A Palm Beach Post writer, making the point that America's obesity problem is not limited to humans, reported from the Boca Greens Animal Hospital (Boca Raton, Fla.) in June that "Pumpkin," a 12-pound Chihuahua, was up and moving well after her recent liposuction surgery. However, the 12 ounces of fat she lost still left her among South Florida's overweight pets, said to be two-thirds of their population. As Pumpkin's owner was reminded, surgery is not to be a substitute for sensible exercise and a modest number of treats.

(1) Police in Fort Myers, Fla., arrested Carlos Chereza, 17, in April and charged him with hiring a hit man to kill his mother and to make it look like a burglary; as is often the case, the "hit man" was actually an undercover detective, who by the way said Chereza's main concern was to pull off the job without damaging the family's TV set. (2) In March, Thailand's agriculture minister criticized health officials' proposal to embed microchips in the nation's 200,000 fighting roosters, to help deal with the avian flu scare sweeping Asia; the minister's main concern was that the implants would hamper the cocks' aggressiveness.

-- Recently, Britain's BBC televised an educational program in which scientist Mike Leahy and pal Zeron Gibson undertook certain activities in the weeks leading up to the program, and then, live on April 15, the men's sperm was shown, by microscope, in a "race" inside tiny glass tubes, in an experiment to gauge the effects of different lifestyle choices on sperm motility. Gibson's won.

-- In March, U.S. Rep. Major Jones of Brooklyn, N.Y., proudly claimed authorship of a controversial rap-music play being seriously considered for staging in New York City. Rep. Jones' "The Viagra Monologues" champions male sexuality, with lines like (according to a New York Post story), "Monogamy is for chumps" and "Boyhood self-esteem dies / Gawking at the other guy's size / What deal with the angels / Awarded him a better tubular prize."

-- South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, intending to score some publicity in his battle against what he believes is irresponsible spending by the state legislature, held two small pigs in his arms at a photo opportunity outside the House chamber in May, telling reporters that one was named "pork" and the other "barrel." Before the event ended, both pigs had soiled the governor's suit jacket and the elegant carpet at the State House, forcing Sanford's press secretary and speechwriter to pull quick duty with cleanser and paper towels.

-- Breakaway Mormon polygamist John Daniel Kingston, testifying in May at his child-abuse trial in Salt Lake City (he had been charged with threatening to beat two teenage daughters if they got their ears pierced), strongly asserted his devotion as a parent, despite having to keep up with numerous children from his reported 14 wives. However, when asked to name the 13 children he had with one of the wives, he struggled through nine names before giving up.

-- In April, the Nebraska state auditor discovered thousands of dollars missing from the state's million-dollar smoking-cessation program and only then realized that the man running the program since 2001, Rock Mueller, had been hired while still on work release from prison on a theft conviction. And in March, the Rhode Island House speaker appointed to the prestigious budget-writing committee Rep. Joseph L. Faria, who was well-known to have been struggling for a decade with personal money issues that had caused him to be sued, to have liens placed on his property, and to have been investigated by the state police.

-- (1) Pedestrian James W. Dudley, 61, was hospitalized in May after being hit by a car in Glen Burnie, Md.; moments before, he had been discussing with another person at a bus stop the relative probability of being hit by a car vs. being the victim of a theft. (2) And in May at a middle school honors dance in Mount Vernon, Wash. (with invitees chosen exclusively on the basis of high academic and behavioral standards), a 12-year-old girl and her 14-year-old classmate were taken into custody for beating another girl unconscious.

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) The civic-minded drunk who recognizes the danger in trying to drive home but who instead puts his adolescent child behind the wheel, or, as Michael Johnston did in Peachtree City, Ga., in June, got a blind friend to drive (supposedly "guided" by Johnston's instructions). (70) And the construction worker who is accidentally shot in the head with a nail gun, but who survives just fine (and winds up with a souvenir X-ray, which also appears in newspapers around the world), as happened to Isidro Mejia in Los Angeles in May.

Salem, Mass., police Sgt. David Connelly was finally arrested in January after an alleged two-year vandalism spree; according to police in nearby Lynnfield, Connelly had been angry at a 2001 court decision against him by Judge Howard Whitehead, who lives a few blocks away, and at least 90 times in two years had driven by Whitehead's house and tossed empty beer cans into the yard. And in St. Petersburg, Fla., in March, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, Melvin Sembler, who for 17 years ran an aggressive drug treatment program called Straight, filed a lawsuit against disgruntled Straight ex-client Richard Bradbury, who allegedly has harassed Sembler since 1987, including rummaging through his garbage (once finding Sembler's penile pump and advertising it on eBay).

In May, the principal of Lincoln Multicultural Middle School in Washington, D.C., already under investigation for some missing school student activities money, was fired after trying to sell two school buses to someone in Panama. And in May, C&F Construction Inc., which had been suspended from D.C. government contracts earlier this year because its president had been convicted of defrauding the government on road-paving materials, was abruptly reinstated and in May awarded a $3.1 million road repair contract.

(1) Police Sgt. Randall C. Hoover of Muhlenberg Township, Pa., filed a federal lawsuit in April accusing the police department and the police union of civil rights violations because members allegedly teased him for his pituitary-gland tumor that caused him to grow lactating breasts. (2) Nurse Jackie Tvedt held on to her state license even though she was fired in January from a nursing home in Newton, Iowa, for allegedly providing a reduced level of care to those patients whom God had told her that He would take care of.

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

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.)