-- As Illinois legislators debate solutions to the rising cost of medical malpractice insurance, newspaper reports from several cities have chronicled the local exodus of neurosurgeons and ob-gyn doctors to avoid the state's oppressive premiums (typically tripling or quadrupling over the last three years), costs that doctors usually must absorb because of health-insurance contract restrictions. Carbondale brain surgeon Sumeer Lal is moving to South Carolina ($40,000 premium vs. $300,000 in Illinois), and nearly one-fifth of the state's neurosurgeons are closing this year. These days, said outgoing obstetrician Eileen Murphy of Chicago (who makes $170,000 in salary but pays a $138,000 premium), "if anything goes wrong (in delivery), you can almost guarantee you're going to be sued."

In Louisville, Ky., local Republican Party activists John Lowler and Peter Hayes feuded recently over their status at the upcoming state convention, with Lowler alleging that Hayes punched him. Lowler had first accused Hayes of smearing him by suggesting that he had recently had gay sex. (Lowler acknowledges that he used to be gay but says he is now straight). Hayes said it was Lowler who smeared first by denigrating Hayes' religion, the Unification Church (headed by Rev. Sun Myung Moon). Hayes told the Louisville Courier-Journal in April that Lowler had taunted him by saying, "Moonie, Moonie, Moonie, Moonie, Moonie." (However, Lowler said he could recall saying only "Moonie, Moonie, Moonie.")

Lawyer Larry Feingold, 53, testified at his January trial in New York City that he was merely trying to commit suicide in 2003 when he turned on the gas in his apartment and that the subsequent blast that devastated three floors of his building caught him by surprise because he didn't know that gas could explode. "I thought gasoline did," he said, under oath, "but I didn't know about gas." And Bromley Preston, 44, filed a claim late last year after he split his head open on the water slide at The Lakes Resort at Berry Springs, in Australia, even though he admits he tried to go down the 100-foot-high slide on all fours instead of on his back, feet first.

In February, officials in the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen established the world's first formal stock-market-type arrangement in which farmers and producers can efficiently buy and sell liquid manure. And the London Evening Standard reported in March that soaring funeral prices in Germany have created markets for cost-saving services, including a thriving business in sending loved ones' bodies to Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic for disposal (a phenomenon known in the trade as "corpse tourism").

-- From a November 2003 article in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, on the fatal transmission of Rocky Mountain spotted fever from two dogs to their owner: "One man in Mississippi contracted Rocky Mountain spotted fever when he killed ticks he had removed from his dog by biting them with his teeth. This may seem unusual," the veterinarian-authors wrote, "but we have since encountered other persons who claimed to kill ticks by biting them."

-- A 23-year-old man in Hartland, Maine, was hospitalized in March after apparently attempting to commit suicide by crucifying himself. According to an account in the Portland Press Herald, he built a wooden cross, placed it on the floor, and nailed one hand to it. According to the officer, "When he realized that he was unable to nail his other hand to the board, he called 911," although the officer said he wasn't sure if the call was for an ambulance or for someone to come help him nail the other hand.

-- News of additional bizarre species was released recently from last year's deep-sea research voyage by scientists from Australia and New Zealand (and reported in News of the Weird in October). The oddest this time was the "deep sea angler fish," because of its sex life. According to Dr. Mark Norman, curator at Museum Victoria in Australia: "The female is the size of a tennis ball. It has big savage teeth" and "a rod lure off the top of its head with a glowing tip to coax in stupid prey." The male "looks like a black jellybean with fins." The mating male bites into the female's side, drinks her blood and gives her sperm. Their flesh eventually fuse together permanently. Said Norman, "They have found females with up to six males attached."

-- Mice Living the Good Life: University of Southern California researchers announced in February that they were able to breed mice with a certain skin gene "overexpressed," resulting in the mices' growing thicker hair, more whiskers and "significantly larger" "external genitalia."

According to a March Arizona Republic profile, Phoenix's Haskell Wexler, 73, is in his 12th year of contesting three $31 parking tickets, a dispute that has taken him through 12 so-far-unsuccessful lawsuits. His complaint is that he thinks the ticket charges were unfairly raised by the city in 1992 from $6 to $16 and that the $15 late fee was entirely inappropriate. Even more burdensome than the lawsuits are Wexler's almost-daily telephone calls seeking his $93 back. A city attorney said Wexler's crusade plays the same role in his life as golf might for other retirees.

A 40-year-old man and his 16-year-old son (carrying a shotgun) were walking home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in March when they decided to rob passing pedestrians of the beer they were carrying; in the ensuing fight, police later said, the beer did not change hands, and the son accidentally shot the father. And according to police in Toledo, Ohio, in March, during the robbery of the Gold Star Market, Joseph Allen Wilson, 18, accidentally shot and killed his 30-year-old accomplice, who was posing as a customer and whom Wilson was "threatening to kill" as part of the clever plan to get the clerk to open the register.

-- Rev. Dwayne Long, 45, a Pentecostal preacher in Rose Hill, Va., died the day after being bitten on the finger by a rattlesnake during a serpent-handling sermon on April 11. He had refused treatment because, as a parishioner said later, "(I)t's the Lord's will." (According to Mark 16:17-18 in the New Testament, "(Believers) shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.")

A speeding pickup truck went out of control, hit a low wall, and became airborne, landing on the roof of Fish Bowl's Bar and Grill, where firefighters rescued the driver (Jefferson, W.Va.). And after visitor Dave Alsop stopped his car in the West Midland Safari Park to photograph Sharka the rhinoceros mating, Sharka uncoupled and instead passionately mounted Alsop's small Renault automobile, heavily denting it before Alsop could drive away (Bewdley, England). And a bill was introduced in the Louisiana legislature to make it illegal for anyone to wear pants that ride below the waistline.

(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 April, choreographer Jenefer Davies Mansfield staged her "NASCAR Ballet" production at the Roanoke (Va.) Ballet Theatre, featuring 20 colorfully unitard-clad dancers, wearing corporate patches of the theater's sponsors, prancing and leaping around a banked-racetrack stage (to new-age music and the sounds of revving engines), "racing" but occasionally crashing into each other, to be rescued by other dancers who are the "pit crews." Mansfield was hoping for a big crossover audience of NASCAR fans gathered for a big race in nearby Martinsville. "In this business," she said, "you've got to take chances."

In December, police in Lewiston, Maine, chased down a patient from St. Mary's Regional Medical Center who, apparently fed up with his hospital regimen, had fled the building on foot, clad only in his gown in the icy rain, and dragging his wheeled IV pole behind him. And Gary C. Laine, 48, wanted on a fugitive murder warrant from California, turned himself in to police in Kerrville, Texas, in February and, apparently seeking to look cooperative, had already handcuffed himself before walking into the station.

William Rhode, 53, was arrested in February and charged in several incidents in which he visited daycare centers in the New Jersey towns of Hardyston, Jefferson and Pequannock and inquired about employment, even though at the time he was dressed in pink women's tights and wore a large diaper. The first two visits were alarming enough to officials, but police arrived in force after the Holy Spirit School in Pequannock reported that Rhode had actually relieved himself in front of students.

-- Thinking Outside the Box: It was a black male police officer who arrested her, and a black female officer who searched her, but drunk-driving suspect Donna Mills, who is a black New York City judge, still played the race card at her March trial. According to a New York Post report, Mills' lawyer said that the presence of the black officers meant that Mills' race-card defense was being undermined, and that that in itself might be evidence of police racism. (Mills was acquitted, but in subsequent interviews, jurors said the racism argument was inconsequential.)

-- Lame Excuses: In Los Angeles in February, Michael Marks, 25, raising an insanity defense to attempted murder, said he was drug-crazed at the time of the crime because someone on a balcony above him had spilled PCP on top of his head and that it must have affected his thinking. (He was convicted.) And Michael Cammarota, 57, asked a judge in New York City in February not to imprison him for engineering a multi-victim investment fraud but rather to send him to a mental institution because he needs help with what he called his "addiction" to "money." (He got four to 12 years.)

-- Missouri high school principal Robert D. Blizzard, 58, was arrested in Oklahoma in December and charged with indecent exposure after he was reported driving with his inside light on and his pants down, flashing motorists. When the arresting officer asked him how he could still keep control of the car like that, Blizzard modestly explained that it was no more difficult than "talking on a cell phone." (And in April, a Toronto musician was ticketed on the very busy Highway 400 after an officer spotted him behind the wheel of his VW Jetta practicing the violin.)

-- In Cleveland in March, John Struna won his lawsuit against a convenience store owner who had sold him Ohio Lottery tickets, claiming that the man ought to have explained a Lottery rule to him (even though the rules are printed on every ticket). Struna had bought 52 tickets playing the same numbers in a game that pays $100,000 per winning ticket, but somehow he never noticed that the payout would be capped at $1 million, meaning that his 52 winning tickets would be worth only $19,230 each. Despite being a heavy lottery player (spending $125,000 a year), Struna said it was up to the store owner to explain that rule to him, and the jury agreed.

-- Frank Chancellor filed a lawsuit against Burger King in Greenville, S.C., in March, claiming that, unknown to him beforehand, his chicken sandwich was too hot and that it scalded his mouth. And two months earlier in West Palm Beach, Fla., Thomas Gould filed a lawsuit against Raindancer steak house, claiming that, unknown to him beforehand, his baked potato was too hot and that it scalded his mouth and esophagus, sending him to the hospital.

Serial thief Colin Sadd, 41, pleaded guilty in April in Sheffield, England, to his latest capers, including swiping five cars that he had gotten dealers to let him test drive. As with his previous car thefts, Sadd drove them around, cleaned them up inside, and washed and waxed them before abandoning them. Said his wife, "(H)e desperately needs help with his obsession." And Debra Janan Goins was charged with theft in February in Mount Carmel, Tenn., after writing three checks taken from a purse she stole, but each time carefully filling in the check register with all the details of the illegal transactions.

Cardinal Rules, Broken: (1) Don't Carry Around the Holdup Note: Christopher Alexander Fields, 42, was charged in Hillsborough, N.C., in January after police found him acting suspicious in front of a Central Carolina Bank branch. The only real evidence of his intention was a note in his backpack reading "I want $10,000 in $100 bills. Don't push no buttons, or I'll shot (sic) you." (2) If You're Paying With Counterfeit Money, Pay and Go: Anthony Lee Lamb, 20, and two alleged accomplices were arrested in Berea, Ky., in March after Lamb paid for a meal at a McDonald's and then sat down to eat it, thus giving the manager a chance to examine Lamb's $20 bill more carefully.

A 21-year-old junior at the University of California at Berkeley became the latest drinking-contest fatality, in a March game among friends repeatedly downing shots of tequila, vodka and whiskey. ("(He) was a competitive guy," said his roommate.) And a 20-year-old Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario) student plunged to his death in February during a contest to see who could spit the farthest off an 11th-floor balcony. He had taken a running start.

In a heavily Hindu section of Bali (Indonesia), dozens of couples participated in a traditional good-luck public "kissing" festival until Muslim clerics showed up with buckets of water and drenched them for their immoral behavior. And a 24-hour camera on a German Internet site, showing only an extended family of wild boars, drew 1.5 million viewers in its first two weeks. And businessman Sam Walls, at first competitive in the Republican primary for a seat in the Texas legislature, lost after recent-year photographs surfaced of his cross-dressing days as Samantha Walls.

(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, at the latest trial of a former executive charged with looting his company during the 1990s, ex-employees of Adelphia Communications said that company founder John Rigas (1) was once taking out so many cash advances that his son (also an Adelphia executive) had to limit him to $1 million a month; (2) required extensive prodding to return 22 company-owned luxury cars after he resigned in 2002; and (3) in a familiar finding in cases like this, had Adelphia pay for a $700,000 golf club membership and the extravagant wedding of another son, Michael.

Junior-lightweight boxer Nate Campbell, a heavy favorite to beat Robbie Peden in Temecula, Calif., in March, controlled the fight and began to taunt Peden in the fifth round, even dropping his hands to his side, daring Peden to hit him; Peden then immediately knocked Campbell out with one punch. And in a December Boston Globe story about wild bears roaming Denville, N.J., animal control officer Meredith Petrillo reported solving the problem of one bear's nesting ("denning") underneath a homeowner's deck: Petrillo advised the resident to have her husband urinate under the deck (after which the respectful bear began denning elsewhere).

Catholic Cardinal Gustaaf Joos declared that only 5 to 10 percent of gays and lesbians are genuinely so and that the rest are "sexual perverts" (Brussels, Belgium, January). And the commissioners of Rhea County, Tenn. (site of the 1925 Scopes "evolution" trial), voted 8-0 to ask the state to help them keep gays and lesbians out of the county (but rescinded the vote two days later amidst heavy criticism) (March). And the Georgia House of Representatives voted 160-0 to prohibit piercing of female genitals, even of adult women eager for the procedure (March). (One sponsor, Rep. Bill Heath, when told that some women seek such adornment, was incredulous: "What? I've never seen such a thing.")

-- Four months after the universally followed gubernatorial recall election in California, Ken Blodgett, the president of the Ochoco West Sanitary District Board (Crook County, Ore.), was recalled by the voters (39 votes to 29), with the main issue Blodgett's having stopped payment on a $14.03 invoice for office supplies, which Blodgett said was not properly authorized.

-- In March, the Saunders County (Neb.) Board of Supervisors reaffirmed that it would not reimburse Register of Deeds Don Clark for the price of a sandwich he ate while out of town on business, even though Clark insisted there was money in his office's budget to cover it. The board said its own rules supersede Clark's budget and instructed the county attorney (who seemed to oppose the board) to hire an outside lawyer to deal with the matter.

-- And They Say Government Is Inefficient: When her 14-year-old son died in a farming accident last July in Beaumont, Texas (pronounced dead at 2:20 p.m. on the 31st), Melissa Devillier knew that the boy's Social Security survivor's benefits (from his dad's death in 1992) would be terminated, but government was startlingly swift to act. On Aug. 11, it told the mother that since the boy had not lived out the entire month of July, he didn't qualify for July benefits, and federal law required her to pay back the $1,025 July advance she had already received.

-- Toronto, Ontario, artist Jason Kronewald, 29, creates claylike portraits of celebrities, but using hundreds of pieces of used chewing gum instead of clay, according to a March profile by Reuters news service. He said he doesn't chew, himself, but buys gum and asks his friends to chew it. "I'm not into picking it off seats in the theater. I like the gum to be mine." His "Gum Blondes" series includes Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson.

-- Another Toronto artist, Istvan Kantor, won one of the country's most prestigious awards in March even though he (called "Canada's leading shock artist" by The New York Times) is best known for bloody performance art scenes, such as wearing the dripping carcasses of cats as a hat and posing himself in various positions to allow blood to drip from body apertures in a series that one critic said was a tribute to blood as "the spurting, contagious prima material of life." (Also, a February BBC News profile touted Madras, India, artist Shihan Hussaini's dedication to using blood to paint 50 portraits of his hero, a Tamil Nadu state official named Jayalalitha. At one point, Hussaini was drawing so much of his own blood that he had to hire a nurse.)

In Santa Fe, N.M., in March, after police recovered $46,000 worth of jewelry near an abandoned safe in a ravine, they concluded that burglars had stolen the 180-pound safe from a nearby home, taken it down the road and tried mightily to break it open, but failed, finally just pushing it down the ravine, at which point (unknown to them, because they had left) it finally burst open.

Corinth, Vt., farmer Chris Weathersbee's house was raided by state police in February and the 44 most-sickly of his goats were seized, leaving him 70 still residing in the house, which is outfitted for them with hay covering the floors to a height of about 2 feet (and, of course, including manure). Weathersbee, 63, told the Valley News (Lebanon, N.H.) that he personally only started sleeping in the house in January (because of the weather); before that, he had slept in the barn with the goats that couldn't fit in the house. An educated man with a nimble mind, he denied that he is a hoarder and asked authorities for more time to find a home for his goats, since he believes that any confiscated by the state would surely be killed (or neutered, which he said violates animals' "right" to procreate).

After a bout of heavy drinking, a landscape worker, riding home with his buddies, fell to his death while trying to urinate out of the open door of their car at about 25 mph (Croesgoch, Wales, November). And a 46-year-old man became the most recent to fall to his death on the side of a highway after stopping his car in the dark and searching for a place to urinate (but falling 300 feet off a cliff) (Columbia, Calif., March).

An Optimist Club (affiliated with Optimist International in St. Louis) opened in Baghdad, reported The New York Times. And Brazilian legislator Antonio Jose de Moraes Souza was removed from office for allowing a physician-supporter to hand out free Viagra at his campaign rallies. And from March 29 to April 6, there were no reported gunshot injuries in the New York City borough of The Bronx, the first such week in at least a decade and probably much longer, in that during the equivalent week 10 years ago, there were 30 shootings and 12 murders.

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