Update: Experimental "natural orifice" surgery might be health care's next big thing following its U.S. introduction last year at Columbia University (as reported also in "News of the Weird"), where doctors removed a woman's diseased gall bladder not by an abdominal incision but through her vagina. In March, doctors at UC-San Diego Medical Center removed a woman's appendix through her vagina, and a man's through his mouth. (A microscopic camera must be inserted through the abdomen, however, to guide the surgeons.) Pain and healing time are usually less than half that of ordinary surgery, but the risk of internal infection is greater. The next step, doctors say, will be removing kidneys through the anus.

-- A Maryland governmental fund created to assist "innocent" victims of violent crime has paid out nearly $1.8 million since 2003 to injured (or deceased) "drug dealers, violent offenders and other criminals," according to an investigation by the Baltimore Sun published in March. Burial expenses were awarded for a carjacker, a victim of an inter-gang killing and a sex offender who was fatally beaten in prison. The Maryland courts have ruled that as long as the applicant was not engaged in a crime at the time he was injured, he must be considered for an award.

-- The Associated Press reported in March that "dozens" of locked-up sexual predators are receiving federal aid to take mail-order college courses through Pell grants, even though prison inmates normally are ineligible. Sex offenders who have completed their sentences, but are held for "treatment," are not technically "prisoners," and many have spent their stipends on "living expenses" such as DVD players, in that they have no "room and board" expenses.

-- Graduate art student Matthew Keeney's latest piece of performance art, in February, called "The Waiting Project," had him standing on streets in Syracuse, N.Y., waiting for someone to ask him what "The Waiting Project" is. In previous pieces, Keeney had held a "Super Bowl party for one" on a park bench, had earnestly watched ice sculptures melt, and had walked from the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C., to the Lincoln Memorial but stopping each time he heard a car horn and then starting again when he heard another.

-- Two aggressive art pieces sexualizing Jesus' Last Supper were displayed earlier this year: Among the 74 plaster models shown in Gateshead, England, in January by British artist Terence Koh was one of Jesus and several disciples sporting generous erections. And in March, a retrospective of Austrian Alfred Hrdlicka went on display in the Cathedral Museum in Vienna, with the blessing of the archbishop of Vienna, even though it included a painting of the Last Supper as a "homosexual orgy," in Hrdlicka's description (because, he said, there were no women in the original Da Vinci painting that inspired it). (That piece was removed during the first week, after complaints.)

-- Last year, Montreal, Quebec, artist Michel de Broin created, as art, the hollowed-out shell of an old Buick powered only by a four-seater bicycle (with hand brakes, or, failing them, Fred Flintstone-type brakes). Nonetheless, when a group took the car out for a spin last October, an overzealous officer ticketed them for "driving" an unsafe "car," but in April, after a daylong court hearing, the charges were dropped.

-- No Man's Land: "The Bride of Palestine" (a 26-year-old drag queen) is the best-known of a group of sexually uncertain Israeli Arabs who gather in underground venues in Tel Aviv and "struggle to define themselves," according to a March dispatch from McClatchy Newspapers. Though they are proud Palestinians at odds with the "occupying" Jewish society, some feel even more rejection by their own conservative communities and seem grateful that the "oppressors" permit the spaces that one woman called her "only refuge."

Latest Police Chases: (1) In Ocala, Fla., in March, Bret Wass, 28, scrambling from police investigating a sexual battery, commandeered a tow truck and drove away, even though the truck had a car hooked onto it; during the chase, he hit the patrol car and was captured on foot nearby. (2) Police in Osaka, Japan, mobilized in January to apprehend fugitive Hirofumi Fukuda, 27, who was wanted for assaulting an officer (which tends to get the attention of fellow officers). By the end of the two-hour episode, a helicopter and 460 patrol cars, involving 2,240 law-enforcement officers, were on the case.

Thirty years ago, before Wal-Mart became an international giant, a small video company made a "handshake" deal to shoot promotional footage of the firm's executives and was given free rein within the company. It made 15,000 tapes, including many, inevitably, showing Wal-Mart leaders in awkward situations. In 2006, an incoming Wal-Mart executive decided to end the relationship, devastating Flagler Productions' bottom line, and to compensate, the company began offering to research its library for historians and, more notably, litigants suing Wal-Mart on product safety, employment and union-busting issues. According to an April Wall Street Journal report, a treasure trove of embarrassing moments is available.

Even though 20 states outlaw keeping monkeys as pets, the Humane Society of the U.S. estimates that there are 15,000 privately owned primates, with at least 200 Floridians licensed for pet capuchins, according to an April Orlando Sentinel report. Since experts warn that the animals are biters and scratchers and are very aggressive when agitated, the Sentinel asked what accounts for their popularity. Said the editor of Monkey Matters Magazine, it's their humanlike features and owners' desires to dress them up. "Believe me," said the editor, "if people could get their cats (into) outfits, a lot of those cats would be wearing outfits."

In three incidents in March and April, robbers were arrested in the act after police were tipped off in advance. The source of the tip each time was a store employee who had been brazenly notified by the perp to expect a robbery soon. Daniel Glen, 40, was arrested in Windsor, Ontario, having called ahead to make sure there was enough money in the convenience store's cash register. An 18-year-old man was arrested in Chicago, having given his phone number to a Mufflers For Less employee and instructing him to call when the manager, with access to the safe, arrived at work. And two men were arrested near Traverse City, Mich., having described to a gas station employee two hours earlier exactly how they would soon rob him.

Earnest residents continue to accidentally destroy their homes: (1) A house in Galveston, Texas, had the roof blown off on Jan. 21 when the resident set out six bug foggers but neglected to turn off the gas stove's pilot light; (2) A Jacksonville, Fla., woman who smelled something unusual in her home on Nov. 15 decided to light the fireplace to clear the air, and a gas leak created a fire that destroyed the home; (3) An apartment building in Sioux Falls, S.D., was wiped out on Feb. 21 when a resident tried to thaw frozen pipes with a blow torch.

(1) Bernard Fincher Jr., 25, was arrested in Buffalo, N.Y., in March for possession of cocaine when police found a stash of the drug that Fincher had allegedly tried to hide in a doughnut box. (2) Cody Young, 13, complained in January that when he parked his expensive BMX bicycle inside the front door of a Goodwill Industries store in Salem, Ore., so he could browse, an employee mistakenly sold the bike to a customer for $6.99.

(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.)

Lawyer confidentiality rules kept one man improperly on death row for 10 years and a probably innocent man in prison for 26, according to news that surfaced in January (in Virginia) and March (in Illinois). Daryl Atkins (sentenced to death in 1997) was the victim of probable prosecutorial misconduct, according to his co-defendant's lawyer, Leslie Smith, who said he witnessed the misconduct but could not report it because a lesser sentence for Atkins would have exposed his own client to greater punishment. In Illinois, Alton Logan was convicted of a murder during a 1982 robbery. However, shortly afterward, Andrew Wilson admitted to his lawyers that he was the murderer, but bar association rules prohibited them from revealing that. When Wilson died in 2007, the lawyers went public, and Logan's case has been re-opened.

(1) Mayor Art Madrid of La Mesa, Calif., apologized in February for an incident the week before when police found him, along with a female city employee, passed out about 10:30 p.m. Madrid was lying on the sidewalk near an SUV; the woman was in the driver's seat with her legs sticking out the open door; and vomit littered the area. (2) A patient reporting for an appointment with dentist Norman Rubin in Smithtown, N.Y., in March told the New York Post that Rubin was in the otherwise-empty office, passed out, drooling, with a gas mask on his face. (Rubin later told the Post, in defense, that it was, after all, his lunch hour.)

-- Dirk Opalka (whose fox scored 96 of 100 possible points) won best in show at the World Taxidermy Championships in February in Salzburg, Austria, beating over 100 competitors in the art of stretching animal skin over fake bodies so the critters look better than they ever looked alive. The attention to detail was astonishing, according to a dispatch in Der Spiegel, on such features as a stag's nostrils, a hyena's lips, a hamster's whiskers, the neck length of a female peregrine falcon (precisely 5.5 cm), and the proper rosiness of a bat's anus.

-- In March, the Tokyo High Court reversed the conviction of pinup model Serena Kozakura, who had been found guilty of kicking a hole in the door of her former boyfriend's apartment so she could break in and scream at him. Kozakura had appealed, claiming that the man had made the hole himself, and as evidence, explained that she could never have squeezed through it, anyway, because her breasts are too big. That argument apparently won the day, creating enough "reasonable doubt" to overturn the verdict.

-- Two German air force sergeants were suspended in December after being caught in a side venture selling sausages based on an old family recipe requiring human blood. Their first batches were made with their own, but as they began mass-producing, they had allegedly asked their colleagues because, according to instructions from one of the men's grandmothers, all blood must be "fresh." "Do not use too many breadcrumbs," she had written, "but if the blood starts to curdle, stir in a teaspoon of wine vinegar."

-- Court documents revealed in March that federal judge Eduardo Robreno had fined New York mortgage banker Aaron Wider and his lawyer $29,000 for using variations of the "F word" 73 times (thus, about $367 per usage) during a contentious deposition he gave in a lawsuit brought by GMAC Bank.

-- Several psychotherapists told The New York Times in February that treatments are being developed for people who are excessively worried about their own carbon emissions being responsible for "global warming." More than 120 therapists are now listed as specialists in the field on Ecopsychology.org, and schools such as Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., have created courses on counseling such patients.

-- Sheila and Paul Garcia of Northfleet, England, acknowledged to London's Daily Mail in February that they invited their 16-year-old daughter's boyfriend to come live with her in her bedroom, despite the fact that he is 36 and divorced, with one child. The parents said they weren't thrilled with the situation, but that it was preferable to the daughter's running away with the man.

-- Cutting-Edge Parenting: (1) Sheriff's deputies in the Orlando area were on the lookout in March for two women who, according to surveillance video from the Magical Car Wash, had pulled into a stall and deposited coins but then proceeded only to scold and then pressure-wash a small child. (2) Aron Pritchard, 27, was convicted of child endangerment in March in Hutchinson, Kan., after a jury declined to accept his explanation for his girlfriend's kids, age 2 and 3, being burned in a hot clothes dryer. Pritchard said he was just trying to show them they could have fun without necessarily spending money.

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Two boys, 12 and 14, were quickly arrested in Port St. Lucie, Fla., in March when they tried to rob a woman who was working at a counter behind protective glass in an office, by picking up the convenience phone and threatening her, implying that they had a gun. The woman was in no danger because of the protective glass, but besides that, the place they had chosen for the hit was a regional office of the Port St. Lucie police department. (2) Donald Baker, 51, was re-arrested in March in Peterborough, Ontario, when he called the police department to request a wake-up call for his court appearance the next morning; amazed at his audacity, police ran a records check and found an additional arrest warrant on him.

-- News of the Weird cited a police report last May that an unidentified man in Guelph, Ontario, had committed at least three incidents of approaching women and asking to be kicked in the groin. After seven such incidents, Jarrett Loft, 28, pleaded guilty in March 2008 to one count and was sentenced to 60 days in jail. Loft offered no explanation for his behavior, other than that he was "curious." One victim, saying that she feared what Loft might do if she refused, repeatedly kicked him between the legs, after which he thanked her and rode off on his bicycle.

-- Good Friday in the Philippines town of San Pedro Cutud has meant, for over 20 years, that two dozen men will line up to be nailed to a wooden cross for a few minutes each to mark their penitence for sins of the previous year (although this year, the government issued an advisory recommending getting tetanus shots and using only sterile nails). Ruben Enaje, 47, was first in line once again (the 22nd time in 23 years that he has been crucified) and, once again, screamed in agony for five minutes at the 6-inch nails driven into both palms and both feet while he lay on the cross. Before the crucifixions, dozens of other men punished themselves by whipping their backs bloody, using bamboo rods.

(1) A 76-year-old Baptist minister was found dead in Clarksville, Tenn., in March after he had tried to pull a goat back into a fenced-in area of his property; apparently, the goat had resisted the slip knot, and somehow the animal's jumping had wound the rope around the minister's feet and neck, and he had begun to turn blue by the time his wife found him. (2) The day before that, an 82-year-old man in Lake Hallie, Wis., was killed when he apparently slipped while using a plumber's auger on his septic tank and fell in, head first, eventually drowning.

(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.)

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).