As the Romanian government hurries to improve law-enforcement sophistication in its campaign for European Union membership, villagers in the Transylvania region are resisting police crackdowns on their traditional practice of vampire killings, according to a March Knight Ridder News Service report. Vampires (unlike Hollywood conventions using crosses and garlic) are just people who go bad upon death and cause continuing grief to family members unless they are re-killed. The body is dug up; the heart is removed with a curved sickle and burned (but it will likely squeak like a mouse and try to escape unless held down); and the ashes are mixed with water and drunk. Villagers are outraged that some may face criminal charges for disturbing the dead, which carries a three-year prison sentence.

Former judge Bob Sam Castleman and his son pleaded guilty to mailing a poisonous copperhead snake to a neighbor with whom they were feuding (Pocahontas, Ark., January). And an Absa Bank Ltd. customer, upset about a car loan, was charged with setting five poisonous puff adder snakes free in the bank's lobby (resulting in one worker being bitten) (Johannesburg, South Africa, January). (In October, a small, nonpoisonous snake was found slithering around a courtroom, in Danbury, Conn.; it was believed unrelated to the dispute being heard, even though that was a divorce case.)

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (69) Drunk-driving arrests of people who were leading public campaigns against alcohol abuse, such as Dr. James Billow, who resigned as director of a county alcoholism prevention program after being charged with DUI in February in Newark, Ohio. And (70) the jewel thief who ingeniously swallows gems at the scene but who is then caught by police, who must wait patiently for nature to take its course so they can recover the evidence, such as Kevin Lynch's swallowing a 2-carat diamond ring from a Salem, N.H., jewelry store in February (which he passed two days later).

-- Thinking Small: Mayor Herman Lee Edwards of China, Texas, was indicted in December for mowing the lawn outside city hall and then pocketing the fee that had been set aside for the yard work contractor. And police in Tokyo announced in January that they had charged two men recently with illegally hooking up to stores' electricity at night in order to power their mobile phone and portable stereo, respectively, cheating the stores out of the equivalent of about 1 cent (U.S.) each.

-- Police Reports: From The Recorder, Greenfield, Mass., Nov. 13, 2003: "A man reported buying a car and when he went to get into it with the intention of sleeping in it, there were three people, including the prior owner (a)lready sleeping inside the car." From The Leaf-Chronicle, Clarksville, Tenn., Nov. 6, 2003, reporting the aborted robbery of a convenience store by a man who pulled a knife and demanded money after he had already given the clerk his credit card to pay for a purchase: "The complainant (clerk) looked at the suspect like he was crazy ... the suspect quickly signed the sales receipt and left."

-- At a special Friday evening session of the New Mexico House of Representatives in February (on health insurance taxes), Democratic leaders needed Rep. Bengie Regensberg for a vote and sent state police to retrieve him at the motel where he was staying temporarily. Troopers reported having to subdue and handcuff Regensberg, who was naked, combative and "likely intoxicated." (Regensberg said the troopers were too rough with him.)

-- The Japanese navy created a TV ad in February to encourage enlistments and public support for its mission of sending security troops to Iraq. In the spot, according to a Reuters reporter, seven actors dressed, Village People-like, as sailors dancing on the deck of a ship, singing (roughly translated), "Nippon Seaman Ship, Seaman Shipo, For Love ... For Peace" and "I Love Japan, I Love Peace, The Maritime Self-Defense Force." (The ad is needed, said a senior officer, because "there are a lot of young people and women who don't seem interested (in the navy).")

-- In a December profile, The Washington Post examined the breezy American history curriculum being sold to schools by presidential brother Neil Bush (more in the news lately for his messy divorce). The course's premise is that future "hunter-gatherers" (i.e., rambunctious boys) don't have the patience to read and should be taught by music, graphics and other techniques. For instance, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 is taught in a rap song, "It was 55 delegates from 12 states/Took one hot Philadelphia summer to create/A perfect document for their imperfect times/Franklin, Madison, Washington, a lot of the cats/Who used to be in the Continental Congress way back."

A pickup truck driver was arrested by an Indiana state trooper because its cargo was blocking sight of the license plate in the back window; on closer inspection, the cargo was revealed to be 900 pounds of marijuana (Indianapolis, March). And in Lafayette, Ind., Joshua K. Kochell, 27, was charged with robbing two gas stations; his probation officer was able to track his whereabouts precisely that evening because Kochell was still wearing an electronic monitor from a 2001 sentence for theft (March).

-- More third-world visitors arrived at Western airports illegally carrying in their luggage indigenous meats destined for family festivals. A 48-year-old woman from Gambia was arrested at Gatwick airport in England with 13 pounds of goat and snail meat and 172 pounds of catfish (March), and at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport, a whole smoked monkey was confiscated from a woman arriving from Cameroon for a wedding reception. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official said these airport seizures are "only the tip of the iceberg" of the illegal importing of traditional meats.

-- (1) The Trufresh company (Suffield, Conn.) said in March that its method of freezing lobsters for restaurants has resulted in a few lobsters, frozen stiff for hours at a time, reviving on their own. (The company ships all frozen lobsters with claws banded, just in case.) (2) A photo technician at a CVS drugstore in Advance, N.C., notified police in March when someone dropped off film showing two male employees of a local Wendy's, in bathing suits, frolicking in the restaurant's pots-and-pans dishwashing sink.

A 37-year-old man, angry that a car splashed mud on him, was charged with slashing the tires on 548 cars (Bournemouth, England). And a jury assessed a girls' high school basketball coach $1.5 million for aggressively hounding a player to lose 10 pounds, which ultimately traumatized her into an eating disorder (West Windsor-Plainsboro, N.J.). And the bad-boy artist who once put goldfish into blenders at a gallery, almost defying visitors to turn them on (and one did), used 780 gallons of red paint to cover a 1,000-square-yard iceberg off the coast of Greenland.

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

Louis Paul Kadlecek, 21, who had never even been in an airplane before, broke into a hangar at an airport near Lake Jackson, Texas, on Feb. 29, and, using trial-and-error, got a Cessna 172 airborne for about a mile, intending to fly to Mexico, before slamming into power lines. Although the crash left the plane a total loss, Kadlecek climbed out and walked home, but sheriff's deputies, based on witnesses' descriptions, arrested him the next day. One Brazoria County aviation official estimated that stunt pilots might survive an incident like that one time in 1,000. Said another, "This guy used up all the luck he's ever going to have."

-- From a March Boston Globe interview with Morgan Lee, newly crowned Miss Gothic Massachusetts: (asked how she would describe Goth) "It's really a style and a way of thinking. Basically, you're miserable all the time. (W)e just see the darker side that other people tend to ignore. The most interesting people are always the saddest." (Asked what her boyfriend thinks of her): "He's very proud of me. (H)e's not a very descript person, kind of like an amoeba, but very cultured."

-- In a 2003 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology, two Seattle radiologists described a 35-year-old man with severe abdominal pain but normal vital signs, who was found to have "multiple" heads from Barbie dolls lodged in his small bowel, which he attributed to his pursuit of the pleasurable anal sensation he gets from excreting them. After a straight-laced description of how doll heads show up differently from other objects on X-rays, the authors advised radiologists to "keep in mind that human imagination may not follow clinical algorithms."

-- In February, free-lance photographer Robert Levin filed a $50 million lawsuit against the Waste Management company for the injuries (including brain damage) he suffered while trying to take photographs at New York City's Ground Zero in December 2001. Levin had surreptitiously climbed atop one of the company's garbage trucks to get a better vantage point when the driver pulled away, causing Levin to fall, which Levin now says showed Waste Management's "failure to respect (my) rights as a pedestrian."

-- British postal worker Alan Pugh filed a lawsuit in Birmingham County Court (England) in December against a Wolverhampton University religious studies teacher who he said had put too much outgoing mail in a letter box, causing Pugh to injure himself trying to haul it away. The lecturer had mailed 270 oversized envelopes, totaling around 50 pounds.

-- According to the New York State Police, Stephen Pappadake, 17, was speeding (80 mph in a 30 mph zone) and passing multiple cars illegally on the morning of April 29, 2003, and he eventually lost control of his car, crashed and died. In January 2004, Pappadake's parents filed a lawsuit against the last driver that Stephen was illegally passing, who they said had veered to the left, causing Stephen to leave the road and crash. The lawsuit made no reference to the police's conclusions.

-- On the morning of July 7, 2001, a vandal tossed detergent into the fountain in Canal Park in Duluth, Minn., producing a massive, continuing mountain of bubbles. About four hours later, Kathy J. Kelly, walking by the still-foamy mound, failed to steer clear enough, fell on the soap-slippery sidewalk, and suffered several injuries including, eventually, gangrene. She sued the city for not having cleaned the fountain or roped off the area. In March 2004, a jury ruled in her favor, finding that 30 percent of the fault was hers for getting too close but that 70 percent was the city's. (Jurors were not allowed to assess the fault of the original vandal.)

In February, the chief justice of Singapore, Yong Pung How, 77, rejected attempts at leniency by a 25-year-old ex-policeman who had argued that his arrest for receiving oral sex (as a "crime against nature") was an anachronism. In upholding the law as a salutary part of Asian culture, Justice Yong sentenced the man to 12 months in jail, pointing out, "There are countries where you can go and suck away for all you are worth," "but this is Asia."

Keep a Low Profile? Sandy L. Warren, 43, was arrested in March and charged with stealing an 8-ton cherry-picker from a construction equipment dealership in Redmond, Wash.; a dealership employee had spotted the cherry-picker parked in Warren's front yard in Redmond with a for-sale sign on it ("$28,990 OBO"). And Ronald Plaster, 21, and Amber Plaster, 20, were arrested in Meadville, Pa., in February after an investigation of sexual assault against two teenagers; the investigation was started when Amber walked into a police station and asked, out of curiosity, whether it was legal for a 21-year-old man to have sex with a 15-year-old girl.

"Repressed memory" was a popular psychiatric diagnosis in the 1980s, with well-credentialed doctors convincing patients that the cause of their unhappiness was a history of sordid sexual episodes that they had buried deep in their subconscious. Three doctors persuaded Chicago-area resident Elizabeth Gale that she had been the victim of a satanic cult that had used her to breed children just for sex and pornography, and she acceded to now-widely discredited treatment (druggings, tie-downs, hypnosis, a tubal ligation, and 18 hospitalizations covering 2,016 days during her 12-year ordeal). In February, Gale settled a lawsuit against the doctors and two hospitals for $7.5 million. One of the doctors, Bennett Braun, lost a similar case in 1997 for $10.6 million.

An 18-year-old man drowned near Eudora, Ark., in December, when the he accidentally fell into a pit of water while attempting to drown his pit bull (which he thought was too old and docile), and the man's father also drowned when he jumped in to save his son. (The dog survived.) And when a construction trench collapsed in New York City in December, a worker was buried up to his neck, and emergency crews were summoned, but before they could arrive, a co-worker manning a backhoe tried to dig him out, but accidentally decapitated him.

A woman with a near-record short name, Ms. Li Uv, 80, passed away in Providence, R.I., survived by her daughter, Ms. Ep Te. And scientists from all over the world headed for the village of Mohammad Pur Umri, India, following news that one of every 10 births there in recent years resulted in twins (vs. the worldwide probability of 1 in 300). And a 35-year-old motorist (stunned by the Madrid bombings) pleaded guilty to trying to run down a pedestrian who resembled Osama bin Laden (who dodged the car, leaving it to crash into a tree) (Montpellier, France).

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

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.)