The West Tennessee Detention Facility (Mason, Tenn.) made a video pitch for California inmates, hoping some would volunteer to be outsourced under that state's program to relieve overcrowding. The hard-timers should come east, the video urged, because of West Tennessee's "larger and cleaner jail cells, 79 TV channels, including ESPN, views of peaceful cow pastures, and ... the 'Dorm of the Week,' (with its inmates) staying up all night, watching a movie and eating cheeseburgers or pizza," according to a March description in Nashville's Tennessean. "You're not a number here," said one inmate. "You come here, it's personalized." (California's outsourcing program is facing a lawsuit from the prison guards' union, anxious about job loss.)

-- Retired German farmer Karl Szmolinsky told reporters in January that he had agreed to visit North Korea in April to give tips on how he managed to breed huge rabbits (around 20 to 25 pounds), which he believes the Koreans view as one answer to their hunger crisis. He has already sent a sampler of 12 monster rabbits, which should produce 60 offspring a year, with one providing "a filling meal for eight people," he told Der Spiegel.

-- Walter C. Stevens, 81, thought he had buried his allegedly disreputable past, but an underground water problem at his former residence in Sierra Vista, Ariz., brought it back. When an area in the yard flooded, a plastic bag emerged, containing videotapes that the FBI now says Stevens had made in the 1970s and 1980s of himself having sex with underage girls in Japan, South Korea and Thailand.

-- A group of "extremist" rabbis (the Sanhedrin, about 70 in number) announced in February that they want Judaism to resume the centuries-ago practice of including animal sacrifices in services and that resumption should start, for historical reasons, in the Jerusalem compound of Temple Mount (but known primarily now as Islam's Al Aqsa Mosque). According to the rabbis, sacrifice (especially of sheep) was a centerpiece of services in the Old City, but they acknowledge that it is unrealistic to expect current Muslim officials to tolerate the practice.

-- U.S. Justice Department statistics released in January showed that nationally, inmates in state prisons (between ages 15 and 64) die at a rate of about 20 percent less than people of that age in the general population. Black inmates, especially, appear to suffer lower mortality behind prison walls, where the death rate is less than half what it is on the outside.

-- Alabama state officials announced in February that they had identified more than $438,000 in abuses of the financial aid program at Bishop State Community College in Mobile, including $87,000 in athletic scholarships awarded to 42 relatives of employees (and others) who played no sports. Included was one employee's 67-year-old disabled grandmother, who received scholarships in three sports (but was unable to use them, in that she passed away shortly after the paperwork came through).

-- According to a Beijing Youth Daily report distributed by Reuters news service in February, an unidentified Chinese businessman posted an online job offer for a "substitute" mistress. That is, in order to save his marriage, he had agreed to allow his wife to beat up his mistress and thus needed a stand-in to absorb the whipping, to spare the real mistress. He offered the equivalent of about $400 per 10 minutes of pain.

(1) Gary Galleberg, a former vice mayor of Naples, Fla., pleaded guilty to battery in February for spitting on the table of restaurant diners whose offense had been to ask Galleberg, twice, to convince his small daughter to stop banging on the window next to their table. (2) Serbian anesthesiologist Spasoje Radulovic and surgeon Dragan Vukanic had an "all-out" fight in a Belgrade hospital's operating room in February, and then outside, punching and slapping each other while an assistant surgeon was forced to finish the operation. The nature of the dispute was not disclosed, according to a Reuters report.

(1) In Omaha, Neb., in February, Kevin Oliver, 36, was convicted of criminal impersonation for tricking two women into giving him urine samples by convincing them, falsely, that he was a recruiter for T-Mobile and needed the samples to complete their employment applications. (2) In a February Internet global survey of fetishism, researchers from Italy's University of Bologna concluded that feet (and shoes) were the world's most popular objects of desire, followed at a distance by underwear and "body fluids." Neither genitals nor breasts nor legs nor buttocks were selected by more than 4 percent of those surveyed, and two people indicated a thing for pacemakers (but it was not disclosed whether the two had yet found each other).

Crooks Who Need More Time in the Gym: (1) A 60-year-old woman turned on a 19-year-old man who had tried to hijack her car in Frisco, Texas, in February, and shot him with his own gun. (2) A petite clerk in her 20s followed on foot the man who snatched her store's cash drawer in Hamilton, Ontario, in February, confronted him and snatched it back. (The man made another try for the cash drawer, but in a tug-of-war, the clerk again prevailed.) (3) Four American senior citizens on a cruise, on a stopover in Limon, Costa Rica, fought off a band of young muggers in February, and in fact one senior (age 70) killed one of the thugs (age 20) with his bare hands, according to an Associated Press report.

The New York City children's services agency took away former "breatharian" David Jubb's 20-month-old son in February after Jubb refused to let physicians treat the boy's fractured ankle. As mentioned previously in News of the Weird, breatharians believe that humans can subsist primarily on air and sunlight. Jubb said he has evolved since those days and now eats, but extremely few calories' worth, and he drinks his own urine. He acknowledged that his child's diet is absent the generally recommended nutritional building blocks for infants, according to a New York Post report.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (79) The punk who tries to outrun police, only to be caught because his baggy jeans slip down and trip him, as happened to Chad Mercer, 20, in Wilmington, Del., in February, as he fled from a traffic violation and a gun-possession charge. (80) Criminal entrepreneurs who cleverly brag about their enterprises on Web sites such as MySpace.com, like Bennie Rangel, 26, of Georgetown, Texas, who posted details of his cocaine business, along with a photo of himself fondling money (which led to a March sentencing of 70 years in prison).

(1) In Pittsburgh in February, Antwon Williams, 45, who police said was in the act of consummating a drug sale, reached into a customer's car to prevent him from driving away without paying but got stuck in the window, and as the customer sped down the street, Williams' body was severed cleanly in two by a utility pole. (2) The South Carolina Public Safety Department reported in January that 122 pedestrians were killed on the state's roads in 2006, but "almost one-third," according to an Associated Press analysis, weren't actually "pedestrians," but people "lying illegally in (the) road."

(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.)

Democracy in Finland: The Intopii computer firm of Helsinki announced in February that it has installed software to assist voters, who, studies suggest, tend to select candidates who look like themselves. When a voter uploads his or her photo, the Web site will use facial-recognition software to find those among the 800 candidates in March parliamentary elections who most resemble that voter, to ease the difficult burden of citizenship in a democracy. And in March, incumbent parliamentary candidate Jyrki Kasvi launched the new version of his campaign Web site, written entirely in the Star-Trek language Klingon.

-- People Confused by "Mother": The head teacher of Johnstown Primary School in Carmarthen, Wales, ordered in February that there be no Mother's Day cards in school this year because it might be upsetting to students without a mother. Also in February, a government-funded advisory report to Britain's National Health Service recommended that medical staffs not use the terms "mum" and "dad" (and use "guardians" or "carers"), especially since the terms might be confusing or alienating to children of gay couples.

-- In February, the grand mufti of Egypt, Aly Gomaa, told a TV talk show audience in Cairo that he endorsed a recent fatwa by noted scholar Soad Saleh that it is religiously acceptable for women to undergo surgical hymen restoration. Perhaps even more controversial, according to Cairo's Daily Star Egypt newspaper, was Gomaa's corollary, that any Muslim man who insisted on his prospective wife's virginity should be prepared to prove his own.

-- The local government's tourist information center in Swindon, England, told author Mark Sutton that his World War I-themed book, "Tell Them of Us," could not be sold in its bookstore unless Sutton demonstrated that he had liability insurance, not for potentially libelous passages but in case readers, for example, suffered paper cuts turning the pages. Said Swindon Borough Council spokesman Richard Freeman, "We have to cover every eventuality."

-- At least a few parents with pronounced genetic abnormalities (e.g., deaf people, dwarfs) have in recent years sought specialized in-vitro fertilization that would improve their chances for a child with the same abnormalities, according to a December Associated Press report (citing a September survey by a Johns Hopkins University research facility). One adult female dwarf told the AP reporter defiantly, "You cannot tell me that I cannot have a child who's going to look like me." Slate.com, extrapolating from the survey, posited that at least eight fertility clinics have provided the service, though many other clinics say they would decline.

In February, the government of southwestern China's Fumin county decided to improve the feng shui (the harmony of the physical environment) for villagers next to mined-out Laoshou mountain, not by planting trees but by spray-painting the mountainside green. An employee at the county "forestry" department declined to comment to an Associated Press reporter.

-- Steven McCuller, 20, was arrested twice in a two-week period for burglary in Pascagoula, Miss., but it was the earlier January arrest that was the more controversial. George Stevenson, 33, a security guard on duty at the Eastwood Townhomes complex, saw McCuller on the grounds late at night and chased him until the pursuit took both men to the nearby Arlington Elementary School, where Stevenson apprehended McCuller and waited for police to arrive. McCuller was charged in that matter, but Stevenson, also, was arrested and charged both with trespassing at a school and carrying a weapon (his service gun) on school grounds (even though, obviously, no students were present).

-- Robert Moore, 37, was arrested in Floral City, Fla., in January, and according to police, he conceded that he had lost his temper and tried to kill his wife after he found out that she had obtained an abortion without informing him. (The charge thus reflects a basic internal battle within the accused over precisely how sacred life is.)

For a story, a KGTV reporter in San Diego called several telephone numbers advertised in local media offering to supply trendy, "boutique" puppies (e.g., Maltese, Bichon Frise) at cut-rate prices, and among the numbers was a seller in Nigeria, who said he was practically giving away the Bichons for just the cost of shipping ($1,000 to $2,000). The reporter, who was recording the call, asked to hear the dog actually barking before he sent any money, and the seller complied. When the reporter played back the barking for acoustics engineers, they all agreed: The Bichon's woof-woof perfectly matched the characteristics of the Nigerian seller's voice.

Everyone Has a Dark Side: (1) Ms. Georgie Audean Buoy, 82, pleaded guilty in February in The Dalles, Ore., to having sex with an 11-year-old boy in her foster care. "(T)his is not the Audean we have known for the last couple of decades," said her pastor at the Covenant Christian Community Church. (2) Denver's City Attorney (and a former state court judge) Larry Manzanares was placed on leave in February after a search found one of the state's stolen laptop computers in his home. Manzanares told KMGH-TV that he had bought it but had no receipt. Said he, "It was rather foolish of me to even think about buying a computer from a fellow in a parking lot." (Manzanares has resigned, and a special prosecutor is now investigating.)

A 15-year-old boy in Hamilton, Ontario, was finally rescued after dangling from a rope, nearly naked, upside down, in the minus-5-degree (F) cold, after a February attempt to spray graffiti on a new bridge went bad. He got his inspiration while tobogganing alone, at about 8 p.m., and left his gloves and cell phone in the sled as he rappelled over the side of the bridge, but when the rope slipped and entangled him, he found himself upside down and then lost some clothes as he tried to wriggle free. At about 10 p.m., when a party was breaking up at a nearby home, someone finally heard his screams for help.

News of the Weird has mentioned instances in which serious assaults have necessitated medical tests for the victim and have fortuitously revealed latent problems that were even more serious than whatever the assault produced. (Some of the latent problems might well have proved fatal had they not been discovered.) In February, a recreational hockey player in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, viciously cross-checked referee Dale Neudorf, sending him to the hospital, where doctors just happened to discover a brain tumor, which was still being assessed at press time. And in October, a New York City mugger nearly choked Jennifer Chow to death, sending her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a latent thyroid cancer. (In March, she reported being cancer-free.)

(1) A 50-year-old man fell through the ice at Donner Lake near Truckee, Calif., in February and drowned. Police said he was ice-skating about 100 yards off shore while wearing 2-foot-tall stilts (thus, the stilts were wearing the skates), and couldn't recover after falling through. (2) California Highway Patrol officers at the scene near Yuba City said the 28-year-old driver that crossed into oncoming traffic and fatally crashed into a Hummer in February was, perhaps, working at his laptop computer while driving. Though the screen was shattered in the crash, the computer was open in the seat beside him and plugged into his car's cigarette lighter.

(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.)

The Kibera neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Dahravi section of Mumbai, India, are two of the planet's most appalling slums, but residents have recently discovered well-off international visitors roaming their toxic, fetid urban hells as voyeurs on travel agency-arranged tours. "(T)hey want to come and take pictures ... tell their friends they've been to the worst slum in Africa," lamented one resident of Kibera (which has one toilet for every 1,440 people), speaking to a Reuters reporter in February, but a March Smithsonian magazine piece quoted a Dahravi tour entrepreneur as promising to show "the positive side of (the) slum" (for instance, the community spirit that discourages street beggars, in a nation otherwise teeming with them).

-- Among traditional rituals still celebrated: (1) Tinku, in Bolivia's high plains, pits two tribes in Sacaca each February in day-long drinking and all-out fist-fighting. Despite the bloodshed, Tinku survives, helped by President Evo Morales' support for indigenous cultures. The mayor of Sacaca called Tinku "a sublime, beautiful act," in a February New York Times dispatch. (2) And at the Historic Carnival of Ivrea, Italy, in February, nine "teams" battled in commemoration of the centuries-old rebellion against noblemen, who enjoyed deflowering commoners' brides on their wedding eves. Today, that battle is waged by people pelting one another with oranges (this year, more than a million).

-- The U.S. Border Patrol has for three decades worked with a small group of Native Americans (Navajos, Kiowa and Sioux, among others) who call themselves the Shadow Wolves and who proudly use ancestral techniques to help track down drug smugglers and human traffickers along the Arizona and California borders with Mexico. According to a February Reuters dispatch, the Wolves can detect "barely visible scuff marks" on the ground and know how to follow trails of tiny fibers.

-- The University of Texas-Arlington fired two employees last year after they had prayed at the cubicle of a co-worker and anointed it with prayer oil, and in December the two filed a lawsuit over the termination. The school said that "praying, shouting and/or chanting over a co-worker's ... belongings without her knowledge and consent constitutes harassment," and that rubbing down the cubicle frame with oil showed "disregard for university property." Evelyne Shatkin and Linda Shifflett said that the co-worker was on vacation at the time, but they declined to say why they thought she needed the benefit of prayer.

-- Britain's Home Office decided recently, in the course of remodeling at the Brixton prison in London, that, because of Muslim inmates, all the toilets should be re-positioned so that users would be respectfully facing perpendicular to Mecca as they answered nature's calls. In China, meanwhile, several multinational corporations, along with the government's television network, said they are de-emphasizing pigs in advertising and promotion even though this is the Year of the Pig in the Chinese zodiac. The Han Chinese majority regard pork as their premier meat and the pig as a symbol of happiness, honesty and fertility, according to a January Wall Street Journal dispatch.

-- TV evangelist Darlene Bishop (Monroe, Ohio) had a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against her in late 2006 by the family of her brother, who died after a battle with throat cancer, which the family says Bishop convinced him (on his deathbed) that he had defeated through her ministry of prayer. Before her brother was stricken, Bishop's main healing example was herself, in that she touted prayer as having enabled her to beat her own breast cancer, but she later conceded that she merely believed herself stricken and that no formal diagnosis had been made. (Bishop's brother was a prominent country and western songwriter, and the family members are contesting his considerable estate.)

-- Two solutions to "bullying": (1) In November, a mother (with her two daughters and a family friend in tow) rushed to a school in Charlotte, N.C., to defend her 15-year-old son, who had been complaining of bullying. (Logically, a defense by one's mother might not put an end to bullying.) (2) The South Korean government commenced a pilot program in March to supply to-and-from-school bodyguards for kids who complain about bullying (to be funded by private donations). However, the bodyguards would not actually sit with kids in class.

-- Seattle parents of 9-year-old "Ashley" announced they have decided to give her intensive hormone therapy, which will likely cause her not to grow beyond her current stature (4-foot-5, 75 pounds), in that she has a likely permanent brain impairment that prevents her from almost all of life's activities (walking, talking, eating, keeping upright). The parents decided that, since she requires constant care, their incentive to take her places and engage her would be increased if she were of a manageable size rather than a full-grown adult.

(1) "Feral Shih Tzus Roam Georgia Condo Complex" (Science Daily); (2) "Son Gets Six Months, Probation, for Dismembering Mother" (WINS Radio, New York City); (3) "Judge Rules Government Supply of Marijuana Is Inadequate" (San Jose Mercury News). (The dogs romped through the Covered Bridge complex in Marietta; the 16-year-old son was found to be emotionally under the spell of a sadistic adult molester; and the federal government's marijuana farm was not producing enough for medical research.)

Brian Ward, 29, was arrested in St. Clairsville, W.Va., in February after a student's parent saw him acting strange while parked across the street from St. Clairsville High School. The parent reported that Ward appeared maybe to be having a seizure, in that his arms were "thrashing around," but police found that that was just his reaction to an illegal inhalant, which was not identified.

Novelist (27 books) David Eddings, 75, accidentally destroyed his Carson City, Nev., garage and part of his next-door office in January while he was flushing out the gas tank of his idle sports car. He said later that his intention was to remove the gasoline from the car to reduce the fire risk, but then he saw that some fluid had leaked onto the garage floor. For some reason, Eddings' curiosity about the leak (water or gasoline?) caused him to light a piece of paper and toss it onto the puddle, just to find out. "One word comes to mind," he later told the Nevada Appeal. "Dumb."

News of the Weird has formally retired the category of household-hoarding stories, but apparently Ann Biglin of West Yarmouth, Mass., has an additional problem: hoarding in her automobile. Police issued her a citation in February after her car jumped a curb and knocked over a light post, which Biglin explained was due to "several old coffee cups" and "assorted pieces of trash" that might have accidently fallen and hit the accelerator. However, police found the seats filled at least chest-high with trash. A Boston Herald photo showed the driver's seat uninhabitable, and its story described the mess as "mountains of trash" that came down as an "avalanche" on her accelerator.

Though much of Pakistan remains devoutly Islamic and sometimes even intensely tribal in nature, 28-year-old Mr. Ali Saleem enjoys modest success on television each week as a cross-dressing diva named Begum Nawazish Ali, whose flamboyant character alternates between coquettish and outrageous. According to a January New York Times dispatch from Karachi, Ali and his fans believe no biological female could do what he does, either because of religious norms or sensitive family "honor" (which sometimes leads relatives to punish or even kill female family members who bring them shame in their community).

(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.)