In February, a Mississippi judge released two convicted rapists of children, who had each been in prison for more than 12 years, based on DNA. The men had been convicted primarily by the "bite mark" analysis of since-discredited dentist Dr. Michael West, who used iridescent lights and yellow goggles to demonstrate that scratches on the victims were bites by the two men. Subsequent independent analysis identified the scratches as scratches, perhaps even made by West himself, according to a director of the Innocence Project. West is a favorite colleague of medical examiner Steven Hayne, who seems always to find evidence of guilt of anyone charged by district attorney Forrest Allgood, according to a Reason magazine investigation. West's bite "technology," in particular, has been widely ridiculed by forensic professionals.

-- A 25-year-old woman was arrested for assault in Bremerton, Wash., in December after fighting with her boyfriend in the shower over whether the man's dog could join them. The woman objected and said the arrangement would be a deal-breaker for their relationship, to which the boyfriend replied that he hoped his next girlfriend would appreciate the dog more. At that, according to police, she punched him several times in the face, and in their struggle, he dislocated his shoulder.

-- Female Muslim medical students at several hospitals in Britain are objecting to a campaign that demands more rigorous hand-washing (to stop the spread of dangerous bacteria), complaining that being forced to bare their forearms above the wrist is immodesty prohibited by their religion. Doctors cited in a February Daily Telegraph story said washing up to the elbow is crucial for safety. Some women at Birmingham University said they would change careers rather than comply.

-- In January, the state medical board in Sydney, Australia, admonished psychiatrist Yolande Lucire for testifying in a court case about her belief that Ritalin and similar drugs had produced residual organic hallucinosis in children that might explain their violence later in life. The board said it disagreed with her and ordered Lucire to make an appointment with a senior psychiatrist for therapy, to help her deal with her problem of making unconventional diagnoses.

-- In early January, when a national deep freeze extended even to the Florida Keys, iguanas fell into their natural hibernation-like torpor, and some compassionate Floridians, unaccustomed to seeing iguanas that appeared nearly dead, took them indoors to warm them up, which is a mistake. The owner of the veterinary clinic in Marathon said one "sweet lady" called him about the five-footer she had dragged inside. "When it woke up," said the vet, "she couldn't understand why it seemed to be coming after her." "When they warm up, they go back to being a wild animal."

-- Construction worker Brian Persaud's malpractice lawsuit is scheduled for trial in March against the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Hospital based on a 2003 incident in which he was taken there (after being clobbered on the head by a plank at work) and given a rectal exam. Persaud was alert when informed of the imminent exam, but then went nuts, resisting the doctor and was sedated so that the test could be performed. The doctor defended the exam, citing the need to check for spinal cord injury.

-- Since at least the early 1990s, trillions of discarded plastic items have converged, held together by swirling currents, to form the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch that now covers an area twice the size of the United States and weighs about 100 million tons. "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there," said one researcher quoted in a February dispatch in London's The Independent. An oceanographer predicted that the Patch would double in size in just the next decade. A 2006 United Nations office estimated that every square mile of ocean contains, on average, 46,000 pieces of floating plastic.

(1) Luis Jimenez, 24, was arrested in Austin, Texas, in January and charged with having child pornography that police say he left behind when he moved. The subsequent tenant has a cat, which, in the process of exploring the new digs, got caught in a gap between a pantry and a ceiling where the DVDs had been hidden. (2) Police testifying in the murder trial of David Henton, 72, in Swansea, Wales, in January said they made recordings (in his home, with hidden microphones) of Henton confessing to killing his long-time domestic partner. Since Henton lives alone, the wordy confessions were apparently to his cats, to whom he spoke frequently about a range of matters.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (87) The person arrested for drunk-driving who decides to contest the charge but is drunk again when arriving in court, as was Joseph Longfellow, 35, who blew a .32 blood-alcohol reading (four times the state driving limit). (88) People who live in airports, like Iranian Merhan Nasseri, who lived at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport for 18 years because of passport problems and who inspired the Tom Hanks film "The Terminal" (and among others, Anthony Delaney, who was arrested at London's Gatwick airport in February after nearly four years' residence).

-- A 16-year-old boy was arrested in Toronto in February after he emerged from a CIBC bank with about $150,000 (Cdn) stuffed in a sack. Despite numerous Hollywood movies emphasizing the need for speed in a bank robbery, the kid had dawdled inside for more than 45 minutes after the silent alarm had been pressed, collecting cash not only from the vault and tellers, but from customers, and by the time he walked out, the bank was surrounded by cops.

-- Pat Dykstra, 51, of Fox Lake, Wis., was persuaded by bar patrons, including her boyfriend, that she was too drunk to drive and so took responsibility by calling 911 from her truck to ask that the sheriff send someone to follow her home, according to a January Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story. (Dykstra then ended the call by telling the dispatcher how dangerous it is to drive while on the phone.) When deputies caught up to Dykstra, she registered a .14 blood-alcohol reading, well over the maximum permitted.

In February, televangelist Jim Bakker (who lost his Praise The Lord ministry in the 1980s in fraud convictions that led to a five-year prison stint) began broadcasting from Morningside, his new religious development in southern Missouri that bears a strong resemblance to PTL's Heritage USA project. According to a February report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "hundreds" of Heritage contributors ponied up this time, too, and despite the fact that each lost 99 percent of the value of their $1,000 investments, some even signed over their $6.54 restitution checks (following the fraud settlement) to Bakker's new venture. The newspaper, observing Bakker's debut from the new studio, noted that the first appeal for donations did not come until 41 minutes into the show.

In a spectacular one-car wipe-out along an airstrip near Ocala, Fla., on Jan. 26, five young men were killed when their supercharged BMW M5 left the road at at least 120 mph, sailed 200 feet, and smashed into a tree. In the days after, visitors to an Internet forum of M5 drivers recalled a question posed on a message board on Jan. 25 from an 18-year-old seeking advice about handling the car when shifting gears at super-fast speeds. He signed on only as "Josh," which is the first name of the 18-year-old driver killed on the airstrip.

(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.)

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.)