The divorce of Anton Popazov and his wife, Nataliya, is about to go through, but the couple are still contractually committed to the Moscow State Circus, where their act includes Nataliya's shooting an apple off of Anton's head with a crossbow. The Times of London asked Anton during a show in Sheffield, England, in February whether he was afraid. "I still trust her because Nataliya is very professional," he said. "(T)he show must go on."

-- Two Park Vista High School girls who admitted that they swiped money off the table of a Girl Scout selling cookies at a supermarket in Boynton Beach, Fla., in January told WPBF-TV later that they had no remorse. Said one (on camera): "We went through all that effort to get (the money). We got all these charges (against us), and we had to give the money back. I'm kind of pissed." Added the other, "I'm not sorry. I'm just pissed that I got caught." The victim's mother said that the girls returned to the supermarket the next day and taunted the little girl.

-- In February, a court in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, sentenced Briton Keith Brown, 43, to the standard four-year minimum term in prison for violating the country's extreme "zero tolerance" drug laws, even though the only drug found was a "speck" (0.003 grams) of cannabis caught in the tread of his shoe and discovered only because the Dubai airport uses sophisticated drug-detection equipment. Previously, a Canadian man was imprisoned for "possession" of three poppy seeds (from a bread roll he had eaten at Heathrow Airport in London) that had fallen into his clothing as he prepared for a flight to Dubai.

-- Roy Chamberlin, 29, has been charged with 1,100 criminal counts in connection with what Pennsylvania police said was a series of nearly 200 rapes against a married woman in Potter Township (and had his first court hearing in January). According to the police report, the woman said she was too terrified ever to report the crimes to police or to her husband. Once, said the husband, he came home unexpectedly about 9 a.m. and found the bedroom door locked and a struggle occurring inside (hearing "Get off me!" and "You're hurting me!"). After the husband pounded on the door, Chamberlin walked out, leaving the wife "crying hysterically and trembling." However, the husband said that his wife declined to explain the situation and that he didn't question her (not wanting to upset her further, since she had recently had surgery).

-- In January, Derry, N.H., Town Administrator Gary Stenhouse told Thomas Souhlaris that he'd have to move his sausage stand because he was trespassing on city property. Souhlaris had set up the stand at the town's garbage transfer station, and Stenhouse said there might be municipal liability issues, especially if other food vendors followed Souhlaris and set up stands at the dump.

-- In January, Shafkat Munir, 26, was sentenced to 12 months in jail for an attempted hoax in Lancashire County, England, in 2007 after receiving three speeding tickets. Rather than pay the fines, totaling the equivalent of about $350 (and retain his license, since his record was otherwise clean), Munir created his own death certificate to get the charges dismissed. Said an official, "I have never known anyone to go to such lengths (over speeding tickets)." The judge also revoked Munir's license.

On Nov. 30, for a social justice project at Cheektowaga Central High School (Buffalo, N.Y.), students spent an 18-degree night in cardboard boxes on the school's lawn, in supposed solidarity with the area's homeless population. According to a Buffalo News report, the suffering students brought DVD players to watch movies inside their boxes, ate donated Dunkin' Donuts and pizzas, and ducked into the school's heated gym whenever they got too cold or bored.

Arrested and awaiting trial for murder: Bobby Wayne Ledbetter, Northport, Ala. (February); Michael Wayne Adams, Fairfax County, Va. (February); David Wayne Cole, West Nottingham, Pa. (October). Confessed to murder: Calvin Wayne Inman, Houston (February). Sentenced for murder: Jerrell Wayne Stanley, Orange, Texas (October). Executed for murder: Michael Wayne Richard, Huntsville, Texas (September). Already serving time for other crimes but expected to be charged with as many as nine murders based on recent DNA evidence: Timothy Wayne Krajcir, Cape Girardeau, Mo. (January).

Arrested in October for vehicular assault in Tacoma, Wash. (after which he told a police officer that he had "definitely had a few"): Mr. Glen Alan Casebeer. The victim of a vehicular assault in McMinn County, Tenn., in January (in which his wife allegedly tried to run him over): Mr. King Money Tarzan Jenkins. Arrested for DUI near Burleson, Texas, in January (after crashing into a house): Mr. Bryan Scott Moron. Falsely accused of kidnapping a 17-year-old girl in Oshkosh, Wis., in November: a previously convicted sex offender, Mr. Pheuk Kue.

In February, on "signing day," when hundreds of highly recruited high school football players announced which colleges they would attend, lineman Kevin Hart of Fernley (Nev.) High School met local reporters with his coach at his side and dramatically chose the University of California over the University of Oregon. However, when the reporters called those colleges' coaches for reactions, they learned that Hart had not been meaningfully recruited by either school, or any other prominent one. Hart explained two days later that he passionately wanted to play at a major school and that when no offer came, "I made up what I wanted to be reality." Hart did not elaborate on what conceivable useful outcome he could have expected from the ruse.

During the media hoopla on Feb. 5, about that day's 24-state "Super Tuesday" "national primary" for president, enthusiastic voters called election offices for the addresses of their polling places so they could run down and vote: 400 called in Virginia (but its primary would be the following week); 1,000 called in Dallas (its primary would be a month later); "hundreds" called in Florida (its primary was the week before). At least six people were lined up to vote by 6:30 a.m. at one precinct in Milwaukee (Wisconsin's primary would be two weeks later).

It's not quite the 2006 News of the Weird story of the kindergarten-bound Broward County, Fla., boy diagnosed with gender identity disorder at age 5, but there will apparently still be steep problems for parents, teachers and students in Highlands Ranch, Colo., when a second-grade boy soon enters third grade as a girl. One student's parent said there'll surely be an issue of, "Why are you in a dress this year when you were in pants last year?" Among the school's problems: building unisex restrooms and preventing bullying.

A 39-year-old man fell to his death while trying to slide down a banister in the Hollywood & Highland Center mall in Los Angeles in January. And three more people died recently as a result of disrespecting railroad tracks: a 42-year-old man, hit by a train on tracks near Burlington, Ill., while listening to his iPod (September); a 31-year-old man, hit by a train in Berkeley, Calif., while talking on his cell phone (November); and another man, hit by a train in San Leandro, Calif., also while on his cell phone (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.)

Several Duke University campus organizations, including the Women's Center, the Student Health Center and the Women's Studies Department, sponsored a "Sex Workers Art Show" on Feb. 3, at which nearly nude "artists" danced for students and others while vulgarly criticizing America via acts such as a woman's pretending to eat excreted dollar bills and a man's kneeling with an American flag inserted in his rear end. Two years ago, Duke's men's lacrosse team was vilified by the Duke administration and faculty merely for hiring two female strippers for a party (from which emanated false charges of rape and the eventual disbarment of the local district attorney). A university spokesman explained to a National Journal reporter that the recent show was acceptable because it was "art" and "social commentary," rather than male-bonding entertainment.

-- Brand-new Japanese parents receiving a gift are then customarily obligated to give a lesser one in return, and the Yoshimiya rice shop in Fukuoka recently created the ideal such return: small bags of rice of the exact weight of the newborn, printed with its face and name, so that original gift-givers (relatives, friends) can experience cuddling "the baby." Then, of course, according to Yoshimiya's owner, they can break open the bag and eat the rice, though he admitted some people have a problem with that.

-- "We sleep with the snakes (meaning cobras), we eat with the snakes, we live with the snakes (but) we are not scared," said a 14-year-old girl in a village near Calcutta, India, to a Wall Street Journal reporter in November. Said a village leader, "Whenever I lie down in my bed, a cobra will just slide on top of me, without hurting me." In fact, more than 3,000 cobras live in one hamlet, mostly in peace, with few bite victims (though a cobra bite is often fatal because villagers initially trust the gods and spirit doctors to treat them). Cobras are so revered in the village that cobra bites are usually described as attacks by vipers or by "nonresident" cobras, based on a belief that local cobras are incapable of evil.

-- There is usually a well-stocked Red Cross tent when the January "corralejas" (amateur bullfights) take place in towns in the Colombian countryside, reported The New York Times in January. "This year was calm, no deaths yet," said a newscaster in Sincelejo. Hundreds of wannabe matadors jump into makeshift rings, some sponsored by local merchants but others merely inebriated or sober and foolish, some gaudily dressed, some in bunches (with one group even picnicking). Wrote the Times, "A stream of men arrived" in the Red Cross tent, "intestines peeking out of a belly, bone protruding from a fractured shin, blood spurting from a gash in the buttocks." Said a local, "This is about the ecstasy of escaping death."

Lord Balaji was a locally popular Hindu god in Hyderabad, India, until a few years ago when a priest noticed that more of his worshippers were complaining that valuable U.S. professional "H-1B" visas were harder to get. Overnight, Balaji was transformed from a purveyor of general prosperity to the "visa god," specializing in lucky H-1Bs, and the temple now draws 100,000 visitors a week. Said one, to a Wall Street Journal reporter in December, "I've never heard of anyone who's gone to the temple whose visa (application) got rejected" (even though typical advice from priest C.S. Gopala Krishna is simply to walk around the temple "11 times").

Questionable Judgments

-- In December, even after the widely reported tiger attack on a visitor at the San Francisco Zoo, the Houston Zoo was still allowing its visitors to play "tug of war" with its own lions and tigers. A 20-pound slab of meat, attached to a long rope, is tossed into the enclosure, and visitors are encouraged to toy with the cats by yanking on it as the animal lunges for it. Said a Houston zookeeper, the game keeps the animals from getting bored. Besides, a zoo official said, "(The lion or tiger) kind of lets us know when he wants to play, and we go along with that."

-- Two counselors in the Denver school system proposed in December that the school board give high school girls who get pregnant at least four weeks of maternity leave, without academic penalty, so they can bond with their newborns. The counselors said the policy would encourage teen mothers to stay in school. (Meanwhile, the Department of Education of the Australian Capital Territory in Canberra granted permission for a 16-year-old student at Stromlo High School to take smoking breaks, based on a doctor's finding that she is so "clinically addicted" to nicotine that her work suffers without it.)

-- A teacher at Yamata Elementary School in Yokohama, Japan, was disciplined in January after a finding that she improperly punished her class because a few students would not come to order. Officials said she lined up all students and walked down the row, slapping each one in the face.

(1) Geraldine Magda, 44, was arrested in Austin, Minn., in January, following a nursing-home visit to hold the hand of her dying sister in her final hours. Magda was charged with stealing the wedding ring from her sister's finger during the hand-holding. (2) A Chicago man traveled to Sheboygan, Wis., in December to finally meet the 18-year-old woman who was his biological daughter, but during the same visit, he was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting her while she was sleeping.

In December, street performer John Domingue said the Huntington Beach, Calif., police have finally stopped hassling him for soliciting tips at the city's famous Pier Plaza when he demonstrates his skill at hammering nails into his nose without serious injury. (Some bleeding results, which is why police said they stopped him in the first place.) The American Civil Liberties Union said it is watching the case, citing Domingues' constitutional right to perform his nose-nailing, sword-swallowing and fire-eating acts for donations.

More Questionable Judgments: (1) David Holland, 46, gave a DNA sample last year to police in San Jose, Calif., to help resolve murder charges against his brother, but was then arrested for an until-then-unsolved 2001 rape when his DNA sample matched that left behind by the rapist. (2) Edward Debrow of San Antonio, Texas, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for a 1992 murder conviction, appealed that sentence as too harsh. After a Texas appeals court granted his challenge and ordered a re-sentencing in October, a judge gave him 40 years. [San Francisco Chronicle, 11-20-07] [KSAT-TV (San Antonio), 10-24-07]

Awesome Capacities: Jason Panchalk, 36, was admitted to the Pima County (Arizona) jail in December, facing a charge of trafficking in stolen property, but he arrived prepared. According to a jailer, Panchalk was carrying "some syringes, matches, lighter, heroin, marijuana, and an assortment of pills," all inside his rectum. And in October, court officials in Cork, Ireland, who were suspicious of a defendant's demeanor, had him medically examined. According to a report in the Irish Independent, doctors found a mobile phone, SIM card and charger, all wrapped in foil and coated with lubricant, inside his rectum.

David Thomson, 49, was convicted in Edinburgh, Scotland, of smothering his mom to death after she had taunted him for his inept suicide attempt several weeks before (October). In Sydney, Australia, a man was charged with beating a neighbor to death because the neighbor was watering his lawn in violation of the city's water restrictions (October). The boss of a factory in North Korea was executed by firing squad before 150,000 people in a South Pyongan province stadium after he was convicted of the crime of making out-of-country telephone calls (November).

(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.)

Five of the 10 best-selling novels in Japan in 2007 were originally composed, and serialized, on cell phones, thumbed out by women who had never written novels, for readers who mostly had never before read one. The genre's dominating plotlines are affairs of the heart, and its characteristics, obviously, are simplicity of plot and character and brevity of expression (lest authors' sore thumbs and readers' tired eyes bring down the industry). Said one successful cell phone writer, for a January dispatch in The New York Times, her audience doesn't read works by "professional writers" because "their sentences are too difficult to understand."

-- The New Lucky Restaurant has been around since the 1950s in Ahmadabad, India, serving diners among the gravestones located at various points around the tables. No one is certain who was buried under the restaurant, according to a December Associated Press dispatch, but Indians aren't much spooked by the experience. Said a retired professor: "Graveyards in India are never scary places. We don't have a nice literature of horror stories, so we don't have much fear of ghosts." The restaurant's main concern is that waiters know the floor plan and don't trip over the ankle-high monuments.

-- It's the "holy grail" of beers, said a Boston pub manager, but, still, only 60,000 cases a year of Westvleteren are brewed because the Belgian Trappist monks with the centuries-old recipe refuse to expand their business (and even get on the phone to harass black-marketers). Westvleteren is sold only at the monastery gate, by appointment, with a two-case-a-month limit, at a price that's reasonable for retail beer, but anyone who gets it from a re-seller will pay 10 times that much. Producing more, said Brother Joris, to a Wall Street Journal reporter in November, "would interfere with our job of being a monk." Furthermore, said Brother Joris, referencing the Bible, "(I)f you can't have it, possibly you do not really need it."

-- Life's Necessities: (1) In January, Taser International introduced the Taser MPH, a combination dart-firing weapon and MP3 music player (that holds 150 songs). (2) In November, Bergdorf Goodman in New York City revealed that it was offering showings of the Guerlain cosmetic house's "KissKiss Gold and Diamonds" lipstick, which retails for $62,000 (housed in an 18-karat gold tube containing 2.2 carats of diamonds).

-- Latest Ape-Human News: The 4th Texas Court of Appeals in January affirmed a lower court decision that monkeys and chimpanzees have no legal right to file lawsuits against an animal preserve for mistreatment. In Apeldoorn, Netherlands, however, one prominent member of the family is full of human nature: Sibu, an orangutan at the Apenheul Primate Park, has so far rejected all overtures to mate with other orangutans and instead appears smitten with blond female zookeepers, especially those with tattoos, according to an October Reuters dispatch.

-- To learn how cockroaches socialize, a research team from Free University of Brussels created tiny robots programmed to act like cockroaches, doused them with the proper pheromones, and set them free within crowds of cockroaches to see if they could influence behavior. While some of the robots coaxed real cockroaches to follow them into an unshaded area (away from a dark area that most normally prefer), nearly half of the robots, despite programming, fell under the "spell" of the real ones and headed for the darkness.

It was not only banks in the U.S. that freely loaned money over the last few years, but also those in India, and not surprisingly, many of their debtors have recently run into trouble making payments. Indian banks, inexperienced at collecting from so many defaulting consumers, often prefer to hire "goondas" (thugs) to settle debts the old-fashioned way, according to a January Wall Street Journal report. Though iron-bar beatings are frowned upon, some bankers say it's their only recourse because of the numbingly slow pace of the Indian legal system.

(1) On Nov. 18, two inebriated men in separate cars, driving by the Carpet Classic Floor Studio in Highland Township, Mich., lost control at the same time, and both smashed into the store. (2) Christopher Dougherty, 22, the subject of a "drunk pedestrian" police call in Kingsport, Tenn., on Oct. 14, was tracked to a Hardee's restaurant, where he was face-down in a plate of gravy. (3) Tina Williams was arrested in St. Augustine, Fla., on Super Bowl Sunday, charged with DUI and failure to have her 1-year-old daughter seat-belted or in a car seat. However, a case of Busch beer was safely buckled up in the front seat.

Police in Madison, Wis., believe they ended the spree of vandal defecations in an apartment house on Schroeder Road (laundry room, hallways, items of clothing) with the January arrest of Ronnie Ballard, 19. At Ballard's first court appearance, Dane County Court Commissioner Todd Meurer set bail at $1,400 and issued a ruling he said he never imagined having to make: As a condition of release, should Ballard make bail, Meurer ordered him to defecate only in toilets.

A 53-year-old man from Vernon, British Columbia, was arrested in January and charged with robbing a CIBC bank. He had left his 20-year-old companion in the getaway car listening to the radio, but when the alleged robber got in with the stash, they discovered that the car would not start because the radio had drained the battery. The pair were captured in a nearby bakery, where they had fled, as law enforcement was plentiful in the area since the CIBC bank is located in a building with a Mounted Police station.

Undignified Deaths: (1) A 25-year-old woman jumped to her death from a department store roof in Tokyo in November and, as sometimes happens with such suicides, she landed on a pedestrian (who was hospitalized in serious condition). (2) At least five people choked to death in Japan over New Year's, as usual, from eating the extremely sticky "mochi" rice cakes that are a staple of the holiday. (3) In Ogden, Utah, in December, a 73-year-old woman was accidentally fatally run over by a motor home. It was unclear whether the first pass over her was fatal, but the driver behaved as others have: After feeling a thumping sound, he said, he stopped and backed up to see what he had hit, thus driving over the body a second time.

(1) "Jilted Lesbian Rugby Player Killed Herself After Brutally Beating Lover Who Had Webcam Affair" (Daily Mail (London)). (2) "Man, 75, Hurt While Riding Pet Buffalo" (MSNBC.com version of an Associated Press story). (3) "Boy Glues Hand to Bed to Avoid School" (MSNBC.com version of an Associated Press story).

(1) In Chaparral, N.M., in December, a loaded .357 Magnum was being traced by two men onto a pattern to create a custom tattoo design, but somehow, the gun went off. Both men were hit by the same bullet, one in the hand and the other in the arm. (2) A 77-year-old man in Des Moines, Iowa, who was trying a unclog his septic tank in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, lost his balance and fell in, head first with his legs sticking up. He remained in that position for about an hour until his wife saw him and called for help.

(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.)