A 5-year-old boy in Broward County, Fla., preparing to enter kindergarten, is believed by gender-identity experts to be the youngest kid in the country whose family supports his decision to live completely as the other sex (according to a May profile in New Times Broward-Palm Beach). The parents doubt that the unnamed now-girl (dubbed "Nicole Anderson" in the article) is "just going through a phase," because of "her" early, constant, and insistent female preferences and comments, e.g., "I want the fairy princess to come and make my penis into a vagina."

-- In May, Nevada officials said they were hopeful of persuading the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to allow the family of a soldier who was killed in Afghanistan, and who is buried in a federal cemetery, to have a Wiccan symbol on his headstone. The department has approved headstone symbols for more than 30 religions, as well as one for atheists, but so far not for Wicca.

-- Much Ado About Little: (1) The student lockers at Kealing Middle School in Austin, Texas, haven't been used in 10 years (for disciplinary reasons) and probably won't be again, but they will still be "refurbished" (and some new ones added) at a $60,000 expense to taxpayers, according to school renovation plans in a recently passed local budget. (2) Included in a local task force's proposal this year for building a $381 million riverfront arena in Louisville, Ky., was $63 million to move a Louisville Gas and Electric substation about 30 yards, across the street from its present location.

-- In May, independent arson experts reported that the 2004 Texas execution of Tyrone Willingham was based on evidence that has now been scientifically disproved (and which had probably been repudiated earlier in 2004, when another Texas arson convict had had his death sentence overturned). According to a Chicago Tribune story, the fire marshals whose testimony cinched Willingham's sentence relied on out-of-date, discredited tests, leaving no reliable evidence for the jury that the fire that killed Willingham's three kids was deliberately set. According to the report (commissioned by the Innocence Project), no formal training (only training "on the job") is required of Texas fire marshals.

-- New Scientist magazine reported in May that the Pentagon's cutting-edge research agency, DARPA, was considering a human-launching device that works like a cannon, to blast special-forces troops (and maybe firefighters and police officers) at just the right trajectory so that they land on hard-to-reach locations, such as rooftops.

-- Last year, in order to soften the transition from an agrarian economy, the rural village of Renhe, China, offered to give farmers apartments in town -- one-bedroom flats for single people and two-bedroom units for married couples. But in a fit of greed, hundreds of couples promptly divorced for no other reason than to qualify for two apartments so that they could rent one out. When officials learned of the scams, they modified the rules, according to a May dispatch in the Los Angeles Times, and turmoil resulted, as newly divorced couples failed to reconcile, leaving children in broken homes while husbands ran off with younger women.

(1) The principal of Liberty Elementary School in Colleyville, Texas, authorized an enlarged photo of a nickel on this year's yearbook cover, but with "In God We Trust" deleted so as not to cause offense -- but then handed out stickers with those four words so that students could place them on the cover photo if they wished. (2) A British government agency recently decided to spend the equivalent of $33 million over 10 years to encourage women and minorities to become fishermen (or fisherwomen) because too many anglers are white, male and middle-aged; a Welsh pilot project, for example, teaches Muslim women and children to fish for trout.

Ernest G. Johnson, 42, was arrested in Shreveport, La., in May after he, posing as an insurance company employee, roamed the corridors at LSU Hospital seeking to photograph women wearing casts. Said a police detective, "It's like all he wants is to be in the presence of a woman with a cast on and have her attention." And in April in Wausau, Wis., Thomas Vogedes, 58, was sentenced to six months' probation for incidents in which he hung dozens of bras and panties (new and used) from car mirrors and videotaped them.

No "Oversies": Sarah Zabolotny, 29, who was in the courthouse in Buckhannon, W.Va., in March to deal with a speeding ticket, was later charged with petty larceny after she was seen on surveillance video folding up an 8-foot rug in the building and walking out the door. When a court clerk tracked her down, Zabolotny asked if she could just give it back and forget the whole thing, but the clerk said no. And in Williston, N.D., in March, Ryan Wright, 20, was arrested for bank robbery, even though he insisted that all he did was walk in to the bank wearing a ski mask and demand money, before saying, "Just kidding" and leaving.

-- Less than three months after one wife-as-sex-slave contract surfaced (in Iowa, for which husband Travis Frey in June was sentenced to 10 years in prison), Hudson, Wis., husband Kevin Anderson was accused of making his own sex-slave contract with his estranged wife, Kimberly O'Brien, which O'Brien filed as evidence in March in her pending divorce. The contract required O'Brien to call Anderson "Master Jon," to achieve orgasm "ONLY" (emphasis in the original) by permission, and to allow her orgasms to be "controlled for proper training (and) teaching ... good habits (and) providing motivation (and) physical or sexual energy."

-- Playing Hardball: The newspaper Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv) reported in March that the Moqassed Hospital in East Jerusalem was under investigation for detaining a newborn baby for two months because its parents did not pay the bill. (The mother had given birth to premature triplets; the hospital allegedly let her take two home but kept the third.) And London's Daily Telegraph reported in April the hard luck story of unemployed Darren Wheeler, 30, who had six of his teeth extracted at the Birkdale Clinic in Whiston, England, but before dentures could be fitted, the clinic converted from public health to private practice and said dentures would now cost Wheeler the equivalent of almost $5,000.

(1) Robert E. Mays, 64, an associate dean at the University of Southern Illinois, agreed to plead guilty in June to biting a man on the leg when he had stopped to help Mays after a March traffic accident. (2) Louisville, Ky., middle school teacher Caroline Kolb was fired in March after a January incident in which she bit a 14-year-old student on the back as punishment. (3) Janet W. Strong, 53, was charged by police in April with biting a toddler at her Loving Touch Child Care center in Milton, Fla. (4) An assistant to boxer Mike Tyson revealed in March that he had settled his lawsuit stemming from a May 2003 incident in which he had accused Tyson, who was angry about a road-rage incident, of punching him and then biting him on the leg.

In April, Elgin, Ill., police said they gave confidential informant Robert Bridges, 29, $300 to buy 7 grams of cocaine and sent him into a drug house for a sting, but later they got tired of waiting for him to leave, and they stormed the house. Inside, they found Bridges, intoxicated, with no money and only 2.8 grams of cocaine left.

(Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com or www.NewsoftheWeird.com. Send your Weird News to WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com or P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679.)

In a May dispatch from Atlanta on Southerners' notoriously unnutritious, fat-laden cuisine, a Chicago Tribune reporter watered readers' mouths with descriptions of the "hamdog" and the "Luther" (prized dishes of Mulligan's restaurant in Decatur, Ga.), which are, respectively, "a half-pound of hamburger meat wrapped around a hot dog, which is deep-fried and served on a hoagie topped with chili, bacon and a fried egg," and "a half-pound burger served with bacon and cheese on a Krispy Kreme doughnut." The 11 states from Washington, D.C., to Florida, west to Texas, have the nation's highest mortality rate from strokes, but, said a University of Mississippi professor, "Food is a strong emblem of identity for Southerners," uniquely shared across racial lines.

-- Near Tampa, Fla., in May, Robin Key, 44, survived a .38-caliber gunshot through the windshield of her minivan when the bullet came to rest in her lap after being slowed by hitting her shoulder belt and bra strap. And in New York City in April, Glenda Clarke, 26, in a rest room of a nightclub when a gunfight erupted outside, survived a bullet that tore through a door, grazed her scalp, and came to rest in her thick hair weave.

-- A so-far-unnamed 15-year-old New York City girl (a student at the once-most-dangerous Hillcrest High School) was arrested in May and charged with attacking three classmates by biting them viciously on the face, necessitating plastic surgery for at least one, who had a chunk of flesh gnawed off before bystanders could restrain the girl (described by classmates as a "goth vampire"). "She was trying to get to my jugular," the victim said. "For some reason, she just likes to bite."

-- In May, a judge in Edmonton, Alberta, ordered Shee Theng, 30, to serve a nine-month community-control sentence for partially scalping his then-girlfriend by attempting to "style" her hair with a power drill, a technique he said he learned about on a TV infomercial. Theng admitted that he knew it was a bad idea because he had previously screwed up his own hair trying it out.

-- Michael Scanlon, 31, a chief associate of disgraced Washington, D.C., lobbyist Jack Abramoff, reportedly earned millions from his largely illegal deals with Abramoff and spent most of it buying real estate in Delaware beach communities during 2002-2005, paying at least $12 million in cash. However, according to a May report in the Wilmington News-Journal, Scanlon dutifully each summer during those years worked as a full-time lifeguard on Delaware beaches, at $11.35 an hour, and reportedly had tried to line up the job again this summer, but was turned down by Rehoboth Beach officials because of his pending federal sentence.

-- "Leigh" (who has shed his last name) was arrested at the courthouse in Machias, Maine, in April, charged with trespassing for the 24th time locally, a strategy he has employed unsuccessfully to try to convince a court to erase a 1993 conviction for reckless conduct with a firearm. Leigh's pattern appeared to be: trespass, then raise the 1993 case in court, then see it ignored as irrelevant, then get jailed for trespass, then get out, then trespass again, then repeat the process. In the latest conviction, he was sentenced to time served, since he had already been in jail for the previous year.

-- Jason Lyon, 28, a National Guardsman from Buffalo, N.Y., who hurt his ankle jumping from a Humvee in Baghdad in 2004, was cleared, after treatment, to return to combat. After his tour ended, he applied to the U.S. Postal Service to be a letter carrier but was turned down because of his ankle injury (though he is free to apply for less-strenuous positions). In March, after publicity about the case, the Postal Service said it would seek a second medical opinion on the ankle, and a decision was pending at press time.

-- Ronald Michalowicz, 54, a fire inspector for Bedford Park, Ill., was dismissed after 28 years on the job (about a year short of retirement) for violating town rules against soliciting charitable contributions. According to a Chicago Sun-Times report in May, the solicitation was initiated by others to pay for Michalowicz's treatment for tongue cancer, which was thought to be fairly quickly fatal, but which he has survived after chemotherapy. A town official, having noted Michalowicz's near-terminal condition earlier, approved the solicitation, but when Michalowicz returned to work, other officials insisted on enforcing the no-solicitation rule. He has sued for wrongful discharge.

(1) Spokane, Wash., dentist Henry G. Kolsrud, 82, decided to give up his license in May rather than face punishment for having an unsanitary office; among the charges: that he kept cat food in the office refrigerator with dental supplies, and that he scooped up cat vomit around the office with dental spatulas. (2) Denmark's Prince Henrik (husband of the queen, Margrethe II) in an April magazine interview declared that dog meat is one of his favorite dishes (even though he is honorary president of the Danish Dachshund Club, owns several dachshunds and has published poems dedicated to dachshunds).

In St. Paul, Minn., in May, an unnamed man, working out a community-service sentence by cleaning up for the next day's "graduation" at the St. Paul Police Department's dog training school, was caught with drugs by the senior canine "instructor," Buster. According to a report in the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, the worker had brought six small bags of marijuana with him, even though assigned to the dog school. "I was going to smoke it when I was done working," he said.

(1) Defendant Justin Jacobson, 21, fighting an assault charge, had a mistrial declared during jury selection when, during a disagreement at the defense table, he slapped his lawyer (Olympia, Wash., May). (2) Defendant John Gomes, fighting a murder charge and apparently not liking that so many of his lawyer's motions were being denied by the judge, suddenly reached over and began strangling the lawyer, until court officers pulled him off (Boston, May).

(1) In April, authorities at El Salvador's La Esperanza prison near San Salvador arrested visitor Lidia Alvarado for allegedly trying to smuggle an M-67 grenade to inmates by stuffing it inside her vagina. (2) Also in April, according to a report in the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal-Star, a 38-year-old man appeared at the ER at BryanLGH Medical Center West in Lincoln with a 20-ounce soft drink bottle lodged in his rectum. (3) Also in April, according to a report in The Capital (Annapolis, Md.), a former restaurant manager was acquitted of assaulting one of his then-employees, heightening the mystery behind the alleged assault (in which the employee had been found in June 2005 in an alley behind the restaurant with a garden hose's nozzle end stuck in his rectum).

In December, News of the Weird summarized local newspaper reports that "more than 50 witnesses" in 30 pending lawsuits had accused Seattle-area physicians (and brothers) Charles and Dennis Momah of sexually abusing patients and, in some cases, of Dennis' improperly impersonating Charles to patients. However, in May, according to the Seattle Times, the judge who presided over the first of the lawsuits concluded that the patient fabricated her story. Judge Katherine Stolz fined the patient's lawyer, Harish Bharti (who represents most of the complainants), $300,000 for being complicit in the tale and ordered the patient to pay Dennis Momah $2.8 million for defamation. (Charles Momah's earlier conviction for sexually abusing patients was not affected.)

(Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com or www.NewsoftheWeird.com. Send your Weird News to WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com or P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679.)

Wheelchair-confined Richard Paey committed almost exactly the same violations of Florida prescription drug laws that radio personality Rush Limbaugh did, with a different result: Limbaugh's sentence, in May, was addiction treatment, and Paey's, in 2004, was 25 years in prison. Both illegally possessed large quantities of painkillers for personal use, which Paey defiantly argued was (and will be) necessary to relieve nearly constant pain from unsuccessful spinal surgeries after an auto accident, but which Limbaugh admitted was simply the result of addiction. (In fact, if Limbaugh complies with his plea bargain, his conviction will be erased.) Paey's sentence now rests with a state Court of Appeal.

-- (1) China, sensitive about the impression it will make on visitors to the 2008 Olympics, has undertaken a major campaign against open spitting, monitored by volunteer scolders who wear shirts that spell out "mucus" in Chinese and who hand out bags to spit in. (2) India's Rural Development Minister vowed in March that the country will eliminate open defecation by 2012, despite reports of toilet use in some states as low as 15 percent. The government gives homeowners toilet-installation grants.

-- For 30 years now, many residents of Frostburg, Md., have been puzzled, and annoyed, at the three-story-high, 400-foot-long metal- and-concrete frame that Pastor Richard Greene calls his modern Noah's Ark, at which he works off and on, awaiting Judgment Day. According to an April Pittsburgh Post-Gazette dispatch, Greene said the Arc came to him in visions during disturbing dreams in 1976. Some neighbors are patient, but others call the Ark an eyesore that depresses property values and wastes religious charity (since contributions to Greene have totaled $1 million).

-- Ewwwww! (1) Again this year, in April, Jim Werych of the Wednesday Night Classics car club in Brookfield, Wis., ritually dragged his tongue, in a deep lick, across Lisbon Road (with traffic stopped in both directions) to verify, and proclaim, that the streets are free of winter salt and thus safe for the club's delicate classics. (2) A March New York Times dispatch described recent successes in eradicating the grotesque "Nigerian worm," which afflicted 3 million Africans in 1986 but only 12,000 last year. The string-like worm, up to 3 feet in length, produces pools of acid in legs or feet (or eye sockets) and causes excruciating pain until expelled.

-- In April, William Bethel Jr. confessed to police during a traffic stop that the station wagon he was driving was mainly used for transporting corpses for his friend's mortuary service but that he was using it just then to deliver pizzas for Domino's of Feasterville, Pa. (Bethel quickly resigned.)

-- On the day after a federal jury in Virginia sentenced "20th (Sept. 11) hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison without possibility of parole, a Florida jury in Orlando gave Carl Moore, 37, exactly the same sentence. The Virginia jury had concluded that Moussaoui could have prevented the deaths of nearly 3,000 people; the Florida jury found that Moore had fondled a 12-year-old girl, briefly, underneath her clothes on an elevator at a resort (his second such conviction).

An Illinois Appellate Court in April upheld a lower court ruling reversing Mongo the steer's disqualification for steroids after he had been chosen junior grand champion at the 2003 Illinois State Fair. Mongo had tested positive for the anti-inflammatory Banamine, for his sore foot, but the court declared the test improperly administered. It was a victory for Mongo's owner, Whitney Gray, but of utterly no benefit to Mongo, who shortly after the fair was slaughtered for steak.

(1) In February, children's book author Frank Feldmann, 35, trespassed to the top of the St. Augustine (Fla.) Lighthouse in the middle of the night, wearing a tiger suit, to decry child pornography on the Internet. However, his point was not immediately understood by police on the ground below because of communication problems posed by his voice-muffling tiger mask. (2) The residents of Steuben County in upstate New York, who attended a community rally in January to protest a planned clean-energy windmill farm, mostly criticized its unsightliness, but one opponent objected because windmill blades make whirring noises that to him resemble sounds of Nazi holocaust torture.

New York City raw-food restaurateur Dan Hoyt, 43, was sentenced to two years' probation in April for a highly publicized 2005 incident in which he indecently exposed himself on a subway train in front of a 22-year-old woman, who reacted by photographing him with her cell phone and displaying the shot on the Internet. In an April interview with New York magazine, Hoyt shrugged off the incident, calling his habit just another facet of a "pretty cool," thrill-seeking person. "I've met women who enjoy (being flashed)." Except for the subway incident, even his victim would "probably want to go out with me."

-- Short Attention Spans: Brian M. Williams, 21, was arrested for allegedly robbing Houchens Market in Glasgow, Ky., in April; police had found him minutes afterward across the street filling his gas tank. And Nathan Myles, 25, was sentenced in March to three years in prison for a lengthy, destructive police chase in Thunder Bay, Ontario; it ended when Myles stopped for a haircut. And Mario Caracoza, 26, was arrested for allegedly robbing a Bank of America in Bristol Township, Pa., in May; police had found him minutes afterward eating breakfast at the Sunrise Diner next door.

-- Wrong Place, Wrong Time: (1) Konoshin Kawabata, 48, was arrested in Osaka, Japan, in March for burglarizing a temple; he wandered through an unmarked door and was surprised by 20 sumo wrestlers, who were staying at the temple and who easily detained him. (2) Police in Melbourne, Australia, arrested a 34-year-old man for robbery in January after the victim (renowned illustrator Bill "Weg" Green) provided police with an unusually helpful drawing of the perp's face.

(1) People hit by "flying" cows (that fall out of livestock trailers on highways and overpasses), with the latest occurring near Seguin, Texas, in March, when a cow flew out onto Interstate 10, causing collisions of two police cars that soon caught on fire. (2) Patient, by-the-book, but useless police standoffs (in which cops implore residents for hours to surrender, eventually to learn that no one is home), with the latest being a suspected drug house futilely surrounded for seven hours by SWAT officers in Oklahoma City in April.

People who accidentally shot themselves recently: Clayton Teman, 23, Springfield, Ore., January (badly misfired while being chased by police). A 25-year-old man, Wichita, Kan., February (driving with loaded gun between his legs). Sheriff's deputy Jeff Hamric, Parkersburg, W.Va., March (during firearms practice at a gun range). An undercover Lauderhill, Fla., police officer, January (when a car bumped him on the street). A 15-year-old boy, North Brunswick, N.J., March (another "waistband as holster" accident). William Tyree, 33, Dacula, Ga., April (badly misfired while being chased by police). An unidentified man, Nacogdoches, Texas, February (shooting at an opossum). And in April, two men, a 23-year-old in Hopkinton, N.J., and an unidentified man in Grass Valley, Calif., fatally shot themselves while playing alcohol-induced games with their guns in front of friends.

CORRECTION: In last week's News of the Weird, I misstated that a young girl's defective heart was removed, in favor of an artificial one, and then re-started recently, after 10 years. Actually, the heart had remained inside her all along, but dormant.