Another Underreported Success Story in the Rebuilding of Iraq: "Abu Mustafa" (a nickname) is part of a small market of vendors of pornographic videos operating in Baghdad, according to an August Reuters dispatch, and sells about 50 DVDs a day, with movies from Lebanon and other Arab countries the most popular. "I tried lots of other jobs," he said, but this was his most promising opportunity (although he said the righteous Shi'ite Badr Brigades have threatened to kill him and his approximately 30 competitors in the Bab al-Sharjee neighborhood).

-- Australian surfer Shane Willmott of the country's Gold Coast became a national media sensation in July when reporters showed up to watch him put his three trained mouse surfers through their paces, in local creeks and in the Pacific Ocean. Willmott trained them in a bathtub and built them little surfboards and little jet skis.

-- A week apart in August, police in Searcy, Ark., and Victoria, British Columbia, reported increases in local behaviors that they both strangely but confidently attributed to methamphetamine addiction. Searcy police say that almost all of the meth addicts they arrest have collections of arrowheads in their homes, gathered from lengthy forays into local fields, and Victoria police report a similar fascination with bicycle parts. Authorities in both places say meth makes users need to keep their hands busy on menial tasks. (Said a Victoria constable, "They sit in the bush with hundreds of (bicycle) parts just fiddling with them all day.")

-- In May, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation made a $700,000 grant to a World Wildlife Fund program to protect the apparently gorgeous forests in the Himalayan nation of Bhutan even though (according to a 2003 report in National Geographic) the recipient of the attention, the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, was explicitly created to protect Bhutan's version of "Bigfoot." Bhutan's "yeti" is called the "migoi" and is about 5 feet tall, covered with hair except for a face, smells horrible, and disguises its four-legged tracks by carefully making sure to leave only two prints.

In Kimberly, British Columbia, in July, trying to establish a Guinness Book record, 644 people at a music festival played their accordions simultaneously for half an hour. And in August, the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald reported that business is strong for local resident John Flannery, who at age 78 still works 15 to 20 times a month posing for artists as a nude model.

-- "Sex Offenders": Charbel Hamaty, of Lebanese descent, spent six months in jail in Raleigh, N.C., after being arrested last year for "molesting" his infant son, with the evidence consisting of family snapshots of Hamaty playfully kissing the nude tot's belly button. Only after a protest campaign did a judge finally dismiss the charge, according to a July report by WRAL-TV. Not so lucky was Fitzroy Barnaby of Evanston, Ill., who angrily grabbed the arm of a 14-year-old girl whom he almost ran into as she was playing dangerously in traffic. He was convicted under the state's "restraining a minor" statute, which requires that its violators be listed as sex offenders (even though the trial judge and, in June, the state Appellate Court, both discounted any sexual motive).

-- Ohio state alcohol and drug undercover agent Timothy Gales was accused, after an internal investigation, of having undermined his own teenage confidential informant in a Columbus store that the pair were probing for selling cigarettes to minors. According to the official report (described in the Columbus Dispatch in July), Gales stood alongside the teenager, and when the clerk proceeded with the sale, Gale asked, "Hey, aren't you supposed to ask for ID?" It was allegedly Gales' second blown-sting incident this year.

-- Elijah Walker, 35, who pleaded guilty to cocaine possession in Cincinnati in June, resisted complying with the state requirement that he also give up a DNA sample, in that he feared the state would use it to create a clone of him. (Said the prosecutor, reassuringly, "I'm not sure the state really wants another Elijah Walker.")

Earlier this year, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Belfast, Northern Ireland, banned the use of the term "brainstorming" when referring to thinking up ideas, instead decreeing that staff will use the term "thought showers" since the former term might be offensive to some people with brain injuries. And New York City mayoral candidate C. Virginia Fields apologized in July for telling a reporter that, when she was arrested in a civil rights protest in the South in 1963, police took her away in a "paddy wagon." She said the term could be offensive to some Irish-Americans.

(1) Arlyne Reiter, of Pompano Beach, Fla., describing the experience of having just arisen in the morning to encounter an iguana in her bathroom: "It was like Jurassic Park in my toilet." (2) Connecticut saddle-maker Mike Derrick, on why he set up a booth in Boston at the August Fetish Fair Fleamarket: He could spend six hours creating a bridle for a horse and earn $40, he said, but "make one for a human, $120."

In Clovis, N.M., in July, Danny J. Jimenez, 51, was sentenced to six years in prison for a pair of 2003 burglaries. Police had captured Jimenez by following the blood trail that stemmed from his encounter with a pawn shop's glass jewelry case. Later, investigators learned that an injury to Jimenez's head did not come from the jewelry case but occurred when Jimenez accidentally hit himself with a hammer while burglarizing a church later that night. Said a detective, "(Jimenez) had a big, round (indentation) in his forehead that was consistent with the hammer that I found." (And, as if he needed more misery, Jimenez's loot bag broke during his getaway, causing him to lose most of the jewelry, anyway.)

Among the stories fabricated by the former New Republic writer Stephen Glass was a March 1998 description (picked up, unfortunately, by News of the Weird) of two Wall Street companies' ritual worship of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. (One supposedly held a cake party and songfest on Greenspan's birthday; the other supposedly had a special office with Greenspan memorabilia to help bond traders meditate. Two months later, the magazine fired Glass and apologized for the fictions.) In August 2005, Erin Crowe, a recent art graduate of the University of Virginia, quietly placed in a New York gallery 18 paintings and sketches she had made over the years of Greenspan, a subject she chose "because his face is so interesting, his lips, his ears" and "his forehead, his comb over." As news circulated about their existence, money managers from around the country quickly bought all 18 pieces at prices up to $4,000 each.

(1) The Capitol City all-stars, bubbling with confidence that this year would be their best chance ever to win the regionals and advance to the Little League World Series, found out in June that they were out of the tournament because the District of Columbia Department of Parks and Recreation failed to send in the paperwork on time. (2) In June, the District of Columbia agency that approves charter schools turned down the Dupont Circle International Academy (a rigorous International Baccalaureate program), citing as one ground that the school will not admit or pass students who perform at below their grade level. The agency's chairman told Washington City Paper, "(A school) has to serve everybody that shows up."

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

Two extreme sports enjoying modest success recently (according to stories in, respectively, Time magazine and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin): (1) Yak-skiing in Manali, India (A person on skis and holding a bucket of nuts is attached to a yak by a long rope fixed to a pulley on a hilltop, with the yak near the top and the skier far below. The skier rattles the bucket loudly to infuriate the yak, which then charges down, yanking the skier rapidly uphill.). (2) Ancient, luge-like Hawaiian lava sledding (A daredevil lies on his stomach, 4 inches off the ground on a handcrafted board about 6 feet long, and slides down a 700-foot-long rock formation at speeds from 30 to 70 mph.).

-- In July, firefighters in Stamford, Conn., had to break a car window, against the owner's wishes, to rescue her 23-month-old son, whom she had accidentally locked inside along with the key. The kid had been sweltering for more than 20 minutes when Susan Guita Silverstein, 42 (who was later charged with reckless endangerment), implored firefighters to let her go home and get a spare key so they wouldn't have to damage her Audi A4. (For infants on an 88-degree day, 20 minutes inside is dangerous, according to the firefighters.)

-- In August, the 14-year-old daughter of Alberta Rose of Brookfield, Wis., was found safe in Baytown, Texas, after being allegedly lured there over the Internet by a 37-year-old man. Rose had reported the girl missing 12 days earlier, but had decided, since she and her boyfriend had nonrefundable airline tickets, to head out on vacation (to Lake Tahoe), but to leave authorities her cell number, in case the girl turned up.

-- In June, a judge in Edinburgh, Texas, accepted a plea bargain in which Robert W. Thompson, 46, who had pleaded no contest to aggravated sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl, was sentenced to no jail time but 320 hours of community service, to be specifically spent knitting afghans. (The judge was sympathetic to Thompson's frail heart condition.)

-- According to the law on the books in 1998 (since amended), Mitchell Johnson had to be released from prison in Memphis, Tenn., when he turned 21, which was in August. Johnson was the boy who, with a classmate, shot up their school in Jonesboro, Ark., that year, killing four girls and a teacher and wounding 10. According to the law, Johnson will have no criminal record and will presumably be free, for example, to buy a gun. (Several news organizations reported on Johnson's imminent release, but at press time, prison officials had not made a formal announcement.)

Said Glenn A. Reed, 31, upon being sentenced in Waco, Texas, in July to 99 years in prison as a habitual criminal (after rejecting a plea bargain that would have meant a 15-year sentence): "There's things I choose to do, like, if I go in a store and choose to take a Snickers bar, if you catch me, you catch me. If not, I'm going to go home and eat it up and go on about my business, dog." And then there is Lena Driskell, 78, who was indicted for the June jealous-rage fatal shooting her former boyfriend, age 85, in an Atlanta senior citizens' home and who told police upon her arrest, "I did it, and I'd do it again!"

-- Women Rising: A majority of golfers in Iran these days are women (about 800 in number), who play wearing the traditional head scarf and tunic, according to a July New York Times dispatch from Tehran. (The country's one grass course has only 12 holes after the other six were confiscated by Revolutionary Guards, but there are several sand-based courses.) Another New York Times July dispatch, from El Alto, Bolivia, reported on "Carmen Rosa" and the Cholitas, who are indigenous female wrestlers who toss each other around the ring, wearing bowler hats, shawls and multilayered skirts (clothing of their native Aymara people), as part of a Mexican- (and U.S.-) style pro wrestling circuit.

-- Reuters reported in May that Yu Haitao and his bride, Fang Shuling, had filed a complaint against their honeymoon hotel in Shanghai after Yu fell off the bed and broke his arm in front of friends and family who were preparing to give him a hard time in what is apparently a traditional "heckle the newlyweds" ceremony. Fang said the bed should have been safe to stand on.

-- Rudeness has become so prevalent in Japan, according to a May dispatch from Tokyo in The Times of London, that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has convened its commission on complaints, whose translated official name is the Study Group Relating to the Prevention of Behavior That Causes Discomfort Among Numerous People in Public Places. Among the public habits bothering various complainers are putting on makeup, sitting on the floor, uninhibitedly reading pornographic magazines, wearing strong perfume and ("unexpectedly," said the Times) "using an umbrella to practice golf swings."

-- Least Competent Animals: Veterinarian John Brunner was called to Milton, Tenn., in June to help release a cow that two hours earlier had stuck her head in a narrow, hollow opening in a tree and couldn't get it out. Using ropes and a tractor, Brunner freed her in 20 minutes. (Said the cow's owner, "It's a nosy animal.") And in August, police in Tenafly, N.J., used bolt cutters to remove the plastic mayonnaise jar that a coyote from the Tenafly Nature Center had gotten stuck on its snout.

-- Super-Forgetful People: The director of a Canadian landmine-detection company said in August that he had flown back from Sri Lanka with TNT in his luggage that he had just forgotten about. (Three airport security systems missed it.) And a 24-year-old man was arrested in August at the Oklahoma City airport for having a homemade pipe bomb in his luggage that he said he had just forgotten about. And when a 36-year-old woman was arrested for bigamy in Hordaland County, Norway, in June, she told officers that she had just forgotten she was already married.

Recurring Themes: Christopher Franklin, 20, became the latest man to flee from police on foot (from a traffic stop in Moore, Okla., in June) only to have his getaway aborted when he tripped on his loose, baggy pants (having run only about 30 feet). And in Durham, N.C., Otis Wilkins, 45, was charged with attempted murder of his ex-girlfriend and others in July for tossing a plastic bottle filled with gunpowder into their car, except that, as sometimes happens, he missed the window, and the bottle bounced back at his feet, igniting his clothes into a fireball, sending him to the hospital.

It has been 13 years since Stella Liebeck won that monumental $2.9 million verdict against McDonald's after she spilled her hot coffee on her lap, causing third-degree burns (with damages later reduced to $640,000). In August, Rachel Wahrenberg filed a similar lawsuit after her 6-year-old daughter was burned over 80 percent of her body in an Estero, Fla., McDonald's. The coffee was "unreasonably" hot, said Wahrenberg, even though the actual injury this time occurred when a 79-year-old customer carrying the coffee collided with the girl on his way to the condiment counter.

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

Update: In July 2004, as News of the Weird mentioned, a federal appeals court ruled that the leak-safety standards for the long-awaited nuclear waste depository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain were too weak, in that the Environmental Protection Agency would regard the facility as safe for only 10,000 years (almost five times the length of time since the birth of Jesus). One National Academy of Sciences panel had recommended against the site unless leak safety could be certified for at least 300,000 years. In August 2005, EPA issued a revised durability standard, now claiming the site would be free of unsafe leaks for a million years. (Context: 110 years ago, science had not even discovered radioactivity.)

-- A 1958 Pablo Picasso original, "Atelier de Cannes," was placed on sale recently by the discount chain Costco (at its Web site Costco.com), priced to move at the retail-type listing of $129,999.99. Costco began offering art on consignment from dealers last year, but "Atelier" (a crayon drawing authenticated by daughter Maya Picasso) is by far its most expensive piece. According to an August report in the New York Post, the company extends its regular guarantee of full refund if dissatisfied.

-- A Pakistani company, The Resource Group, seeking more call-center work from U.S. firms, set up an office this year in Washington, D.C., a block from the White House, and installed a receptionist, live from Karachi, via a flat-screen TV on the office wall. According to a May Washington Post report, Ms. Saadia Musa cheerily greets visitors, answers and routes phone calls to the Washington office, lets in deliverymen, and orders sandwiches from down the street.

-- In July, Uttar Pradesh Eunuchs Association, in Lucknow, India, demanded that the district magistrate and the senior superintendent of police order cops to begin exposing fake eunuchs by lifting their skirts to verify their status. Charlatans, according to the group, deprive real eunuchs of "legitimate" income (a large part of which derives from eunuchs' entering places of business and private parties, exposing themselves and otherwise being obnoxious, and demanding a fee to leave).

Police in West Hartford, Conn., arrested Matthew Flynn, 46, in August for allegedly threatening to castrate a Melly's ice-cream truck driver with a pair of hedge clippers because the driver blared his jingle on and on and on, even though Flynn told him that no kids lived on the street. And David Owen Rye, 48, was arrested in Los Angeles 10 days earlier for allegedly firing at least three bullets into a Toyota Camry in an apartment-house parking lot because its car alarm wouldn't shut off.

-- Fire-Freaking: Apparently, forest fires make the jewel beetle (also known as the black fire beetle) frisky, according to Dr. Helmut Schmitz and colleagues at the University of Bonn (Germany), for males and females will fly toward one in a mating frenzy after detecting even the faraway flickering of flames and crackling of burning wood. Schmitz, and predecessor William George Evans, hypothesized that the fire eliminates the beetle's predators and prevents tree secretion from trapping the beetle larvae, according to a March report by BBC News.

-- In research published in May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biologist Brian Langerhans and colleagues found that large genitals in some fish species (such as the western and Bahamas mosquitofish) represent evolutionary pluses and minuses. Apparently, females prefer well-endowed mating partners, but on the other hand, well-hung males tend to have shorter life spans because, weighted down as they are, they cannot swim away from predators as nimbly as can mosquitofish with smaller endowments.

Sam, the 14-year-old Chinese crested, won in June for the third time as the World's Ugliest Dog at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in California. According to an Associated Press reporter, the hairless dog's "wrinkled brown skin is covered with splotches; a line of warts marches down his snout; his blind eyes are an alien, milky white; and a fleshy flap of skin hangs from his withered neck. And then there's the Austin Powers teeth that jut at odd angles from his mouth." Owner Susie Lockheed said that even the judges recoiled when they first saw him. (Fortunately, for those concerned with dog beauty, Sam has been neutered.)

(1) On July 3 in San Marcos, Texas, Dave Newman, 48, rescued a swimmer caught in the currents of the San Marcos River, pulling the man underneath a waterfall and to shore. However, when Newman tried to climb out of the water, a police officer offered his hand but only to arrest Newman for interfering with "official" rescuers (who, of course, failed to get to the man before Newman did). (2) According to police in Jacksonville, N.C., Dorothea Thomas was shot six times by her boyfriend in June and forced to jump from her apartment's second-story balcony to survive, but by the time she returned from the hospital, her landlord of nine years, United Dominion Residential Community, had posted an eviction notice, kicking her out for letting such a dangerous man come onto the property.

-- Star wide receiver Brandon Jackson might just play in at least half of Lancaster (Texas) High School's football games this season because he doesn't go to court until Oct. 17 on six counts of aggravated robbery from two January armed holdups. Lancaster High's dedication to the presumption of innocence for high school football players is apparently so strong that the only remaining issues, at press time, were (1) whether his relocation from his previous high school will be permitted under the general rules on transfer and (2) whether he will be allowed to remove his ankle monitor during games.

-- Werner D. Anderson was arrested on several traffic violations in Missoula County, Mont., in June after a two-county car chase with deputies that ended with Anderson creeping along at 20 mph until he stopped. Deputies say that when Anderson finally got out of his van, a syringe fell to the ground, and Anderson said he had been driving so slowly at the end because he needed to shoot up with cocaine one last time before he got arrested.

Jeremy Suggs, 21, was arrested in Las Vegas in August and charged with robbing a Wells Fargo bank, done in by the familiar lapse of having accidentally left behind his wallet and a name-imprinted deposit slip. Also, according to police, he had fired two shots in the bank out of frustration at noncompliance with his demands, with one narrowly missing his own head, and had to re-count down a threat to shoot ("5, 4, 3, 2, 1") when no one gave him money the first time. His alleged partner and getaway driver, known as "Jap," had supposedly talked him into the crime by assuring him that there were no surveillance cameras, but of course there were.

(1) The owner of Al's Lock and Safe in North Platte, Neb., made a truck key in June based entirely on looking at an X-ray of the key inside the stomach of Arthur Richardson, who had accidentally swallowed it in an inept attempt to play a prank on the friend of his who owned the truck. The friend said he needed the truck right away and couldn't wait for Arthur to receive a nature's call. (2) Grandmother-of-six Mari Savage and other senior friends in Margate, England, began a campaign this summer to wear hooded sweatshirts and baseball caps, in order to discourage teenagers from dressing that way, which Savage believes encourages gang behavior. Said Savage, to the Daily Telegraph, "Once older people like us get hold of (these garments), they lose all their street cred."

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