Sonette Ehlers of Kleinmond, South Africa, recently invented a tampon-like sheath that she says will reduce the disturbing number of rapes that plague that country, but local anti-violence leaders are skeptical, as well as alarmed. The device folds around the penis with microscopic hooks and, once engaged, requires medical intervention to remove. (It may also incidentally inhibit the transmission of HIV.) Critics call it impractical (since one must be worn constantly) and barbaric, and a distraction from other solutions to the rape crisis. The devices are expected to be available in pharmacies starting in July, for 1 rand each (about 15 cents).

-- Registered sex offender James Andrew Crawford, 35, was arrested in May in Perris, Calif., after having camped for two weeks in a theater line that was waiting for "Star Wars: Episode III" to open. According to a Riverside County deputy sheriff, Crawford was in violation of a state law that requires sex offenders to notify the government if they adopt a new "domicile" for more than five days.

-- In June, Marc Ferrara, 43, was convicted in Jersey City, N.J., in the 1982 hammer-beating death of his girlfriend, but perhaps because of testimony that the victim had hit Ferrara first, the jury found him guilty only of aggravated manslaughter instead of murder. However, unknown to the jury, the state supreme court had ruled in 1993 that the manslaughter statute in effect in 1982 was subject to a five-year statute of limitations (since changed), which meant that Ferrara could not be convicted, and, thus, he walked free.

-- Dog owners trying to place their pooches with a day care service are encountering screening processes that resemble those for child admissions at elite preschools, according to a May Wall Street Journal report. Urban Tails, in Houston, requires a four-page "dog personality profile" and an evaluative "peer session" with other dogs. Dog Day Afternoons Country Day Prep in Boston requires two letters of reference, a seven-page application, and an "interview." After her "Ghillie" was turned down by one service, a woman acknowledged to the reporter that maybe her dog is "not gifted."

-- Methamphetamine Blues: Dentists interviewed for a June New York Times story said they are increasingly seeing patients who are addicted to the caustic methamphetamine chemicals and who demonstrate "meth mouth" in which healthy teeth turn grayish-brown and (according to the Times) "begin to fall out, and take on a peculiar texture less like that of hard enamel and more like that of a piece of ripened fruit." (And in March in Carthage, Tenn., Scott Stewart was sentenced to eight years in prison for running a home meth lab, despite his insistence that his goal was mainly to ensure that his meth was "safe" from the harmful chemicals other makers were putting into their products.)

-- Among the accusations against Glenn Marcus, 52, arrested in New York City in May for allegedly detaining women and torturing them as sex slaves, are that he forced one of his victims to also create a Web site for him to market his sex photos and another victim to operate the Web site for up to 10 hours a day.

-- Chinese men smoke cigarettes at twice the rate U.S. men do, according to a June dispatch from Guiyang by Toronto's Globe and Mail, and that includes an estimated 60 percent of male Chinese doctors, with about 90 percent of the men believing that smoking is either not harmful or actually healthful. Implicated in these beliefs is the government, whose cigarette monopoly sells 1.8 trillion units a year (at the equivalent of about 25 cents (U.S.) a pack) and apparently disseminates its own feel-good messages about smoking (e.g., that it enhances brain function, relieves schizophrenia, reduces the risk of Parkinson's disease), despite also requiring small health warnings on the package.

-- The Continuing Campaign to Make Sure No One Is Ever Offended: Organizers of the June 28 re-enactment of the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, near Portsmouth, England (in which Britain's Admiral Nelson soundly defeated French and Spanish ships), have decided to remove all references to the defeated nations, calling the mock battle one between the "red" and the "blue," so as not to offend visiting dignitaries.

(1) The South Carolina House's Judiciary Committee, voting in mid-April on two bills to upgrade the crimes of, respectively, gamecock fighting and spousal abuse, from misdemeanors to felonies, passed the former but tabled the latter for the remainder of 2005. (2) Jerry Adams, deputy finance commissioner of Tennessee, was stranded for 13 hours in an elevator in the state Capitol in May without the use of the emergency telephone because the phone's line had been disconnected over the state's nonpayment of the bill.

Adventures in Foil: Anthony Hudson, 43, a former city council candidate and a host of a cable TV program, was arrested in a disturbance in Akron, Ohio, in April; he was covered in silver Mylar foil, wearing an athletic supporter over his trousers, and calling himself the "King of Egypt." And housing authorities in Sacramento, Calif., ordered the D'Souzas on Timberwood Court to take down the sheets of aluminum they had placed around their home to stop the neighbors from allegedly bombarding them with radio waves, which they say had given them headaches, lupus and other illnesses. A Code Enforcement spokesman said there was also foil aplenty covering the inside of the house.

In May, sheriff's deputies in Albuquerque arrested four men on drug-trafficking charges with the inadvertent help of the 2-year-old son of one of the men, according to an Albuquerque Journal story. The father had accidentally locked his keys and his son inside his Cadillac SUV, and the boy had used the OnStar emergency button, which generated a phone call to the sheriff, and deputies arrived to find the father still pleading for his son to unlock the door (which OnStar eventually opened electronically). Deputies became suspicious at all the late-night hubbub and in a consensual search of a nearby trailer belonging to another of the men, found 1,700 pounds of marijuana.

Latest Toilet Litigation: Scott A. Keller filed a lawsuit in March against the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, claiming he was seriously injured when a wall-mounted toilet at a rest stop collapsed, sending him to the floor, causing whiplash and other injuries to his neck and back. And John Jenkins, 53, filed a lawsuit in Morgantown, W.Va., in June against the general contractor Chisler Inc. and another company, claiming that a portable toilet at a construction site exploded while he was using it (due to leaking methane gas underneath, which his cigarette ignited). Jenkins said he suffered severe burns to his face, neck, arms, torso and legs.

Michelle Alabaster, 36, of Bexleyheath, England, finally prevailed in May, nine years after filing her lawsuit against her then-employer for having (illegally, she contended) awarded her vacation pay at the rate she was making on the date of her application for vacation instead of the rate she was making on the last day before vacation. Her total winnings: the equivalent of about $495, including interest. But more money was at stake in the battle in New York between Nicholas Purpura, 62, and his ex-wife, Barbara, who married in 1983 and have been fighting over millions of dollars since their 1988 divorce. The New York Post reported in March that the case is "lurching to an end." Four of the judges who heard earlier parts of the case have since died.

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

Gerardo Flores, 19, was convicted of murder in June in Lufkin, Texas, in the death of the 5-month-old fetus of his girlfriend, Erica Basoria. Flores admitted that he had stood on Basoria's stomach several times at her request to induce a miscarriage, but Basoria had told authorities that she had also punched herself in the stomach several times. Under Texas law, killing a fetus is a capital offense, and so Flores automatically received a life sentence, but Basoria could not be charged because of her constitutional right to abortion.

-- (1) British entrepreneur Colin Dowse recently introduced Sprayonmud (about US$14 a quart), dirty water chemically treated for greater stickiness, mainly for urban SUV owners to pass themselves off as all-terrain adventurers. (2) The maker of Doggles (which for several years has sold sunglasses for dogs at about $25) now offers corrective-lens Doggles starting at $75, which veterinary ophthalmologists can prescribe as alternatives to $2,000 lens-replacement surgery, according to a March report by KMGH-TV in Denver.

-- In the last few years, Taiwan entrepreneurs have opened restaurants with motifs such as prisons, zombies and Mao Zedong, but the latest is Eric Wang's "Marton," in Kaohsiung, whose theme is the toilet. All seats are what you would think, with food served on a glass tabletop resting on a bathtub, and some of the delicacies are presented in miniature toilet bowls (among them, curry hot pot, and disturbingly, chocolate ice cream).

-- Recent scholarly findings (reduced to their essence in a May Wall Street Journal column): It's much easier to identify someone if he is physically near you than if he is up to 450 feet away (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, February). People who choose their careers carefully, rather than on a whim, experience greater job satisfaction (Journal of Economic Psychology, vol. 26, no.3). College students tend to drink more alcoholic beverages than they realize (Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, April). If patients voluntarily tell a doctor about a bad side effect of a medicine, they are more likely to be switched to a safer one than if they don't (Archives of Internal Medicine, January).

-- According to a study by Professor Martin Gibala and others, published in the June Journal of Applied Physiology, people can get the health benefits associated with two hours' cycling in just two minutes. Gibala said that over a two-week period, two hours daily of moderate-speed riding made cyclists no healthier than four all-out, to-the-max 30-second bursts daily (with four minutes' rest in between). (However, all subjects were already at least moderate exercisers.)

-- (1) New York state Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, from Manhattan, introduced a bill in June to require a minimum wage for comedians (at least $125 per 20-minute show at comedy clubs on weekends and $28 on weekdays). (2) North Carolina correctional officials began rethinking inmate manufacturing programs recently when they discovered that, even though they pay prisoners only $3 a day in their T-shirt-making concession, suppliers in Bangladesh can make the shirts for 38 percent less.

-- London's Housing Market: Agence France Presse reported in May that an agency had just rented out a 54-square-foot apartment in Notting Hill (loft bed over a kitchenette, closet and shower) for the equivalent of US$1,065 a month. And in the Haringey Park neighborhood, developer Andrew Markey proposed to convert the kitchen and hallway of a house he owns into its own two-story townhouse (producing a living room 21 feet by 8 feet). Agents said such a house might go for the equivalent of US$325,000, but in June, the local council rejected his initial plans.

In March, Mark Allen Shook, 43, attempting to flee (with his dog) Mountain Ranch, Calif., police officers who had come to arrest him on a domestic violence charge, was captured after a chaotic fight during which the dog bit off part of Shook's ear. And in Eltham, England, in May, a family's dog, chasing a ball, bumped the ladder on which a man was standing to trim some bushes with a chainsaw, causing him to fall and fatally slice the neck of his wife, who was holding the ladder.

(1) Five Buddhist monks in Bangkok were defrocked in May after a street fight culminating years of hostility between two temples, according to a Reuters dispatch. Said one (who used brass knuckles), "When an ordinary person is given a middle-finger sign, he will be mad. So will I." (2) In May, a 1,500-pound camel named Poon, roaming around his home at the Mayle Farm in Shinnston, W.Va., decided to sit down on top of a woman who was painting a fence. No one could hear her muffled screams, but she managed to call 911 on her cell phone, and help arrived just as Poon had begun to bite her.

In March, The Australian newspaper identified an upswing in the business of some beauticians who have responded to customers' desires to lighten the skin around their anuses. A beautician in Sydney said she had long been helping sex workers for that condition but that lately the clients are civilians trying to please boyfriends who are taken by how "clean and light" porno actresses seem. Said another beautician of the ingredient she uses, "I explain that it will give them eczema and (other problems), but they want it anyway."

Easy Identifications: (1) Awiey "Chucky" Hernandez, 20, was arrested when he went to the 90th Precinct station house in Brooklyn, N.Y., to check on the status of a pal and inadvertently stood directly in front of his own "wanted" poster (on robbery and drug charges). The in-custody pal Hernandez had come to inquire about was Huquan "Guns" Gavin, 18, who appears with him on the poster. (2) Charles Cross Jr., was arrested on the street minutes after allegedly robbing a Fifth Third Bank in Louisville, Ky., in May, because he displayed the effects of having been looking directly into his stash bag at the moment the red-dye device exploded.

Even though AIDS continues to spread through sub-Saharan Africa, the pernicious custom of the village "cleanser" persists in Zambia, Kenya, Malawi and other countries (mentioned in News of the Weird in 2003). When a husband dies, the widow traditionally must break the marital bond by soon having sex again, lest the entire village be spiritually condemned. The preferred partner is a relative of the husband, but if none is available, the village leader calls on a professional "cleanser" who performs the task in exchange for a chicken or other remuneration. According to a May New York Times dispatch from Malawi, cleansers believe that wearing a condom will provoke other bad spirits.

A man fell to his death from an overpass onto Interstate 5 in Seattle, the loser of a who-can-hang-the-longer game with a friend (May). And a 22-year-old intoxicated man from Aberystwyth, Wales, accidentally fell through a window and fatally landed on a spiked fence after having pulled down his trousers and screamed to no one in particular, "Who wants some of this?" (April). And in Frederick, Md., a judge convicted Ben Meacham, 23, on two misdemeanor counts for his role in the death of a 21-year-old pal, who had said he wanted to do something unusual on his motorcycle because it was about to be repossessed over a loan default. With Meacham videotaping, the pal, pantsless, did a wheelie before losing control and accidentally, fatally ramming a parked truck (June).

Yamaha Corp. recently introduced the MyRoom, which is a customizable, soundproof, shed-like structure, with 27 square feet of floor space, for installation inside notoriously crowded Japanese homes, so that a resident can get privacy (or be exiled if he or she gets annoying). The company expects a sales surge in 2006, when Japan's first wave of baby-boom salarymen retire and begin staying home a lot. Yamaha developed the MyRoom concept for musicians to practice in, but subsequently realized that the boxes (which sell for the equivalent of about US$5,500) had a much larger appeal.

-- James Carroll Bayley, 44, pleaded guilty in May to killing his brother, Robert, in an incident in Raleigh, N.C., in which James alleged that Robert had come by, drunk, to retrieve his power drill that James had borrowed. James told the judge that he certainly didn't mean to kill Robert, but had grabbed his gun for protection, then "shot him in the right leg to knock him down." "Then," said James, "after a short time, I shot him in the head to make him dizzy so he would fall."

-- In May, Mr. Oran Ambus was locked in a standoff with the St. Louis dog pound, which was holding his 9-month-old rottweiler. Ambus could pick up the dog any time he wanted, reported KSDK radio, provided he would neuter him, but he refused, citing the Book of Leviticus, which he believes permits animals in heaven only if they are unaltered. (Thus was Ambus' dilemma: Get his dog back unholy or, given the pound's put-to-sleep policy, allow its imminent, but holy, demise.)

-- A man (identified in court papers as John Doe), who suffered injuries and sexual dysfunction 11 years ago when a woman unexpectedly changed positions during intercourse (and fell on him and fractured his penis), was again turned down in his attempt to sue the woman. The Court of Appeals of Massachusetts said in May that it would be impossible for a judge or jury to decide which movements in consensual sex were legally reasonable or unreasonable.

-- The San Diego Union Tribune reported in April that Los Angeles Angels' first baseman Darin Erstad was wearing a leather-pouched "balance necklace" of minerals that (according to the manufacturer) will "achieve alignment of body, mind and spirit" and "address the electro-pollution, toxic vapors, scars, surgeries and traumas to the skin by organizing the quantum nature of man," which are things important to Erstad to avoid the kinds of injuries he had experienced in previous seasons. Erstad said that since he has been injury-free so far in 2005, "it must be working," but the player who recommended the necklace, teammate Steve Finley, is substantially underperforming so far this season.

(1) Julie Atkins, 38, of Derby, England, featured in a May BBC TV documentary on childbirth because her three daughters gave birth last year at, respectively, ages 12, 14 and 16, told the Sunday Mercury newspaper: "I don't care what people say about me. I blame the schools. Sex education for young girls should be better." (2) Tommy Rollins Jr., 26, who police say shot Missouri state trooper Brandon Brashear nine times during a traffic stop (chasing him onto the median of Interstate 470 in Kansas City), told reporters in May, "The society's what caused me to do what I did. Just look at the society we live in." (At press time, Brashear was in critical condition.)

(1) In Eatonton, N.J., in March, a man carjacked a van even though, unknown to him beforehand, it was transporting inmates from Northern State Prison to a highway work detail. (The suspect was arrested after a 70-mile chase.) (2) Washington's King County agreed in April to pay $23 million to Stockpot Soups to relocate to make room for a prospective sewage-treatment plant. Until recently, Stockpot had famously tormented its neighbors most Mondays and Tuesdays (its onion-soup-making days) with a putrid, body-odor-type smell.

-- A reporter for the Elyria (Ohio) Chronicle-Telegram, observing the workings of modern pothole-filling technology for an April story on the local street department, described the "Super-Patcher" machine as releasing a flow of "what appeared to be greasy, black beans" following a "phlegm-textured stream of sticky tar" that "coated the pothole like a pound of snot."

-- After a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show proclaimed the use of Premarin vaginal cream and Preparation H on her face to smooth out wrinkles, Baltimore's WBAL-TV did a follow-up with local doctors, who generally agreed that the ingredients might work but were nonetheless harmful to facial skin. Said female Maryland gynecologist Terry Hoffman, "Personally, if something is meant for my 'hu-ha,' I don't think I'm going to put it on my eyes."

-- (1) Michael Lewis, 27, decided for some reason to fire his pellet gun at a .22-caliber bullet lying on a picnic table to see if he could hit it. He did; it exploded; and some of the bullet fragments lodged in his groin. He was hospitalized at Salina (Kan.) Regional Medical Center in March. (Police said alcohol was not involved, leaving "judgment" as the likely explanation.) (2) Justin Mitchell Oaks, 21, and his wife were miraculously uninjured after Oaks inadvertently drove their Toyota Corolla underneath an 18-wheeler on Interstate 10 in Tucson, Ariz., in April, got stuck, and was dragged 800 feet before the truck could stop. (Alcohol was not the problem here, either, but rather a cell-phone conversation.)

-- Christopher Lamping, 20 at the time, was arrested for DUI in Indiana, Pa., in March, after he leaned on the horn repeatedly through three light changes because the car in front of him would not go through the green lights. The car in front was a marked Indiana police cruiser whose officers were talking to a man on the sidewalk, and after hearing enough of Lamping's horn, one officer walked over and noticed Lamping's odor of alcohol. According to the Indiana Gazette story, Lamping later explained that he "just didn't think of" driving around the stopped car.

Australian Jo Lapidge is the latest to offer a toilet training system for cats, according to a May Reuters dispatch. Her Litter-Kwitter is a four-step process to accustom the cat to relieve itself over a toilet bowl: (1) a red toilet-seat "disc" on top of cat litter; (2) the red-seat-and-litter device placed on top of the bowl requiring the cat to jump up to use it; (3) a yellow-seat disc without litter but with a small hole so that the water below is not prominent; and (4) a green-seat disc with a larger hole. Lapidge said it took eight weeks to train her cat, Doogal, even with his problem of climbing voluntarily into the bowl from time to time to play.

The following people accidentally shot themselves recently: Accused taxicab robber Rodriguez Massett (in the foot, while running from police) (Roswell, Ga., May). Convenience store clerk Bunny Nat (in the hip, while adjusting the "protection" gun he carries in his waistband) (Des Moines, Iowa, April). A 21-year-old man (who, while horsing around, fatally believed an "unloaded" gun could not also have a bullet in the chamber) (Tacoma, Wash., April). A 16-year-old boy (in the leg, while aiming at a snake in his yard) (Port Wentworth, Ga., June). Kole Eugene Maxwell, 18 (shot himself three times during one session of cleaning his 9mm pistol) (Centre, Ala., May).