Canadian researchers writing in the journal Neurology in June reported that 18 of 122 dogs belonging to epileptic children were able to sense, minutes ahead of time, when a child was about to have a seizure, and about 30 others showed unique reactions to a seizure event (including in some cases trying to protect the child from danger). Also in June, researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institute reported that Rico, a border collie they have studied for several years, can distinguish by name more than 200 objects and can even figure out the names of unfamiliar objects associated with familiar ones (attributed, as in the epilepsy cases, to the dog's high sensitivity to sight, sound and motion).

Ken James, 64, died in February when he fell off a stolen bicycle in Melbourne, Australia, and hit his head; police later found 435 bicycles and hundreds of parts in his home, stacked to the ceiling in every room (with only a few of the bikes having been legitimately acquired). And in May, a court in York, England, banned Norman Hutchins, 53, from all National Health Service hospitals and doctors' offices, based on 40 complaints since January of his attempting to grab surgical gowns and masks for his collection; he was described by his lawyer as "not a well man."

-- In May, the Washington Times profiled Mark and Lorraine Moore's growing business selling bird diapers at $20 to $26 (Lycra suits with straps that fit around the wings, with a Velcro flap in back, with pads that must be changed every six hours, but which allow birds to roam the house without soiling the furniture). And Frank Morosky of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has introduced charcoal-lined diapers, at $20 to $50, designed to reduce the odor of dogs' flatulence. (A Cedar Rapids veterinarian said he didn't think the diapers would sell because so many owners revel in their dog's flatulence as a way of distracting attention from their own.)

-- MCI Inc., in bankruptcy protection and planning to lay off 12,000 workers this year, revealed to its shareholders in May that it had dismissed its president, Richard R. Roscitt, who worked for the company for only seven months, but that according to Roscitt's shrewdly negotiated contract, it had to pay him severance of $8.1 million, plus assorted benefits.

-- The New York Times reported in June that overworked Catholic clergy in the U.S., Canada and Europe are outsourcing certain ritual prayer requests from their parishioners over to Catholic clergy in India. Priests said such a practice is not new, but that a priest shortage might have caused a bump in numbers. Indian priests said the requests are typically accompanied by US$5 to $10 (much more than they are offered for domestic prayers).

-- Two designers from India's National Institute of Fashion Technology in Calcutta have begun to offer a cotton jacket for women that contains a mild electrical charge, to help protect them from molesters and muggers. A 9-volt battery in the waistband connects to a switch and wires running through the cloth. The domestic price, according to a May Indo-Asian News Service story, is 855 rupees (about US$20).

-- After 13 wrongful years in prison and five more detained as a "violent sexual predator," James Rodriguez, 43, finally realized last year that he would have to start lying and "confess" to molesting those two boys in the 1980s and seek "rehabilitation." Otherwise, California's Atascadero State Hospital would never release him. He told an Associated Press reporter that he sought advice from the hospital's pedophiles on what to say and how to act, and he finally convinced doctors that he was, indeed, so very remorseful for his "attraction to kids." Then, as he was set for a hearing in April, his two "victims" finally recanted, telling officials that they had made up the whole thing.

-- Scottish Gas Corp. headquarters in Edinburgh drew stares earlier this year when it filled its landscape with rows of square trees whose branches will, in 15 years or so, form the shape of green cubes resting on the trees' trunks. Right now, each tree resembles a bank of lights on a pole at a ball park, with five rows of branches vertically flat. As the branches grow, they will be braced horizontally and vertically so as to expand symmetrically in three dimensions ("pleaching") until the cube shape is obtained.

Andre Lamar Henderson, 30, was arrested after allegedly robbing a Madison Bank branch in Norristown, Pa., in June and coming away with $50; his holdup note had demanded "all your hundreds and fifties," and, as the teller later said, there was lots of money in the drawer but unfortunately for Henderson, no hundreds and only one fifty. And Knute Falk, 54, allegedly robbed a Bank of America in Beaverton, Ore., in June but was arrested when his getaway was delayed; he had demanded a bank customer's car keys, walked out, then returned after a minute or two, with his mask off, to ask the customer which key opens the door.

George Stanichuk, trying to convince a Boston Herald reporter in March of his innocence in his girlfriend's disappearance, insisted that the woman's having previously gotten a restraining order against him was not telltale evidence: In fact, he said, "every girl I've gone out with has put a restraining order against me." And in New Port Richey, Fla., in February, Robert Scott Schwartz, representing himself in a domestic violence hearing, admitted that he had beat his girlfriend for "a few minutes," slammed her head into the stove, pulled her hair, and stuck his thumbs into her eye sockets, but nonetheless turned to her in the courtroom and said, "I'm willing to overlook a lot of things if you can just get along with me."

In Albany, Ga., high school English teacher Carla Murray, 32, resigned after officials found a poem she had allegedly written to one of her students (among other notes that indicated an affair between the two). The poem: "The smell of your cologne mixed w/ sweat / The sounds you make while (omitted in the Associated Press story) / The touch of your hands / There's more, but I won't embarrass myself by mentioning them."

(1) Anti-smoking crusader Zhang Yue, 44, who has worked in 60 Chinese cities, arrived in Hong Kong in May to showcase his unique form of encouragement: He simply walks up to smokers on the street and yanks the cigarettes out of their mouths. (2) In May in West Greenwich, R.I., Jeffrey A. Stevens, 39, and two passengers were arrested after a car chase on Interstate 95 for possession of a stolen license plate; at one point in the chase, according to police, one passenger pulled down the back seat, crawled into the trunk, and when Stevens popped it open, reached up and, at 60 mph, unfastened the incriminating plate (which Stevens later tried to discard along the road).

Thanks This Week to Colin Rafferty and Jan Wolitzky, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

(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 a murder trial about to conclude at press time in Martinez, Calif., the circuslike cast of characters included Glenn Helzer (already convicted of several bizarre murders designed to vault him to power as the one true Mormon prophet), his brother Justin (charged in Glenn's crimes and described as one who takes his meals on the kitchen floor on all fours), Dawn Godman (a self-described "good witch" who pleaded guilty as Glenn's helper and then, as the government's star witness, described Glenn's plot to recruit Brazilian orphans to go to Utah and kill Mormon elders, thus hastening the apocalypse), and a former Playboy centerfold (September 2000), not charged with a crime, who was Glenn's girlfriend and took the stand to vouch for Justin's good character.

In April, a New York appeals court ruled that Leon Caldwell was entitled to a $50,000 state worker-compensation death benefit on behalf of his son, Kenneth, who died at age 30 at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, even though Leon had abandoned Kenneth shortly after birth and had seen him only twice since. The court said that Leon "met the legal definition of a parent" (but ordered him to pay Kenneth's mother her long-overdue $20,000 in child-support).

(1) House of Lords member Norman Tebbit told a radio interviewer in May that homosexuality in Britain is "intimately connected" to the rise in obesity. (His explanation: The breakdown of the family means fewer family meals and more fast-food meals.) (2) Florida state legislative candidate Ed Heeney told a Palm Beach County political meeting in May that homosexuality has made it difficult for him to enjoy his pastime of billiards. (His explanation: "(Y)ou have a situation where the lesbian community is buying restaurants and bars (and, presumably, removing the pool tables).")

In May, Anchorage, Alaska, public defender Leslie Hiebert, representing murder defendant Kenneth Padgett, explained why Padgett's having stuck his mother's corpse between two walls of her mobile home and sealed up the space as a tomb, was not evidence that he had killed her. Hiebert told the jury that Padgett was just trying to help her. She died of natural causes, Hiebert said, but "really loved her trailer" and "would not have a problem" with her remains being buried there. (Padgett was convicted.)

-- James Samuel Steward suffered severe brain damage in May 1998 after he took an overdose of methadone that someone had smuggled into jail for him while he was an inmate in Goulburn, Australia. In May 2004, Steward's parents filed a lawsuit on his behalf (because he is now unable to care for himself), claiming that it is the government's fault that their son got tempted, in that it did not smuggle-proof the jail, and the Stewards are asking the equivalent of US$2.7 million.

-- Earlier this year, a worker compensation commission in Sydney, Australia, awarded benefits for "psychological injury" to teacher Jeff Sinclair, caused when Baulkham Hills High School fired him. The basis for the firing was his romantic relationship with a student, which began in 2000 when he was 49 (and the married father of three) and she was 15. Sinclair will receive from the government the equivalent of US$19,000, plus US$215 monthly for as long as his "injury" continues. Teacher and student now live together, as Sinclair and his wife have divorced. (And in May, Sinclair's ex-wife said she would soon file a similar claim for "psychological injury," before the same commission, also based on the firing of her then-husband.)

-- In April, the Alaska Court of Appeals upheld the legality of a police traffic stop of a car that an officer believed was the same car about which a report of occupants fighting had just been called in. The officer said he saw, through the rear window (according to an Anchorage Daily News report) that "the woman in the passenger seat was facing the driver (while the car was stopped for a red light), her left leg on top of the driver's seat, wrapped around his head rest," followed by the man's moving to "lean over" the passenger. That the activity was sex, instead of fighting, was irrelevant, said the court, because either one creates a traffic-safety problem.

-- Lame: Mr. Angel Jones, 27, was convicted of aggravated assault against his girlfriend, specifically, biting off most of her nose in a rage; he admitted the nose was in his mouth but said that due to her using weight-loss medication, her nose had become brittle, and that it just fell off (Toronto, May). And Maurice Williams, 24, was charged with perjury after he told a judge he was not "Williams," even though "Williams" was tattooed on his back. Said Maurice, "I can't see what's on my back. If there's some tattoos on my back, somebody's been bothering me when I'm asleep" (Muncie, Ind., May).

-- In April, Joshua Baldwin, 24, was sentenced to 180 days in jail for 16 incidents of indecent exposure to women in stores in downtown Bay City, Mich. His explanation to the judge: "I was only hoping to get lucky, but I went about it the wrong way."

Streator, Ill., school superintendent Bill Mattingly apologized in January after an investigation found that he called a black basketball player at Streator High into his office and ordered him to start passing the ball more often to "white kids," including Mattingly's son. And in March, Andy Schmeltzer, baseball coach at Hirschi High School (Wichita Falls, Texas), was placed on leave after he took a bat into a teacher's room, asked her to change some grades, and then slammed the bat down on a desk, for emphasis.

Arrested recently and charged with murder: Estell Wayne Buck (Monroe, Ohio, June); Jerry Wayne Wright (Monroe County, Tenn., March); David Wayne Marsh (Hagerstown, Md., March); Jonathan Wayne Larrabee (Wakpala, S.D., March); Jerald Wayne Harvel II (Pawhuska, Okla., February); Robert Wayne McMillion (Miami, Fla., December). Arrested on suspicion of murder: John Wayne Warrener (Thornton, Colo., June). Convicted of murder: Charles Wayne Green (Pocahontas, Ark., May); Mark Wayne Hauseur (Joshua Tree, Calif., April). Attempted suicide while in custody for murder: Kenneth Wayne Gregory (Land O'Lakes, Fla., April). Death sentence upheld on re-sentencing: Robert Wayne Lambert (Sapulpa, Okla., May).

A 46-year-old South African soldier, part of an African Union peacekeeping force in Bujumbura, Burundi, was killed in May when a large, rotting tree fell over onto the portable toilet he was using. And a 45-year-old television cameraman was struck and killed by a car at a dangerous Omaha, Neb., intersection while he was working on a story about how dangerous the intersection is (June).

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

"Fishermen" using pistols, shotguns and assault rifles are permitted on two U.S. lakes (in Vermont and Virginia) for a few weeks each spring to fire away at pike and several other species, according to a May report in The New York Times. Sportsmen (who wait in tree "fish blinds") aim just in front of their prey to kill by concussion because a direct hit renders the fish inedible. Describing the fascination, one shooter struggled in awe: "It's something that once you've done it ..." The relatively few shooters are so avid that attempts to ban the activity have gone nowhere.

The West Virginia secretary of state ordered the polls still to be open in the town of Littleton for the June 8 municipal election, even though no candidates ran for any of the seven offices and write-ins were disqualified. (The town will probably disband.) And in May, former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who presided over the state's 2000 presidential recount, revealed that her absentee ballot in a March 2004 local election was not counted because she forgot to sign it. And in March, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, trying to persuade traditionalist men to let women register to vote, said in a speech, "Please, my dear brothers, let your wives and sisters go to the voter registration process. Later, you can control who she votes for, but please, let her go."

(1) According to an April New York Times dispatch, the quiz show "The Mission," on the satellite TV channel of Lebanese militants Hezbollah, challenges contestants in categories such as naming Arab suicide bombers, with the winner receiving points toward the game's ultimate destination, "Jerusalem" (the retaking of which is a unifying theme of all the channel's programs). (2) Craig Gross, 28, and Mike Foster, 32, run the Christian Internet site "XXXChurch," designed to help the faithful overcome pornography and masturbation, according to a May Wired magazine report. (Recent advice: "Remain calm and tell yourself, 'You don't own me, masturbation!'" Recently, several online "parishioners" commenced a 40-day abstinence, to match the time Satan tempted Jesus in the desert.)

Alaska is reputed to be the state most laden with congressional overspending (thanks to its powerful U.S. Rep. Don Young and U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens), and an April New York Times dispatch described two proposed, marginally useful bridges for the state that will eventually cost taxpayers more than $2.2 billion. One, almost as big as the Golden Gate bridge, would connect Ketchikan (pop. 7,800) with a 50-resident island and the town's modest airport (and would replace a five-minute ferry boat ride), and the other, a 2-mile-long span, would connect Anchorage, according to the Times, to "a port that has a single regular tenant and almost no homes or businesses."

-- Universal Health Care (for Prisoners): A judge in Wilmington, N.C., had to officially "release" accused murderer Shirley Spaulding in May, as a ploy, to get the state to start picking up her medical bills. Brunswick County was running out of money because it has paid nearly $400,000 to treat her respiratory illness while she awaits her death-penalty trial. (Fortunately, she was too sick to depart custody.)

-- Donnie Newsome, the chief administrator (called the "judge-executive") of Knott County, Ky., was convicted in October 2003 of buying votes, then denied bail during his appeal because the judge found him a "danger" to the community, and then sentenced in March 2004 to two years in prison. But Newsome still manages the county's affairs from a detention facility in Lexington, getting briefings from an assistant during visiting hours. (Kentucky law does not require the resignation of convicted officials until their appeals are exhausted.)

-- In April, London's National Portrait Gallery showed an hour-long video of star soccer player David Beckham, sleeping; artist Sam Taylor-Wood said she wanted to do an original of the ubiquitously photographed Beckham and realized there was not much that hadn't already been done. And at a March exhibit at London's Nelson's Column, guest performers took turns reading Japanese artist On Kawara's book that consists only of 271,000 selected dates that occurred between 998,031 B.C. and A.D. 1,001,980. (Said a gallery director, "On Kawara's work speaks simply and directly about a subject relevant to us all, the passage and marking of time.")

-- Not only does San Francisco's Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center (i.e., the city dump) have an "artist in residence," but sculptor Rick Carpenter is actually the 43rd person to hold that position, according to an April San Francisco Chronicle report. Carpenter said his specialty is discarded bulk items, citing, for example, the weaving he made from 40 orange extension cords, and his latest, an object stuffed with the contents of a 5-gallon bucket of wigs someone tossed.

William Basil Armstrong, 56, was charged with robbing the Clark Mart in Akron, Ohio, in May; he gave up partway through, though, and had to ask the clerk to please run out to Armstrong's car and retrieve his oxygen tank, which he requires for a respiratory condition. And in November 2003, Mark Shleifer, 48, pleaded guilty in Doylestown, Pa., to possessing more than 1,000 pictures of child pornography, even though he is legally blind.

In 2002, the director of Washington, D.C.,'s National Zoo was criticized for impeding a Washington Post investigation into a spate of animal deaths at the zoo; the director had refused to release the medical records of a giraffe on the ground that she had to protect the animal's right of "privacy." In May 2004, the policy of the University of Georgia's veterinary hospital was also revealed, in an Associated Press report, to voluntarily give privacy rights to animals similar to the rights hospitals are required to give to humans under federal law.

Joseph Micale, 34, charged with manslaughter in the death of his wife, said she accidentally died while being choked during sex to heighten her orgasm (Syracuse, N.Y., January). And Sheila Davalloo, 34, was convicted of attempted murder, though she said her husband was accidentally stabbed during one of the couple's consensual rough-sex sessions (Pleasantville, N.Y., February). And Donald Marks, 40, abruptly pleaded no contest to murdering a 38-year-old prostitute, though he had claimed for over a year that she accidentally died while he was choking her in consensual rough sex (Honolulu, May).

A small crime wave hit south Philadelphia streets late last year, with a gang of five or more men randomly attacking pedestrians, seemingly for fun, and in at least three of the incidents, the men wore boxing gloves to beat up their victims. And in April, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of part of the Patriot Act (a public document) but couldn't publicly reveal what its lawsuit claimed because such disclosure without Justice Department permission is forbidden by the Patriot Act. (The Department OK'd a heavily censored press release 22 days later.)