It is increasingly difficult these days for a girl to go through the stage of "plain old kid," according to a June Arizona Republic story, because clothing fashions seem to move from "toddler" directly to some form of "teen" (including "tween" and now "pre-tween"), with spaghetti-strap dresses and "ultra miniskirts," but in tinier-than-ever sizes. In fact, reported the newspaper, GapKids recently offered a "white, crocheted string bikini you'd likely see Anna Kournikova wearing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue (except that it) was for a 12-month-old."

Exciting New Products: (1) a washing machine with a built-in MP-3 player and speakers (U.S. patent applied for in June, from the South Korean firm LG Electronics) and (2) Liver Love, Carob Crunch, Honey Hearts and other dog treats that are marketed as snacks that owners can enjoy along with their dogs (from Britain's Alldog Bakery), but with the principal drawback that they are more expensive per gram than lumpfish caviar or the priciest of gourmet chocolates.

-- (1) A Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan) researcher reported in June that his work reveals that cockroaches have memories and the ability to learn, in that they can be taught to salivate (upon exposure to a specific odor), just as Pavlov showed that dogs could be taught to salivate (upon hearing a bell). (2) The human nose's ability to differentiate smells is greatly improved by mucus, which helps the nose by separating the scents chemically, and researchers from the UK's Warwick University said in April that they had developed an artificial mucus (a thin polymer coating over an artificial nose that enhances that device's effectiveness).

-- Among the recent discoveries of substances that provide similar virility outcomes as Viagra: the venom of a variety of black widow spider found in southern Chile (according to a researcher at Universidad de la Frontera in Temuco, Chile); the health drink Boost Plus (according to a June lawsuit filed by Christopher Woods of New York City, who developed priapism); the winter-flowering heather plant (according to botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland); and walnut extract (according to a researcher at Universiti Malaya in Malaysia) (though one would need 7 pounds of walnuts to achieve the effect of one pill).

-- Faced with falling prices for domestic wine, a group of French vintners has made terroristic threats against the government and retailers who carry imports. The guerrilla gang, wearing black ski masks, released a video in May (so far ignored by the Sarkozy government), reminding officials about recent incidents in which small explosives were detonated in supermarkets that carry imported wines and in which a tractor-trailer carrying imported wine had been shot at. Said one hooded protester, "Blood will flow" if prices don't soon rise.

-- Parents With Too Much Money: Backyard play sets can range in price from less than $100 to high-end outfits of $2,000 to $12,000 that would typically include fancy combinations of rock walls, rope ladders, sandboxes and tunnel slides, and maybe a tower with roofs and rotating plastic guns mounted on the walls, according to a May report in Milwaukee's Journal Sentinel. Also available: the King Kong Carl McKee Custom, at 46 feet by 58 feet, featuring towers 16 feet high (price: about $46,000, installed).

-- In June, for the fourth year, professor Paul Worsey of the University of Missouri-Rolla conducted his Summer Explosives Camp, with 20 high-school-age kids learning the techniques of blowing things up (e.g., a tree stump, a watermelon, a dead chicken). Said one camper, "Some people like baseball (but) I just like to set off bombs." Worsey's main goal is to recruit mine-engineering majors to his school, but another benefit, he told National Public Radio, is that the school "attract(s) the kids that might otherwise get into a little bit of trouble (and) give(s) them ... an opportunity for a career."

-- In June, the town council in Ledbury, England, turned down Timothy Fry's request to be allowed to exercise his two snakes, Rose and Buddy, in the town's park. He said he'd been letting them roam, leashless, for the last year with no complaints, but admitted that the two (a corn snake and a rat snake) were getting stressed from all the attention they have been receiving.

-- Pablo Castro, 26, was sent to the hospital twice in Decatur, Ala., on June 24, once after being stabbed in an argument and, after his release later that day, being stabbed again while arguing with a different person. And Tony Hicks was hospitalized in Knoxville, Tenn., for separate wounds on July 1, 2 and 3; he was hit by a car one night, then released from the hospital the next day, but was back in after an intruder attacked him in his home, and after his release the next day, he was back after police shot him in connection with a robbery.

-- A judge in London's Southwark Crown Court sentenced Mr. Bonney Eberendu, 36, to a mental health facility in June after he admitted that he was the one who smeared his feces inside at least six trains over a several-month period last year. Eberendu said the voices in his head had, on at least five occasions, instructed him to go kill someone and that, somehow, he was able to overcome the voices by doing what he did on the trains.

On May 31, veteran big-rig operator Gilberto Cantu drove his 18-wheeler all the way through the Lincoln Tunnel (1.5 miles, from Weehawken, N.J., to New York City) even though the load was 6 inches too high for the tunnel, so that the truck's roof continuously ripped and peeled off, slowing the truck and making a screeching noise the whole way. In addition, Cantu apparently ignored the several sound warnings and flashing lights by officers who tried to stop him inside the tunnel, and according to their reports, he appeared not even to understand why they had stopped him after he finally emerged. Cantu was not alcohol-impaired and, until then, had a "spotless" safety record.

One of the standard "panic" rumors that throw some African villages into turmoil is the report that a couple (usually unmarried and therefore deserving of bad fortune) has become stuck together during sex and cannot be unstuck without medical attention. A reporter for Kenya's East African Standard happened to be in the middle of a frenzied mob in front of the Naselica Hotel in downtown Kisumu on May 26, brought together by rumors that an ambulance had been called for a stuck couple. The reporter was convinced that most in the crowd were true believers, but the hotel manager said one of his competitors probably had planted the rumor, hoping to tie up traffic for the day and to create the impression that the Naselica is unlucky.

Recent Play-Dates: Conneaut, Ohio, March (image of Jesus on a pancake); Glasgow, Scotland, March (image of Jesus in a woman's ultrasound scan); Kamloops, British Columbia, March (image of Jesus on a baking sheet); Sacramento, Calif., March (image of Jesus on burned wallpaper); Houston, Texas, February (image of Jesus in a pizza pan); Crystal City, Texas, February (image of Jesus in the bark of a tree); Morton, Texas, January (image of Jesus in ice in the freezer of a grocery store); Avery Park, Ga., January (image of Jesus stained on shower tile).

(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.)

Africa's largely primitive Hadzabe people, down to their last 1,500 members after surviving thousands of years of disease, famine and encroaching civilization, fear their final blow will be the recent deal that Tanzania made to turn the tribe's prime hunting grounds over to United Arab Emirates royalty for private safaris. The land comprises 2,500 acres near the Serengeti Plain, and some Hadzabe (who still make fire by rubbing sticks together) are resigned either to fight the "invaders" (with bows and poison-tipped arrows) or to migrate to towns for survival, according to a June Washington Post dispatch from Tanzania's Yaeda Valley.

Andres Vasquez, 20, of Verona, Ky., initially told the 911 operator in May that someone had "thrown" his truck on top of him, but he finally admitted he was drunk, had had a one-vehicle accident, was trapped upside-down and was in dire pain, fading in and out for over two hours to the dispatcher. The operators pleaded the entire time for Vasquez to just say where he was so that they could send a rescue party, but, as the Kentucky Enquirer put it, "When repeatedly asked his location, (Vasquez's) answer was always the same: 'I'm under the (expletive) truck.'" (He finally gave a clue and was rescued.)

-- Lame: (1) Jonathan Powell, 17, was convicted in April of sexually assaulting a college student in Iowa City, Iowa, after his DNA was found in several places on her body. Powell explained the DNA by claiming that he had merely bumped into the woman accidentally while jogging and had become so "entangled" with her that he was unable to free himself for about "45 minutes." (2) In April, Donald Duncan Jr., 34, was convicted of invasion of privacy in Carlisle, Pa., after his wife discovered a hidden-camera video of two girls who were disrobing in a bedroom in the couple's house. Duncan said he had set up the camera because he suspected there were ghosts in the house and wanted proof.

-- Lawyer Charles Curbo filed a motion in Memphis, Tenn., in June, claiming that his client, Tony Wolfe, who was convicted of murder, failed to get a fair trial due to the ineffectiveness of Wolfe's lawyer (i.e., Curbo) because the lawyer was often too sleepy to do a good job. However, the prosecutor pointed out that part of Curbo's strategy had been to "wear down" witnesses "by extensive cross-examination" and that it was no wonder that he was exhausted.

-- Tiffany Weaver pleaded guilty in April to having stolen a lawyer's official ID and impersonating the woman in order to gain access to the jail in Baltimore so that she could visit her incarcerated boyfriend, but she denied, through her lawyer, that she and the boyfriend had had sex while they were together. "There was never any sexual intercourse," said attorney Ivan Bates. "There was no thrusting whatsoever."

-- Unclear on the Concept: (1) After the owner of a wrought-iron business in Brussels, Belgium, abruptly turned away a 53-year-old Nigerian native who had applied for a job, the local labor office declared the owner racist. However, the man said he was just trying to protect the Nigerian from the owner's dog. "My dog is racist," he said. "Not me." (2) Police in Kyoto, Japan, said in March that a man had been detained after firing a dozen rounds from his house toward a new, 11-story condominium building next door. The man explained that he was angry that the building was blocking the sunlight he had previously enjoyed.

St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock was killed in an April car crash after he collided with a stopped tow truck on Interstate 64 in the middle of the night, and according to a police report, Hancock was intoxicated, speeding, un-seat-belted, and talking on his cell phone at the time. Nonetheless, in May, Hancock's father filed a lawsuit claiming that the causes of the crash were (1) the tow truck operator, (2) the driver who was being assisted by the tow truck operator, and (3) the manager of the restaurant in which Hancock had been drinking.

The local government in Dalkeith, Scotland, has decided that, notwithstanding global warming and carbon "footprints," the lights will stay on all night, every night, in the building that formerly was Dalkeith High School (but which has been vacant since 2004) because councilors fear that trespassers would hurt themselves in the darkness and sue them. A Green Party spokesman called it "an unbelievable triple whammy (cost, fire risk, environmental waste)."

In April, Los Angeles gynecologist David Matlock licensed his 2-year-old G-spot-enhancing technology to 35 other doctors around the country to help spread the benefits of collagen injections that swell the so-called Grafenburg Spot (a supposedly pleasure-registering zone which is, at best, tiny and hidden, but according to some doctors, nonexistent). With the patient's help, the doctor guides the 3-inch needle to the most promising location, and one injection renders the G-spot the size of a coin. Many patients claim their sex lives are greatly enhanced, but no peer-reviewed research has yet been done.

Chief Deputy Terry Thompson was driving around Rayville, La., in June when he saw several cars stopped for an 8-foot snake in the road, with some motorists threatening to run over it or shoot it so that traffic could pass. Thompson stepped in to save it and then realized that he recognized the snake. It was, he remembered, the one-eyed boa constrictor that had turned up missing in March after owner Chad Foote had moved into town, and Foote said he was ecstatic to have it returned, considering the handsome price one has to pay for a snake with one eye.

Twelve hundred troops from Poland were deployed to Afghanistan in June as part of a NATO buildup to patrol the Pakistan border, searching for Taliban forces, but Polish commanders admitted that they would not be combat-ready for several weeks because the keys to all their Humvees had been stolen. One commander said spare keys had been ordered.

News of the Weird first mentioned "Breatharians" in a 1999 report, referring to people who claim to subsist on only water, air and sunlight, even though there is scant proof of their self-denial and utterly no scientific evidence that humans can live beyond a few weeks on such a diet. In June, London's Daily Mail profiled German Michael Werner, who claims not to have eaten (except for fruit juice, coffee, wine and an occasional grape or nut) since 2001 yet is active and appears robust at 6-feet-2 and 175 pounds, attributing his success to a hunger-ignoring state of mind. The two most famous Breatharians (Australian Ellen Greve and American Wiley Brooks) were both later exposed in the press as having sneaked food on the side.

Elderly drivers' recent lapses of concentration, stepping on the gas instead of the brake: An East Meadow, N.Y., man, 91, crashed into his wife (March). A prominent biochemist from the 1940s, age 88, crashed through a wall of the Civic Center in San Rafael, Calif. (June). An 84-year-old woman, playing golf with another woman, accidentally ran her down in her golf cart, Medford, Ore. (April). A Shiloh, Ill., woman, 84, drove into the cafeteria of Shiloh Elementary School, hitting one girl (January). A Deland, Fla., woman, 84, driving to pick up a prescription, smashed into the pharmacy (November). An Eastbourne, England, man, 80, crashed into the lobby of Eastbourne General Hospital, coming to visit his wife (June). An Oshkosh, Wis., man, 77, smashed into a restaurant (with pedalwork that was complicated by his cane, leaning against the driver's seat) (December).

(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.)

Popular Science's "10 Worst Jobs in Science" this year (July issue) included the divers who scrub the walls of pits of sewage, toxins and nuclear waste; the elephant vasectomist (wielding a 4-foot-long laparoscope to deal with the 12-inch-wide testicles); carcass-preparers who ship cat, frog, shark and even cockroach bodies to be studied in science classes; the whale researcher who admitted she was "surprised" at "how much you could learn about a whale through its feces"; and the volunteers who lie still for up to 21 days to study the effects of weightlessness (for $2,000 a week).

-- Servicemembers Legal Defense Network activists told reporters in June that at least 59 U.S.-trained Arabic speakers have been ejected from the military because they're gay (and in each case despite being a native English-speaker who completed intense, expensive military language school). But a month before that, as symbolic of the government's shortage of Arabic speakers, an official of the U.S.-funded Al Hurra Middle East television service admitted that it had recently, inadvertently, broadcast several pro-terrorist programs (including an hour-long tirade encouraging violence against Jews), attributing the error to the fact that no senior Al Hurra news manager speaks Arabic.

-- Britain's Home Office said in April that the country's 1,500 most "disruptive" families could soon be moved into special communities by themselves, with 24-hour supervision, if they didn't stop causing trouble (trouble which the Home Office figured has cost taxpayers the equivalent of more than $1 billion to deal with).

-- Among the tax sweeteners offered by states to welcome relocating businesses is Texas' easy-to-get farmland benefit. When the huge Fidelity Investments company bought a 300-acre plot near Dallas for a new office, it made sure to put 25 head of cattle on the land, which the Boston Herald found reduced its real-estate tax bill by about $360,000 a year under what it would pay without the cattle. Also, federal farm subsidies continue to be skewed, as well. In May, a coalition of Washington groups unveiled a searchable computer database listing agriculture subsidies by recipient, which revealed that such "farmers" as David Letterman and basketball player Scottie Pippen receive federal funds for incidental farm uses of their land.

(1) In May, a jury in Weld County, Colo., declined to hold Kathleen Ensz accountable for leaving a flier containing her dog's droppings on the doorstep of U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, apparently agreeing with Ensz that she was merely exercising free speech. (2) Jenny Bailey was elected mayor in Cambridge, England, in May, and her companion-partner Jennifer Liddle (a former Cambridge city council member) became the equivalent of "first lady"; both Bailey and Liddle were born males and became women as young adults.

University of Western Australia artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr blend art with science, extracting living cells from animals and growing them on top of biodegradable scaffolds so that when the scaffolds disappear, a living entity remains, in the shape of the scaffold. At the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon, Israel, in April, they unveiled "Victimless Leather," or actual animal skin cells that grew into leather without harming an animal, but their previous work has included growing steak from lamb muscle cells and the preparation for growing wings on a pig (though, in the final stage of that project, they were turned down by the exhibitor, who was apparently grossed out).

In May, "more than 300 people" in Augusta, Ga. (according to the Augusta Chronicle), assembled at the Municipal Building explicitly to pray for the city, following weeks-long controversies on the city commission. In June, "more than 300 people" in Destin, Fla. (according to the Northwest Florida Daily News), assembled at the Destin Worship Center and raised their hands in joyful prayer for a rebound in the real estate market in the coastal communities in the Florida panhandle.

Thomas Wimberly, 74, was arrested in July 2006 for stealing two hot dogs (value: $2.11, including tax) from a Quik Trip convenience store in Wichita, Kan. (though he said he had merely forgotten to pay). Because it was Wimberly's third misdemeanor theft charge, Kansas law required that the count be upgraded to a felony. Wimberly could not immediately make bail, and in fact was incarcerated for 71 days before his trial (once being subject to a bond of $100,000), but prosecutors insisted on a trial. In April 2007, a jury of 12 people (reportedly angry at having been called to such an insignificant case) found Wimberly not guilty. (The penalty, according to state law, if he had been convicted, was 12 months' probation.)

(1) In May, a woman in Jacksonville, Ill., reported the theft of a bong from her house; she told police that she valued it because it belonged to her son, who is in prison, and it is all she had to remember him by. (2) The sheriff's office in Clyman, Wis., reported that a man called 911 on April 21, alarmed that he had just paid $20 to a woman at a club after a lap dance and then realized that she was not the one who had danced for him.

(1) Police in Guelph, Ontario, were on the lookout in May for the man they thought responsible for three incidents in which someone approached a woman and asked that she kick him in the groin. A police spokesman said no crime had been committed, but that they are "concerned." (2) In New York City in June, Frank Ranieri, 25, was arrested and charged with impersonating a police officer in order to persuade teenage girls, for money, to let him stab them in the buttocks with a ball-point pen (which is the not-well-known paraphilia called piquerism).

In May, the inept Christopher Emmorey, 23, was sentenced to two years in prison for robbing a Peterborough, Ontario, bank, from which he had intended to take $2,000. However, the teller said she could only give him $200 and also must take out a $5 fee because Emmorey is not a regular customer. Emmorey stood stoically while she did the paperwork and then handed him $195, which he took and walked away (only to be arrested a short time later).

The escalating value of the late Italian artist Piero Manzoni's canned feces was chronicled in News of the Weird in 1993, 1998, 2002 and 2004, but now in June 2007 his former colleague Agostino Bonalumi told a reporter that the project had been a hoax and that Manzoni had merely filled the cans with plaster. Manzoni created 90 small tins, and collectors had paid thousands of dollars each (making his feces worth more per ounce than gold, including once, in 1993, paying $75,000 for a tin). (A spokesman for Britain's Tate gallery, which once paid the equivalent of about $35,000 for one, said that the actual content of the art is beside the point.)

(1) A 54-year-old man was killed while running to catch his bus in Greater Manchester, England, in May; he accidentally ran smack into a lamppost and fell into the street, where the bus ran over him. (2) Police in Los Angeles said in May that they believe a 21-year-old man deliberately parked his car on railroad tracks, with his girlfriend inside and a train approaching. However, the girlfriend survived (with serious injuries), and the man was killed by shrapnel from the collision as he was fleeing.

(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.)