China's societal self-improvement in preparation for the 2008 Olympics continues. The Beijing Tourism Bureau ordered hotels to re-translate English signs, hoping to avoid such notorious past gaffes as "Racist Park," which is now "Park of Ethnic Minorities," and a cafe's attempt to salute Western visitors with "Welcome, big nose friends." And the Beijing Olympics Committee has been training hostesses for months to stand in military-like precision, straight enough to hold a sheet of paper between their knees, and to smile continuously, showing "six to eight teeth" (even if placing a chopstick in the mouth sideways is necessary for practice). There are height and weight requirements for the hostesses, and each must have an upper- to lower-body ratio of no more than 11-to-13, to eliminate, according to local newspapers, "big bottoms."

-- It struck Leo Hill, 81, of Lakewood, Colo., that he was being shorted sheets of toilet paper (in the 12-pack, whose rolls allegedly yielded fewer sheets than similar rolls in the 4-pack), and he earnestly counted 60 rolls, sheet by sheet, concluding that the shortage amounted to enough paper to service one sit-down session per roll. He took his complaint to the Denver Post (and even to the Better Business Bureau), but the reporter, trying to replicate Leo's work, found no shortage, in Leo's brand or eight others.

-- Jonathan Lee Riches is believed to be the most prolific lawsuit-filer ever to operate from behind bars. His "docket" now includes more than 1,000 cases in just over two years (with eight more years to go on a federal sentence for fraud), including claims totaling several trillion dollars from "injuries" inflicted on him by such people as President Bush, Martha Stewart, Steve Jobs, Britney Spears, Tiger Woods (luggage theft), Barry Bonds (illegal moonshine production), and football player Michael Vick ($63 billion for allegedly stealing Riches' pit bulls and selling them on eBay so that Vick could in turn buy missiles from Iran).

-- Prison reformer James McDonough revealed in February the extent of the mess he inherited when taking over the Florida Department of Corrections in 2006 (40 officials charged with crimes, 90 fired, 280 demoted) and said much of the problem centered on inter-department softball. Even though former officials had admitted to contract kickbacks and frequent taxpayer-funded "orgies," McDonough said, "I cannot explain how big an obsession softball had become. People were promoted on the spot after a softball game ... to high positions in the department because they were able to hit a softball out of the park ... The connection between softball and the parties and the corruption and the beatings (of prisoners) was greatly intertwined."

-- Making artistic, themed scrapbooks is a $2.6 billion industry in the U.S. (nearly one-fifth as large as the adult-video industry) and has a "Hall of Fame" as protective of its morals as baseball's, which has shunned gamblers and steroid-users. According to a January Wall Street Journal report, one "superstar" scrapbooker, Kristina Contes, was recently kicked out of the hall for violating etiquette by displaying another's photo inside her scrapbook in a competition. Contes said the oversight was inadvertent but that she is now shunned within the community for her grave offense and called "labelwhore."

-- Orlando "public artist" Brian Feldman celebrated Feb. 29 (Leap Day) by devoting himself to "leaping," according to a report on WOFL-TV. For the entire 24 hours, beginning at midnight, Feldman leaped off a 12-foot-high platform every three minutes and 56 seconds (a total of 366 times). Said Feldman, "I thought it would be a good idea to get people to think how they spend their day."

-- German artist Markus Kison created a full-body burqa, the robe that devout Muslim women wear for modesty, but equipped to send a digital signal of the wearer's face to anyone nearby via Bluetooth. According to a February report in Der Spiegel, Kison reasoned that, since nothing in the Quran specifically forbids it, women can use it to determine their own personal levels of modesty.

-- First, Arkansas Tech University canceled outright its production of the Stephen Sondheim play "Assassins" (containing some violence) because of "recent tragic events" on campuses, but then relented because of the hard work that the students had already put in. In February, the production was staged in full, one time, to an audience solely of participants' families, who presumably could handle the violence. However, even that showing took place without the play's prescribed guns, even though they were only wooden props. (The "guns" were later discarded but only after being sawed in half.

(1) Police officer Thomas Wilson pleaded guilty to having 8,742 images of child pornography on his computer, but the judge acknowledged that Wilson might have acquired them "somewhat accidentally" (Brisbane, Australia; March). (2) Ernest Simmons was convicted of attempted murder of two sheriff's deputies despite his defense that he only "accidentally" shot at them (11 times, using two guns) (Orlando, January). (3) Accused purse-snatcher Derrick Dale, 21, said that the purse fell on his foot and (according to the arrest report) "the next thing he knew, (it) was in his hands" (Destin, Fla., January).

This Getaway Plan Works Better in July: James Jett, 33, was arrested in Blount County, Tenn., in February after attempting to evade police by jumping into the Little River and submerging all but his face. However, the high temperature that day was only 36 degrees (F), and by the time he was discovered, he was suffering from hypothermia.

-- More People Having Sex with Inanimate Objects: (1) Art Price Jr., 40, was charged with public indecency for several instances of walking naked into his back yard and (according to neighbors' videos) simulating intercourse with a picnic table (Bellevue, Ohio, March). (2) A 36-year-old man faced several charges after allegedly masturbating on a woman's bicycle seat (explaining that he felt "an overwhelming calm" when he smelled the handlebars of a woman's bike) (Ostersund, Sweden; February). (3) A building contractor was caught by a security guard simulating sex with a canister vacuum cleaner (and claiming that he was merely vacuuming his underpants, which he said was a "common practice" in his native Poland) (London; March).

-- People continue to purposely maim themselves in various schemes. Daniel Kuch allegedly had a friend shoot him in the shoulder so he could get time off work (and was arrested for telling police that it was a drive-by) (Pasco, Wash., February). And Elizabeth Hingston, 24, let her boyfriend break her leg by jumping on it so that the pair could claim insurance proceeds worth the equivalent of $200,000 (Plymouth, England, November). And Zachary Booso, 19, shot himself in the cheek, shoulder and thigh so that he could brag to his friends and ex-girlfriend that he is involved with gangs (Brownsburg, Ind., March).

-- A 39-year-old man who had been cited 32 times for driving without a seat belt (and who finally rigged a fake belt in his car to create the illusion that he was belted in) was killed in a low-impact car crash that would not have been fatal to a belted driver (Okata, New Zealand; coroner's inquest, February). And a 74-year-old man died of hypothermia after sneaking out of a nursing home at 4:30 a.m. to smoke (Winnipeg, Manitoba; January). And a man and a woman were fatally struck by several vehicles on the Trans-Canada Highway after they had continued a fight from their stopped car out to the middle of the road (Chilliwack, British Columbia; February).

Irish director-playwright Paul Walker's production of "Ladies & Gents" opened for a March run in New York City 29 blocks north of Broadway in a public restroom. According to an Associated Press report, the entire play takes place among the porcelain in a bathroom in Central Park, portraying "the seedy underside of 1950s Dublin," with the audience of 25 standing beside rows of stalls, near "spiders, foul odors and puddles of questionable origin." Walker proudly admits that he wanted to take the audience "out of their comfort zone" to create "a different energy." Actor John O'Callaghan recalled that rehearsals were especially difficult: "One man actually came in and had a pee right in front of us."

-- In October, the government of Singapore, anxious about the city's declining birth rate, began teaching its high school polytechnic students in formal courses on how to flirt. Said Isabel, 18: "My teacher said if a guy looks into my eyes for more than five seconds, it could mean that he is attracted to me, and I stand a chance," according to a March Reuters dispatch. The course includes "love song analysis" and how to chat online.

-- Officials in the Shivpuri district of India's Madhya Pradesh state, needing a promising program to slow the country's still-booming birth rate, announced in March that men who volunteer for vasectomies will be rewarded with certificates that speed them through the ordinarily slow line to obtain gun permits. Said an administrator, the loss, through vasectomy, of a "perceived notion of manliness" would be offset "with a bigger symbol of manliness."

-- Ajinbayo Akinsiku's heavily abridged version of the Bible, in the Japanese graphic "manga" style, was recently published in the United States, with the goal of making Jesus more "accessible" to a younger, religion-indifferent generation. Quirky, illustration-rich manga presents biblical philosophy as action scenes using contemporary dialogue, according to a February New York Times review. In one example, Akinsiku (who hopes someday to become an Anglican priest) has Noah taking census on the Ark: "That's 11,344 animals? Aargh! I've lost count again. I'm going to have to start from scratch!"

-- Duquesne University and Boston College recently created professional courses in financial and personnel management for churches (and Villanova University even established a special master's degree), thus recognizing that frauds by greedy priests and sexual abuse by errant clergy cannot be resolved simply by churches' demanding that their leaders behave. Lax U.S. churches have lost tens of millions of dollars to embezzlement and sexual-abuse lawsuits, but, said a Villanova official, "If (church officials) were better trained in management, a lot of problems ... could have been avoided."

-- Among the recent victims of internal religious strife in Malaysia was Kamariah Ali, 57, who long ago renounced Islam and started worshipping a two-story-tall "sacred teapot" she had built for her Sky Kingdom cult (emphasizing the "purity of water"). She was sentenced to jail as a failed Muslim in 2005, and the teapot destroyed, and in March 2008, another court found that she had been insufficiently rehabilitated and ordered her back to jail.

-- Registered sex offender Jason Lee, 28, was arrested in Cincinnati in February and charged with several counts of deception for his seemingly benevolent acts of posting bond for two female strangers who had been arrested. Later, according to police, he had demanded sex and drugs from the women as payback, and a prosecutor said Lee had trolled for names of arrested women on the Web site of the Clerk of the Court.

-- Questionable Judgments: (1) Jason Fife was sentenced to probation and community service after harassing his estranged wife's boyfriend with a special package delivery. Fife, said his lawyer, now "understands that in a civilized society, a person cannot send (someone) a severed cow's head ...." (2) In December, Sister Kathy Avery of St. Clare of Montefalco Catholic School in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., held all fifth- through eighth-graders after class in the school's chapel so she could inform them of the new rules against cussing. According to the kids, Avery held nothing back: She recited a list of the actual, blush-producing words and phrases she was talking about. Said Avery afterward, "It got a little quiet in church."

-- "Look, it is no big deal," Christopher Wilkins told the Fort Worth, Texas, jury trying to decide in March whether to send him to death row or life in prison. "I'm as undecided (about that) as you are." Wilkins even belittled his own lawyers for bringing his family in to beg the jury for mercy: "They (my lawyers) sprung that charade on me," he told the jury. When his lawyers suggested that his murders were not cold-blooded but were the result of drug use, Wilkins said, "I wouldn't put too much weight on that." Before leaving the witness stand, Wilkins complimented the prosecutor ("You're doing a fine job") and added, "I haven't been any good to anybody for the last 20 years, and I won't be for the next 20 or the 20 after that." (The jury chose the death penalty.)

(1) Like a Paul Simon song: Anthony Raspolic reported a break-in in the wee hours of Jan. 1 in his apartment in Durant, Okla. He told police that he was in bed with his girlfriend, but got up and left the room, and by the time he returned, someone had taken his place. (The man scurried out of the bed, stole Raspolic's wallet and fled in his Ford Explorer.) (2) Like a Jennifer Beals movie: The Associated Press profiled Cincinnati's Alexandra Harrill, 19, in January, fascinated that she is a would-be ballerina saving up for lessons by working as a welder, just like the 1983 Flashdance character Alex Owens.

(1) In January just after police in Tyler, Texas, took Christopher McCuin, 25, into custody on suspicion of killing and eating parts of his girlfriend (an ear was found on the stove), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent the sheriff a fax demanding that McCuin receive only a vegetarian diet, suggesting that too much meat-eating had already occurred in the case. (2) Mark Hotuyec, 46, was arrested in Joliet, Ill., in February and charged with indecent exposure after he allegedly drove alongside a school bus containing fourth-graders while openly fondling himself, visible to kids looking out the window. (The bus was from the Wood View Elementary School in Bolingbrook, Ill.)

Krystal Evans, 26, and Denise McClure, 24, rifled through packages on a DHL delivery truck in December in Crescent City, Calif., looking for their urine samples headed for the lab because they were certain theirs would test positive, which would have meant their return to jail. The driver summoned police, and the women were arrested for destroying evidence and violating their probation and in March were convicted and could face two years in prison. Evans' original sample turned out to be clean, after all, but during the December arrest, she tested positive for methamphetamine.

(1) In January, the parents of Carroll County (Md.) Board of Education candidate Draper Phelps, 28, obtained a protective stay-away order against their son, marking the third consecutive year they felt they needed one. (Phelps lost in the February primary.) (2) In February, at a polling place in Chicago's 42nd Ward (according to a Chicago Tribune report), one election judge (a woman in her 30s) was charged with battery for punching another election judge (a woman in her 50s) in the face. (3) Brian Sliter, 42, announced in March his candidacy for mayor of Wilmer, Texas, notwithstanding his 2004 arrest (resulting in probation) for trying to arrange a tryst with an underage girl.

(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.)

While March Madness dominates intercollegiate athletics, another group of collegians works out amidst coaches' whistles, endures bloody, 12-hour practices, and cheers on teammates preparing for the national championship in meat-judging, in which about 40 colleges compete, according to a March Wall Street Journal report. Coaches at powerhouses like Colorado State and South Dakota State say skills such as evaluating T-bone cutting and spotting whether a pig has too much back fat come with determination and concentration (and, of course, practice, as one coach said it all comes down to time spent in the meat locker, at 38 degrees (Fahrenheit)). (And pro scouts are watching from the stands, representatives of U.S. meat companies, seeking talent.)

(1) Italy's highest appeals court ruled in March that it is not illegal for a woman to lie in a police investigation if the reason is to cover up her adulterous affair. Court of Cassation judges said that her honor is more important than providing intimate information about her lover. (2) The North Carolina Court of Appeals voted 2-1 in February to approve a worker compensation claim for only one of a woman's breast-implant replacements, ruling that the other implant ruptured (in a job-related accident) only because it had been improperly installed. (The dissenting judge said, even so, the compensation fund should pay for the second replacement, too, because to achieve their purpose, both breasts must be aligned properly on the chest.)

-- When Johnny Diablo's year-old vegan restaurant failed to catch on in Portland, Ore., last year, he converted the space into Casa Diablo's Gentlemen's Club, which is what he believes is the world's only vegan strip club. He has no rule against meat-eating dancers, he told Willamette Week newspaper in February, but won't permit leather, fur, silk or wool outfits on stage (no "murder victims" in the club, he said).

-- Cosmetics from the American company Blue Q, under the "Lookin' Good for Jesus" brand urging users to "Get Tight with Christ," were pulled from stores in Singapore in February due to complaints, but Blue Q said it's not abandoning that line of hand and body creams, lip balm, breath spray and bubble bath. (Of course, Blue Q also markets similar cosmetics under such brands as "Dirty Girl," "Cute as Hell," "Total Bitch" and "Virgin/Slut," as well as a car air-freshener by its brand "Cat Butt.")

-- A team of researchers from the University of Calgary and the Tokyo Institute of Technology proudly announced in February that they had successfully stored "nothing" inside a puff of gas and then had managed to retrieve that same "nothing." That "nothing" is called a "squeezed vacuum," and the physicists tell us that a light wave can be manipulated so that its phases are of uncertain amplitude, then the light itself removed so that only the "uncertainty" property of the wave remains.

-- In February, the South Korean cell phone company KTF announced a new voice-analysis program for its customers to enable them to evaluate their sincerity when calling a lover. The caller can point the phone's camera at himself and see a meter on the screen measuring his own passion, then receive a text message afterward noting voice expressions by the person receiving the call (surprise, honesty, etc.).

-- To feed the fast-growing women's hair-extension business, brokers in India scour the countryside for Hindu temples that encourage female worshippers to shear themselves as good-luck offerings to the temples' gods, according to a February dispatch in Germany's Der Spiegel. Historically, the hair was used to make mattresses, but because the celebrity-driven extension business is so large, salons around the world pay from $125 to $250 per pound for strands of never-chemically-treated hair of desirable hues. Shaving is a Hindu tradition, and one donor told Spiegel she had long prayed for her husband to stop drinking and that when that "miracle" happened, she felt compelled to offer her hair.

-- In the worst slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti (where 80 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day), rice now sells for 30 cents a cup (double the price of a year ago), according to a January Associated Press dispatch, leaving the poorest of the poor to subsist mainly on "cookies" made with dirt. Choice clay from the central plateau is at least a source of calcium and can be baked with salt and vegetable shortening. However, recently in the La Saline slum, the reporter noted, the price of dirt, too, has risen about 40 percent.

At a February casting call in Pittsburgh for the movie "Shelter" (to star Julianne Moore), producers announced they were seeking extras to play West Virginia mountain people from the hollers (Pittsburgh is about 40 miles from the state line), specifically an albino woman, extraordinarily tall or short people, those with unusual body shapes and faces (especially eyes), and "a 9- to-12-year-old Caucasian girl with an other-worldly look. 'Regular-looking' children should not attend."

Takahiro Fujinuma, 37, was arrested and charged with making at least 2,600 calls (perhaps more than 10,000) to directory assistance ("I would go into ecstasy when a lady (operator) scolded me," he told a reporter) (Tokyo; January). Ms. Lee Amor, 23, pleaded guilty to calling or texting her jilting ex-boyfriend more than 10,000 times over a 65-day period (South Devon, England; February). John Triplette was arrested, suspected as the one who made more than 27,000 calls to "911" since May 2007 (consisting mostly of mumbling and making bodily noises) (Hayward, Calif.; February). Paul Kavanagh, 40, was sentenced to 30 months in jail for making about 15,000 calls in 12 years to women asking them about their underwear (West London, England; November).

Not Ready for Prime Time: Robber Adam Grennan, 39, did not make it out of the Mt. Washington Bank in Dorchester, Mass., in December. So intent was he in not appearing nervous that he waited patiently in line, eyes straight ahead, until the time came to hand the teller his holdup note. He did not notice that a uniformed Boston police officer, working security, had slipped quietly behind him in line, and he arrested Grennan immediately as Grennan was quietly demanding large bills and "no funny money."

Padre Pio, who died in 1968 and was sponsored for sainthood by Pope John Paul II, has been a controversial figure, as News of the Weird reported in 1999. He was wildly loved by his parishioners, yet viewed skeptically by some Vatican officials who found his claim of hands bleeding from crucifixion holes (similar to those of Jesus), and of having been eye-gouged in a wrestling match with the devil, to be difficult to authenticate. On orders from Pope Benedict XVI, Padre Pio's body was exhumed in March, to be placed on public display for several months at the Vatican, even though problematic for two reasons. The top part of his skull is exposed, presenting an unsettling image, but more important, there obviously are no crucifixion holes or scars on his hands or feet.

Latest Electro-Sensual Accidents: Toby Taylor, 37, of York County, Pa., was charged with involuntary manslaughter in January after his wife died of a heart attack in an accident during sex, and police found the woman's body (according to the York Daily Record) with "alligator clips on the end of a stripped electric cord ... attached to her breasts," with an on-off switch. About two weeks earlier, 100 miles away in New Berlinville, Pa., a 23-year-old construction worker was electrocuted when he placed electric clips to his chest piercings (despite colleagues' warnings).