National Geographic TV reported in January on designer-breeding of dogs, with emphasis on the not yet officially recognized species of Labradoodle. Breeding decisions must be carefully made because, say experts, some interspecies pairings create unhealthy offspring. For example, mating a pug with a Pekingese would likely create a dog whose eyes would fairly easily dislodge from their sockets, and a Newfoundland-Saint Bernard match-up would produce a dog particularly vulnerable to hip dysplasia. On the other hand, Yorkipoos and schnoodles appear to be safe, and the Labradoodle is a low-allergy, lightly shedding version of the Labrador retriever.

People Who Accidentally Shot Themselves Recently: Anthony McCoy, 20, Edwardsville, Pa. (while he was playing with a gun, said police, it fired, nicking his scrotum, July). Maceo Price, 32, a bodyguard for singer R. Kelly, Marietta, Ga. (accidentally shot himself in the leg while removing his gun at a nightclub, September). Randy Robinson, 19, Toronto (fatally shot himself while pocketing his gun as he fled a taxi robbery, December). Thomas Morris Van Dyke, 40, South Buffalo, Pa. (fatally shot himself in the neck while climbing into his shoddily made hunter's tree stand, December). And police officers in Collinsville, Ill. (December), and Hopatkong Borough, N.J. (November) (the Collinsville officer shot his foot during a drug raid, and the New Jersey officer shot his leg during his annual firearms qualifying test.

Police in Franklin Township, N.J., charged a 20-year-old man with shoplifting two pythons from the Animal Trax pet shop and driving away with them. The man's poor judgment was not the reason police caught him, but when they did later encounter the stolen snakes in the man's house in January, he admitted that one of the snakes had wriggled out of his pocket during the getaway, wrapped itself around his leg, and bit him in the "groin area."

-- Junior Allen, 63, feels 2004 will be his year. The North Carolina Parole Commission will decide soon whether to grant his application for release, after 25 straight rejections. Allen's only conviction, in 1970, was for stealing a TV set, which today would carry a probable sentence of probation only. Meanwhile, the same commission released Howard Washington on parole in January after 10 years in prison for murder; he committed his crime one week before the state eliminated parole as a possibility for murders such as the one Washington committed.

-- In December, New Hampshire's state drug abuse and prevention program was turned down for a $17 million grant on the sole ground, said the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, that its application was typed with smaller margins than permitted. The federal agency did not give the state an opportunity to correct the formatting, even though the victims of the rejection were not the grant-writers but drug-addicted patients.

-- Deborah Hayes, who was awarded more than $1.3 million by a jury in Beaumont, Texas, in November for the heart damage she suffered while taking the Fen-Phen weight-loss drug, said in December that that was too much money and that she thought she had demonstrated only about $588,000 in damages.

-- Wanda Hudson, 44, said she was inadvertently padlocked into her 30-by-10-foot locker by a careless employee of the Dauphin Island Parkway storage facility near Mobile, Ala., on Nov. 7, 2001, and did not get out until a neighboring unit renter heard her cries 63 days later. Hudson, who said she survived on canned foods and juice, was found weighing 85 pounds and in a clinical state of "advanced starvation." She sued Parkway for $10 million but in September 2003 was awarded $100,000 by a jury.

-- Americans continue to be divided over the wisdom of "zero tolerance" laws that require heavy punishment even for slight, technical violations, especially as applied to public school students. In December, for example, the Bossier Parish, La., school board voted to uphold the year-long expulsion of a 10th-grade girl for "drug" possession, specifically an Advil tablet. And in January, a Rio Rancho, N.M., middle school student was drug-suspended for five days for possession of a Gas-X tablet. (National media attention eventually caused both school districts to lessen the penalties.)

-- In December, payoff checks started arriving from Citibank's class-action lawsuit settlement that required it to refund overcharges for credit-card fees, but since the $18 million payout had to be split among 20 million customers and former customers, the checks were for as little as 4 cents, while the lawyers who brought the lawsuit shared $7.2 million. A major Citibank "abuse" corrected by the lawsuit: It was charging interest from 10 a.m. on the payment-due date but agreed to start charging it only as of 1 p.m.

News of the Weird reported in 2002 that Armin Meiwes, 41, had been arrested for killing and eating a 42-year-old man in Kassel, Germany, but presented videotaped evidence that the murder was consensual (which would still be a crime in Germany but with a lighter sentence). Prosecutors have since learned that the "international cannibal community" may include hundreds of men who communicate on the Internet, including several who visited Meiwes to discuss becoming his dinner but who changed their minds (and were permitted to leave). Among Meiwes' e-mail exchanges (revealed at his trial, which is ongoing), a potential victim wrote, of the symbiotic nature of their proposed relationship: "Hey, we seem to have discovered a market niche." Meiwes: "We could solve the problem of overpopulation and famine at a (single) stroke."

According to police in Spokane, Wash., two young men on a lark decided to stop their car at a Denny's on a cold Jan. 14 morning at 5 o'clock, take off their clothes, and give the customers and staff a thrill by cavorting through the restaurant. However, one customer had the last laugh. He left, got into the streakers' idling car (which contained their clothes) and drove off. The car turned up five days later, minus CDs and the clothes. (Remarkably, the streakers, and a third pal, who remained clothed, have not yet been identified by local media.)

German and Swiss engineers, finally connecting their respective parts of the new Upper Rhine Bridge in Laufenberg, Germany, discovered that one half had been built 54 cm lower than the other, requiring massive reconstruction. And a 16-year-old boy, after holding a week-long series of parties while his father and stepmother were away, and seeing the damage done to the $380,000 house, burned it down to hide the destruction, according to police (Cincinnati, Ohio). And a 28-year-old man was sentenced to 10 months in prison for embezzling money from his company (a law firm), which itself is under indictment for stealing money from its clients (Brattleboro, Vt.).

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

Happy New Year: Once again, authorities in the Hillbrow district of Johannesburg, South Africa, were unable to stop the traditional midnight celebrations, in which residents of high-rises toss refrigerators, ovens, beds, trash cans and other furniture off their balconies, and police, wearing crash helmets, try to dodge the fusillade. And People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals pressured officials of Brasstown, N.C., out of the traditional New Year's Eve "possum drop" (lowering a caged opossum at the stroke of midnight, a la Times Square), causing the town to substitute a piece of roadkill. And Mr. Henry Earl was arrested in Lexington, Ky., on New Year's Eve for being drunk and disorderly; his 11th such arrest that month and number 804 since 1992.

Scientists on the cutting edge have recently developed cholesterol-free mice (by Quark Biotech), bisexual butterflies (by Butterfly Park in Singapore), and the "perfect" slice of buttered toast (by Arla Foods, Leeds, England). And a team of mathematicians using 200,000 computers found the largest "Mersenne prime" number ever, which is 6.3 million digits long; said a Michigan State grad student who worked on the project, "It's a neat accomplishment, but it really doesn't have any applicability." And New York University professor Steven Brams and colleagues developed a nuanced political-economic theory for efficiently dividing a cake among dessert lovers who insist on getting their fair shares.

In January, in Florida's first election using all touch-screen balloting (following the state's 2000 presidential fiasco), Ellyn Bogdanoff won a special election for a state House seat from Broward County by 12 votes out of about 10,000 cast, but the losing candidate was considering a challenge over the 134 "voters" who had gone into the booths but for whom no votes were registered. (By the way, in January in San Antonio, Texas, Chad Allen Tolleson was arrested for burglarizing a store by climbing in through a ventilation duct; however, he got stuck, and early-arriving employees who found him dangling from the ceiling now refer to him as "Hanging Chad.")

-- Over a two-month period in the American Indian Miskito community of northern Nicaragua, about 150 people contracted a hysteria whose symptoms included wandering naked in public, becoming severely violent, fighting imaginary enemies, and, later, lapsing into comalike states. Nicaraguan officials regard the illness, "grisi siknis," as culture-bound, with traditional healers more effective at treating it than medical doctors (in contrast to affluent societies' culture-bound illnesses, such as anorexia nervosa, which are often treated medically).

-- As an example of the stunning heritage of honesty of the Japanese, the Tokyo police's Lost and Found Center reported that the equivalent of US$23 million in cash found by strangers was turned in in 2002 (and almost $17 million eventually made it back to the rightful owners). Also, reported The New York Times in January, 330,000 umbrellas were turned in (but fewer than 1,000 were claimed).

-- Televangelist Joyce Meyer has risen from the pack of TV ministers (and from the ordinariness of her pre-preaching life) by her uninhibited pursuit of donations ($95 million in 2003), according to a December St. Louis Post-Dispatch profile. "Make your checks payable to Joyce Meyer Ministries," she shouted, "and 'million' is spelled m-i-l-l-i-o-n." Of once receiving $1 million in stocks from a worshipper, she said, "I didn't have that (gift) for five minutes and I said, 'OK, God, next I'll take $5 million." "Fear," she reminds her parishioners, as in their fear of making sacrifices in order to have more money to give her, "is the work of the devil."

-- The Los Angeles Kabbalah Centre is enjoying soaring income due to the Jewish mysticism's recent embrace by pop celebrities (e.g., Madonna, Britney Spears), according to a December New York Times report. Kabbalah bottled water (which has supposedly absorbed the energy of the Torah by osmosis from being in the same room with it and which "changes you on a molecular level," said a Centre employee) costs $3.50, and red string bracelets, which supposedly ward off negative spirits (which Jewish traditionalists say is an appalling oversimplification of their purpose) cost $26 to $36.

Ten months before election day, God has handicapped the 2004 presidential race as a "blowout" victory for President Bush, according to Pat Robertson on his Christian Broadcasting Network program "700 Club" (January). And Connecticut's besieged governor, John Rowland, who is in deep trouble for having taken favors from contractors and then (as he later admitted) lying about it, said he can't resign because God spoke to him directly and ordered him to hang in and defend himself (December).

In Clearwater, Fla., Mary Denise Flowers was arrested for stealing a $20,000 ring from Littman Jewelers, with the key prosecution evidence emerging only several days later when Flowers, whose modus operandi was to swallow the ring at the scene of the crime, finally "passed" it at a local hospital, where it was mined from her feces (December). And a home at 3715 Euclid Avenue in San Diego was completely demolished when a pilot light ignited the 19 bug bombs the homeowner had set; one canister would have been plenty lethal for the small area, but 19 yielded a bomb 28 times more powerful than necessary (December).

Joy Wiggins (accidentally shot herself in the heart with a nail gun but was miraculously saved by doctors at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital, Beaumont, Texas, October); Jed Bryant, 21 (accidentally shot by co-worker's nail gun, 3 1/2 inches into his skull, Rapid City, S.D., January); Roxanne Kirtley (absentmindedly stood up, forcing her head against a protruding nail that went 2 inches into her skull, Dallas, August); and a 34-year-old laborer (fell and landed seat-first on a rebar rod that, alas, impaled him through the buttocks, Toronto, Ontario, September).

While his dad was busy with a phone call 3 feet away, Timmy Novotny, 7, climbed through the 8-by-10-inch release door of a stuffed animal game machine at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket in Sheboygan, Wis., in January and couldn't get out. He spent an hour among the elephants and rabbits until firefighters dismantled the machine.

New York City (Port Authority) police officer Russell Bass pleaded guilty to having illegally videotaped an 11-year-old girl in a shower two years ago and blamed it on the stress he was under for helping with the 9-11 rescue at the World Trade Center. And North Little Rock, Ark., police arrested two alleged Internet-trolling pedophiles, one of whom had flown in from Arizona and the other all the way from South Korea, to meet teenyboppers, who were, of course, police officers running a sting.

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

-- Joy to the World! Jonathan Cantu, 39, and Charles J. Kern, 50, each feeling slighted at the other's Christmas gift, smacked each other over the head with flowerpots and were hospitalized (San Rafael, Calif.). And Brandi Nicole Nason, 20, also dissatisfied with a gift, allegedly tossed a Molotov cocktail into her ex-mother-in-law's house, causing $200,000 in damage (Hermosa Beach, Calif.). And a woman was arrested for beating a man with a Christmas tree after he complained that the gifts he was carrying were heavier than the tree that she was carrying (Victoria, British Columbia). And after Donna Simmons-Groover won her apartment complex's Christmas-lights competition, a losing neighbor ripped out part of her display in a rage (Jensen Beach, Fla.).

Noah Donell Brown, 24, running from police after allegedly robbing a Subway sandwich shop, was caught after being slowed by his baggy pants, which caught on a fence post (Hendersonville, N.C., October). And a 14-year-old boy was fatally hit by a train while playing on railroad tracks with friends, when he tripped, got his baggy pants caught on a rail, and could not free himself (Dayton, Ohio, November).

Kenneth Martin, 44, and Earle Sharpe III, 30, were arrested for kidnapping in Providence, R.I., in December after abducting a 24-year-old man who supposedly owed Martin money. According to police, after taking the man to an apartment, Martin pointed his gun at him but then realized the magazine clip had fallen out. Martin and Sharpe went outside to retrace their steps in search of the clip after first giving the victim a stern warning not to leave. However, he did leave and called police.

-- The Singapore government decided in December to list its high-tech sewage-water conversion plant as a major tourist attraction; Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong drank a bottle of the purified waste to demonstrate that it is not only safe but tasty. And sanitation officials in Oslo, Norway, said they will soon create an adventure park within the city's sewer system, including rafting, theater performances, artwork on the walls, and an area for weddings and parties.

-- As New Yorkers frolicked in the fresh snow from the city's Dec. 7 blizzard, Gilberto Triplett, 28, set up a street-corner kiosk to sell snowballs for $1 each. According to the New York Daily News, he sold six, then created a fresh inventory, and moved four more before calling it a day.

-- Questionable New Products: Triumph International, the Swiss maker of unmentionables, presented a prototype of an anti-smoking brassiere containing perfumes (including lavender and jasmine) that are turned unpleasant by tobacco smoke. And in November, Jones Soda Co. of Seattle bottled 6,000 units of turkey-and-gravy soda, which, remarkably, has the consistency and taste of pureed turkey and gravy; also remarkably, the entire run sold out, with some bottles offered at a huge premium on eBay.

-- For New Year's, the Japanese department store Mitsukoshi Ltd. offered traditional "bento box" meals, but expressly for dogs (at least, dogs whose owners were willing to pay about US$175 each). The ornate, two-layered container housed 30 delicacies, including pork dumplings, black beans, strawberry mousse and green tea, and was a bold attempt by the store to pitch to Japan's growing upscale pet market.

-- A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that a woman who conceived three sons with her husband was biologically unrelated to two of them. Doctors posited that the woman herself was part of an nonidentical-twin pair that fused at an early stage of her mother's pregnancy and that only her blood cells are hers, alone, while cells from her eggs and other tissues may have come from her sister's fetus.

-- Free-lance writer Jean Lund (her pen name), 51, disclosed to the Boston Globe for a November story that she suffers from Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (perpetually on the verge of orgasm) and hopes that her revelation will help people understand how uncomfortable the condition is. According to Lund and others, the arousal is much different than sexual desire and in fact is not satiated by orgasm. Suspected causes are chemical imbalances, seizures and irregular blood flow. "It's just a horror," said a 71-year-old sufferer; it "never stops, it never lets up."

News of the Weird reported in 1996 that Mr. Virldeen Redmon, then 67, had just been sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison on three drunk-driving-related counts, the latest of his nearly 400 alcohol-related arrests since 1947. He was released from prison for health reasons in 2001, but has been arrested several times since then on similar charges (running his total to over 400), and in December 2003 was sentenced on three new counts to 17 years in prison. His driver's license was revoked in 1977.

Arrested for murder: Dennis Wayne Bryant (Richmond, Va., August). Committed suicide while wanted for murder: Rodger Wayne Chastain (San Francisco, August). Awaiting trial for murder (pending a competency evaluation): Elvis Wayne Botley (Palm Springs, Calif., June). Murder appeal rejected: Barry Wayne Riley (Vancouver, British Columbia, September). Acquitted of murder (Ouch!): David Wayne McQuater (Athens, Ga., May). Sought by police for a 1995 murder (in Bonita Springs, Fla.) and suspected in a 2003 murder (in Leeds, England): David Bieber (who, when he went on the lam in England, chose as his alias, for some reason, Nathan Wayne Coleman).

(1) "Westchester Ordered to Pay $2,500 to Pedophile Clown" (an August New York Times story about clown Richard Hobbs' winning a lawsuit against a county that had tried to keep him out of a public park). (2) "Champion Liar Accused of Cheating" (a November London Evening Standard report that this year's winner of the World's Biggest Liar contest in Cumbria, England, read from a script instead of extemporaneously lying).

In November, a 70-year-old businessman had just finished testifying against the Homer, Alaska, city council's proposed no-smoking ordinance (calling the reported dangers to health "baloney") when he keeled over, dead of a heart attack. (He had said that eating breakfast with smokers every morning "hasn't bothered my health any.") Also in November, in New York City, a 79-year-old man, who was using a blender to make a health drink for his wife, was killed when the appliance exploded, with a glass shard severing an artery.

A 21-year-old woman was charged with public nudity for being naked in a downtown bar, even though the police's only evidence was a photograph of her, naked, in the bar, that she had posted on the Internet (Lincoln, Neb.). Two armed robbers who kicked in a door and threatened a terrified woman backed off after she told them she had epilepsy; one of the men said his cousin is similarly afflicted, and he convinced his partner to call it off (Wichita, Kan.). A 36-year-old woman was arrested for stealing 50 antique glass eyeballs (which have little resale value) from a hospital display case (Owensboro, Ky.).

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