Inexplicable: Sudan Provost, 40, walked into the River City Bank in Sacramento, Calif., on Dec. 29 and, reported the Sacramento Bee, quietly announced to employees that he had come to "rob" it, but then handed a teller his driver's license and a money order to be cashed. The teller asked if he had an account, and Provost replied, "This is not a joke. I have a gun. I do this for a living." However, he opened his bag to reveal that he had no gun and then asked for a tissue for his runny nose. The teller said she didn't have one. Provost said he'd be right back and walked across the street to a drugstore, and by the time he had returned, police were on the scene. Provost was arrested on suspicion of attempted robbery.

-- New York state food inspectors are having trouble keeping up with the illegal importation and sale of uninspected exotic meat, for the city's immigrant population, including bush meat and meat from endangered species, according to a December Associated Press report. Inspectors found, among other items openly displayed in New York City storefronts, armadillo and iguana meat, cow lungs, smoked rodent and an unidentified fish paste, along with crates of turtles and a tub of bullfrogs, and occasionally endangered gorilla and chimpanzee meat.

-- The Continued Americanization of China: (1) Though most Chinese women still prefer whiter complexions, urban professionals are beginning to tan, either by sunbathing or in salons, for that "healthy" and "fashion(able) look," according to a November Wall Street Journal dispatch. (2) Chinese urban professionals are also turning more frequently to divorce (in a country in which it has been rare), especially women, who tend to file abruptly (the so-called "flash divorce"). Said one counselor (for a November Time magazine report), "Life in (urban) China has changed so fast that if things aren't new or exciting, people just end their marriages instead of working through their problems."

-- A 2006 Church of England report warned that disagreeable congregants, together with the pressures of the church's "feudal system" bureaucracy, were turning priests harshly negative and creating an "irritable clergy syndrome." One of the report's authors told The Times of London in December that priests are bothered by "having to be nice all the time to everyone, even when confronted with extremes of nastiness," such as aggressive and neurotic parishioners.

-- The recent traditional Christmas Nativity play at St. Stephen's church in Tonbridge, England, centered on music from the Beach Boys, with Mary turning into a "surfer girl" to sing "God Only Knows" and the Three Wise Men portrayed as Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson performing such favorites as "Fun Fun Fun" and "Good Vibrations" (according to a December Agence France-Presse report). Said the pastor, "(N)ativity plays ... can just be a bit dull. (This) made it more realistic."

-- (1) Sweden's English-language The Local reported in November that prosecutors were about to release both male suspects who acknowledge being present at a 1998 murder but who each blame the other. Prosecutors concluded that since there is no additional evidence, they could not convict either man. (2) A 59-year-old German man, identified as Gerold H. and serving life for murder, refused in October to accept his release after 34 years, according to a Reuters report. Said a spokesman for the Brandenburg justice ministry, "We can't do anything if someone sentenced to life in prison doesn't want to leave."

-- Michigan Law: (1) A bill passed in November by the Michigan House of Representatives makes it a crime for a cohabiting boyfriend to pressure his pregnant girlfriend into having an abortion, including by simply moving out of the house. (2) The Michigan Court of Appeals, ruling in November, said an obscure but unambiguous state law makes any "sexual penetration" a serious sexual assault if it occurs during any other felony, including simple adultery, with a maximum penalty of life in prison.

-- Elementary schoolteacher's aide Kumi Houston of Williamson County, Texas, was fired in November after she allegedly admitted to a sheriff's detective that she allowed an 11-year-old boy to reach under her bra and fondle her (which would clearly be illegal). However, as Houston's attorney later explained, her statement (which Houston did not deny making) was not necessarily a confession. What happened, said attorney Robert Phillips, is that his client "made a statement. It may be an admission, or it may be just (her) version of what happened. That's not a confession."

-- The Alabama Supreme Court, ruling in January, told leukemia-stricken Jack Cline that state law makes it either too early or too late for him to sue the manufacturer of benzene, to which he was exposed in his factory job, and it dismissed his lawsuit. He may have known he had been exposed to a carcinogen, but he couldn't sue until the cancer was actually diagnosed, but when it finally was, years later, the state's statute of limitations had long since run out. Several justices expressed concern about the catch-22, but they were in the minority.

Lamest Defense: James Lane III, 27, was arrested in Carrboro, N.C., in January after police chased him, in his car and later on foot. Officers tackled Lane about 20 feet into a wooded area and recovered a white plastic bag containing a pound of marijuana. When police pulled Lane to his feet, he said that someone must have left the bag on the ground at precisely the spot in the woods where Lane fell, because he had never seen it before.

Least Competent Lawyers: Jeffrey Leonard is on death row in Kentucky for murder and had challenged the fairness of his conviction, criticizing his court-appointed defense counsel. Lawyer Ferdinand Radolovich had represented Leonard all the way through his murder trial without bothering to learn his real name, in that for his conviction and subsequent first appeal, Radolovich thought Leonard was "James Slaughter" (and he didn't even know how to spell that name, habitually writing it "Slawter"). (Also, Radolovich had told judges that he had previously handled four death penalty cases but in fact had done none.) Nonetheless, by a 7-7 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals could not conclude that better lawyering would have helped the clearly guilty Leonard.

-- (1) Neil Rodreick II, 29, shaved his body and posed as a 12-year-old boy, and then allegedly had sex with Lonnie Stiffler, 61, and Robert Snow, 43, in Chino Valley, Ariz., before all three were arrested in January (as the result of Stiffler's attempt to enroll Rodreick in a charter school as a boy). The two men were said to have been quite upset when police told them Rodreick was not 12 years old. (2) Inner Mongolian herdsman Bao Xishun, at 7-foot-9 reputed to be the world's tallest man, was recruited by a commercial aquarium in Liaoning province, China, in December to reach into the stomachs of two dolphins to extract some plastic that they had swallowed and which was making them sick. Surgical instruments had irritated the dolphins' stomach, but Bao's 41-inch arm did the trick.

The Bosnian town of Bijeljina proposed in November to build a giant cabbage monument to honor its most important crop. "We very much appreciate this vegetable," said the director of the town's tourism office. And Briton Richard Townsend, 24, on a personal mission in December, ate 36 brussels sprouts in one minute, seeking the world record, but fell seven short. He said he had trained by eating a plate of brussels sprouts every day for six weeks.

(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 findings that could surely be matched in the United States, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported in January that the country's 100 highest-paid business executives had, by 9:46 a.m. on Jan. 2, earned an amount equal to what the average Canadian would earn in all of 2007. And The New York Times reported in December that Wall Street bonuses for 2006 were so large that one real estate broker complained at New York City's shortage of $20 million properties and a Greenwich, Conn., Ferrari dealer complained that Ferrari hadn't manufactured enough 599 GTB Fioranos (price: about $250,000) to fill his customers' orders.

(1) Because of recent government campaigns to protect wildlife, snake charmers in India's Rajasthan state are increasingly unable to work with live snakes but nonetheless hope to continue earning tourists' money by performing the same rituals, except without snakes. (2) On New Year's Day at the South African tourist attraction of Cango Caves, an overweight visitor in the "Tunnel of Love" got stuck exiting, and she and the 23 people behind her were trapped for 12 hours until rescuers used a pulley and liquid paraffin (to grease the rocks) to extricate her.

-- Don Karkos heroically regained sight in his right eye in November after 65 years. A 1941 Navy submarine explosion had knocked him out, and doctors had told him many times that he would never see with that eye again, but Karkos, 82 (a retired horse farmer who works as a security guard at New York's Monticello Raceway), was butted in the head by a horse in November and awoke the next day with sight regained. He told the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y., in December that the blow he took from My Buddy Chimo was even harder than the one from the concussion.

-- Alarming Science: (1) A researcher at the Minnesota Cancer Center reported in January finding amounts of the carcinogen NNK, most likely from tobacco smoke, in toenail clippings of smokers (and nonsmokers exposed to second-hand smoke). (2) A researcher writing in the January/February issue of Australasian Science magazine reported that the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, carried by many cats, not only can harm pregnant women (as was previously known) but also can lower the IQ of men and make women more promiscuous.

-- Science Gone Too Far: A December New York Times dispatch reports that among the hottest social status symbols in Tokyo is the cute-but-bizarre dog created by inbreeding, such as a blue Chihuahua or a white dachshund. However, inbreeding also produces a high number of deformities, and to get that dachshund, for example, the litter of five contained four dogs with almost unspeakably gross birth defects. Nonetheless, because of demand, dog inbreeding continues. And a Nottingham University professor warned in January that farmers are now at work in the United Kingdom breeding "stress" and "hostility" out of pigs and cows to make them more obedient en route to the slaughterhouse. The professor said the goal of such breeders is to create animal "vegetables."

-- (1) Employees at Wal-Mart's headquarters in China have set up a branch of the Communist Party, according to a December Associated Press dispatch, to go with five existing branches at individual stores (but the party said it would not interfere with Wal-Mart management). (2) Outsourcing of American jobs recently reached a new category of corporate employees: lawyers. An estimated 23,000 lawyers' jobs were lost in the U.S. last year to India, where document review and legal research can be performed at about half the cost as in America, according to a December story in the News Journal of Wilmington, Del.

-- In what one reporter termed "a culture clash of near-epic proportions," Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist (the mostly free online advertising Web site), told a gathering of head-shaking, befuddled Wall Street analysts in December that his company had no intention of raising more money than necessary to cover expenses, much less of maximizing income (even though many analysts believe investors might pay $1 billion or more for the company).

-- (1) About one-fifth of professional rodeo bull riders have given up their cowboy hats and now wear modified hockey helmets with face masks because of the prevalence of serious injuries. Said one diehard, though, "I don't wear a cowboy hat because I'm a bull rider. I wear a cowboy hat because I'm a cowboy." (2) London's Observer reported in November that several UNICEF offices worldwide have complained to U.N. headquarters that celebrities endorsing the charity's work have demoralized the staff because traveling celebrities are so high-maintenance when they arrive to "help" and also because some companies making donations (for example, Gucci) are owned by parent companies whose factories exploit Third World children more than the donations help.

-- At least 30 Texas death-row inmates have pages on dating Web sites, according to a November Associated Press report, and the murderers usually describe themselves in cuddly terms. Wrote convicted cop-killer Randy Halprin, "I think I'm a pretty funny guy. I have a wacked (sic) sense of humor. I can be a big kid at heart. I'm a hopeless (and I mean hopeless) romatic (sic)." However, also in November, Calvin Bennett, 26, a suspect in two Arkansas murders, was traced by police to Rothschild, Wis., by the personal ad he had placed on a dating Web site, describing himself as shy and giving his ideal evening as "a nice romantic dinner with soft music, followed by a romantic walk or a carriage ride."

-- Police in Chesterfield Township, Mich., arrested Calvin Fluckes Jr., 21, in December after he tried to cash a counterfeit check for $848 at a Wal-Mart. Fluckes was apparently oblivious of the approximately 80 uniformed police officers who were in the store for a charity event and whose cruisers Fluckes had to pass when he parked his car in the Wal-Mart lot. According to a police lieutenant, "(Fluckes) was immediately apprehended."

-- Marshall Byers, 28, was arrested in Everett, Wash., in December, and charged with the attempted murder of his estranged wife's boyfriend (who was treated for five knife wounds). According to prosecutors, Byers was surprised at the "attempted" charge. Allegedly, he told a detective, "What? I thought I stuck him like a pig. What do you mean, he's alive?"

-- Also Should Have Kept His Mouth Shut: Jeremy Lyons, 20, was arrested in Hanover Township, Pa., in October for an alleged vandalism spree, bashing car windows with a baseball bat. A local TV station had carried a story of the arrest of another person, and Lyons for some reason called the station and, laughing, told them they had the wrong man. He was arrested when the call was traced.

The following uncoordinated people accidentally shot themselves recently, having chosen to carry their gun not in a holster but in the waistband of their pants: Manranzana Grimes, 16 (Canton, Ohio, September) (shot himself in the leg); a 23-year-old man (Wichita, Kan., November) (shot himself in the testicles); Gregory Quinn, 49 (Lewistown, Pa., November) (in the leg when removing his gun while driving); Evando Minor (Baltimore, November) (in the genitals while drawing his gun to rob a taxi driver).

(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.)

At the December ceremony in Najaf, Iraq, in which U.S. commanders turned over control of the city, Iraqi commandos took the stage carrying frogs and a rabbit and soon were eating the animals raw in a show of feral manliness. As U.S. personnel looked on apprehensively, one Iraqi cut open the rabbit's belly, screamed, snatched its heart in his teeth, and passed the bloody carcass down the line, with each commando taking a bite. According to a Baltimore Sun dispatch, locals said that Saddam Hussein's special forces used to do similar things, but with snakes, dogs, cats and even wolves.

-- (1) Floyd Kinney Jr., 49, pleading guilty in Northampton County, Pa., in December to indecent assault on two young girls, blamed the incidents on his wife's obsessive bingo habit, which he said took her out of the house "three, four times a week." (Said the judge, "Some people, when their wives aren't home, decide to clean the living room.") (2) Kevin Sutherland, 45, arrested in Salt Lake City in December for downloading child porn on his office computer, told investigators that he personally would "never" access child porn but that he has been diagnosed with multiple personalities, one of which is a 16-year-old boy ("Casey") who likes to look at pictures of girls his own age.

-- Numerous witnesses saw Michael Stone charge into the parliament building in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in November, armed with bombs, a knife and a handgun. After he was wrestled to the floor, he was charged with trying to kill separatist leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who were inside. However, in December, Stone said everything he did that day was merely "performance art replicating a terrorist attack." A credulous reporter for the Belfast Telegraph applauded Stone's "use of mixed media and everyday materials," which he said "show(ed) imagination."

-- Charles Littleton, 22, was defiant even after being Tasered by police when he resisted efforts to remove him from a Saginaw (Mich.) City Council meeting. He said he had to stand up for his right to wear his Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap, despite a rule banning hats for men inside. "It means more than just a hat," he said. "It's like my crown. It's like asking a king to remove his crown."

-- IBM fired Vietnam veteran James Pacenza from his job at a research facility in East Fishkill, N.Y., because he had logged on to an Internet chat room at work after being told not to. However, Pacenza responded with a $5 million lawsuit in November, claiming that he is "addicted" to chat rooms, as "self-medication" for his Vietnam-based post-traumatic stress disorder. (IBM said it does accommodate illnesses, but was not aware that Pacenza's obsession amounted to one.)

-- Monacan High School (Richmond, Va.) art teacher Stephen Murmer was placed on leave in December, and then fired in January, for his extracurricular work painting with his posterior (literally, dousing his backside with paint and rubbing it onto the canvas). Though he had taken steps to work under a different identity, he was exposed in a video that circulated on the Internet and was thus forced to go public. Murmer said he is contemplating an appeal and added, "I'm certainly proud of the ass painting."

-- Parents of some Castro Valley (Calif.) High School girls, led by aggressive county judge Larry Goodman, have waged a campaign to oust the school's girls' basketball coach, Nancy Nibarger, claiming that she insufficiently valued their daughters' skills in team tryouts. In October, school officials, in a compromise, created a committee to pick the team, but that committee, too, found the complaining girls not worthy enough. (Several of the parents, undaunted, vowed to continue seeking Nibarger's dismissal.)

-- More Ironies: (1) Doug Milliken was elected treasurer of Colorado's Arapahoe County in November on a promise to help families protect their property from foreclosure (Colorado had the country's highest foreclosure rate for most of last year). However, on Nov. 6, Milliken, himself, was served foreclosure papers that cited debt of $253,624 on his home. (2) California's Golden State Fence Co., which has a contract to build part of the United States' immigrant-impeding barrier on the Mexican border, agreed in December to pay fines totaling nearly $5 million because it had been employing illegal aliens.

(1) Britain's Darts Regulatory Authority announced in November that professional darts player Robbie "Kong" Green had been suspended for eight weeks after a positive drug test (marijuana). (2) The Federation of Black Cowboys, of Brooklyn, N.Y., with 35 members and 45 horses, lately must do its riding on city streets in traffic that was not a problem until urban sprawl enveloped their Cedar Lane Stables, according to an October New York Times profile.

-- Some British and German drivers have over-relied on their cars' satellite-navigation devices, according to a December Reuters dispatch, sometimes with tragic (or hilarious) results. A 53-year-old German man thought the device's instruction to turn "now" meant not at the next corner but right that second, and he crashed into a building. Another followed instructions but ignored a prominent "closed for construction" sign and plowed into a pile of sand. Said an exasperated German auto club spokesman, "It's not as if people are driving in a tank with only a small slit to see out." (In November, an ambulance in London went 400 miles to make a 20-minute trip, and in May another took 90 minutes to take a crash victim to a hospital 10 minutes away, both due to faulty "sat-nav" programming.)

-- Burglar Sheldon Reece, 32, was shot in the abdomen by homeowner Abel Sisneros in Fort Worth, Texas, in December. According to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, to enter the house, Reece had to boldly disregard two signs outside: "Warning. Nothing inside is worth risking your life for. Owners of this property are highly skilled to protect life, liberty and property from criminal attacks" and "No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again."

In October, the Rhode Island Supreme Court entered a final judgment for Charles "Chick" Lennon, 68, against the manufacturer of a penile implant he had received in 1996 but which perpetually remains somewhat erect. (He says he has to wear a fanny pack in front to conceal it.) He had originally won $750,000 for his pain and humiliation, reduced to $400,000, but then back up to $950,000, which he is scheduled to receive. In Chicago, dozens of men have sued Dr. Sheldon Burman after having their penises deformed in lengthening surgeries, according to lawsuits reported by the Chicago Sun-Times in September, even though Burman said he stands by his original methodology, involving vacuuming and stretching (on which he is said to be self-taught). And Blake Steidler, 25, of Reamstown, Pa., who said he received botched penis-augmentation surgery, was sentenced in November to almost five years in prison for mailing a bomb to the surgeon.

(1) Police in Sydney, Australia, arrested 19 people in a two-family street fight in January and, according to Sydney's Daily Telegraph, confiscated "knives, baseball bats, metal poles, planks, branches, cricket bats, pick handles, screwdrivers, golf clubs, curtain rods and glass bottles," as well as hammers and machetes. (2) Chytoria Graham, 27, was arrested in Pittsburgh in October after a fight with her boyfriend, culminating in Graham's grabbing the couple's 1-month-old son by the legs and using him to clobber the boyfriend.

(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.)