Australian Jeffrey Lee is the last surviving member of the clan that controls the Koongarra uranium deposit near Kakadu National Park (east of Darwin), and federal law requires his permission for the French energy company Areva to extract the estimated 14,000 tons, perhaps worth the equivalent of $4.2 billion (U.S.), but Lee vouches never to sell because "if you disturb that land, bad things will happen." "This is my country," he told the Sydney Morning Herald in July. "I'm not interested in money. I've got a job. ... I can go fishing and hunting. That's all that matters to me."

-- Widower Charlie Bonn Kemp, 77, of Vero Beach, Fla., took especially hard the loss of his wife, Lee, in 2006 because she was unquestionably the love of his life even though the couple stopped having sex even before they got married in 1978, according to a June St. Petersburg Times profile. Lee had been Charlie's gay lover for 26 years, until revealing in 1978 that he could no longer resist the urge to become a woman, and especially a housewife. Such was their attachment that, following Lee's full sex change, she and Charlie decided to take advantage of Lee's new status and legally marry and continue their devotion, even though Charlie remained sexually attracted only to men.

-- Kenya, in addition to the usual problems of a developing African nation (poverty, tribal frictions), has recently endured the rise in power of the Mungiki, which is a secret society that is (according to a June New York Times dispatch) "part Sicilian Mafia, part Chicago street gang, with a little of the occult sprinkled in." Police say the members aim to destabilize the country in the midst of the current political campaign by devil-worshipping acts of violence (skinning heads, drinking human blood from jerrycans). A district commissioner in Nairobi said the Mungiki had threatened her with genital mutilation. The gang originated in the 1990s much as organized crime in the U.S. did, by taking over such urban enterprises as bus transit and garbage collection.

-- Latest in Brain Science: (1) French neurologists writing recently in the journal The Lancet described their surprise in finding, via brain scans, that a normally functioning 44-year-old man had a brain "more than 50 percent to 75 percent" smaller than average, consisting of little more than a thin sheet of brain material surrounding a large fluid buildup. (The man is employed as a French government bureaucrat.) (2) Researchers at the University of Calgary said in July that female mice in their study were not only sexually aroused by whiffs of male mouse pheromones but that the scent apparently made the females' brains grow larger.

-- Northbrook, Ill., husband Arthur Friedman persuaded his wife that after 10 years' marriage, they should become mate-swapping swingers, which he thought would enhance their relationship. His wife, reluctant at first, began to participate and eventually fell in love with another swinging husband, an event that precipitated the Friedmans' breakup, reported the Chicago Sun-Times. Friedman, with an inadequate appreciation of irony, sued the husband under Illinois' alienation-of-affection law, and in June, a jury actually found in his favor, for $4,802.87. However, the soon-to-be-divorced Mrs. Friedman said she felt humiliated by the implication that she had been "worth" just $480 a year.

-- Lithuania's Ombudsman for Children, visiting Ireland in June to investigate complaints of mistreatment of her countrymen, told reporters that many of the estimated 30,000 Lithuanian children in Irish Republic schools felt unsafe and that violence was common. In one Irish town, she said, "Lithuanian children are beaten only because they are more beautiful than Irish ones," and in general, she said, Lithuanians are disliked because we dress well instead of looking the part of poor immigrants.

(1) The New Zealand Herald reported in June that a prostitute may be eligible for worker's compensation based on her having been injured when the car in which she was riding plunged down a hillside. Because the driver was a john who was taking her to a site he had chosen for their encounter, the Prostitutes Collective trade union said hers were "workplace" injuries. (2) Former Brooklyn Center, Minn., car-washer Douglas Williams, 56, was fired last year when, in response to the sales manager's requiring him to clean up litter, he refused, colorfully, by telling the manager to perform an anatomically impossible act. However, the state court of appeals ruled in June that Williams was nonetheless owed unemployment benefits.

-- A toddler broke from his mother's supervision in May at the Rhime Buddhist Center in Kansas City, Mo., and accidentally trampled the meticulously created colored-sand picture that eight monks had to that point spent two days creating, but the monks impressively responded with patience. "No problem," said one, from India's Geshe Lobsang Sumdup monastery. We have three days more (before the show closes). So we will have to work harder."

-- Inattentive Drivers: Trucker Merv Bontrager accidentally crashed his 18-wheeler in Minot, N.D., in April when he looked away briefly to check the floor for the doughnuts he had tossed aside for later eating. And Kristopher Lind accidentally crashed his car in Vancouver, British Columbia, in March when he tried to open the tightly packaged sex toy he had bought earlier that day. And Andrew Workman accidentally smashed his car into another in Shepley, England, after he lost control when a bee flew through the window and stung him in the crotch (according to the findings of an inquest in April).

-- In June, a 17-year-old boy survived but was seriously injured when he fell about 75 feet onto some rocks at California's Mount Diablo State Park. He had climbed over a handrail in order to fake a fall so that his pals could capture the plunge on video to put on his MySpace Web page.

(1) Hiroshi Nishizaki, 46, was arrested in Osaka, Japan, in May and accused of causing damage of the equivalent of about $5,500 by pouring urine on a neighbor's house on 169 occasions, because it was blocking Nishizaki's view. (2) Wheaton, Ill., lawyer Donald Ramsell sued Geneva, Ill., lawyer Douglas Warlick in June, demanding that Warlick continue to sell him "his" two of the four season tickets to Chicago Bears games they had split since 1985 but which Ramsell suspected Warlick might keep for himself this year. Warlick complained to the Chicago Tribune in June that Ramsell had never contacted him, but just filed his lawsuit out of the blue. Said Ramsell, "The courthouse is where you go when you have a dispute."

(1) In June, Pfc. Duncan Schneider finished training with his Oregon Army National Guard unit, immediately married his longtime girlfriend, and prepared for deployment to Iraq; the marriage means that Schneider's unit's first sergeant is now his mother-in-law. (2) Officials at the Masters games in Milan, Italy, in July announced in advance that, since the invited athletes ranged in age from 35 on up to the 90s, the javelin competition would be moved to a site far away from most of the other events.

(1) A burglar was killed trying to sneak into the Maranatha Used Clothing store in Miami on May 31; police said the man had crawled between the blades of a large, idle ventilation fan but that before getting all the way through, he accidentally tripped the "on" switch. (2) In Forst, Germany, in May, as a 43-year-old man and a 12-year-old boy vied in a spitting-for-distance contest from a second-story balcony, the grown-up, trying for extra momentum, thrust himself forcefully up to the railing, launched his saliva, and accidentally fell to his death.

(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.)

A New Delhi, India, glaciologist said in June that global warming in the Himalayas is at least partly responsible for the melting of the stalagmite in the Amarnath cave in Kashmir, which is one of Hindus' holiest pilgrimage sites because the giant icicle is said to symbolize Lord Shiva (the god of destruction and regeneration), who is typically represented by phalluses. A caretaker of the site told Reuters that the stalagmite is melting rapidly, though it has varied in size from year to year, with the lean years thought to represent Lord Shiva's displeasure about something.

-- Sweden's English-language news outlet reported in June that the government's employment service had granted Roger Tullgren, 42, supplemental income benefits based on his illness of addiction to heavy-metal music. Tullgren (with long, black hair, tattoos and skull-and-crossbones jewelry and who said he attended nearly 300 concerts last year) said he had been addicted for 10 years but finally got three psychologists to sign off on calling his condition a disability. His employer now permits Tullgren to play his music at his dishwashing job.

-- Ohio inmate Keith Bowles may spend the rest of his life in prison just because a federal judge miscalculated Bowles' deadline for appealing his case. Bowles was convicted of murder in 1999, and his federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus was denied in 2004. However, the federal judge wrote "Feb. 27" as the deadline for appealing (mistakenly, because federal rules gave Bowles only until Feb. 24). Bowles' Feb. 26 appeal was dismissed as too late by the U.S. Court of Appeals and, in June 2007, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

-- In June 1995, Gordon Wood, who would subsequently be charged with Caroline Byrne's murder in Sydney, Australia, arrived at the morgue shortly after her body did, identified himself as her boyfriend, asked to see the body, and also asked, according to the attendant, "Do you mind if I look at her tits?" (The attendant, according to a police report reviewed by a judge during a June 2007 court proceeding, refused, and Wood was charged shortly afterward with having thrown the woman off a cliff.)

According to police, Derrick House and another man planned to kill four people in a 1985 Chicago drug hit and needed a stranger to knock on the door so that House and his companion could gain entry. They paid teenager Charles Green $25 to do that, and House completed the mission. Green was convicted and imprisoned for "participating" in the murder. House got the death penalty, but as a result of legal challenges, was recently released. House's companion was never convicted. Thus, the only one of the three still in prison 22 years later is the one who just knocked on the door. In August, a judge is scheduled to hear Green's latest petition for a new trial.

(1) Jenny Brown, 62, entered her sponge cake in a contest sponsored by an organization in Wimblington, England, in July, was informed by judges that she had won "second place," and was only later told that she was the only entrant (but was also told that she could not have first place). (2) According to U.S. government figures, Afghanistan's opium crop produces more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, but in July the country's council of ministers began a crackdown on smoking tobacco in government buildings.

(1) The registrar of Nigeria's university entrance exams reported in May that almost 2,000 of the students had been caught in cheating scams. (2) Arab researchers writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported in June, not surprisingly, that Middle Eastern women who dress covering all or nearly all their skin may have significant vitamin D deficiency due to lack of sunlight.

-- (1) A star athlete at Brigham Young University was arrested in Provo, Utah, in June after police saw him angrily dueling with a street cleaner using the man's mops. The cleaner had crossed a street slowly, provoking driver Kyle Perry to leap from his car, grab a mop and swing it at the cleaner (who parried the attack with another mop). (2) The representative from Boulder, Colo., in the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., in May was 14-year-old Miss "Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan" (that's M-a-i-t-h-r-e-y-i G-o-p-a-l-a-k-r-i-s-h-n-a-n).

-- Once-classified reports obtained by the Associated Press in May revealed that three times in late 2005 and early 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense issued espionage alerts regarding newly designed Canadian 25-cent pieces, which the Pentagon warned may contain embedded transmitters capable of eavesdropping, and which perhaps were given purposely to U.S. contractors working in Canada. Some time later, according to the reports, the Pentagon learned that the coin's coating was not a film-and-mesh transmitter but merely a covering to preserve the limited-issue coin's unique design.

(1) Shafique el-Fahkri, 19, had the leg of a chair jammed completely through his left eye socket during an attack in Melbourne, Australia, in January. Five surgeons, operating for three hours, saved his life, and three months later, he had regained 95 percent of his vision (and said, of the attacker, "I forgive him, totally"). (2) As the result of a January car crash in Nebraska, Shannon Malloy, 30, had her skull separate from her spine ("internal decapitation"), but she remained alive until doctors could stabilize her with screws into her neck, and her recovery is progressing at Denver Spine Center, according to a May KMGH-TV report.

(1) Robert Theriault, 49, a courthouse security officer in Concord, N.H., was convicted in April of persuading a couple that he was a tester for an insurance company and would pay them $20 to have sex in front of him so he could evaluate a certain bedsheet and condom. (2) Aaron Meinhardt, 37, was arrested in Riverside, Mo., in July after a municipal swimming pool employee saw him expose himself. The arresting officer said Meinhardt asked him, "Am I (not) allowed to satisfy myself? It has been a long time since I have. What am I supposed to do, just keep it in?"

Crime Time in Wilmington, Del.: (1) Jesse Dale, 42, was arrested and charged with cocaine possession in Wilmington in June during a routine traffic stop after he attempted to throw his stash out the passenger window as the officer approached. (However, the window was up, and the package bounced back into the seat in "plain sight" for the officer to base an arrest on.) (2) Also in June, according to police, Branden Tingey, 28, was arrested after closing hours in the manager's office at Wilmington's Polidoro Italian Grill, trying to open the safe. It appeared that Tingey was using a computer displaying a Web page on safecracking.

(1) A 21-year-old man fell to his death in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, in April when he leaned a little too far over on a hillside rock in order to write his girlfriend's name on an available space on the surface. (Her name is Kaylee and not, unfortunately, just Kay.) (2) A 43-year-old man suffered a fatal heart attack in 2006 during sex with an exotic dancer in Pacifica, Calif., and homicide was ruled out because the death was captured on the video camera the man had set up to record their session. (On the other hand, the woman's drug use was also on the video, and she was sentenced in May 2007 to a year in jail.)

(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.)

Some parents feel "unprecedented levels of angst" to pick cool enough names for their kids, with some even hiring consultants, according to a June Wall Street Journal report. Baby-book authors charge clients $50 for a list of "special" names, and half-hour phone consultations go for $95. Another adviser charges $350 for three calls plus a comprehensive linguistic history of the selected name, and one California mother paid $475 to a numerologist to "test" the name Leah Marie for "positive associations." The Journal blames the problem on too much information about names (from the Internet), as well as parents' fear of dooming their child for life by insufficiently distinguishing their kid from others.

-- Violent demonstrations in northwestern India in May left at least 18 dead, as members of the lower Gujjar caste demanded that the government put them into an even lower class, at the bottom of the social ladder (so that they would be eligible for more government benefits). The Gujjars say that being one of the government's "Other Backwards Classes" is unsatisfactory and that they deserve worse.

-- International restrictions on tuna fishing have created a shortage in Japan's sushi restaurants so dire that chefs are considering substitutes such as sushi prepared with raw horse or deer meat. While that would outrage many Japanese diners, some restaurateurs believe the plan feasible, according to a June New York Times dispatch from Tokyo. Said one: "We tasted it, and horse sushi was pretty good. It was soft, easy to bite off, had no smell."

-- Egypt's Muslims are growing weary of the number of specific religious edicts ("fatwas") issued by the country's clerics, including two recent, highly controversial ones, according to a June New York Times dispatch from Cairo. Ezzat Atiya, a lecturer at the prestigious al-Azhar Islamic University, had declared that men can be permitted to see unrelated women without their head scarves (which is ordinarily prohibited) by the symbolic act of the woman's breastfeeding the man five times, which in theory places the woman on similar footing to the man's mother. A second challenging fatwa declared that drinking the urine of the Prophet Muhammad would be holy. (Atiya has been suspended.)

-- In May, one of the world's Christian "dental healers," the interdenominational Rev. Steve Jones, set up his latest revival tent, near Bradenton, Fla., and began not only allegedly curing toothaches but growing teeth and turning amalgam fillings into gold, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. The reporter described a parade of witnesses claiming to have been healed and to have seen their crooked teeth straightened. Laying his hand on the jaw of one local resident, Jones assured the crowd, "You can see gold coming (into the filling)."

-- Sandy Sabloff had been scheduled to receive a kidney from Australian Ashwyn Falkingham in April, at Toronto (Ontario) General Hospital, but the hospital canceled it at the last minute, apparently acceding to pressure from Falkingham's mother, who said her son had been brainwashed by a "cult" called Jesus Christians, which she said is obsessed with donating kidneys as a test of spiritual devotion. (Ashwyn Falkingham said he remained eager to donate.)

(1) Hitachi's "brain machine interface," which it showed an Associated Press reporter in June, might soon allow a user to don a hat and turn an appliance on or off by merely thinking about doing so. (Until now, such thought-controlled instructions could only be done by people with devices implanted.) (2) Scientists at Italy's La Sapienza University announced in May that they had, for apparently the first time, surgically grafted a vagina (built with stem cells) onto a woman who had been born without one due to a rare condition.

Probation-Happy Judges: (1) Judge Angelo DiCamillo of Camden, N.J., thought probation (and $750 restitution) was enough for six teenagers in June, even though they had wrecked a family's home during a party ($18,000 damages), urinated and defecated on the furniture and (except for one boy) declined to apologize. (2) Also in June, Judge Harold Kahn of San Francisco thought probation was enough for a woman who had claimed the identity of another (through stolen credit cards) and run up six months of bills and bad credit, and even though the thief was already on probation. (Bonus fact: The victim had collared the perp herself, following a chance meeting, and handed her to police.)

(1) "Bishop" Anthony Owens, 35, of Duluth, Ga., out of prison less than two years following a bigamy sentence, was arrested in April on suspicion of agreeing to marry four more women. Owens said that maybe he "misunderstood" Mormon teachings. (2) Kylie Wilson, 28, was convicted in June in Brisbane, Australia, of stabbing her friend Daniel Blair because Blair literally would not stop masturbating in her home, where Wilson's 3-year-old daughter was present. According to Wilson, Blair started his adventure in the bathroom and moved to the bedroom, ignoring Wilson's pleas, until she grabbed a knife and stabbed him twice in the shoulder. Even then, the wounded Blair merely retreated to the garage, where he continued what a newspaper called his "marathon."

John Moore, 67, golfs nearly every day and has for about 20 years, according to a July St. Petersburg Times report. The golf he plays, though, consists of hitting 35 long-iron shots (five shots with each of the seven balls he owns) on a grassy median strip along Interstate 275 in downtown Tampa. "You can't play this game one day, two days in a week," he said. "You have to play it all the time if you want to do something with it." What Moore wants to do with it, he told the Times, is to someday soon make his first-ever appearance on an actual golf course.

In July 2007, four would-be suicide bombers were convicted in London of a botched terrorist act that came two weeks after their more successful colleagues attacked trains and a bus in that city two years earlier. The second attack failed because the leader, Muktah Said Ibrahim (who was said to have flunked math in school) miscalculated the amount of ingredients, rendering the bombs useless. However, terror fighters make mistakes, too, as the U.S. Government Accountability Office revealed in July. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had recently granted a license for handling radioactive materials (enough for a so-called "dirty bomb") to a fake company set up by the GAO, consisting of nothing more than a telephone and commercial mailbox in West Virginia.

Smoking Kills: David Pawlik called the fire department in Cleburne, Texas, in July to ask if the "blue flames" he and his wife were seeing every time she lit a cigarette were dangerous, and an inspector said he would be right over and for Mrs. Pawlik not to light another cigarette. However, anxious about the imminent inspection, she lit up and was killed in the subsequent explosion. (The home was all-electric, but there had been a natural gas leak underneath the yard.)

Dr. Brady Barr, a reptile specialist with the National Geographic TV channel, needed to get close enough to Nile crocodiles in Tanzania (length: up to 20 feet) to attach data monitors to their tails and decided to dress up as a croc and crawl to them. With a crocodile suit, a prosthetic head and a metal cage (and hippopotamus dung to mask his human scent), he was able to apply tags, with video to prove it (according to a June report in London's Daily Mail), with the scariest moment coming not from crocodiles but when a hippo wandered by, attracted by the dung scent.

(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.)