Ivy League Blues: In March, a Princeton University graduate student in applied mathematics, Michael Lohman, was arrested, suspected by police of being the guy who has been assaulting Asian women on campus for weeks by snipping locks of their hair or by furtively doctoring their drinks with unspecified "bodily fluids" in the dining hall. And a week after that, in Rockport, Mass., a chaired professor of economics at Harvard, Martin Weitzman, was charged with larceny after a farmer said Weitzman has long been trespassing and hauling away manure for his own nearby farm, thus denying the farmer his market price of $35 per truckload.

-- (1) Mr. Mamadou Obotimbe Diabikile was shot by police and arrested after his unsuccessful attempt to rob the Mali Development Bank in Bamako, Mali, in March, in part hindered by the nearly seven pounds of magic charms he was wearing to make himself invisible. (2) Musician Edna Chizema went on trial in March in Harare, Zimbabwe, for allegedly defrauding Ms. Magrate Mapfumo by convincing her to pay the equivalent of US$5,000 for Chizema to fly in four invisible mermaids (folkloric goddesses of revenge, according to the Shona people) from London to help recover Mapfumo's stolen car.

-- Kim Chan, 40, of a village in the Cambodian province of Kampot, announced in March that he had a cow that was heavenly possessed and could cure illnesses by exposure to its bodily fluids, but local official Khun Somnang immediately discounted the claim, saying, "We had a holy cow here a year and a half ago (and you) don't get two that close together."

-- According to a February report in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, Itzik Simkowitz is suing a pet shop owner in Beersheeba for selling him a sickly Galerita-type cockatoo (price: the equivalent of about US$2,000) that died shortly after Simkowitz got him home. As in a classic Monty Python sketch, the shop owner initially insisted that the parrot was merely lethargic and needed time to adjust to his new surroundings, but when the parrot (to use the Python dialogue) was shown to be "a late parrot," "an ex-parrot," "a stiff," and to have "joined the choir invisible," the shop owner still refused to return the money.

-- In the Stephen King novel, "Christine" was the name of the demonic car, but Christine Djordjevic of South Haven, Ind., is the owner of a car that started and drove off, unattended, in March and crashed into her neighbor's home. Police concluded that the culprit was Djordjevic's remote starter, which had been installed by the previous owner imprudently, in that, on stick-shift cars, it can work in gear.

-- Fred Simunovic was charged with armed robbery of a Key West, Fla., credit union, with "armed" referring to the pitchfork he was waving (March). And a man fled after attempting to rob a shopkeeper in Central Park Plaza in Jacksonville, Ill., in January by first threatening her and then slapping her several times with a fly swatter (January).

-- William Woodard, 39, suspected by police in the Trenton, N.J., area of more than 50 burglaries, was arrested in March, and authorities said they were confident they could match him to what had become one of the "signatures" of the crime spree: random splotches of excrement at several crime scenes. In the course of the arrest, a highly nervous Woodard failed to control his bowels, and police have submitted samples for DNA testing.

Christopher Garcia, 46, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was turned down for unemployment benefits in March because an administrative judge found that he was properly fired by a convenience store for misconduct in that he would not stop "air drumming" on duty (using real drumsticks), causing some customers to complain of feeling threatened. And in March in Rajahmundry, India (about 300 miles south of Hyderabad), officials termed "resounding(ly) success(ful)" their tax-collection tactic of sending several teams of two drummers to stand outside the defaulters' homes and pound their instruments until the debtors paid up.

Tony Young, 35, made the news in January in Flint, Mich., when he tried to stop the theft of his Mustang ("my pride and joy") by grabbing the spoiler and hanging on for 20 minutes as the thief drove through Flint and on two interstate highways at speeds up to 80 mph, trying to shake him off. Young still managed to call 911 on his cell phone and describe his route until police could join the chase, which ended when the driver fled on foot and was captured. (Two weeks later, "Young" was arrested and charged with breaking into a home, and police discovered that his real name is Anthony Barry and that he has served two stretches in prison.)

Two groups of Aryan supremacists who fled Germany to establish utopias in South America were in the news recently, regarding their descendants' colonies in southern Chile ("Colonia Dignidad") and in Paraguay ("Nueva Germania"). Colonia leader Paul Schafer, 83, who reportedly commanded total obedience from his sect of 300 farmers (who remain, culturally and technologically, in the 1940s), was arrested in Argentina as a fugitive from charges of having sex with his camp's children. And prominent California musician-composer David Woodard was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle in March to be carrying musical and electronic equipment to Paraguay to reinvigorate Nueva Germania as an "Aryan vacuum in the middle of the jungle" as per composer Richard Wagner's vision of an aesthetic outpost of Germanic culture.

According to police in New York City, schoolteacher Wayne Brightly, 38, who was having trouble passing the state's modest certification exam, paid a former mentor, Rubin Leitner, to take the test for him. Though Leitner is a learned man, he is also age 58, white, chubby and afflicted with the autism-like Asperger's syndrome, while Brightly is 38, black and thin. When Leitner (using the fake ID Brightly had supplied) scored high on the test, officials naturally wanted to interview Brightly to ask about his sudden brilliance, but Brightly decided to send Leitner to the meeting, instead, virtually assuring that the ruse would collapse.

In March 2003, as an edgy Washington, D.C., prepared for possible domestic terrorist reactions to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, David Olaniyi and wife Reena Patel were arrested at the Capitol, where they had embarked on an "art" project consisting of Olaniyi wearing a mask and objects duct-taped to his body, resembling the appearance of a suicide bomber. (Said Olaniyi at the time, "Duct tape is a hot item in D.C. I wanted my art to reflect what was hot here.") Apparently, Olaniyi continues to believe the Capitol police had no cause to be fearful of suicide bombers, for he filed a lawsuit in March 2005 against police and FBI agents for violating his first-amendment rights by arresting him.

(1) A pregnant woman named Akono was quoted in a March Agence France-Presse dispatch from London during demonstrations against U.S. policy in Iraq as saying she planned to intensify her own protest by soon going on a hunger strike, reasoning that she wants "to do everything I can to make sure my child has a secure future." (2) Montana State University student Jeffrey Pumo, 21, arrested in connection with some shootings of marbles at people in February, was quoted in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle as saying, "I'm looking forward to proving my innocence on the majority of these counts."

The New Zealand agricultural company Summit-Quinphos revealed in March that it has a working model of an automated nitrogen-inhibiting sprayer that fits under a cow's tail, and that it has a government grant to develop the device. A company spokesman said nitrogen from cow urine, concentrated in small patches in a field, currently must be neutralized by expensively treating the entire field. However, the company's "tail-activated" gizmo immediately fires a blast of inhibiting chemical at the ground directly below every time the cow lifts her tail for a call of nature. (A New Zealand Herald reporter made Summit-Quinphos scientist Jamie Blennerhasset solemnly swear that the announcement was not an April Fool's joke.)

In March, an Iowa administrative law judge denied Barbara J. Dutton unemployment benefits, ruling that her firing as supply clerk at a 12-person Des Moines company was justified by her incompetence. According to records cited by the judge, Dutton had earnestly ordered office supplies during an 18-month period totaling about $230,000, including 16,000 Bic pens and nearly $15,000 worth of Scotch tape. Since there was no evidence of dishonesty, the company was left with the conclusion that she was simply overmatched in her job. Said she, "I didn't realize that I was not needing (everything)."

-- Communiques to Nowhere: TalkToAliens.com began taking orders in March, recording people's messages at $3.99 per minute and beaming them into space, aimed toward the Milky Way by a huge parabolic dish antenna in Connecticut on a relatively accessible FM frequency. And in December, German inventor Juergen Broether introduced his "telephonic angel" system (at about US$2,000), which is a battery-operated, underground loudspeaker that, buried at a gravesite, allows someone to speak into a microphone and have the messages amplified through the dirt to the departed for up to a year on a single battery charge.

-- A February Atlanta Journal-Constitution dispatch from El Alberto, Mexico (near Mexico City), profiled a theme park in which potential and wannabe emigrants to the United States can test their survival skills in an obstacle course that touches on the rigors migrants endure sneaking across the border. The cost of this rehearsal for a better life is an admission fee of the equivalent of US$13.

-- In November, Yeslam Bin Laden, one of 53 siblings and half-siblings of Osama, announced in Paris that he would soon bring to market upscale floral fragrances for men and women at about $30 an ounce, though the products will bear his first name rather than his last, for obvious reasons. (However, in February, the trademark authority in Switzerland, where Yeslam lives, resolved in his favor his long-held-up application to use the "Bin Laden" name commercially, in case he decides to.) Yeslam said he hasn't seen Osama in 17 years and is appalled by his Al-Qaeda activities.

-- Bureaucrats in North Korea's Communist Party, summarizing their understanding of the way the brain works, announced in January that, henceforth, all men would be expected to wear their hair short (2 inches, maximum) in that longer hair impairs function by taking oxygen away from the nerves in the head. (Balding men would be allowed another inch for comb-overs, and hair length of women was not addressed.)

-- In studies reported recently by mainstream researchers: (1) DNA-damaging cancers caused by heterocyclic amines were found reduced in rats that drank nonalcoholic beer instead of water (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry). (2) Tobacco-smoking apparently provides some protection against the onset of Parkinson's disease (Karolinska Institute of Sweden). (3) Overweight patients tend to survive better than nonoverweight patients the rigors of a certain cardiac-bypass procedure (coronary artery bypass grafting) (American Journal of Cardiology).

Heidi Erickson of Boston, one of America's more aggressive cat-hoarding women, made News of the Weird in 2003 when she raucously challenged her evictions from two homes where she allegedly was attempting to breed the "imperfections" out of Persian cats. Subsequently, she moved into the Plympton, Mass., home of Patricia Pima, a black hermaphrodite who raises champion horses. The friendship ended in February when passenger Erickson yelled at Pima for reading the Bible while driving on Interstate 495, resulting in Pima's ordering Erickson out of the car, which led to Erickson's filing a complaint with local authorities that Pima's home reeks so bad that it is a public health hazard.

(1) In six weddings this year in India, two boys and four girls were married in tribal-custom ceremonies to dogs, which is believed to bring better luck to children who have been cursed by teething first from the upper jaw ("dog teeth"). (Agence France-Presse reported that the four February marriages in Jharkhand state involved, thank goodness, dogs of the opposite gender from the spouse.) (2) In February, a Pakistani tribal council in Kacha Chohan (Punjab state) ordered a 2-year-old girl to marry a man, age 42, to punish the girl's uncle for having sex with that man's current wife (although the marriage will not be official until the girl turns 18).

The following people accidentally shot themselves recently: Off-duty sheriff's deputy Melissa Baird (while loading her gun to check out a noise in her yard) (Brandon, Fla., March). Accused home invader Paul K. Hardy, 40 (while unloading his gun as a goodwill gesture after he warmed up to his victims) (Martinsburg, W.Va., December). The one-legged Keith Caldwell, 32 (after grabbing his gun to investigate a noise, but deciding to hop around unsteadily rather than put on his prosthesis) (Tuscaloosa, Ala., January). Santiago Preciado-Alvarez, 54 (a typical waistband-for-a-holster accident while trying to scare off coyotes) (Rock County, Wis., February). Adrian White-Wolff, 20 (fooling around with his pistol in a car with friends) (Tucson, Ariz., March).

News of the Weird has reported on how single acts of sexual intercourse wound up costing men (e.g., tennis star Boris Becker) staggering amounts of money. In March, Harry C. Stonecipher resigned under pressure as CEO of Boeing for having an affair with a Boeing lobbyist, and the New York Post, examining regulatory filings, concluded that Stonecipher had thus forfeited bonuses and incentives that could have been worth about $38 million. While more than one act may have been involved, the pair were stationed in different cities, and published reports indicated that the affair had only recently begun.

In March, the Oregon board that enforces teachers' standards and practices charged Salem high school football and track coach (and science teacher) Scott Reed with gross neglect of duty after investigating parents' complaints that he routinely licked the bleeding wounds of his players to help them recover. In addition to knowledge he acquired as a teacher of science, Reed had also earlier taken the standard teachers' seminar on bodily fluid contact (which he was ordered by the board to retake).

The Maryland schoolteachers' union was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have violated labor law by obstructing two of its own staff members' challenges to working conditions (March). And a 59-year-old man drowned in a quarry near Hillsville, Pa., while testing his new water depth-finder (March). And two days before Easter, the city council in Mission Viejo, Calif., exasperated by the destruction of plants and shrubbery, authorized residents to shoot on sight the animals suspected of causing the damage: rabbits.

(CORRECTION: In the column released for March 20 publication, I reported that the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh had plagiarized some of the Web site text it posted to help writers on the subject of plagiarism. Actually, the plagiarized text concerned a different topic of help for writers. I apologize for the error.)

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

The inspirational Charles Gonsoulin of Los Angeles, pursuing a Canadian woman he had met on the Internet, sneaked across the border on foot in February from the North Dakota side (because a 1984 crime would have prevented his legal entry), heading for the bus station in Winnipeg, 75 miles away, even though he had no experience with sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures. When police picked him up just inside Canada, he was disoriented and had such frostbite that he lost 10 fingers and most toes, but, he said later, "It was all worth it for me. It's the difference between sitting around dreaming about things and going out and getting them." "I know my life is complete." He was scheduled for deportation as soon as he recovers, and the pair still haven't met. The woman lives in a Montreal suburb, 1,400 miles from Winnipeg.

-- In March, Billy Reed, 49, of Fleetwood, Pa., lost a 19-month battle with the state Department of Transportation over his insistence that he has a right to have his eyes closed in his driver's license photo, because of freedom of expression and his "right to happiness." After a Commonwealth Court ruled against him, Reed (who said he studies law in his spare time) said he would probably appeal. "I didn't set out on this as a mission. It's one of those things that happen in life. Here you are. Life takes you down a path, and you end up where you are."

-- In 1989, after his release from prison on petty crimes, John L. Stanley undertook the serious study of criminology, lecturing and even hosting a Dallas radio program on crime, but in December, he confessed to robbing a Commerce Bank in Kansas City, Mo., because he needed to return to prison to further his study, telling the judge, "(T)here are some things about crime you can't understand unless you get into the belly of the beast" and that he needed to "be secluded and do the things I need to do while I still have the time." "You can take a butterfly and put it on a light stand, but until you are a butterfly and fly, you can't understand why a butterfly flies." (Stanley showed up for sentencing in March in a wheelchair, which was the result of his, not surprisingly, being beaten up by another inmate.)

-- A female Zimbabwean athlete who had won several track and field events at meets in Botswana and Mauritius was arrested in Harare in February after authorities discovered she actually had a small penis. Samulkeliso Sithole, 17, said she was born a hermaphrodite but that her parents had paid a traditional healer to make her totally female, and, "because" her parents failed to pay the healer's full fee, the penis had begun to grow.

-- Not My Fault: In separate incidents, trespassers Philip Dederer, 20, in Australia and Carl Murphy, 18, in England were awarded the equivalent of around US$1 million each in March after they were injured, even though blatantly trespassing on private property. Dederer, now a paraplegic, had disregarded "no diving" signs and continued to jump into the Wallamba River until an accident occurred. A sympathetic judge regarded the signs inadequate, in that none said that diving was "dangerous." Murphy, now partially blinded and with 17 metal plates in his head from a 40-foot fall in a warehouse, claimed that if a perimeter fence had not been broken, he never would have gotten in to have his accident.

-- Lame: (1) Farm hand Dean Schwankert, 37, was charged with lewdness in February for allegedly, while naked, pursuing his boss, a 75-year-old woman, through her house and asking for sex; Schwankert told police he was merely making a nude inquiry of what time it was (Lyndeborough, N.H.). (2) And Paul Callahan (who made News of the Weird last year when he attempted to rob a copy shop in Boston thinking it was a bank) asked for a lenient sentence for the two bank robberies he committed later that same day, claiming a motive (in the words of his lawyer) "to validate his being a man of strength" after having suffered sexual abuse as a Catholic altar boy.

During an emergency in December, Westminster (Md.) High School's policy on evacuating wheelchair-using students came to light, to the horror of two disabled students' parents. While smoke filled the building and the panicked students exited, teachers brought the two students to the second-floor stairwell and, rather than risk liability for mishandling them, teachers were instructed to get out themselves, and leave the students there to await trained firefighters. (A month later, a special committee clarified the policy, urging that the students be left only in smoke-free stairwells.)

Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University Medical School, told a conference in Brisbane, Australia, in March that he donates blood regularly because one of the key reasons why females outlive males is menstruation. Perls said iron loss inhibits the growth of free radicals that age cells. "I menstruate," he said, "but only every eight weeks."

-- In a February report to the U.S. Department of Education, the District of Columbia public school system revealed a chronic-truancy rate of 23 percent (15,000 of its 65,000 students absent without excuse at least 15 days a year), many times higher than the rate for adjacent or comparable jurisdictions. (However, a March report of the D.C. Inspector General partially undermined that number, pointing out that the schools' $4.5 million computer system was incapable of identifying which students are at which schools.)

-- In February, the Washington, D.C., Department of Health chose an elementary school cafeteria as the site for a weekend sterilization/vaccination program for stray and feral cats. Although workers put down plastic sheets and towels, when students and teachers arrived the next school day, they were overwhelmed with odors of ether and cat urine. Only then did officials decide to cancel lunch, and classes, for a complete cleaning and disinfecting.

Women's groups in Mexico City, working from a building donated by the municipal government, are preparing a retirement home for at least 65 elderly prostitutes, according to a March Reuters dispatch. Among the candidates that Reuters interviewed was Gloria Maria, who says she is 74 years old and "can't charge what the young ones do" but still has "two or three clients a day." [Reuters, 3-17-05]

Lawrence M. Small, the chief executive of the Smithsonian Institution, was convicted in 2004 for his collection of South American artifacts that include the feathers of 219 birds protected by the Endangered Species Act, and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service. Hearst Newspapers reported in February that Small had not yet begun his sentence, in that he is still negotiating for the right to serve it by spending 100 hours lobbying Congress to change the Endangered Species Act.

In October, two pilots of the regional Pinnacle Airlines, with no one else on board, told air controllers they were taking the craft to its highest listed altitude (41,000) feet "to have a little fun," but then engines failed. In their last communication before crashing (according to transcripts published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in March), the crew asked "Is that cool" if they took the plane to a lower altitude to try to restart the engines. And in separate fatal incidents, two 20-year-old men assumed that military flak vests are bulletproof. (They are designed only to protect against shrapnel.) A vest-wearing man in Orofino, Idaho, "dared" his friend to shoot him (December), and another, in Hobart, Ind., asked to be shot to prepare him for his upcoming military service (February).

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