

-- A man who was hit by lightning at a Cincinnati amusement park two years ago (who survived, but with brain damage) filed a lawsuit in June against the park. According to the man's lawyer, Drake Ebner, the man somehow did not already know enough about how serious lightning storms are and the park management was negligent in not warning him against heading for his car, where he was struck.

(1) To publicize an April 1 town festival near Cedar City, Utah, the mayor dreamed up a fanciful narrative: that a 10th-century, Viking-discovered island had been carried ashore by a Pacific Ocean volcano, to a point near what is now Cedar City, and by a 19th-century treaty, the U.S. had swindled the Vikings out of ownership of the island's artifacts, allowing Vikings only the privilege of the April festival. Everyone took the story in good spirit until several residents of nearby St. George grimly wrote the mayor claiming to be Viking descendants and demanding "their" artifacts back. When the mayor told them it was a joke, the claimants accused the mayor of a coverup. (2) And elected as sheriff of Aiken County, S.C., in May was a fellow named Mike Hunt, whose campaign slogan was "Mike Hunt / Accessible for You."

Anthony Scott Ward, 40, and Melissa Coleman, 27, were arrested in Prestonburg, Ky., following a Memorial Day incident at a playground (with kids nearby), in which Coleman was bound face down on a picnic table, being paddled by Ward with a boat oar, in what authorities described as consensual "foreplay." Police recovered a cache of bondage items from the couple, including ceremonial hoods, handcuffs, prosthetic sexual tools, ropes, chains, collars, clamps, vibrating devices, lubricants and a cattle prod.

-- In May, battered wife Elizabeth Rudavsky stabbed to death her severely abusive husband of seven months, Angelo Heddington, in Thedford, Ont., but to Rudavsky's shock, Heddington was soon identified as a woman (who had long ago adopted male mannerisms and dress). A former Heddington girlfriend, who had discovered the secret earlier, told a reporter, "(Heddington) had soft hands, but she spit like a guy. The whole time you were talking to her, she'd have her hands in her pockets playing with herself like she was a guy."

-- London's Daily Mirror revealed in May that "Dr. Death" Harold Shipman, serving a life sentence for killing 15 older patients (and perhaps as many as 200 more), had somehow been allowed to assist sick prisoners in the hospital wing of England's Frankland jail in Durham County. Said one prison source, "This man has spent his career secretly killing (people). Just imagine some poor guy's face when he looks up from his wheelchair and sees Dr. Death is pushing it."

-- In May the U.S. Supreme Court let stand an Iowa Supreme Court order that the Interstate Power Co. should pay a family $700,000 because stray voltage had been juicing up their farm's cows. Daniel and Coleen Martins said that, because of a nearby power substation, their cows had been kicking off their milkers, swinging from side to side, and "dancing," to the detriment of their milk production.

-- One beneficiary of Oregon's budget woes, according to an April report in the Salem Statesman Journal, is Jose Leonidas Selva Jr., who had just been arrested behind the wheel of a stolen car, his third arrest in two months. As in the previous arrests, Selva was summarily released two days later because Oregon had no money to pay a public defender to represent him. The limited defense funds were to be used for suspects in violent crimes, and by his third arrest, Selva knew that: "I figured, they're just going to release me. They're not going to hold me. I'm just going to keep doing it." Selva was ordered to return after July 1, when new budget money is supposedly available.

-- According to a May lawsuit filed against the all-girls Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden, Conn., Catholic Sister Linda Cusano repeatedly wrestled a student to the floor in a secluded office in incidents in 1991 and 1992, for sexual purposes and to impress upon the student that she needed to join the convent upon graduation and submit herself to God. Cusano was known by students as "the recruiter" because of her aggressive (but more mainstream) encouragement toward sisterhood.

Police in Scotia, N.Y., arrested Malinda Kelly in March on several charges but only after they had scurried around for several hours trying to find her "stolen" car and her 3-month-old son, who was inside. The next day, Kelly's story fell apart. Actually, said police, she had forgotten where she had left the car, which was idling, with the child inside, while she ran down the street to burglarize her uncle's home. (She came away with some money, but meanwhile lost her own money when a stranger took her purse from the idling car.)

Illinois became the latest state to propose a ban on having one's tongue aesthetically split, reptile-like (unless done by a doctor or dentist). But the move is unpopular among devotees. "When I first saw it, I thought tongue-splitting was the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life," said satisfied splittee James Keen, who spoke to an Associated Press reporter, who observed that Keen "now speaks with a slight lisp." Said another splitee, who said he could now do party tricks like picking up a pencil with the two halves, "It's done to better yourself."

Jessica Parks graduated from high school in Oakland County, Mich., in May, with high grades, a varsity letter in cheerleading, and other entirely typical achievements of high-performing teens, all done without benefit of arms, which she has been without since birth. Among her special skills: putting her contact lenses in with her toes, and driving her car with no special equipment, just one foot on the gas and one on the steering wheel. And in June, NewsChannel 4 in Oklahoma City featured Laura Stringfellow's dog Faith, whose front legs failed to develop and so now, at age seven months, has learned to walk and chase cats while on her hind legs.

(1) CBS News reported in May that while 90 percent of gun purchasers go through instant criminal background checks on an FBI database, the State Department's list of known foreign terrorists is not yet on the database. (2) At Pittsburgh International Airport in May, a 21-year-old mental patient almost effortlessly penetrated several security barriers until he was able to board an empty passenger jet on the runway. (3) A June General Accounting Office report found that as many as 30 suspected terrorists whose visas have been revoked may still be in the United States because of the State Department's laxness in notifying Justice Department agencies.

A Southport, England, driver showed a judge a note from his doctor certifying that a blood clot had erased his short-term memory and thus that his 30 parking tickets should be dismissed because he can never remember where he parked. The Texas Legislature passed a bill to ban doctors' performing surgery while intoxicated, except in an emergency. Officials in Lagos, Nigeria, announced that people ticketed for driving recklessly to avoid the city's notorious gridlock will not be able to drive again until certified "mentally sound" by a psychiatric clinic.

(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 June Associated Press dispatch from Macha, Bolivia, reported on the most prominent of the annual Tinku festivals that neighboring tribes on the country's high plains engage in. On a midnight in May, as thousands gathered to drink and dance, the men eventually began to fistfight in a bloody ritual that tribal leaders say is healthy and spiritual, even though some men are beaten badly, and occasionally someone dies (which, legend says, is good for crop fertilization). Villagers say the one-night fighting answers feuds and insults built up over the year and fosters brotherhood. The Bolivian government has tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the violence in recent years.

-- Weird India: On June 15, according to Dr. Chittaranjan Maity (the medical education director of the state of West Bengal), a 13-year-old boy began producing quarter-inch-long winged beetles in his urine after eggs hatched in his body. And a few days earlier in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, according to a report in the Press Trust of India, a 9-year-old girl was "married" (in a non-binding ceremony) to a stray dog, which tribal custom requires in order to protect a child whose first tooth appears on the upper gum; the marriage had been delayed for several years because of financial considerations.

-- Familiar Injuries, Big Bucks: If you reach for a door while a person on the other side pushes the door toward you, you might get your fingers jammed. It happened to Cedrick Makara, 56, in a restroom stall at his New York City office building, and in May, a court awarded him $3 million for ruptured tendons in his thumb that caused him to miss work for six months. And in Camden, N.J., in February, schoolteacher Eileen Blau filed a lawsuit for "severe and multiple injuries" caused when 11-year-old, 90-pound student Daniel Allen accidentally ran into her while engaged in hallway horseplay.

-- Michael Machetti, 31, filed a lawsuit in Riverside County, Calif., in April against Bullseye Tattoo and its owner, charging that the tattoo removal he had done on his neck had infected him with the flesh-eating disease necrotizing fasciitis. Machetti said he went for the removal because co-workers had complained about the familiar two-word obscene phrase (the second word: "you") on his neck, and he wanted it replaced with the apparently more acceptable "666."

-- Sue the Victim (continued): Kenneth J. Lewis II, serving 12 years in prison for burglary, filed a $140,000 lawsuit against property owner Nina Baugh, who had chased after Lewis and shot him in the arm (Bentonville, Ark., April). Willie Brown, 44, serving four years in prison for a convenience store robbery, filed a lawsuit against the clerk who had shot him (with Brown maintaining, "(T)here was no need for the use of deadly force," even though Brown had claimed to have a gun) (Muncie, Ind., April). And in a court filing in May opposing early release for farmer Tony Martin, who had been convicted of killing a burglar, Britain's Home Office argued against parole, maintaining that the government must protect burglars from violent homeowners.

-- Sally Carden Davies, 48, was awarded the equivalent of US$310,000 by a court in Sydney, Australia, in March for falling off an odd-looking chair in a cafe‚ and suffering various injuries, including the loss of her sexual urge, which she said caused a romantic relationship to falter. Davies said her injuries have also affected her practice as a horse dentist.

-- Justin Scheidt filed a lawsuit in May against the Showgirl III strip club in Fort Wayne, Ind., for "serious and permanent injuries" to his groin area received after he consented to take the stage with several dancers during their show. Scheidt, as a climax to his bachelor party that night, complied with the women's requests and lay on his back with his legs around the dancers' pole, after which they began climbing the pole and sliding down squarely on his groin. Scheidt went ahead with his wedding but said he was unable to consummate the marriage because of his injuries.

-- In Newport Beach, Calif., in May, Trenton M. Veches, 32, was convicted of 22 counts of lewd conduct, with the "sexuality" involved consisting merely of sucking the toes of boys aged 6 to 10. Veches' attorney said the behavior was weird but not legally "lewd" because Veches touched only the feet and in fact was not physically "aroused," himself, but an expert witness for the prosecution said people can be sexually stimulated without showing arousal.

(1) Chicago police arrested six people in June and charged them with running an insurance scam, which was allegedly led by a 39-year-old man known as Bonecrusher; police said homeless men consented to have Bonecrusher administer compound fractures of the arm or leg, and they would then be taken to staged accident scenes and instructed how to make quick settlements with insurance companies of up to $100,000 (but getting to keep only about $1,500 of it). (2) And Sheffield Hallam University (Sheffield, England) announced in May that it would inaugurate a Master's degree program in creating video games; a spokesman for a Sony UK company said, "We hope more universities will start offering (curricula) like this."

-- Last year, News of the Weird reported on a bulimic Japanese woman who periodically buried plastic bags of her vomit in a remote area under cover of darkness. In April 2003, authorities in Madison, Wis., finally solved a two-month mystery in which an unidentified "smelly, rancid, green slime" (according to a Wisconsin State Journal reporter) in plastic bags was being dumped in garbage cans along Hammersley Road. Neighborhood patrols finally spotted the dumper, a self-described bulimic. A medical authority interviewed by the Journal said some bulimics believe that if the evidence is removed, the illness might not be a problem.

-- Another PETA Tactic: In April, The Independent (London) revealed that the founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the 53-year-old Ingrid Newkirk, will be advocating her cause even after she passes away. To continue PETA's campaign to educate people on the treatment of animals for food, fashion and testing, her will provides that part of her body be publicly barbecued; that her feet be turned into ornaments; that part of her skin be turned into a leather product; that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency receive her eyes, mounted; and that the owner of the Ringling Brothers circus receive one of her fingers, mounted.

A 20-year-old motorist was killed in Boggstown, Ind., on June 5 when he lost control of his truck while apparently aiming his rear end out the driver's side window (but no other details were released). And sheriff's deputies in Palmdale, Calif., said a motorist was killed in a head-on collision on May 31 just moments after exchanging obscene gestures with a driver he was trying to pass.

In March in New York City, after six months of warnings about a street widening, the electric company finally moved its utility pole, which was anchored in what by that time had become a lane of traffic, about 10 feet from the curb. And in June, a private road-striping crew on state contract painted a prominent crosswalk on Cucumber Hill Road in Foster, R.I., connecting a hedge on one side with a stone wall on another (and zero pedestrian traffic except for occasional wild animals).

A 29-year-old man was hospitalized in fair condition after he playfully put a 4-inch-long fish in his mouth (not realizing the fish would head for the only opening, his esophagus) (Macomb, Ill.). At La Mesa Junior High School (where students can be expelled for carrying even squirt guns), the yearbook came out with a quarter-page ad for the National Rifle Association (Santa Clarita, Calif.). The 48-year-old owner of a skydiving service whose fatality rate is eight times the national average was killed while skydiving (Ottawa, Ill.).

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

-- Several news organizations have recently profiled 70-year-old Charlotte Chambers, who is a reserve defensive back for the Orlando Starz of the Independent Women's (tackle) Football League. Said the Starz' chief executive: "Last year, I thought I should tell the other teams to go easy and not hit her too hard. But now I'm afraid she's going to hurt somebody." Said the 5-foot-4, 140-pound Chambers: "I say, 'You better hit me (first), because I'm laying you out.'"

-- An industry has sprung up in the last year or two in New York City: advisers who counsel parents on how to get their 3-year-olds accepted at prestigious nursery schools (which gives them a leg up in being accepted at prestigious kindergartens and then prestigious private schools). According to a May New York Times report, advisers charge as much as $300 an hour or a flat $3,000 to give tips, which parents justify because a full, 14-year ride in private schools can cost $300,000. Top-of-the-line Columbia Grammar, for example (one of the "Baby Ivies"), recently had more than 500 kindergarten applicants for 34 open slots.

(1) "From Hyenas' Privates, a Potential Public Good" (a May Contra Costa Times report on how both male and female hormones flow through hyenas' genitals, in part shaping them, which scientists say offers clues in how to treat potentially hermaphroditic humans). (2) "Psychologists Dissect the Multiple Meanings of Meow" (a May Cox News Service report on how cats may display many alterations of their standard vocalization depending on why at that time they want humans' attention). (3) "15 Injured in Kite Contests" (a report from Britain's Independent TV on competitions featuring contentious Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat, India, in which aggressive participants use twine coated with powdered glass).

-- In May, 36-year-veteran ambulance driver Mike Ferguson, rushing a liver for transplant from Leeds to Cambridge, England, on the A1 highway, was ticketed for doing 104 mph. In fact, Ferguson was ticketed by two jurisdictions that night, but Cambridgeshire police dismissed the ticket after Ferguson's explanation while Lincolnshire police sent the case to prosecutors even after the explanation, and at press time, a court date was being set.

-- The Florida Legislature finally amended its open-government law in May to prohibit sex-crime inmates from getting access to photographs of their victims. Under the previous version of the law, a state appeals court had ruled that convicted sex-assaulter Dale W. Weeks was entitled, under the liberal public-records procedures, to investigative photos that depicted his victim's genitals.

-- The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned the "armed robbery" conviction of Deshon Rene Odom in May, saying that even though Odom had a gun in his waistband, he hadn't meant for anyone at the bank he was robbing to see it, and therefore that he was not legally "armed." The court said that the federal law speaks only of using a gun, not carrying one; on the other hand, the court acknowledged that if Odom had waved around a toy gun that looked real, that would be enough for "armed" robbery.

-- A 70-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman pleaded no contest to public indecency in New Philadelphia, Ohio, in June after their arrest for engaging in sex acts in a booth at a Hardee's restaurant. Though it was the couple's first lewdness charge, the prosecutor told the judge that it was not the first time they had done something like that.

-- Ken Rohrer, an elementary school principal in Michigan City, Ind., resigned in April, two weeks after he had (apparently as a joke) decided to appear on the school's classroom TV system making his daily announcements while portraying an Iraqi character, denouncing "lying" Americans and the Bush administration and charging that the upcoming school ice cream social would be held as scheduled, even though Iraqis were starving.

-- A joint resolution commissioning a statue to recognize the anti-abortion movement in South Carolina is currently making its way through the state House of Representatives. In the original proposal in circulation until May, the statue that sponsors thought would best celebrate unborn children was to be a huge (6-foot-tall) fetus. (Some supporters have suggested an alternative design.)

Recently, police, faced with thieves whom they suspected had swallowed their contraband in order to avoid detection, had to wait and let nature take its course in order to recover the incriminating evidence. Carpet cleaner Daniel Dyament, 19, finally expelled (after 72 hours) the $3,000 ring he allegedly stole from a customer's home in Bloomfield Township, Mich. (June). And in March, Chicago police reportedly used White Castle "sliders" to coax suspect Peter J. Mannix to yield (after 96 hours) a stolen $37,000 diamond. But in Santa Cruz, Calif., jeweler Joy Kilner concluded in June after days of waiting that the $1,800 diamond that her pet basset hound swallowed was not coming out and was probably stuck in the dog's intestines.

-- Davidson County (Tenn.) judge Ellen Hobbs rejected the death-row appeal of murderer Abu-Ali Abdur Rahman, 52, scheduled for June 18, ruling that the state's lethal-injection cocktail is constitutional, even though one of the three drugs involved (Pavulon) is banned in Tennessee for animal euthanasia. And a congressional committee staff revealed in May that five U.S. companies that have relocated their headquarters offshore in order to avoid federal taxes were nonetheless awarded a total of nearly $1 billion of taxpayer money in federal government contracts over the last fiscal year.

In May, Reuters reported on the increasing popularity in Australia of large cockroaches as pets (won't hurt children, very low maintenance). However, at about the same time, health authorities in Thailand decided to confiscate and destroy about 1,000 pet cockroaches, calling them pests, but reluctantly showed sympathy for the owners' losses by holding a Buddhist funeral rite for the cockroaches. And a few days before that, artist Catherine Chalmers opened her "Executions" exhibit in New York City, featuring photographs of cockroaches dying simulated "human" deaths (hanging from tiny nooses or executed in a small prison electric chair) and, in a video, arising from the "dead" in a gas chamber (gruesomely knocked out by carbon dioxide, then revived as the gas dissipates).

In 2000, News of the Weird reported on neuroscientist Lawrence Farwell's "brain fingerprinting" (in which he says he can measure brain activity or inactivity in order to determine whether a person has previously experienced an event or a setting, such as a murder scene). According to a May 2003 Associated Press story, University of Pennsylvania scientists are testing devices that detect brain activity in order to determine whether a person is about to lie even before he or she has spoken a word. Biophysicist Britton Chance's headband measures blood-flow; psychologist Daniel Langleben uses a type of MRI machine; and other researchers employ devices like heat-sensitive cameras to measure telltale blood-flow around the eyes.

Convicted underwear thief Ronald Ernst (whose record includes 16 previous lewdness-related charges), filed a lawsuit against a police detective and two attorneys for calling too much attention to his case (Fargo, N.D.). Australia's Federal Court rebuffed the Tax Office and ruled that convicted heroin dealer Francesco Dominico La Rosa could reduce his 1995 taxable income to allow for A$224,000 that he said had been stolen from him in a drug deal gone bad. And officials in Berryville, Ark., were perplexed at a wave of finely crafted counterfeit money passed around town but only bills in the seldom-seen denomination (for bogus bills) of $1.

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