Two child prodigies from India made the news in June. A boy named Bharanidharan, 13, backed by several adult disciples, declared himself a Hindu holy man and founded a monastery in Salem in Tamil Nadu state, until his parents had him abducted and brought back home. (A judge released the boy back to his ashram and will later conduct a hearing on his rights.) And Akrit Jaswal, 11, acclaimed as a genius by Indian and international organizations, recently spent two months at the Tata Cancer Institute in Mumbai, working with researchers on cancer and AIDS, and at the recommendation of doctors, Akrit's parents sold most of their belongings to finance a research lab for him in New Delhi.

Kenny Borger survived a one-car crash in upstate New York on May 1, but his passenger was killed, and Borger decided to surreptitiously bring the body home to Hamilton, N.J., in the damaged car and then figure out what to do next. What he decided on was to commandeer a backhoe one night from a previous employer, scoop up the body, drive it about five miles out of town, dig a 13-foot-deep hole with the backhoe, and bury the body. He was later arrested and charged with tampering with evidence. Said Mercer County prosecutor Joseph Bocchini Jr., describing Borger's plan, "I couldn't make this stuff up."

-- Clermont, Fla., police 911 dispatcher Lorraine Stanton was fired in May as the result of bad performance reviews, not even counting an incident on her last weekend. A woman called to report a street gathering that included a man wanted by police, but according to the 911 tape, Stanton was not helpful: "OK, that person would have to come to the police station, and we would have to check. When they come in, they'd have to bring ID." When the caller asked why a wanted man might voluntarily turn himself in, Stanton replied, "Ma'am, that's the only way we can check."

-- The mother of accused serial killer Maury Travis filed a lawsuit against the prison in May for her son's alleged suicide, claiming among other things that the architects who designed the cellblock made it unusually difficult for guards to peek in on inmates on a "suicide watch," such as her son. However, Travis' "suicide" actually revealed a remarkably focused man: According to news reports, Travis is said to have hanged himself with a bedsheet, but with a pillowcase over his head, toilet paper in his nostrils, a washcloth in his mouth, and his hands tied behind him.

-- Officials investigating an explosion inside Villa Hermosa prison in Cali, Colombia, in May (which killed three inmates and wounded 15) concluded, using the process of elimination, that the only way the grenade could have gotten into the facility was to have been smuggled in by a certain, unnamed female visitor earlier that day. According to a Reuters News Service dispatch, authorities concluded that she must have hidden the grenade in a body cavity because that's the only place guards are not allowed to search.

-- In May, the Columbus (Ohio) City Council approved a building permit for the Faith Christian Center ("On Fire for God") to construct a 52,000-square-foot commercial complex centered on an indoor skateboard park, and including a restaurant, arcade and pro shop, named Godz Xtreme Power Park.

-- A March Wall Street Journal story reported on the growing number of churches that have introduced services aimed at improving the lives, and chances for salvation, of parishioners' pets (at least in part under the belief that some former worshipers would return to church if it were more "relevant," such as by offering prayers for protection from fleas). In some places, clergy accompany parishioners to pet euthanizations, or hold "bark mitzvahs," or dispense Holy Communion to dogs.

-- In April, Rocky Sanchez, 36, a former civic award-winner in El Monte, Calif., was sentenced to 1,002 years in prison on 41 felony counts, including the rape and torture of his wife, with the long sentence reflecting the fact that any one of the counts was Sanchez's sentence-enhancing "third strike." Under California law, however, if his wife had died during the attack, Sanchez might have received only about 50 years. (That's because he would be subject instead to the capital murder statute and might have gotten life without parole, but then again, he might have gotten the death penalty.)

-- In Denver in May, a 13-year-old girl, who was sometimes taunted by classmates because she has a small right arm and leg from cerebral palsy, was threatened with a knife and had her hair set on fire by a seventh-grade boy, but after the incident was reported, officials at Martin Luther King Middle School sent her home for the rest of the school year (for her protection, they said) while the boy remained in class. (The school's interim principal admitted several days later that her staff had botched the investigation.)

China Daily reported in May that businessman Hu Xilm, who claims that a housefly in the food 10 years ago ruined a big business deal for him, has since spent thousands of dollars on an obsession to eliminate as many flies as he can; with help from a team of volunteers he recruited, he claims to have killed 8 million. And in May, white supremacist Ms. Karleana Zuber was arrested in Kootenai County, Idaho, and charged with spitting in a state trooper's face; Zuber was isolated from the other inmates for her protection because in her not-too-distant past, before surgery, she was a male white supremacist.

Serena Prasad, 22, got into a fight with her boyfriend in Turlock, Calif., on May 2 and allegedly stabbed him several times in the chest, but seeing that he was injured, put him into her car and headed for the hospital. According to a police account, while she was stopped en route at a traffic light, she realized that her boyfriend had not had enough yet, and she walked around to the passenger side, stabbed him again in the shoulder with a steak knife, and kicked him in the head, but police happened by, and she was arrested on a charge of attempted murder.

In June, the Oklahoma attorney general petitioned the state Supreme Court to remove District Judge Donald D. Thompson of Sapulpa based on recurring complaints that he used, during trials and other proceedings, under his robe, a pump device for enhancing masturbation, in view of court personnel, who complained of the "whooshing" noise the gadget made. And in St. Paul, Minn., a 43-year-old woman was arrested for an incident in which she bit her new boyfriend's tongue too hard during a kiss, slicing off a portion and, police believe, inadvertently swallowing it. (She told police she has had issues with men in the past and might have panicked.)

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

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.)