China's historical fascination with crickets has recently been exhibited in cricket beauty contests, singing competitions and prize fights, according to a January Los Angeles Times dispatch, and has led even to increasing vigilance about crickets cheating with performance-enhancing drugs. The fighters duel in terrarium-sized containers, and, according to the Times, "Overhead cameras (project) the action onto large screens," allowing spectators close-ups of crickets tossing each other around with their powerful jaws. The best fighters may sell for the equivalent of $10,000, are raised on vegetables and calcium supplements, and are sexually active before fights. The doping issue mostly involves the "singers"; slowing the vibration of the cricket's wings produces an attractively lower pitch.

-- In October, Korie Hoke filed a $1.6 million lawsuit against the Tempe, Ariz., police, claiming that it was actually an officer's fault that she, after a New Year's Eve bender, crashed into a cement wall and suffered serious injuries. Hoke had called police to a party, distraught that she had caught her boyfriend cheating on her, and the officer summoned her parents to pick her up. (Hoke was cited only for underage drinking, but she later tested above the blood-alcohol legal limit.) The officer, after obtaining Hoke's assurance that she would await her parents and after searching Hoke and her car and finding no car key (Hoke had hidden it), left the scene. Hoke then drove away and crashed, and now claims it was the officer's fault for not staying with her.

-- Scott Anthony Gomez Jr. filed a lawsuit in January against jail officials in Pueblo County, Colo., alleging among other things that they failed to take security precautions to prevent him from escaping. He seriously injured himself last year when he fell 40 feet while scaling a wall in his second escape attempt. He said that, after his first escape, he had told then-sheriff Dan Corsentino how lax security was, but that no "improvements" had been made.

-- On Second Thought: (1) In August 2004, business executive Tomas Delgado, driving 100 mph in a 55 mph zone, fatally smashed into a 17-year-old bicyclist near Haro, Spain. In 2006, Delgado sued the boy's family for the equivalent of about $29,000 for damage to his car, and the lawsuit languished until January 2008, when, perhaps shamed by worldwide publicity, Delgado dropped it. (2) In December, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority filed a lawsuit demanding payment from the families of four people killed by an out-of-control tractor-trailer in 2006 (presumably to recoup clean-up costs and damage to the roadway). However, after the New York Post asked NJTA lawyer William Ziff for a comment, he rushed to the Union County courthouse and withdrew the lawsuit.

-- As the home-mortgage industry continued to reel in January from the Countrywide Financial Corp. debacle, a federal bankruptcy judge learned that the company, in at least one case (with others suspected), had not only backdated crucial documents but fabricated them altogether and then told the judge the company was merely trying to be "efficient." A court had approved the recasting of a client's debt to Countrywide in March 2007, closing the case, but the next month, Countrywide "discovered" a way to get extra money and thus created three letters supposedly sent to that client before March 2007. However, Countrywide later acknowledged that the letters were actually written after March 2007 but that making up documents was merely "an efficient way to convey" information.

-- A prize-winning paper from a Hebrew University researcher, seeking to explain the paucity of rapes by Israeli soldiers of Palestinian women, concluded that the soldiers were merely using a "strategy" of non-rape, according to a December report on Arutz Sheva. Such a hands-off policy "strengthens the ethnic boundaries," wrote Ms. Tal Nitzan, seemingly suggesting that Israeli soldiers primarily feared increasing the Palestinian population. Nowhere, critics pointed out, did Nitzan suggest that rape is rare because Israeli culture condemns it.

-- California's Solar Shade Control Act protects solar panels from obstructions from sunlight, and in January, Santa Clara County officials sought to enforce the law against homeowners who themselves are staunch environmentalists. Since the back yard of Prius-owners Richard Treanor and Carolynn Bissett contains lush redwood trees that block their neighbor's panels, the county ordered that the trees be cut down.

-- Tolerance: (1) In November, 70 petitioning neighbors said they were fed up with the Museum of Tolerance in West Hollywood, Calif. The final straw was the museum's application to expand its building, extend hours of operation until midnight, and reduce the buffer zone between it and nearby homes. (2) Officials of Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, initially agreed to host the annual multi-denominational Austin Area Interreligious Ministries Thanksgiving celebration last year, but abruptly canceled when they came to realize that Muslims might actually pray there. Under criticism, the church said that it "hopes" the religious community "will ... be tolerant of our church's beliefs" that necessitated the decision.

-- In January, the Chinese retailers at Beijing's Silk Street Market, which is a notorious supplier of knock-off merchandise such as Louis Vuitton, announced that they would begin creating clothing and other items under their own SilkStreet brand, and they naturally issued the warning, "Anyone using the brand (without permission) will be held liable."

Energetic Perverts: (1) Elementary school principal John Stelmack, 60, was arrested in Bartow, Fla., in December and accused by prosecutors of innocently photographing young girls but then using a computer software program to place their heads on photos of nude women (which may not even be illegal, according to a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision). (2) Kazuo Oshitani, 48, was arrested in Osaka, Japan, in December as the one who draped perhaps more than 170 items of women's underwear over objects in his neighborhood (and who possessed at least 200 more such items in his home). He was charged with littering.

It is apparently becoming more difficult to recruit competent suicide bombers in Afghanistan because twice in a two-day period in January, clumsy bombers accidentally blew themselves up before they ever had the chance to take their targets out. One fell down a flight of stairs while on his way to an attack in the town of Khost, and the other's bomb accidentally exploded as he was getting dressed for an assignment in the town of Lashkar Gah (although the latter bomber did take three colleagues with him).

At least one collector spent the equivalent of $40 on an original "Freddie W.R. Linsky" abstract expressionist painting, praising its "flow" and "energy," according to a December report in London's Daily Mail, and a gallery in Berlin was said to have made an inquiry about Linsky's other works. Linsky, as longtime News of the Weird readers might guess, is an enthusiastic 2-year-old, whose mother had him daub ketchup splotches onto canvases and then uploaded the images to art patron Charles Saatchi's online gallery. Among Mom's lush captions to Linsky's ketchup-period works was: "The striking use of oriental calligraphy has the kenji-like characters stampeding from the page."

More Ironies: (1) A 66-year-old millionaire roofing company founder was killed at his home in Rock, Wis., in December when he accidentally fell through the roof of his garage. (2) An 18-year-old Amish man was killed in Hustisford, Wis., in October when, working on a construction crew, he came into contact with a high-voltage wire and was electrocuted. (3) Inmate Frederick Fretz, 45, serving time for molesting a young boy, died in January in the dining hall at the federal penitentiary in Atwater, Calif., when he choked on a hot dog.

(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.)

Mayor Grace Saenz-Lopez (Alice, Texas, pop. 19,000) and her twin sister were indicted in January for hiding evidence in a dognapping case. Saenz-Lopez had agreed to baby-sit a shih tzu but, alarmed by the dog's sickliness, she kept it and lied to the owners that it had died. When it was spotted at a local grooming service, Saenz-Lopez and her sister allegedly began a cover-up that included the mayor's once pretending to be her sister. The mayor told her lawyer that if not for her husband, she would go to jail "for the rest of (my) life" rather than give the dog back. Most recently, Saenz-Lopez reported that the dog had run away, but many of her constituents are skeptical.

-- Among the accusations that emerged from an FBI investigation of the U.S. government's beleaguered Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (according to a December Washington Post report) is that the deputy director of that office, Ginger Cruz, a self-described Wiccan, had been threatening to place hexes on employees if they co-operated with outsiders' evaluations of the agency. (She was cleared of those charges by the internal SIGIR staff.)

-- A commercial, pre-packaged ham-and-cheese sandwich using one slice of bread is regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which conducts daily inspections under its jurisdiction, but a ham-and-cheese sandwich on two slices of bread falls to the Food and Drug Administration, which inspects plants about once every five years. That anomaly surfaced in the current presidential campaign and was verified by a Congressional Quarterly-St. Petersburg Times "Politifact" researcher in December. A USDA official admitted to the Times that there "is no rationale or logic" behind the distinction: "(I)t's an issue that makes it look like we don't know what we're doing."

-- Political Campaign Strategies: (1) Lee Myung-bak was elected president of South Korea in December, perhaps attributable in part to his organization's spraying a sharp fragrance they call "Great Korea" in the air at campaign events and then on election day at polling places, hoping for an olfactory influence on undecided voters. (2) Matthew Lajoie, 21, could have used chemical help in his race for an at-large school board seat in Brunswick, Maine, in November. He spent the campaign trying to convince voters that he is a changed man from the one who had amassed 18 criminal convictions in the previous two years. (He lost but received 10.5 percent of the votes.)

-- Samina Malik, 23, was convicted in a British court in December and given a suspended nine-month sentence for having amassed a large collection of how-to books on terrorism. She came to authorities' attention as the self-described "lyrical terrorist" who writes poetry glorifying the Islamic mujahadeen fighters who specialize in beheadings. (From her "How to Behead": "Tilt the fool's head to its left / Saw the knife back and forth / No doubt that the punk will twitch and scream / But ignore the donkey's ass / And continue to slice back and forth.")

-- In January, the Centre for Recent Drawing art gallery in a London, England, suburb scheduled a series of 55 works by artist Jordan McKenzie, 40, called "Spent," even though they consist merely of canvases onto which he had ejaculated and covered with carbon sprinkles. McKenzie maintained that the works were "heartfelt and delicate."

-- The Austin (Texas) Police Department announced in January that it had suspended Officer Scott Lando, 45, based on preliminary indications that he had been hiring a prostitute while on duty. According to a search warrant affidavit (disclosed in the Austin American-Statesman), Lando had paid for the woman's services in part by giving her free rein over part of Mrs. Lando's closet, declaring that his wife "would never miss" some of the items.

-- Chutzpah: (1) Georgia Ann Newman, 36, was arrested and charged with battery on a police officer after she not only spit on a Charleston, W.Va., officer but, as he was leading her away, wiped her nose on his uniform shirt. (2) Teresa Walker, 44, was arrested in Cincinnati in October in the course of a minor traffic stop because, while the ticket was being written, she allegedly called the police department on her cell phone to complain that the officer was writing too slowly. She later denied the officer's charge that she had threatened to "shoot" him if he didn't speed it up, but only to "sue" him.

Satellite-navigation is undoubtedly a boon to drivers, but reports are accumulating of incidents in which drivers turned over too much discretion to the technology. For example, in January in Bedford Hills, N.Y., a visiting Silicon Valley computer technician absentmindedly obeyed his car's global positioning system and wound up, stalled, on railroad tracks, where a passing Metro-North train smashed into it (after the man had exited).

(1) In October, Syracuse, N.Y., dentist George Trusty was sued in federal court after a drill bit snapped off and lodged near a patient's eye, allegedly because Trusty was dancing to the song "Car Wash" on the radio while tending to the patient. (2) In January, former Skokie, Ill., eye doctor's assistant Joseph Vernell Jr. was sued after a patient complained that, in a dark room "exam," Vernell was detected licking her toes (but then explaining that he was actually "checking (her) sugar level").

Too Late: According to police in Honolulu in January, it was Ellis Cleveland who robbed four banks within a five-day span, and that's what an officer said to him as they arrested him. Responded Cleveland, "Four. I didn't do four. I only robbed three banks. But it doesn't matter because I'm not talking to you guys. I want a lawyer." Police later said that Cleveland was not counting the attempted robbery on Dec. 31 of the Bank of Hawaii because, after three different tellers tried unsuccessfully to decipher his holdup note, Cleveland gave up and walked out empty-handed.

News of the Weird has mentioned several times (last in 2001) the federal court order requiring the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to rectify decades' worth of negligence in administering the Indian Trust Fund, which might involve as much as $2.5 billion. Included in a 2001 court order was a prohibition against BIA's maintaining a department Web site until it proves that it can secure all the records necessary for the court-ordered accounting, and according to a Boston Magazine story in January (reporting on the bureau's handling of a Massachusetts casino), the agency still lacks department-wide Internet access. However, there is one room on the fourth floor of the bureau's Washington, D.C., office that is connected to the Web, but e-mailers and Googlers have to leave their desks and go to that office.

Recent Playdates: Marion County, Fla., January (image of Jesus on a slice of raw potato); Tampa, Fla., January (image of Jesus on a slab of granite); Houston, January (image of Jesus on another slice of raw potato); Meadow Lake, N.M., December (image of Jesus on a sprayed-on wall covering); Homestead, Fla., December (image of Jesus on a chest X-ray); Port St. Lucie, Fla., November (image of Jesus on a pancake); Houston, October (image of Jesus on a bathroom towel); Forest, Va., August (image of Jesus on a smudge of driveway sealant); Manchester, Conn., August (image of Jesus on a kitchen cabinet door); Lodi, Calif., August (image of Jesus on a backyard fence).

(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 startup Massachusetts dating service has the usual questionnaires about likes and dislikes, but bases compatibility specifically on how one person smells to another (straights and gays accommodated). Eric Holzle's ScientificMatch.com tests each person's "major histocompatibility complex" (MHC) genes, the science behind which dictates how one person will translate the scent of another (with similar-processing people less compatible). (In one famous study, women preferred the smell of T-shirts from men whose MHC was the most different from their own.) Holzle predicts a higher success rate than for ordinary dating agencies, but at a fee of $1,995 per client.

Michael Windisch, proprietor of the Maltermeister Turm restaurant in Goslar, Lower Saxony, Germany, solved what has become a crisis for other restaurants since the state extended a smoking ban in August. Windisch opened three holes in an outer wall so that, in cold weather, a smoker need not venture outside but can stick his head and arms through the holes and puff away while remaining inside (according to a December report in Der Spiegel).

-- In December, the city of Bangalore, India, staged its fifth annual marathon, with an elite group of runners that officials thought would bring the city recognition in the world racing community, but problems occurred, the least of which were the city's ubiquitous potholes and pollution. At about the 20 km mark, the leaders were chased down the street by barking dogs snapping at their heels. Twice during the race, runners were forced to stop and take breaks because impatient motorists were disregarding traffic controls to reclaim their roads.

-- Egypt's competitive spirit, combined with a recent surge in piety as some in the Middle East strengthen their commitment to Islam, have led many men to suddenly sport dark calluses on their foreheads ("raisins") as a signal of perhaps-overenthusiastic daily praying. The five prayers require, in all, 34 contacts with the ground (of forehead and nose), and additional personal prayers add to the total, according to a December New York Times dispatch from Cairo. Rumors persist that some men use sandpaper to darken the calluses to appear even more pious.

-- Noxious Substances: (1) State and federal authorities descended on Quality Pork Processors of Austin, Minn., in December after 11 workers contracted a mysterious neurological illness, which apparently came from inhaling the mist that results from blowing hogs' brains out with compressed air. (2) New York City apartment house doorman Jonah Seeman was suspended in December after excessive complaints about his bad breath. His job, said a resident, is opening the door, "not ... his mouth." (3) Maurice Fox, 77, said in December he would comply with the wishes of the Kirkham Street Sports and Social Club of Paignton, England, to sit only by the front door so he could excuse himself when he needed to pass gas, which management said had become a problem.

-- A neighborhood yard sale in Cocoa, Fla., in December offering children's furniture and toys took place at a home at which two registered sex offenders reside with their mother (though it was unclear where the items came from). A probation officer checked periodically to see that the men did not venture outside, where some unsuspecting adults, and their children, browsed the inventory.

-- Douglas Hoffman, 61, was sentenced in January to as much as five years in prison for staging a small-scale terror campaign among his neighbors in Henderson, Nev., to mask his own vandalism in destroying over 500 trees to get a better view of the Las Vegas Strip. At first, according to prosecutors, Hoffman cut down just the trees that affected his own view, but to divert attention, he cut down others in the subdivision and then sent threatening notes suggesting that an extremist militia would continue to attack their property, finally promising "chemical, biological and nuclear mass destruction."

-- John Hayes, 46, a Marietta, Ga., middle school coach, was arrested in December and charged as the person who drove a group of his students around at night so they could vandalize various Christmas yard decorations (in one case, leaving reindeer entangled in "sexual positions"). A neighbor whose display was wrecked pursued Hayes' truck, caught up to him, and asked, "Are you crazy?" Hayes responded, allegedly, "It's just a bit of fun."

(1) Washington, D.C., firefighter Gerald Burton faced suspension in December for disobeying a direct order by fighting a blaze he had come across while driving his fire truck to a training class. A supervisor had ordered him on to the class, but Burton and his partner put out the fire (limiting damage to $150,000), along with the dispatched crew, which arrived shortly after Burton. (2) In December, as the director of the District of Columbia's Youth Rehabilitation Services spoke before the City Council on the successes of his special unit tracking down escapees, one on-the-run youth watched from the audience a few feet away, unknown to the director, according to a Washington Post report. (Another 19-year-old ran away in September and was unaccounted for because a female YRS officer, unknown to her superiors, had subsequently married him and was keeping him at their home, according to the Post.)

Authorities in Valentine, Neb., have been on the lookout since November for the vandal who has approached several storefronts at night and, apparently with Vaseline smeared over his nude body, pressed himself against windows and doors. A radio station called the person "the buttcheek bandit" (although some speculate there may also be a copycat). Asked Valentine police chief Ben McBride, "Who in their right mind would do something like that?"

Clumsy: (1) A 26-year-old accused shoplifter was hospitalized in Grand Rapids, Mich., in January after he got into a scuffle with a department store security officer. He had allegedly stuffed some knives under his clothes, and when he was knocked to the ground, he accidentally fell on several of the blades. (2) Josue Herrios-Coronilla, 18, was arrested in Durham, N.C., in January and charged with DUI after he accidentally drove through a yard in a residential neighborhood. He then abandoned his car and hitched a ride, but at a later traffic stop, police identified him by his shoes, in that when he ran out of the yard, he had stepped in several piles of the resident's dogs' droppings.

Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre makes News of the Weird periodically (the latest in May 2007) because the six Christian denominations that share its management become involved in petty but elaborate disputes. A similar problem arises at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics share space at the site thought to be the birthplace of Jesus, and in December, when some Orthodox faithful wandered into the Armenian section during Christmas season, officials of both faiths squared off and flailed at each other with brooms before being separated by Palestinian police.

Elderly drivers' recent lapses of concentration, confusing the brake pedal with the gas: A Varnell, Ga., woman, 81, drove through the front office of an insurance agency (August). A Wausau, Wis., man, 80, crashed through a wall of a Burger King (September) (and then got out and ordered breakfast). A Cedar Rapids, Iowa, woman, described as "elderly," crashed into a dentist's office (August). A woman, 76, drove through the front entrance of Massachusetts's Brockton Hospital (October) (killing the chief of radiation oncology and a receptionist). A Soldotna, Alaska, woman, 73, crashed into a hair salon, knocking a customer across the room (November). A Coral Springs, Fla., man, 71, drove through a back yard, went airborne over a swimming pool and crashed into the house (October).

(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.)