In March, Awards World magazine sponsored the inaugural "Awards Awards" at London's Dorchester Hotel, handing out awards to members of the British awards-presentation industry for the year's best awards shows. Spokesperson Barbara Buchanan explained, "Everybody likes to win an award," even the people who give out awards (who staged ceremonies for about 1,000 major presentations in Britain last year). Although Buchanan called this year's program a success, she said it is disqualified from receiving any awards at next year's Awards Awards.

In February, a consortium of yoga teachers filed a lawsuit in San Francisco against yoga master Bikram Choudhury (creator of the celebrity-trendy "Bikram" style), demanding that he become a little more serene, himself, and stop hassling them by claiming a copyright on his positions, some of which, they insist, are centuries old. And Agence France-Presse reported in January that yoga classes for dogs are available in Miami, New York City and Hollywood, producing such success stories as the aging pooch that, having assumed special dog-yoga positions, supposedly regained mobility in her hips.

Patient privacy regulations (under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) were recently blamed for hospitals' placing restrictions on ward visits by Santa Claus (in Davenport, Iowa, December) and by clergy members (in Morgantown, W.Va., January), unless all patients give permission. And a Silver Spring, Md., woman was billed $17,000 by Washington (D.C.) Hospital Center before the hospital was allowed to tell her who the patient was, because of federal privacy laws. (The patient was her missing-person husband, who had been killed by a hit-and-run driver, news the police were late in giving her.) And privacy laws recently prevented the public school system in Nashville, Tenn. (and undoubtedly other cities), from having an "honor roll," unless all parents consented (even parents of mediocre students, who would be publicly revealed as non-honor roll).

-- Cheryl L. Cooper was, until October, a counselor for Pyramid Healthcare Inc. in Pittsburgh, working with drug- and alcohol-addicted patients, but following a break-in and armed robbery of her home, she was summarily fired. Pyramid claimed (according to a February Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story) that since she had become a target of neighborhood tough guys, Pyramid clients and staff who would be with her at any time were thus in danger. (Among the problems Pyramid counselors must work through are traumas to crime victims and rehabilitation of criminals.)

-- In March, a court in Ansbach, Germany, turned down a challenge by a 43-year-old unemployed man to the government's denial of benefits stemming from his temporary separation from his wife, who is in her native Thailand. He claimed that since she could not afford to return to Germany, the government should pay for the travel, and since it refused to do that, it should pay him for at least four visits a month to a prostitute, plus an allowance to buy condoms, pornography and an appliance to aid masturbation.

-- In February, social workers found a feral family of six (only the father spoke a recognizable language; others used hand signs and noises) living in a shed on a farm at Theunissen, in Free State, South Africa. None of the kids (aged 14 to 26) had ever met anyone outside the family and simply ran into the woods any time visitors approached. One boy ambulated only in a frog-like manner. The father said the kids were born normal, and he assumed their poor development was punishment because he could not afford the ceremonial sacraments of the Majola tribe.

-- A case report in the January issue of the Indian Journal of Chest Diseases and Allied Sciences described a 27-year-old woman with an unshakable cough who, based on a radiograph, was found to have a condom lodged in her "upper right lobe bronchus," which eventually she disclosed to doctors had happened because she had accidentally "inhal(ed)" it during fellatio.

-- An African Grey parrot, N'kisi (trained by New York City artist Aimee Morgana), has apparently been reliably observed with an English vocabulary of 950 words and the ability to manipulate some of them in context, according to a British Broadcasting Corp. magazine report. According to a Cambridge University veterinary professor, the most promising gains from cognitive-ability testing on animals recently have been achieved with parrots.

-- In January, Sunnyside Elementary School (Stanton Heights, Pa.) suspended Brandi McKenith, 7, for a day for bad language, specifically for pointing out to a classmate that he was going to wind up in "hell" because he had said, "I swear to God." And in December, Ernest Gallet Elementary School (Lafayette, La.) sent Marcus McLaurin, 7, to a special discipline class for telling a fellow student, accurately, that his own mother is "gay" (which, he said, "is when a girl likes another girl").

(1) The December attempted robbery of a BB&T bank in Chesapeake, Va., was aborted when the robber and the teller arrived at a stalemate. The robber pushed a holdup note across the counter, but the teller read it, said, "I can't accept this," and passed it back. The robber pushed the note through a second time. The teller wadded the note up and tossed it back at the robber, who picked it up and walked out. (2) And the robbery of a liquor store in Greenville, S.C., in February was aborted when the clerk ran out of the store after the perp told him to empty the register, while pointing his bare index finger at him, simulating a gun.

A 44-year-old man was crushed to death by a slow-moving tractor-trailer when he jumped underneath it to get the reportedly "well-worn" baseball cap that the wind had just blown off his head (Lethbridge, Alberta, November). And a 55-year-old man died of a heart attack, most likely, said the police, during or moments after stabbing his wife numerous times in a domestic altercation (Keene, N.H., December). And a 23-year-old man was hit by a subway car at New York City's 34th Street station when he leaned over the tracks to see the oncoming train, not realizing that it was coming from the other direction (December; the last press report available said the man was in critical condition).

A female Catholic catechism instructor was awarded $950,000 from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for injuries from being punched by a priest during a discussion of teaching techniques. And the San Jose Mercury News reported that teachers at several California schools have begun offering extra course credit to students who bring in vital classroom supplies no longer affordable under school budgets. And Abbeyfield School (Chippenham, England) banned regulation-size soccer balls during recreation periods, permitting only small, soft balls, but denied the reason was fear of lawsuits.

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

Adding to the Disney-fanatic adults who have appeared in News of the Weird is George Reiger of Bethlehem, Pa., who has now been tattooed with Disney-related images 1,600 times, adding about one per week. Reiger said he spends $50,000 a year on his Disney habit, owns 19,000 items of memorabilia, and has fitted his house with Disney touches. In February, Reuters news service asked his opinion of chairman Michael Eisner and of potential Disney owner Comcast Corp., both of which Reiger denounced as indifferent to the original Disney magic. "A lot of people ask me," Reiger said, "if I got (a tattoo of Eisner), where would I put it?"

In December, on their second try, six men managed to set fire to a cross in the yard of a Dade County, Ga., white woman whose daughter was dating a biracial man, but then they couldn't control the flames, which threatened an "innocent" white neighbor, provoking one of the men to call 911, leading eventually to their arrests. The county, in Georgia's northwest corner, is known as the "state of Dade" for its isolation and insularity (99.4 percent white), but Sheriff Philip Street did bring himself to denounce cross-burning as "old school."

On Jan. 30, as Angel Eck, 20, drove her Pontiac Sunfire on Interstate 70 toward Denver, she suddenly could not slow down. The car was locked in overdrive and climbed to 100 mph; the ignition would not disengage; and the clutch and accelerator were stuck. A half-hour later, two enterprising Denver police officers, having been alerted by cell phone and reprising a tactic from the old "CHiPs" TV show, slowed the car by allowing it to repeatedly bump the rear of their squad car until it came to a stop. A few days later, idling in the shop at Green Mountain Auto Service, the car jumped gears and pinned a mechanic against an inside wall until a colleague set the emergency brake.

-- Separation of Church and Clinic: At a November hearing on Thomas DeVol's business practices, Missouri's State Committee of Psychologists also heard evidence that the marriage counselor had described himself as a "Christian psychologist" who estimated that, during his 20-year practice, about 150 of his clients were possessed by demons and other "evil spirits." (The committee was still deliberating DeVol's fate at press time.) And in February in Genoa, Italy, Catholic Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone announced formation of a committee of three priests and three health professionals to decide, in possible cases of satanic possession, whether the parishioner should be referred to counseling or to an exorcist.

-- Update: Indian sadhu Lotan (aka Ludkan) Baba was reported in News of the Weird in 1995 for his 2,500-mile holy journey through the Indian countryside traveling by lying on the ground and rolling over and over and over, the entire distance (doing from six to 13 miles a day). In September 2003 (reported in video on the CBS News Web site in January 2004), he set out on a 1,500-mile trip, rolling from Ratlam, India, to Lahore, Pakistan, where he said he hopes to thank President Pervez Musharraf for his India-Pakistan peace initiatives.

-- From an underreported profile of Mel Gibson in The New Yorker (Sept. 15, 2003), discussing his then-upcoming film, "The Passion of the Christ": "There is no salvation for those outside the Church. Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She's a much better person than I am. (But) she's Episcopalian. (S)he believes in God, she knows Jesus. (A)nd it's just not fair if she doesn't make it (to heaven); she's better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair (that she will not be saved). I go with it."

-- Mile High Outfitters, a backcountry expedition organizer in Challis, Idaho, has petitioned the U.S. Forest Service for permission to install three commercial, recreational hot tubs smack in the middle of an unspoiled wilderness area, and the service is now considering the proposal (the public comment period having ended early this month). Each tub would require 1,250 gallons of water, heated by wood-burning stove, replenished every three days in-season, even though motorized vehicles to bring the water in are not now permitted.

-- Burnsville, Minn., according to city planner Mike Niewind, hopes to solve some garbage, energy, odor and environmental concerns all in one project by expanding its landfill, by 2007, to create an electricity-producing methane plant (to power 3,000 homes) underneath an 18-hole golf course that will be built on a manmade, pristine, 100-foot-high plateau offering scenic views of the Mississippi River Basin.

At his trial in November for stealing the equivalent of US$150,000 worth of jewelry from a house, Daniel Dady, 20, offered the defense of lack of motive, in that he had just inherited the equivalent of US$30,000 and did not need more. The jury found him guilty anyway, and at his sentencing in January, Judge Peter Jacobs not only sentenced him to 4 1/2 years in detention but also ordered him to hand over the inheritance to his victim as partial restitution (an inheritance the judge would not have known about had Dady not spoken up in November).

A suspected prostitute became the latest police detainee to commandeer a patrol car and drive it away after twisting her body to move her cuffed hands from behind her to the front of her (all in a briefer time than it took officers to walk around the outside the car) (Kensington, Pa., February). And a Harrods Estates broker announced that he had sold a private, one-car parking space in the tony Knightsbridge section of London for the equivalent of US$187,500.

A 7-year-old boy was arrested and charged with sexually molesting a 5-year-old girl (Morristown, N.J., November). And an 8-year-old boy, accused of fondling four 7-year-old girls, agreed to enter sex-offender rehabilitation (Mount Clemens, Mich., December). And a 12-year-old girl, who was improperly touched by a 40-year-old man (resulting in his conviction for lewd conduct), was revealed by court investigators to have voluntarily performed oral sex on, or intercourse with, at least 40 men (Monterey, Calif., February).

Ms. Farrah Daly, 27, who told officers (upon her arrest for allegedly stealing $1 million in jewels from her employer) that she was too "cute" to go to prison, was sentenced to three years in prison (Akron, Ohio). And a 30-year-old man challenged as unconstitutional the police search of his 18-month-old son's diaper that produced a stash of cocaine (a search the police defended as legal, in that they had noticed a "large load" in the diaper (Evansville, Ind.). And a restaurant selling only dishes made with Hormel Spam opened in an upscale shopping mall in Manila, Philippines.

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

New York City high school chemistry teacher Elihu McMahon, 69, reports daily to a do-nothing job, at $77,000 a year, as the result of being ordered out of the classroom based on various complaints and administrative findings. In fact, according to a February New York Post story, he has spent about three-fourths of his time in the last 15 years in such jobs (since New York teachers have generous job protections), costing the schools an estimated $600,000 in salary. Among the complaints against him: racist remarks to students (McMahon is black), insubordination, incompetent teaching, improper grading and sexual harassment (although McMahon blames the problems on bad administrators).

-- An 18-year-old man was transferred to Youth Court, with its more lenient procedures, after he was arrested and charged with stabbing a man to death at a New Year's Eve party in Edmonton, Alberta. He will not be tried as an adult because the victim was stabbed just before midnight, and the alleged killer did not actually turn 18 until Jan. 1.

-- In December, Australia's TV Channel 7 reported that many schools across the country, at the behest of the Australasian Performing Rights Association, were discouraging parents from making keepsake movies of their kids' appearances in Christmas musicals, because recording the holiday songs might violate copyright law.

-- The New York Times reported in February on a Washington, D.C., man whose love of music led him, in the 1960s, to meticulously hand-make and hand-paint facsimile record album covers of his fantasized music, complete with imagined lyric sheets and liner notes (with some "albums" even shrink-wrapped), and, even more incredibly, to hand-make cardboard facsimiles of actual grooved discs to put inside them. "Mingering Mike," whom a reporter and two hobbyists tracked down (but who declined to be identified in print), also made real music, on tapes, using his and friends' voices to simulate instruments. His 38 imagined "albums" were discovered at a flea market after Mike defaulted on storage-locker fees, and the hobbyists who found them said they were so exactingly done that a major museum would soon feature them.

-- Tom Musser, 81, and brother Jack, 84, are ex-cowboys who for the last 12 years have made and sold their own one-of-a-kind, crooked furniture through independent dealers from their home base in Delta, Colo. Their awkward-looking pieces are best sellers (1,600 sales so far) even though each one is almost unavoidably primitive, owing to the fact that the proud Mussers aren't (in the words of a satisfied customer) "burdened with any knowledge of woodworking." Said Tom, "We just do what the sticks (the wood) want."

-- Case Western Reserve University researchers revealed in a December journal article that cockroaches do not age gracefully, that after about 60 weeks of adulthood, they get stiff joints (which inhibits climbing) and hardened foot pads (which prevents sticking to vertical surfaces). One of the researchers, noticing that aged roaches seem to have lost their ability to escape from predators, hypothesized that the loss was brain-based; he tested the hypothesis by removing the roach's head (and, thus, brain), and sure enough, the roach once again was able to flee like a youngster.

-- A team of researchers that included Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) reported in November that herring communicate with each other via a high-pitched, "raspberry"-like sound emitted from their anuses. (Since the sounds were frequent, whether the herring had eaten or not, the researchers concluded that the noise was not produced by digestive gases.)

Among recent U.S. patents (according to a January story in the East Bay Express, Emeryville, Calif.): (1) a penile prosthesis with a magnet, from Deborah Knoll-Ewers, Hercules, Calif. (to overcome erectile dysfunction with new-age magnet therapy); (2) a plastic liner for men to use beneath their underwear, from Wesley Johnson, Burbank, Calif. (to keep the clothing clean while engaged in fully dressed sex, such as lap dances); and (3) an electrically safe device that attaches to the tongue, to make it vibrate, from Eric A. Klein, Mountain View, Calif. (to enhance a partner's sexual pleasure).

A 16-year-old boy was arrested in January in Dania Beach, Fla., after a 7-Eleven clerk subdued him mid-robbery. The boy had pointed a .22-caliber rifle at the clerk but then suddenly remembered that he hadn't loaded it. He had shells in his pocket, but they were .40-caliber, too large for the rifle (but that didn't stop the boy from trying to cram them in). The clerk took advantage of the boy's confusion and disarmed him.

News of the Weird has remarked several times on the late composer John Cage's "4'33," a 273-second "musical" number containing nothing but utter silence. In February 2004, according to a New York Times report, cuts from "White Album" by the band Sonic Youth were being listed for downloading on Apple's iTunes online store, and included was "Silence," a 63-second cut consisting of no sound at all, for which fans were nonetheless expected to pay the regular iTunes price of 99 cents. (In a subsequent clarification, a Sonic Youth spokesman said "Silence" would only be sold to purchasers who bought all of the album's cuts.)

A 41-year-old model airplane hobbyist was killed when his radio-controlled helicopter went haywire and crashed into his neck (Houston, November). A 27-year-old woman was killed when, during calm weather on a suburban street, a 40-foot magnolia tree fell on top of her while she was jogging (Titusville, Fla., December). A 38-year-old man was killed when his pickup truck hit a ditch at 60 mph, with the cause of death later determined to be that the truck's radio had been jarred loose during the crash sequence and hit him on the head (Timberlake, N.C., January).

National Hockey League goalie Byron Dafoe (Atlanta Thrashers) went on the injured list after he slipped on the icy sidewalk outside his team's hotel in Ottawa, Ontario, and hurt his back. And insurance companies in Thailand complained that politicians were using their generous health-care policies to stay overnight in hospitals while traveling on business, thus pocketing their per diem money. And several dozen (maybe many more) automobile keyless-entry systems failed in the Las Vegas area on Feb. 20, allowing conspiracists to remind everyone that the city is only 150 miles from "Area 51," supposedly the government's extraterrestrial research center.

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