In the northern Albanian countryside, about 40 women still practice an ancient tradition as "sworn virgins," who are young females who renounce sex forever in exchange for being treated as men, according to an August Washington Post interview of Elvira Dones, an Albanian native who recently completed a documentary on the subject. The oath is usually taken in front of a town's elders, and the likeliest candidates come from homes in need of a male head of household (because of death or abandonment). Even in such a male-dominated society, according to Dones, men seem to accept the "sworn virgins" as equals.

-- This past summer, two capital-murder inmates (who might have been executed, regardless) were put to death after curious court policies failed them. Luther Williams' execution was carried out in Alabama in August after the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to stop it, despite his plea that the state's lethal injection procedure was unconstitutional. However, one month later, the court voted to accept for consideration another case questioning the constitutionality of the injection. (Court policy is that four votes are needed to accept a case, but five are required to stay an execution.) In September, just minutes after the court's lethal-injection case was accepted, lawyers for Michael Richard, who was scheduled to die that evening, rushed to file a stay with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal and promised delivery by 5:20 p.m. The court clerk responded, "We close at 5"; the petition didn't make it, and Richard was executed at 8:23.

-- Spaniard Manuel Gozalo organizes bus trips of women from Madrid to isolated rural villages, which most of the native females have long since abandoned for cities, leaving lonely single men. His "caravanas de amor" (caravans of love) have made 32 day-trips since 1995, promising the ladies some fun and dancing (and possible romance) and the men perhaps a last chance at finding a companion (and Gozalo told London's Independent in July that his caravans have produced at least 40 marriages).

-- A particularly environmentally conscious Catholic priest in Suffolk, England, set up a confessional in August at a Greenpeace festival to permit parishioners to relieve their guilt over despoiling the Earth, according to a report in The Times of London. At the festival, however, the priest, Dom Anthony Sutch, also had to deal with the August announcement that the Vatican would begin transporting 150,000 pilgrims a year on chartered, high-carbon-footprint airliners.

-- Hindu officials persuaded the Indian government in September to withdraw a report on a construction project because it treated a prominent bridge as a natural stone formation instead of (as Hindus say) a bridge created by the god Ram and his army of monkeys. In another victory for Hindu sensibility, the government cracked down on the rustling of "sacred" cattle in August by issuing ID cards with photos of individual cows, to help guards at the Bangladesh border halt the illegal trade.

-- God's Will Be Done: (1) In August in Atlanta, televangelist Thomas Weeks was arrested for allegedly beating up and threatening to kill his estranged wife, televangelist Juanita Bynum, in a hotel parking lot before a bellman rescued her. (Weeks blamed Satan for the incident.) (2) Pastor Walter Steen pleaded guilty in Detroit in August to tax fraud and was sentenced to 15 months in prison. He had started the God Will Provide Tax Service in 2005, but prosecutors said 1,573 out of the 1,578 returns he prepared for clients claimed tax refunds.

-- Shoe designer Marc Jacobs recently crossed a frontier in fashion by introducing women's high-heeled shoes with the "heel" in the front. Wrote London's Daily Mail: "A chunky, 4-inch heel nestles horizontally just under the ball of the foot. Where you'd expect a heel, there is nothing but fresh air." Models of the shoe are priced in the $500 to $700 range.

-- Questionable Menus: (1) Puzzlingly, young adults in Japan seem particularly drawn toward mayonnaise, and thus Koji Nakamura might have a shot at success with his Mayonnaise Kitchen restaurant in a Tokyo suburb, according to an August Reuters story. Included in his fare are several mayonnaise-flavored cocktails, including the "Mayogarita." (2) Health officials in Rockland County, N.Y., issued two complaints against the Great China Buffet restaurant in September after an employee was seen preparing the day's garlic in back of the building by stomping a large bowl of it with his boots on.

-- Maritza Tamayo, principal of New York City's Unity Center for Urban Technologies high school, was fired in August following revelations that she was so concerned about the unruly behavior of some students that she brought in a Santeria priestess in December 2006 to cleanse the building of evil spirits. The students were on holiday break, but workers found chicken blood sprinkled around the building, and Tamayo and two other women in white dresses were seen, chanting, with one balancing a silver tray on her head, holding 40 lit candles.

Officials of the Miss Ventura County (Calif.) pageant said in September that they are tired of waiting (now, two years) and would seek police help in getting the disqualified 2005 winner Hilary Gushwa to return her crown to them. Gushwa was ousted for being secretly married at the time, a violation of pageant rules. She responded at first that she did not recall her wedding, in Las Vegas, because she was on medication, but subsequent evidence showed her actively planning the ceremony and reception.

People who decide to urinate in public continue to find the practice dangerous, as News of the Weird has documented many times. A 40-year-old man, somewhat inebriated, attempting to urinate into the River Bulbourne in Hemel Hempstead, England, fell in and drowned (April). A 58-year-old man stood up in his boat to urinate while fishing and fell into a lake near Farmington, N.M., and drowned (August). A train driver in Berlin, Germany, apparently attempting to urinate out of a door at 70 mph, fell to his death (May).

(1) A 19-year-old man was arrested in Darwin, Australia, in August after he shoplifted a pornographic magazine and retreated to a public restroom in the Karama Shopping Centre. A security guard trailed him, joined by a police officer, but they decided to wait until he was finished before apprehending him. (2) A 26-year-old man was convicted in September of masturbating in a University of Manitoba library in Winnipeg. He explained, "I was just sitting at a computer, downloading a few things, and I got a little horny. ... I do it all the time." (According to the Winnipeg Sun, one of the conditions of his six-months' probation is that he not masturbate "in a library or anywhere else.")

(1) A 27-year-old woman was killed in Melvindale, Mich., while setting off Fourth of July fireworks when she failed to move her head out of the way after launching a 3-inch mortar bomb. (2) A 55-year-old man in Fall River County, S.D., was killed in August when he accidentally shot himself in the stomach. According to police, he was attempting to show friends that a key point in a recent CSI television show was wrong (that is, according to the script, a victim could not physically have managed to shoot herself in the stomach).

(CORRECTION: A News of the Weird story three weeks ago (based on a report in London's Daily Telegraph) declared that a top-of-the-line Oral-B toothbrush employed "navigation technology" to allow the user to guide the brush usefully through the mouth. Contrary to the Daily Telegraph story, no such technology is in use, and the standard digital readout on the toothbrush merely coaxes the user to move from one part of the mouth to another at suggested intervals.) (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 September, prominent California cardiologist Maurice Buchbinder had his privileges revoked at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla after he allegedly roughed up an unruly angioplasty patient during and immediately after the procedure. Buchbinder was so irritated by the patient's combativeness that he even (according to witnesses interviewed by state medical licensing officials) delivered a pair of what could be described as "Three Stooges" moves: bopping the patient in the head with the tip of his elbow and twisting the patient's nose until it turned "bluish."

(1) A Japanese clothing manufacturer, Kochou-fuku, announced in August a line of air-conditioned shirts, with two tiny battery-operated fans inside to evaporate perspiration (for the equivalent of about $95). (One drawback: The shirt billows out, suggesting that the wearer is overweight.) (2) Among the recent recipients of Marin County (Calif.) Green Business certificates of environmental awareness was Pleasures of the Heart, a sex-toy and lingerie store that sells, among other items, rechargeable vibrators and erotic undergarments made of organic bamboo fabric.

-- Noted Israeli plastic surgeon Eyal Gur said in August that he expects approval next year for his revolutionary breast-lift procedure ("an internal bra") in which an actual thin titanium bra-like frame is implanted just under the skin with silicone cups to hold the breasts up. Dr. Gur said the procedure will be quicker (40 minutes long), less invasive (local anesthesia only) and less expensive (no hospital stay) than today's breast lifts.

-- Voices: Last year, William McCartney-Moore, 9, was rushed to the hospital in York, England, following a seizure and, after surgery, was mute for several weeks, until he finally spoke, not in his strong "Yorkshire" accent but in "the Queen's English" as his mother described it (though his accent returned shortly). The outcome was similar for Czech race-car driver Matej Kus, 18, who was knocked out cold in a UK speedway accident in September, only to awaken speaking not in his habitually broken English, but with flawless diction. (His new "dialect" lasted only a few days, and Kus says that he remembers none of it.)

-- Endangered! (1) Biologists who have been studying "Lonesome George," the sole survivor of a species of Galapagos Island tortoises, told Reuters News Service in July that they are skeptical he will ever mate, even though he may live another 100 years. After so many abortive attempts to pair him with a female (even having randy young male and female tortoises demonstrate mating for him), they say George remains totally uninterested. (2) And in Australia, a turtle species named in 1990 for Steve Irwin is now thought to be growing endangered, according to an Australian Associated Press dispatch in August. The "Elseya irwini" is one of a few turtles that respirate through their excretory openings.

(1) Alex Baker, 96, told London's Daily Mail in May that he is very happy to have lived all his life in the same Portsmouth house in which he was born (although the neighborhood has certainly changed a lot since 1911). (2) David and Jean Davidson, who are retired and own an apartment in Sheffield, told the Daily Mail in September that they've actually been living at a TraveLodge motel for the last 22 years because they prefer the simplicity. (And of course during a holiday in the U.S., the Davidsons made sure to stay at TraveLodges.)

-- Contrary Thinking: (1) Three U.S. finance professors, working with business data provided to the government of Denmark, concluded that a company's profitability usually falls following a death in the CEO's immediate family. However, the professors found (according to a September Wall Street Journal report), that profitability slightly increased if the family death was that of the CEO's mother-in-law. (2) The Tata Group, a Mumbai, India, company that handles customer-service calls for several U.S. firms, has outsourced some of its work to a firm in Ohio (according to an August Fortune magazine report), on behalf of a client that insists on operators knowledgeable about American geography.

-- The makers of Veet Hair Removal Cream sponsored a survey this year for people to vote on which celebrity female has the sexiest walk and, to lend the promotion some respectability, hired Cambridge University professor Richard Weber to explain a strut's sexiness via measurable physical characteristics. Weber eventually quit the project, according to a September report in London's Guardian, in part because Veet named Jessica Alba No. 1 when the results he saw showed Angelina Jolie the winner. Weber used such calculations as waist-to-hip and thigh-to-calf ratios to explain Jolie's apparent success: Jolie's "slightly larger waist may give her the torso strength with which to produce a better angular swing and bounce to the hips than (smaller) stars such as Eva Longoria (and Alba)."

Frederick Cronin is challenging the suspension of his New Hampshire driver's license, claiming that his blood-alcohol reading (0.13) was not properly obtained. State law calls for two readings, with the second 20 minutes after the first, and Cronin claims that his second test was administered too soon. During the 20-minute period, he said, he had burped, and state law requires the 20-minute delay to restart following any "vomit[ing], regurgitat[ing] or belch[ing." However, in June, a hearing examiner accepted the ticketing officer's testimony that Cronin never "belch[ed]" but rather emitted only a "dry burp," which the examiner described as air emanating not from the stomach but from closer to the mouth.

Convicted sex offender Paul D. Brunelle-Apley, 26, was arrested again, in Madison Township, Ohio, in September, when his attempt to make up with his 14-year-old girlfriend came to public attention. According to police, Brunelle-Apley was seeing another girl on the side (age 15), and in a display of remorse, he delivered flowers and a teddy bear to his main girlfriend while she was in class at Madison High.

According to police in Warsaw, Poland, novelist Krystian Bala might have gotten away with torturing and murdering a businessman in 2000 if only he had resisted writing about his crime in his 2003 novel, "Amok." The trail for the killer had been cold for several years until a tipster informed police of the book. In the plot, which authorities say bore a distinct resemblance to the 2000 murder, were details that police say could only have been known by the killer. After investigating, police found several other ties Bala had to the crime, including the fact that the victim was Bala's ex-wife's lover. Bala was sentenced in September to 25 years in prison.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Small-time drug operators, thinking they are keeping a low profile, continue to have their hideouts inadvertently discovered by police. In June, a single-engine plane crash-landed outside a home near Baton Rouge, La., and responding police discovered marijuana plants in the yard. In September in Escatawpa, Miss., Curtiss Coleman, 53, attempting to dial 411 directory assistance, mistakenly dialed 911, though he immediately hung up. However, police routinely investigate dropped-911 calls and discovered Coleman's methamphetamine lab.

Tall Buildings Claim Three More: A 27-year-old man who idolized the late singer Jim Morrison accidentally fell to his death from a New York City apartment building in July. (Morrison himself was known as a daredevil, with a fondness of walking on the ledges of buildings.) And in June, a man and a woman in their early 20s were found dead and naked next to a four-story building in Columbia, S.C., and police concluded that they had accidentally fallen. (The pair had apparently discarded their clothing on the roof and, said police, possibly had tumbled off while having sex.)

(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.)

Ralph Whittington, 57, retired in 2000 as curator of the main reading room at the Library of Congress, but was better known as the "King of Porn" for his private collection that he recently sold (500 boxes' worth) to the Museum of Sex in New York City.

Whittington's home (which he shares with his mother, after his wife left him) was, before the sale, "packed to the rafters," said the museum's buyer to The Washington Post in August. "Downstairs, you had to walk sideways to get through the rooms." Said Mom, "It's something he loves. You see men his age going to bars or on dope. But he (was) home day and night (indexing and cross-referencing). That (gave) me peace of mind."

Ferruccio Pilenga recently turned out another class of graduates at his Italian Dog Rescue School, which he says is the only one in the world that trains canines (mostly Newfoundlands, with some Labradors) to jump out of helicopters into rough waters for rescues at sea. Pilenga told London's Independent in August that it takes about three (human) years to teach them, and that they are of the most use in treacherous waters near rocks, where a rescue boat would be shredded, but his dogs, on long leashes, can fight through flailing arms and get the victim to hold on while the dog is dragged to the rescue vessel.

-- (1) Stephen Peterson, 42, went back to court in Sydney, Australia, in August to challenge the "not guilty/insanity" decision against him nearly 10 years ago, claiming that he should have been allowed to call as defense witnesses certain "higher beings" who had ordered him to bash the victim. Those entities included the "sun god," Spacedust, and the "plasma being," Kadec. The court turned him down. (2) British physician Stuart Brown, 37, was sentenced in August only to a small fine after a conviction for brutally beating his wife. Brown had explained the fight by saying that a "red mist" had descended on the room, causing him to lose control.

-- Not Our Fault: Dennis and Betty Hager filed a lawsuit in Wilmington, N.C., in July against the school system for causing them emotional pain and suffering by not stopping the love affair between their 16-year-old daughter and the school's married, 40-year-old track coach. However, the Hagers have already signed a form (to satisfy state law) to allow the daughter to marry the coach.

-- Helene de Gier filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the National Postcode Lottery of the Netherlands, claiming emotional distress from not winning, even though she never entered. That particular lottery picks a geographic postal code at random and awards prizes to all of its residents who have entered that lottery. Since so many of her neighbors were flaunting prizes, she felt particularly humiliated, she says. (Seven people on her street won the equivalent of about $18 million each, according to a June Associated Press dispatch.)

-- "Zero Tolerance" Is Just for the Kids: (1) One Alabama teacher, already fired but awaiting trial on a charge of raping a student, has not only received his regular paychecks for nearly two years, and will continue to until the trial is over, but has also been awarded two routine raises, based on a 2004 state law boosting teachers' rights (according to an August Associated Press review of records). (2) The largest school district in Montreal, Quebec, was ordered by an arbitrator to rehire a teacher whom it had fired in 2004 for illegally failing to disclose a conviction for killing his wife. The arbitrator ruled the firing improper, in that homicide is unrelated to the teacher's classroom work.

-- It's Good to Be a British Prisoner (cont.): Britain's chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, included in a recent inspection report of facilities her advice that prison wardens try to improve respect for inmates by having guards address prisoners by their preferred names and knock on cell doors before entering. A guards' association spokesman said the suggestion lacked even a "modicum" of sense.

-- Louisiana prosecutors want the death penalty in the first trial for accused serial killer Sean Gillis, but to get that for an individual murder, state law requires an "aggravating circumstance" beyond the murder, such as kidnapping or robbery. At an August hearing, a prosecutor said Gillis had actually "robbed" his first victim, in that he had absconded with one of her arms and part of a leg. Gillis' lawyer argued that that was not "robbery," in that those parts were merely "left over" from the homicide.

-- In Abbotsford, Wis., in August, Harvey Miller, 43, and Edwin Marzinske, 55, were both ticketed for DUI while driving the same car. Miller has no legs but was steering; Marzinske was operating the foot pedals. Hence, both men argued to police that neither of them was, by himself, "operating" the car.

Fetishes on Parade: A 50-year-old man was detained by police in August after complaints at Disneyland near Paris. Witnesses said the man had sprinkled itching powder on young children so that he could video-record them scratching themselves. And in September, Norman Hutchins, 56, was again jailed after incidents at England's Bradford Royal Infirmary, where he faked an illness to gain entrance so that he could steal equipment for his sexual gratification. Police records showed Hutchins as obsessed, since 1970, with oxygen masks, gowns and syringes, among other items.

According to the Internet security firm CardCops Inc., online credit-card hacking brokers appear to have stolen the identity of a "Herman Munster," whose "personal data" appeared in chat rooms frequented by such thieves. CardCops told reporters in June that in all likelihood, an international hacker, preparing a list of accounts to sell to identity thieves, and unfamiliar with the 1960s TV show "The Munsters," probably fell for a bogus MasterCard application under Herman's name and TV address, 1313 Mocking Bird Lane.

-- Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (83) The frustrated taxpayer who thinks he's punishing the government if he makes his large payment in only small change, such as Cary Malchow, who paid off his property tax bill in Muncie, Ind., in August by making employees count $12,656.07 in coins and $1 bills. And (84) blood-alcohol testing machines that show, with alarming frequency, death-defying results of around .40 and higher, even though each instance is reported in the press (based on "medical texts") as nearly lethal, such as cases two months apart this year in Washington, in which Deana Jarrett, 54, scored .47, and Rebecca Lingbloom, 45, registered .50. (Neither died or even became seriously ill.)

-- The category of stories of people keeping deceased relatives' bodies around, based either on fear of losing the relationships or a psychotic belief that the deceased will regenerate (or sometimes, to conceal the death so that government checks keep coming), has been retired. But that was before this: A funeral parlor in London told The Times in September that it was finally time to bury Annie Lamas, who died 10 years ago but whose body has been kept in the parlor's cold storage unit by her two adult daughters, who visit almost weekly to chat with her and touch her up. Elder daughter Josephine, 59, was said to make sure Mom's lipstick is fresh (on a body that has wasted to the point of leathery skin stretched over bones) and place fresh padding on her stomach cavity.

(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.)