Are We Safe? In a two-day period in March, alarming reports revealed that "dirty (radiation) bombs" easily entered the country in car trunks in tests, that one-third of U.S. civilian nuclear research reactors were insufficiently secure, and that concerns were heightened about the 2,000 shoulder-fired missiles said to be unaccounted for in the world's arsenals. On the other hand, the Los Angeles Times reported that the fishing village of Dillingham, Alaska, at least, is secure, now that a $200,000 Homeland Security anti-terrorism grant has paid for 60 "downtown" surveillance cameras (with 20 more to come). Dillingham (pop. 2,400) is about 300 miles from Anchorage, with no roads linking it to anywhere.

-- In earnest testimony in March, Douglas Dyer explained how it was just bad luck that his married girlfriend got shot twice, fatally, in the middle of her back by the rifle he was holding. Dyer said he had originally intended to kill himself, but when she grabbed at the gun to stop him, it fired into her hand. Then, as she ran out a door, he followed and bumped the door open with the gun, causing it to fire and accidentally hit her flush in the back. As his body flinched from the shot, banging into a wall, the rifle again accidentally fired, putting another bullet in the center of her back. (The Rockland, Maine, jury apparently didn't believe a word of it and convicted him of murder.)

-- Brian Blair is now a Republican county commissioner in Tampa, Fla., but before that was a professional wrestler for 20 years. He now says it wasn't the dropkicks, pile drivers or neck breakers that ended his career, but rather tripping over a tray of dirty dishes at a Carrabba's Italian Grill in Tampa in 2001, which he said injured his head, shoulder and knee, and his lawsuit is still pending. (His previous lawyers resigned in March.) Blair wrestled for four months after that injury, but said the matches were the less-strenuous "tag-team" contests. Also, hospital records show a blood-alcohol reading of 0.089 90 minutes after the incident, though Blair told the Tampa Tribune he only had a sip.

-- At the Nov. 14 meeting of the governing board of Provincetown, Mass., Selectwoman Sarah Peake raised a formal objection to the continued presence of the historical painting that graces the board's meeting room, though it is of a previously uncontroversial scene of Pilgrims voting on the Mayflower Compact. Peake's objection (according to a November report in the Boston Globe) is that there are no women in the painting.

-- Super-Compelling: (1) John Melo's lawsuit demanding re-sentencing was rejected in March by the Middlesex County, Mass., Superior Court. Facing a term of "10 years," Melo had complained that a couple of "Feb. 29's" were included in that time, and since a "year" is usually 365 days, he should not be serving 366 days during leap years. (2) According to the Hartwell (Ga.) Sun, state Sen. Nancy Schaefer, speaking at an "issues day" event in February, said one reason illegal immigrants find work in the United States was because "50 million" abortions have caused a U.S. labor shortage: "We could have used those people."

Ms. Zulima Farber became the New Jersey attorney general in January even though her public record shows 13 speeding tickets, three license suspensions, and two bench warrants (for failure to appear in court regarding the tickets). Farber acknowledged "embarrassment" at the record and joked that it might take "psychoanalysis" to learn why she did those things. (However, a psychoanalyst interviewed by the New York Daily News rejected the suggestion. Farber, said the doctor, just "needs a spanking.")

-- The Christian Diocese of Mizoram in northeast India, which was established by Welsh Presbyterian missionaries who worked the area from 1840 to around 1960, announced in March that it would send a missionary back to Wales because it was clear that the Welsh are in serious spiritual decline. "The Mizos," said Rev. Zosang Colney, "have a burden to do something for their Mother Church in Wales," since fewer than 1 in 10 Welsh regularly attend services.

-- What Goes Around, Comes Around: (1) England's Norwich Union insurance company reached a settlement in January with its employee Linda Riley over her workplace injuries. Riley had tripped over a pile of claim forms in the office. (2) Protesters filed a lawsuit against New York City recently, raising familiar complaints about police behavior: that NYPD harassed peaceful demonstrators during a 2004 rally, herded participants into pens, and intimidated speakers and supporters with threats. However, the plaintiff in this lawsuit is the police officers' union, whose members were protesting the slow pace of contract negotiations with the city.

-- Not Your Father's Hell's Angels: Police were investigating the Hell's Angels chapter in Stockholm, Sweden, in February after 70 members claimed government benefits for being "depressed." Police said the gang had largely abandoned its reliance on shootouts and bomb attacks and moved into crimes like tax fraud.

Recent drivers who decided, for reasons known only to them, to get naked before taking the wheel: (1) A woman, her toddler and her mother (all naked), Norwood, N.Y., sitting in a parked car (February). (2) John Persico, Providence, R.I., smashed into several cars naked (February). (3) Natalie Peterson, 23, Roy, Utah, shucked her clothes after an argument with her aunt (March). (4) Eric Wayne, 57, Pocono Township, Pa. (An officer who knew him said Wayne "tends to get a little weird" when he's been without sex) (arraigned in March). (5) A man and woman, ages 59 and 70, Cologno al Serio, Italy (joyriding nude) (March).

-- Outstanding Police Work: (1) A 40-year-old man in Cedarburg, Wis., was arrested on suspicion of DUI when police noticed the severed hose of a gas station pump sticking out of his car's fuel door. (It belonged to a Kwik Trip station.) (2) Daniel Nordell, 52, with a history of DUI, was arrested in March when police saw him driving through downtown Waupaca, Wis., in reverse (because he said the other gears wouldn't work). (3) A 44-year-old man was arrested for DUI in Australia's Northern Territory in March after he asked a police officer how to get to the hard-to-miss Uluru (Ayers Rock, the huge, 1,000-foot-high rock formation that appears red in sunlight), which was about 300 feet in front of him, illuminated in his headlights.

-- Maxcy Dean Filer made News of the Weird in 1989 for his legendary relentlessness in that, after graduating from law school, he failed the California bar exam 46 times, finally passing in 1991. He now practices in Compton, Calif., but last year was put on probation for failing to file a particular document, and was scheduled to take an exam in March on ethics and professional responsibility. Though exams have not been good to Filer, the result of this one has not been reported.

-- Crime Really Doesn't Pay: In July 2005, News of the Weird reported Jared Gipson's extremely bad idea of trying to rob Blalock's Beauty College in Shreveport, La. The 20 students and teachers inside (almost all women) beat him to a pulp with curling irons, hair dryers, chairs, a table leg, and their fists (leaving him with 21 cuts that had to be stitched). In March 2006, Gipson, 24, was sentenced for that attempted robbery, and as a recidivist, got 25 years in prison (and might have received more except that several of the women asked the judge for leniency).

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

You Might Want to Do Your Shoplifting Elsewhere: Increasingly, police departments and government offices (customs agencies, NASA, even the FBI) rely on state-of-the-art investigation support from the Target Corp. (as in Target department stores), according to a January Washington Post report. Target's world-class forensics lab in Minneapolis is the first choice by many departments for examination of surveillance tapes and other evidence, and it was Target in the mid-1990s that finally moved agencies to coordinate previously incompatible databases of criminals (treating the felon population as a nationwide "inventory control" problem). A Target executive said he works for "a high-tech company masquerading as a retailer."

-- During President Bush's recent trip to India, 17 Secret Service Labradors and German shepherds accompanying him (each with its own police "rank," such as "lieutenant") were housed in five-star hotels in Delhi, according to local press stories (but Delhi police dogs, assisting in the same missions, went home to kennels). Faring less well was one of the three teams of search-and-rescue dogs assigned to find Hurricane Katrina victims, which had to be sent home in March because of a hotel-booking snafu, for which FEMA and Louisiana officials blamed each other.

-- How to Be a Police Department: In California, a police department can be created if a local government gives a transportation contract to a private company, automatically empowering that company to hire its own cops, who, though not allowed to make arrests, can carry guns, access police databases, and receive government anti-terrorist grants. The law achieved notoriety in February when Internet millionaire Stefan Eriksson's Ferrari crashed in Malibu, and he later made confusing statements, including the revelation that he is the "deputy commissioner" of the "San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority" police, a post he acquired by starting a modest bus service for the elderly.

-- Questionable Policies: (1) The Wood Methodist Church was informed in March by the town council in Dudley, England, that it owed an "advertising fee" of the equivalent of about $130 to put up a cross. (Town regulations specify that a "cross" is an ad for Christianity.) (2) In March, Apache County, N.M., contracted to pay up to $100,000 to a former Arizona attorney general to investigate Apache's sheriff, Brian Hounshell, who, after an exhaustive previous investigation (whose cost was not revealed), was accused of misspending $8,000 of taxpayer money.

The publisher Powerhouse Books (and its imprint Rosen Editions) is preparing for the imminent release of photographer Ellen Jong's "Pees on Earth," a series of shots of Jong urinating in prominent public spots around the world. Jong is a mainstream professional whose non-urinary work has appeared in Vogue and other publications.

-- Cheaters on the Rise: (1) In March, students at Mount Saint Vincent University in Bedford, Nova Scotia, persuaded the administration to prohibit professors from using any plagiarism-detecting aid, to avoid (said the student union president) a "culture of mistrust." (2) Students at Banja Luka University in Bosnia-Herzogovina protested in February the economics faculty's decision to install surveillance cameras during exams. "Cheating in exams," said one student, "is a part of our Balkan mentality, and it will take years to change students' (attitudes)."

-- In March, New York Times fashion writers noted that the decision of several designers to shroud runway models' faces in various ways during the annual Paris Fashion Week in February and March surely must be sending some message. Among the devices designers used: masks (making some models resemble "Hannibal Lecter in drag," according to one critic), woven basket-like coverings and burqa-type swaddling. Guesses on designers' motives included a reflection of general world gloom; tributes to the plight of Muslim women; and designers' fear of beautiful faces' distracting from their designs.

(1) In February, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that the neck is a "sexual or intimate (part)" and thus that a forcible kiss there is a felonious touching that allows sentencing the offender to life in prison under the state's "three strikes" rule. (2) Also in February, a Florida appeals court upheld a jury's simultaneous findings that Nicholas Cappalo was not guilty by reason of insanity in the burglary of a home in May 2002, but guilty and sane during the ensuing getaway, in which he led sheriff's deputies on a 15-mile, high-speed chase.

Former major league baseball all-star Darren Daulton, 44, told the Philadelphia Daily News in February that in retirement, he understands dimensions of reality that few of his fellow Earthlings know. He first experienced his extraordinary power after delivering a game-winning hit in the 1990s and breaking into tears after the game, discovering that "I didn't hit that ball. Something happened, but it wasn't me." Later, Daulton said, he was "awakened" to realms beyond those covered by the five senses. Things will become clearer on Dec. 12, 2012, at 11:11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, he said, because that's when the world will end.

(1) A 27-year-old woman was arrested in League City, Texas, in February after police discovered her 6-year-old daughter wandering around her empty school yard on a Saturday morning. The woman said she dropped the kid off, as usual, but that she was distracted and didn't realize it was Saturday. (2) Prominent neuroscientist Louis A. Gottschalk, still professionally active at age 89, lost about $3 million of his family trust over a 10-year period to Nigerian e-mail scammers, according to his son, who wants an Orange County, Calif., judge to remove his father as the estate's administrator. In fact, Dr. Gottschalk has continued to pay money on another scam because the new recipients are "different Nigerians," according to the son's description of a conversation with his father.

In 2003, News of the Weird told the inspirational story of "Star Trek" fanatic Tony Alleyne, who was trying to sell his small apartment in Leistershire, England, for the equivalent of about $1.7 million, after having converted it to a finely detailed model of the starship Enterprise (with transporter control, warp core drive, voice-activated lighting and security, infinity mirror, etc.). In February 2006, Alleyne, weary of the lack of buyer interest, filed for bankruptcy and moved to his Plan B: to gut his "Enterprise" and redesign the place as the bridge of the Voyager (from the later Star Trek series), which he will offer at a lower price.

On Feb. 23, a woman asked a clerk at the Get Go! convenience store in McKeesport, Pa., to "microwave something for me. It's a life-or-death situation." The clerk complied, but when she realized that the item might be a severed penis, she called police. The woman later explained that it was a dildo-shaped container of urine because she had to be drug-tested for a job afterward and needed urine heated to "body temperature." Unexplained still in subsequent press accounts was why she stored the urine in that type of device. She was charged with criminal mischief (for contaminating a microwave food oven).

Twice in a two-week period, couples were found asphyxiated and enjoined in sexual positions in cars whose engines had been running in closed garages. A New York City couple, ages 28 and 21, who had been dating about a month, died in March, and a Milwaukee, Wis., couple, ages 23 and 17, died in February in a car whose engine had quit (though still with plenty of gas) because the concentration of carbon monoxide had prevented oxygen intake to the engine.

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

Because perhaps hundreds of Japanese Yakuza gangsters are nearing retirement age, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has drafted rules for the former gambling, loan shark, and protection workers to qualify for benefits, according to a March dispatch from Tokyo in The Times of London. Since organized crime leaves no employment paper trail, ex-mobsters must supply a letter of retirement from their crime boss in order to sign up, although local governments are expected to accept as partial proof gang tattoos, criminal records, demonstrations of missing finger tips (the sign of traditional Yakuza punishment for mistakes).

-- Victoria Lundy, 41, in custody in Chillicothe, Ohio, in January for a barroom shooting, apparently smuggled her gun into the jail at the time of her arrest by putting it inside her vagina. A shot was fired in a holding cell, and according to a fellow prisoner interviewed by the Chillicothe Gazette, the gun had gone off when Lundy sat down on a bench in the cell. (No one was hit.)

-- Among the places of business particularly affected by Americans' cell-phone rudeness was the Green Oaks Family Dentistry clinic in Arlington, Texas, according to a February USA Today story. Office manager Lisa Teague said patients were carrying on phone conversations while hygienists worked in their mouths. "It was very disruptive," she said.

-- Chicagoland Schools in Crisis: (1) In February, a sixth-grader at Waldo Middle School was suspended and charged with a felony by Aurora, Ill., police when he brought powdered sugar to class for a science project and jokingly told another student that it was cocaine. A custodian overheard the conversation and reported him. (2) The Chicago Tribune reported in March that dozens of blind students in Chicago public schools are nonetheless required to take driver education classes. One sightless but otherwise optimistic student told the Tribune she resented the requirement because it made her uncharacteristically dwell on something that she cannot do.

-- Andrew Thurnheer, 45, was elected in January as the highway superintendent in Danby, N.Y., even though he still lives with his parents. He doesn't sleep in his old bedroom, though; he sleeps in his tree house, 40 feet up, which he built nearly 20 years ago, and which has a generator-powered elevator, a shower and a propane heater, according to a January Associated Press dispatch. (Mr. Kapila Pradhan, also 45, has also been living in a tree, for the past 15 years, but that is in a village in Orissa state in India. He sought solitude after a fight with his wife, according to a January BBC News dispatch.)

Arrested in February in Town Creek, Ala., on drug-related charges: University of North Alabama basketball player Reprobatus Bibbs ("reprobate," in the dictionary, is "morally depraved" or "beyond hope of salvation"). And sought in a February shooting death in New Orleans: 20-year-old Ivory Harris, whose nickname is "Be Stupid."

(1) When the U.S. Department of the Interior was ordered to reimburse lawyers for American Indians $7 million for their successful lawsuit over missing royalty payments on Indian land, the department decided that budget considerations would force it to raise almost half of that $7 million by cutting back programs of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. (2) According to a November Washington Post poll (whose results were published in February), 94 percent of Americans said they are "above average" in honesty, 89 percent "above average" in common sense, 86 percent "above average" in intelligence, and 79 percent "above average" in looks.

(1) In January in Kyoto, Japan, a 32-year-old nurse was sentenced to more than three years in prison after she was convicted of relieving her overwork-induced stress by tearing off the fingernails and toenails of immobilized patients. (2) British dentist Mojgan Azari was de-licensed in January after a conviction for allowing her unqualified boyfriend to do fillings on more than 600 patients. (3) Terra Linda High School (San Rafael, Calif.) wrestler D.J. Saint James, a senior, was profiled in February in the Marin Independent Journal for his sterling record, including a freshman match in which he suffered a ruptured testicle (which eventually swelled to the size of a fist) but toughed it out for three minutes before summoning up an almost-miraculous burst of energy to pin his opponent.

-- Life Imitates a GEICO Commercial: A teenager lost control of his car in Kettering, Ohio, in March, and smashed into a house, causing major damage. According to police, he had swerved to avoid hitting an albino squirrel (which, unlike in the commercial, did not survive). Another squirrel caused a four-car collision in March in Mount Pleasant Township, Pa., but no injuries were reported. Neither human was cited by police.

-- "What She Really Wants to Do Is Direct": When Tamara Anne Moonier filed rape charges against six young men in Fullerton, Calif., in June 2004, she seemed the disconsolate victim of vicious predators. However, shortly afterward, one of the accused gave police a video of the entire incident, and Moonier consequently was indicted in 2005 for filing a false police report and defrauding a victim assistance fund. In February 2006, Orange County Weekly published several pieces of dialogue from the video and described numerous "scenes" in which Moonier is shown laughing (27 different times), dominating action, ordering certain sex acts and positions, complimenting the men's bodies, and barking out exhortations for the men to improve their virility and performances.

(1) Russian president Vladimir Putin apparently surprised diplomatic observers in Britain in January when he declined to expel four U.K. diplomats who had been accused of espionage. Reasoned Putin, according to a January dispatch in Britain's Guardian, these four weren't smart enough to avoid getting caught, and if he expelled them, the U.K. would just send replacements who are more clever. (2) A recent study by economists Naci Mocan and Erdal Tekin concluded that unattractive teenagers grow up to commit more crimes than do attractive people. A February Washington Post summary of the research posits that fewer job opportunities and social opportunities might be what accounts for the "consequences of being young and ugly."

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (77) The disgruntled debtor who finally agrees to pay, but obnoxiously delivers it all in pennies, or in $1 bills, as William Lewis Jr., did on a foreclosure judgment in Sebring, Fla., in March. (78) The latest recycling laboratory breakthrough that makes possible the conversion of manure, urine or methane gas into a new energy source, as was Japanese professor Sakae Shibusawa's March announcement that, by pressure and heat, he can produce an ounce of gasoline from 5 pounds of cow dung.

-- A February BBC News story, citing a local newspaper in Upper Nile state in Sudan, reported that village elders had required a Mr. Tombe, as punishment for having been caught having sex with a female goat, to pay a dowry to the goat's owner and to care for the nanny as if they were "married." (The story ran worldwide, with Australia's News Limited's Web site reporting it with a file photo of a goat, adorned with a black bar across its eyes, to protect its privacy.)

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