Great Moments in Capital Punishment: Prosecutors in Portland, Ore., took the death penalty off the table for Tremayne Durham in July, accepting a minimum-30-year prison term for an "aggravated murder" over a business deal. Durham agreed to plead guilty when prosecutors relented to his additional demand of two pig-out meals (featuring KFC, Popeye's and Haagen Dazs right away, and pizza and lasagna on the day the judge accepts the plea). Prosecutors said they hated appearing to cater to the whims of a murderer, but eyeing the expense of a long trial and lengthy appeals, as well as the turmoil for the victim's family, they agreed. In August, the judge accepted the deal.

-- Though it has been on national cable TV since mid-July, ratings have not been spectacular for the G4 channel's show, "Hurl!" leaving many Americans unaware of precisely how far standards of taste have fallen. "Hurl!" contestants are forced to gorge themselves, then are purposely, rapidly, twirled and shaken on carnival-type rides, with the last player to retain his stomach contents declared the winner. Wrote a Washington Post reviewer, it's "for people who found 'Fear Factor' much too nuanced."

-- Least Competent Multitaskers: A Dallas entrepreneur recently created a programmable device for those busy, busy parents who actually need to be reminded that they brought their tots with them in the car (lest their child become one of the several hot-car deaths a year in America). Provided that they're not too busy to set the system up, an alarm alerts them if they exit the car without the baby. Said one Texas woman interviewed by NBC News, "As a mom, you can get really distracted."

-- A rule for federal lawsuits (Rule 8a) requires the initial pleading that commences the case to be "short and plain," and another (9b) requires it to be to the point, with several pages usually plenty to give the other party notice of what he's being sued for. In June, federal judge Ronald Leighton summarily tossed out the initial pleading of Washington state attorney Dean Browning Webb, whose client is suing GMAC Mortgage, because Webb had submitted 465 pages, with meticulous detail, including 37 pages quoting e-mails, and 341 pages asserting claims that freely repeated each other on points they had in common.

-- Believers: (1) Rocky Twyman of Washington, D.C., started Pray at the Pump, a brief, scattered national campaign in June to urge prayer to bring down gas prices. A colleague in St. Louis claimed his prayer sessions caused the price drop in July, pointing to his use of the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" (and his new verse, "We'll have lower gas prices"). (2) In July, Salinas, Calif., Mayor Dennis Donohue, frustrated at this year's dramatic surge in gang violence, kicked off a campaign to urge a citywide fast, which he said was a proven technique in achieving social justice.

-- In a July ceremony, Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan honored SWAT officers for their bravery and professionalism during a December middle-of-the-night raid of a house that supposedly contained a gang's guns. However, it was the wrong house, and the bewildered, frightened resident started shooting back. Said Dolan, "The easy decision would have been to retreat (but the) team did not take the easy way out." The house got riddled with bullets, but no one was hit, and the chief later apologized but still felt that it was "a perfect example of a situation that could have gone horribly wrong, but did not because of the (team's) professionalism."

-- Unrealistic Expectations: (1) Victor Rodriguez, 21, about to be arrested on a domestic assault charge in Bridgeport, Conn., in June, turned to his 9-foot-long pet python and, as police approached, shouted to the snake, "Get them!" (It remained motionless.) (2) In July, Josef Fritzl, the man who imprisoned his daughter and her children for 24 years in a dungeon in their home in Amstetten, Austria, told his own jail's officials that he needs daily exercise outside because he hates being cooped up in his cell.

While most major opera houses provide sign-language interpreters at the side of the stage, producer Marita Barber recently staged the opera "The Hunt of King Charles" in a version in which all performers sign as they sing, with only a two-piece orchestra in the background, for patrons with hearing. At Barber's venue, the Theatre Totti on a Finnish island, actual baritones and sopranos were sought for their respective roles, even though they would all sign their lyrics, because, said Barber, "(W)e need facial expressions and gestures to get the feeling and the atmosphere across" to the deaf audience, for example, when lyrics call for elongating a word to fit the music.

(1) Lamont Cooke was arrested by a SWAT team in Vernon, Conn., in July after spending the last year on the run from Philadelphia and Maryland authorities, who wanted him for charges of kidnapping and murder. According to the arresting U.S. marshal, Cooke surrendered quietly, except that he wet his pants. (2) A police task force in Orem, Utah, arrested a 21-year-old gang member in June, catching him riding a tricycle that he had just stolen from a little girl.

Montreal, Quebec, psychiatrists Joel and Ian Gold believe they have identified five patients between them who are deluded to the point where they are certain they are starring in reality TV shows or movies about their lives. In the well-established Capgras delusion, a patient believes that his immediate family has been replaced by look-alike actors, but the Golds' five patients believe that their every movement is being broadcast around the world (and have named the disorder the "Truman Show delusion" after the 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey), according to a July National Post story.

Latest Negative-Cash-Flow Robbery: The man (dressed as a woman) got away after the attempt at Joe's Cafe‚ in Metairie, La., in July, but he lost money in the deal. As a ruse to get a clerk to open the cash register, he handed over a $5 bill to pay for two doughnuts, and, with the register then open for change, pulled a gun and demanded the contents. The clerk immediately became hysterical, screaming, and the robber, frightened, fled the restaurant without his $5 or his doughnuts.

Stripper Susan Sykes, 47, known as "Busty Heart," was rejected in July as a contestant for the NBC show "America's Got Talent," as the judges were unappreciative of her ability to crush empty beer cans with her enormous breasts. As News of the Weird reported, Sykes was sued in 1997 by an Illinois strip-club patron who claimed a serious neck injury after Sykes, in a little audience-participation, playfully trapped his head between her breasts while she danced. Eventually, the lawsuit was dropped.

Revenge of the Critters: A 44-year-old woman accidentally shot herself in the knee while pursuing a mouse inside her travel trailer (Potter Valley, Calif., July). And a 27-year-old man accidentally shot himself in the head while chasing a skunk (Elwood, Utah, May). And a 45-year-old woman accidentally shot herself in the foot while stalking a woodchuck in her garden (Ferryville, Wis., June). And a 57-year-old man accidentally shot himself in the hand while aiming at bees (Williamsburg, Pa., April). And a retired police officer accidentally shot himself in the chest while aiming at a snapping turtle behind his house (Bensalem, Pa., August).

(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.)

Martha Padgett gave birth to quadruplets in Riverside, Calif., in July, but she only did half the work. The other two babies were born to her partner, Karen Wesolowski, using Padgett's eggs and the same sperm donor, and whose two came along 22 hours after Padgett's two. The women carried two fertilized eggs each only because they had failed five times before with in-vitro fertilization and just wanted to improve the odds of having at least one child between them.

-- "Someone's getting a new spinal cord tonight!" yelled Canadian tent-revival preacher Todd Bentley in July during his crusade in Lakeland, Fla. (also telecast on GodTV and the Internet), according to an Associated Press observer. Miracles are "popping like popcorn," he promised, punctuating each hands-on salvation with an Emeril-type "Bam!" His unorthodoxy extends to sometimes roughing up the afflicted, he admits, because that's what God tells him to do, e.g., kneeing a "cancer patient" in the stomach, banging a crippled woman's leg on a platform. Anyone in need of healing should, Bentley shouts often, "come and get some!"

-- The most popular UK Hindu temple east of London appears to be the spare bedroom of Sushila Karia and her husband, Dhirajlal, in a quiet residential neighborhood in the resort town of Clacton-on-Sea. On holy days, the line of pilgrims extends down the hall and stairs, through the living room, out the door and across the lawn, according to a May report in London's Daily Mail. The temple, inaugurated 29 years ago to save Hindus the 90-mile round trip to London, contains 17 marble gods that were specially blessed for the occasion by priests in India.

-- France's Council of State turned down an otherwise-acceptable petition for citizenship by a French Moroccan woman in July, on the ground that her total submission to her husband makes her "insufficient(ly)" "assimilat(ed)" into the country's ethos of gender equality. The 32-year-old Muslim veils her entire body in public except for a narrow slit for the eyes and, for example, rejects the idea of voting, in that such matters should be left entirely to the discretion of her husband and male relatives.

-- "The days of the ceramics trade here are numbered," lamented Francisco Figueriredo, 68, and the specific ceramics trade of his region (Portugal's Caldas da Rainha) happens to be ornamental penises. For more than 30 years, Figueriredo and his wife have been two of a small number of craftspeople who have shaped and molded various models for export (e.g., mugs with penis extensions, penis-shaped bottles, ceramic soccer figures with penises peeking out from under flags). A July Reuters dispatch attributed the decline to a general loss in the provocativeness of public sexual displays.

-- The government of France announced that, starting next year, it will regulate the booming business of country-western line dancing, by, among other measures, requiring licenses of teachers, after 200 hours' instruction. Inexplicably, at least 100,000 people in the country line dance weekly, and the popularity is growing, according to a May dispatch in The Times of London. A French Dance Federation official said he guesses the preference of line dancing over square dancing is the French preference for no physical contact.

Questionable Judgments: (1) Dr. Frederick Lobati, 47, was charged last year with felony abuse of his daughter in Ozark, Mo., but in June 2008 offered the defense that, being of African heritage, he was merely applying a "konk" (a bare-knuckle punch), which is an acceptable punishment in his culture. (2) In June, the High Court in Johannesburg granted the request by a Chinese civil rights organization to switch Chinese South Africans from "caucasian" (as they were during apartheid) to "black" (which would allow them to better qualify for government benefits).

(1) The president of Japan's Osakana Planning Co. told attendees of the Japanese Seafood Show in July that his tuna makes superior sushi because his company administers acupuncture to each fish prior to its death, in order to reduce stress. (2) A Welsh oil painting, "Newport Nude," which was mothballed 60 years ago for being too brazen for public display because the model is naked, drew fresh criticism when reintroduced in July at a public gallery in Wales but this time only because the naked model is holding a cigarette.

Boston fire inspector Albert Arroyo, on tax-free disability since March ("totally and permanently disabled," wrote his physician) from an unwitnessed on-the-job injury, apparently heroically overcame his condition and six weeks later finished eighth in the 2008 Pro Natural American bodybuilding championship. Said his lawyer, James Dilday, time in the gym was actually a way for Arroyo to get his mind off his depression at being forced to take early retirement at age 46. (A Boston Globe investigation in January found 102 firefighters with mostly questionable job injuries, taking full retirement, with some manipulating paperwork to retire at a higher grade than when they were "injured.")

Rodney McLagan, 48, acknowledged that a few pornographic images of children might have been among the 31,000 that he had downloaded from the Internet, but that he has never had a sexual interest in children. Rather, almost all of the images are of adults having sex with animals. As his lawyer pointed out in court in Hobart, Australia, in July, McLagan has such low self-esteem that he considers himself, too, a "beast." Included in the sex collection were dogs, ponies, snakes, tigers and, in one case, an octopus.

In June, police in Spokane, Wash., arrested Calvin Robinson, 19, who had set up inside the lockable family restroom at a mall because he needed an electrical outlet to run the color printer he had just bought for $100 (in real money) in order to make counterfeit $10 bills. Police recovered a sheet of uncut, poorly made copies, which Robinson said he had intended to use to buy "90 dollars" worth of marijuana.

In 2001, News of the Weird noted Hong Kong jeweler Lam Sai-wing's monument to excess, the solid-gold bathroom (including flushable toilet), built as a tribute to Vladimir Lenin's critique of capitalism's wastefulness. ("(W)e shall use gold," wrote Lenin, "for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities in the world.") Lam later added more fixtures, furniture and statues to his display, using a total of six tons of 24-carat gold. However, the world economy is different now, as Lam noted in a July Wall Street Journal profile, with gold that cost around $200 an ounce in 1999 now valued at nearly $900. He has decided to begin melting down the entire structure, except for the toilet, that is. "I don't care if gold hits $10,000 an ounce," he said. "I'm not melting (that) down."

Recent Playdates: Salt Lake City, July (image of Jesus in a three-gallon container of spumoni at an ice cream shop); Salinas, Calif., July (image of Mary in the floor drain of a restaurant undergoing renovation); Monterey, Calif., May (image of Mary in the leg wound of a biker who slid 50 feet along the pavement when he lost control of his motorcycle); Darlington, England, April (image of Jesus in the foil wrapping on a bottle of cider served at the Tanners Hall pub); Lorain, Ohio, April (image of Jesus in a woman's ultrasound picture); Iowa City, Iowa, May (joint appearance of Jesus and Mary on a plastic bag used to bring home groceries from Wal-Mart).

(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.)

Brother Cesare Bonizzi, 62, of a Capuchin Friars monastery near Milan, Italy, is the lead singer in a heavy-metal band that recently released its second album, "Misteri" ("Mysteries"), following a successful performance at Italy's "Gods of Metal" festival (headlined by Iron Maiden and, ironically, Judas Priest). On stage, the white-flowing-bearded Brother Cesare booms out gritty but non-proselytizing lyrics while wearing his traditional brown robe. He told BBC News in July that his superiors have never interfered with his sideline and that he plans to send a copy of the new album to the pope. "He's a music lover, and metal is music."

-- High Point University (just south of Greensboro, N.C.) is not quite Club Med ("Club Ed," it was called by the Chronicle of Higher Education) but provides free ice cream for students, a hot tub in the middle of campus, wake-up calls and a concierge service, all run by a campus "director of WOW," whose job it is to thrill the "clients" and attract new ones. This is the strategy of President Nido Qubein, a motivational speaker and "customer comes first" businessman, and so far, enrollment is way up (even at higher tuition), new construction is transforming the campus, and $100 million is in the bank.

-- Challenging New Products: (1) stilettos for toddlers (though with soft heels), from Bellevue, Wash., designer Britta Bacon, selling recently in Toronto for $39.95 (Cdn) a pair; and (2) a rotating ice cream cone on which the scoop gently revolves counter-clockwise, so that lazy people merely stick their tongues out and need not actively lick (sold by Kitchen Craft in the UK).

-- The U.S. government's $100 billion stimulus distributed to taxpayers this spring achieved mixed results, according to economists, but at least the Internet pornography industry flourished (according to a July trade association spokesman). Adult Internet Market Research Co. reported that "20 to 30 percent" of "adult" Web sites reported that sales rose during the time checks were being issued. However, Nevada brothels were suffering, even though Hof's Bunny Ranch ran a stimulus-check special: Hand over your $600 check and get the usual $1,200 "party" ("three girls and a bottle of champagne").

-- A July Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that professional fundraisers keep so much of the money donated to charity by conscientious, generous-minded people that 430 different California charities over the last 10 years got not one penny of the contributions. In fact, in 337 cases, the charity paid an additional fee on top of getting nothing back (but did come away with the donors' names and addresses, for further solicitation). Philanthropy watchdogs say fundraisers should never keep more than 35 cents on the dollar, but the Times found the overall average was 54 cents, and for missing-children charities, fundraisers kept 86 cents. (Fundraisers for an organization called Citizens Against Government Waste kept 94 cents.)

-- A 10-year-old British boy had such a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder that he was overwrought with guilt that he had caused the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks, in that he had not been able that day to make his ritual step upon a particular mark in the street. Writing in June in the journal Neurocase, psychologists at University College London said the boy recovered only when they convinced him that the attacks had already started by the time he would have made his usual step.

-- Many nations are exploring how to curb cattle's release of the greenhouse gas methane, including altering cows' diets to reduce flatulence (which requires monitoring the gas compositions from the old and new diets). To collect the gas for measurement (according to a July report in London's Daily Telegraph), researchers at Argentina's National Institute of Agricultural Technology rigged a large plastic tank to the cow's back, with a tube to the backside to directly capture each emission. (The alternative, researchers pointed out, would require a human to follow a cow around with plastic bags.)

-- Higher-Order Animal Research: (1) Britain's Sea Life Centre announced a study in July that would give octopuses Rubik's Cubes to play with, to ascertain whether they use a certain tentacle for such activities, or any tentacle at random. (2) Writing in the journal Nature in July, a team of University of Oregon biologists showed that roundworms do "calculus"-type computations, using chemosensory neurons, to determine how to find food or avoid trouble.

Sam Bloomfield, 58, grew up poor on Tonga but arrived here in 1976 and says he has tried to show his gratitude ever since, according to a July 4 profile in his hometown Herald of Everett, Wash. He has tattooed "God Bless America" under his left eye, "Land of the Free" under his right eye and a large "USA" across his forehead, and last year underwent another 15 painful hours with the needle to cover the rest of his face with stars and stripes resembling an American flag so that he can toast his beloved country in the mirror every morning.

In July, convicted drug dealer Marcus Anderson opened the door of the Corrections Department van taking him to court, climbed out and walked away into downtown Baltimore. It was an ordinary van without a prisoner cage and whose driver had no gun, handcuffs, phone or radio (because Anderson had arrived late at the pick-up point for the regular prisoner van). An exasperated Judge Charles Bernstein later asked whether the driver had given him bus tokens, too. "If I were a young enterprising criminal," said the judge, "I'd come to Baltimore to set up my practice. This is the place to be. This is the Promised Land."

"Brain fingerprinting," reported in News of the Weird in 2000 and 2003 from the experimental work by former Harvard research associate Lawrence Farwell, achieved a breakthrough in July in India, when two murder suspects were convicted based in part on that technology. Though Farwell's theory is somewhat different, the "Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature" used in Mumbai operates on a similar principle, that a different brain area activates when one recalls an actual experience than when one recalls something he merely learned about. Thus, in the India cases, neurologists concluded that the defendants either were present at the murder scene or had actually looked for or transported the murder weapon (and not that they had just read or been told about those facts).

(1) After complaints by neighbors, police went to an apartment in Framingham, Mass., in July to quell a raucous screaming match between two women who, it turns out, are deaf. (2) In Crawley, England, in July, police were called to a supermarket to break up a fight between two grandmothers, who were ramming each other in their mobility scooters.

(1) Donald Seigfried, 55, and Diane Whalen, 54, were arrested in June and face several charges based on the more than 200 homemade videos police found featuring Whalen having sex with various dogs. Police were alerted after Whalen's son found the evidence of his mom in action. (2) In June, a woman walking in a parking lot near Fort Walton Beach, Fla., with her two children was nearly struck by a car, but gently approached the driver to let her know the kids were unhurt. Inexplicably, the driver erupted, and when the woman tried to calm her by offering her a church brochure, the furious driver grabbed it, pulled her own pants down, and, according to a police report, "wipe(d) her female anatomy" with it (as the mother shielded her children's eyes).

(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.)