The Brazilian designer Lucia Lorio introduced women's lingerie in October containing a global positioning device to enable the wearer to be tracked by satellite. The creator said the password-protected lace bodice would make it easier for women kidnapped by thugs or terrorists to be located and rescued. Critics called it a virtual chastity belt, primarily of service to insecure males curious to know where their women are. (However, the wearer can manually turn the device off.) Another anti-terror lingerie product may also surface someday, based on a 2007 U.S. patent, issued to a Plainfield, Ill., company for a bra whose cups could also function as air-filtration systems in case of chemical attacks.

-- Facing a state budget crisis in July, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fired about 10,000 temporary and part-time workers and ordered the 200,000 permanent employees to be paid only the minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until the legislature passed a crisis-solving budget. However, a week later the State Controller John Chiang pointed out that state payroll records could not be changed to accommodate the cut because they were written in the antiquated COBOL computer language, and virtually the only state employees who knew the code were some of the part-timers Schwarzenegger had just fired.

-- London's Daily Mail profiled two 10-children British families in October to illustrate the inconsistencies of government benefit awards. Sean and Anne Tate and their children live on Sean's truck-driver salary of the equivalent of about $23,000 a year, plus the government's standard per-child benefit. Harry Crompton has been out of work for 15 years, and his wife, Tracey, has never held a paid job, yet they receive the equivalent of $48,000 in various government benefits, which The Daily Mail said would require a tax-paying family to earn the equivalent of $68,000 a year to draw. The Daily Mail reporter also noted that the Tate home is immaculate and the Cromptons' home, messy.

-- Two of Oregon's unique public health markers clashed dramatically for resident Barbara Wagner this summer when she was informed that the universal medical care available to everyone in the state (but with certain service restrictions) would not pay for her expensive lung cancer drug (because her five-year survival likelihood was poor), but was told, at the same time, that the state would pay for any necessary drugs under its Death With Dignity Law (i.e., suicide).

(1) The September mug shot of Michelle Allen of Middletown, Ohio, was possibly the Internet's most-circulated news photo of 2008, since she was inexplicably dressed in a full-body cow suit (with rubber teats) as she was allegedly disorderly in chasing children and interfering with traffic. (Alcohol may have been involved.) (2) Shopper Amber Dibartolomeo, 23, was arrested in a Wal-Mart in North Bay, Ontario, in July and charged with selling crack cocaine inside the store. Police said they found $2,217 in cash on her, along with a can of pepper spray, and 27 grams of cocaine (one in her bra and 26 in her vagina).

(1) A restaurant owner in Rutino, Italy (near Salerno), told police in November that as he was negotiating over the building's lease with his landlords, one hit him in the head with a chair and two others kicked him repeatedly in the stomach. The landlords were not from La Cosa Nostra but were a priest and two nuns from the local Catholic order that owns the building. (2) In the village of Pumaorcco, Peru, in September, a bus containing 14 British sightseers on holiday was held hostage for five hours by 50 natives wielding pickaxes and metal bars, who mistook them for personnel from a mining company that they believed were exploiting their land. The Peruvian guide finally negotiated their freedom but had to call for another bus, since the villagers completely destroyed the original.

Bridgeport, Conn., police arrested Michael Smith, 47, in October for breaking into Holy Ghost Deliverance Church. Smith explained that he was passing the church, spotted a drum set through a window, and could not restrain himself from trying it out. According to a Boston Globe report, officers found Smith "in a spirited solo after the church's alarm system went off."

-- Merle Sorenson, 48, had to be rescued from the Columbia River near Quincy, Wash., in October, where he nearly drowned after driving his Humvee off of a boat launch. He told the rescuers that he was trying to clean his tires and wanted to see how far he could drive the vehicle into the water but still be able to back out.

-- In August, an employment tribunal in Glasgow, Scotland, rejected the age-discrimination charge by 16-year-old Darren Mirren, whose complaint was that the Spotless Commercial Cleaning Co. in Glasgow, about a 20-minute ride from Mirren's home, had turned him down for a job because he didn't show up for a scheduled interview. Mirren implied that a person of his age could not be expected to find an address unless they gave him directions.

(1) In October in Vancouver, Wash., a 74-year-old man actually succeeded in his mission to unclog, with his hands, the garbage chute from his 10th floor apartment, but then he pushed too far. When rescue workers arrived, only the man's feet and lower legs were visible, with his wife holding on for dear life. (2) In August, a 78-year-old woman apparently misread the signs at Arlanda airport in Stockholm, Sweden, and placed herself on a baggage belt, which led to a chute, but she was only slightly injured and did not miss her flight.

People whose special land-use and zoning requests are turned down by the government or neighborhood associations sometimes retaliate defiantly, as News of the Weird has reported. In July in Bucks County, Pa., two men who were denied the right to tear down a house decided to paint it purple and pink, just to annoy the neighbors. In October in Olympia, Wash., a developer who was denied a permit for a grocery store decided instead to expand his adult video store next door into an "emporium." In September in Potsdam, N.Y., a man wanting to build a convenience store was turned down and so installed a row of nine used toilets in his front yard, as "artwork."

Failed Prayers: (1) The 16 players for a soccer team called Midland Portland Cement, who were in Zimbabwe for a match in October, were told that a swim in the Zambezi river is a traditional ritual that would cleanse the team of evil spirits. However, only 15 players made it back, as there are crocodiles. (2) Hundreds of visitors a day visit the Muslim shrine of Khan Jahan Ali in Bangladesh, where they bathe in a pond to wash away evil spirits and feed chickens to crocodiles to bring good fortune. "Normally, the crocodiles are very friendly," said a local police officer, but in August, Mr. Rubel Sheikh was eaten while washing away his evil spirits.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said they had developed new technology that would detect breast-enhancement cheating at beauty contests. The researchers are veterinarians, and the relevant contests are of show cows at dairy exhibits, where the "cheating" involves making the cow's udders fuller, smoother and more symmetrical (in that 40 percent of the contestant's grade is based on udder integrity). Unlike their human beauty contest counterparts, though, cow udders are valued only for milk-producing potential.

(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.)

When a four-bedroom house inhabited by 50 tenants partially collapsed in October in Honolulu, at least 10 of the residents said they had been pressured to let the property manager give them experimental "stem-cell" injections. Manager Daniel Cunningham, 56 and a de-licensed chiropractor, said he has been injecting the substance, phenol, into himself for years, to treat gnarled hands (though the hands appeared to a Honolulu Advertiser reporter to be deteriorating to the point where Cunningham wears socks over them). One man said Cunningham injected him directly into the eye, and others complained of various side effects. Cunningham ran for mayor of Honolulu this year and in the September primary received 737 votes on a platform of complaining about government's meddling into health care.

-- Deceitful mating strategies may be rife in the animal kingdom (especially among humans), but Australian researchers recently documented the sexual guile of a group of orchids that basically trick male wasps into pollinating them by resembling the look and smell of female wasps. Writing in The American Naturalist, the authors noted that female wasps reproduce both with and without sperm, with the latter creating male offspring. Consequently, the researchers hypothesized, when orchids commandeer sperm, it indirectly leads to the birth of more future pollinators. (Charles Darwin's subsequent book, after "The Origin of Species," was "The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects.")

-- The remote Manitoba First Nations tribes in Canada have largely moved away from alcohol abuse, according to an October Winnipeg Sun report, to the abuse of much more potent "superjuice," made with a fast-acting yeast that encourages quick brewing. According to a local probation officer, though, underbrewing results in the swill's continuing to ferment in the stomach after consumption, causing violent pain and progressive inebriation lasting for days.

-- In 2003, retired Colorado businessman John Haines, who was concerned about dangerous cracks in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, went to great lengths to find and purchase a huge slab of the identical high-grade white marble of the Tomb and offered it, free of charge, shipping included, to the Army (which has been considering reconstruction of the Tomb since 1987). In the ensuing five years, according to an August Denver Post story, the Army continues to ignore Haines, yet periodically shows interest in opening the reconstruction to competitive bidding, but mostly just allows the idea to languish.

-- In September, a Wisconsin appeals court suppressed the surveillance video that allegedly captured David Johnson, 59, having sex with his comatose wife in a Portage nursing home, obviously violating the state law against sex without consent. Nursing home caregivers had installed the camera to protect the wife, but the court ruled it an invasion of the privacy of the marital relationship.

-- In November, the Bombay high court expunged the arranged-marriage records of an Indian couple who had separated immediately after their 1998 honeymoon when the husband complained that he had been unable to consummate because the bride had large boils on her face. She has since been cured of her disorder and did not want future suitors to read of her past.

(1) Officer Keith Breiner, suspended from the police force in Beaumont, Texas, for crossing the line during an undercover prostitution sting (that is, he actually had sex), defended himself in an August hearing: "It was a job, sir. I didn't have pleasure doing it." It was, he said, "something I did for the city." (2) In his murder trial in October in Leeds, England, chef Anthony Morley testified that the killing was in self-defense, but he did admit to carving, cooking and eating part of the body afterward. "At some point (the victim's) body had just become something I would deal with at work, a piece of meat. ... That's my daily task, preparing meat."

(1) In October, the local government council in Worcester, England, ordered Bill Malcolm to take down the 3-foot-high, barbed-wire fence he had installed to deter the thieves who had broken into his storage shed three times in the previous four months. According to the Daily Mail, the council said it feared the government would be sued by a wounded trespasser. (2) In August, the local government in Dymchurch, England, said a traditional celebration of the inspirational character Dr. Syn would have to be altered because the town had been unable to obtain liability insurance. According to legend, the swashbuckling Dr. Syn braved enemy troops to bring food to starving villagers by horseback, but without liability insurance, the man portraying Dr. Syn would now have to merely walk through the village.

Two high school boys in Markesan, Wis., were hospitalized in September with broken pelvises after a "prank" went bad and a classmate inadvertently drove over them as they lay in the road in front of her car. On the other hand, a professional, Tom Owen (known as the "Human Speed Bump"), was hospitalized in October with similar injuries after he attempted to break the Guinness Book record by being run over by eight vehicles (with the last one, a box truck, leaving him in bad shape). Owen got certification, though, because the truck did pass completely over him.

(1) University of New Hampshire officials banned Bert Allen III, 44, a convicted sex offender, from campus in September for posting fliers without permission, seeking a "trophy wife." To further draw attention to himself, Allen sued for a restraining order (unsuccessfully) to allow the continued solicitation. (2) Police in Covington, Ky., arrested Gregory Griggs, 19, in October at the USA Motel, a suspected drug market. Though several people were booked that night, Griggs was the one wearing the T-shirt that read, "It's Not Illegal Unless You Get Caught."

Many people believe Israelis have more important things to worry about these days, but the city government of Petah Tikva (a Tel Aviv suburb) became the latest municipality to implement a registry of dog DNA, to encourage owners to pick up after their pets in the city's streets and parks. Abandoned droppings will be analyzed and those dogs' owners punished.

(1) In August, a woman filed a lawsuit in Orange, Texas, against the manufacturer of the Sea-Doo personal water vehicle, claiming negligent design, after she fell off the back end and directly into the powerful jet stream from the vehicle's water pump. According to the lawsuit, "The high-pressure stream ... penetrated her orifices, causing massive, mutilating injuries." (2) However, in September, a federal jury in Baltimore rejected the claim by a 64-year-old West Virginia man that a Frederick, Md., surgeon had stapled his rectum shut during an operation. The jury accepted the doctor's explanation that it was the man's longtime, heavy smoking that caused his rectum to become swollen and shut for 17 days.

Gary Arthur Medrow, then 44, first made News of the Weird in our inaugural year, 1988, but his criminal record (mostly for impersonating police officers) goes back at least 10 years before that. Medrow's periodic compulsion is to call someone on the telephone (usually a woman), pretend to be a law enforcement investigator, ask her to lift another person in her home, carry that person into another room, and then describe the results to Medrow. News of the Weird reported Medrow's relapses in 1991, 1997 and most recently, in 2004, when he was charged in New Berlin, Wis.

(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.)

Dutch designer Eric Klarenbeek, 29, has developed jewelry consisting of tiny crystals or flowers that hang directly from the eye via micro-thin medical wire attached to either prescription or blank contact lenses and, in the light, give the appearance of tears streaming down the cheek. He expects to hit the market soon, according to an October report in London's Daily Mail, at a price of the equivalent of around $325. Though the adornments appear to be painful or dangerous, Klarenbeek said users of his prototypes so far have been "amazed" at their comfort.

-- Residents of an Austin, Texas, neighborhood undergoing a federally mandated sewer replacement noticed that, for several weeks starting in September, the work crews would spend the first three hours of their 12-hour days digging a huge hole in the street, and the last three hours re-filling and paving over it (repeating the process each day). The 20-by-20-by-20-foot hole in Monroe Street was too big to be covered with metal plates, and the city's "policy" of minimal traffic disruption required repaving for nighttime use, at least doubling the cost of the work.

-- Pay Those Dentist's Bills! (1) In October, a 58-year-old patient accused the Rush Green Dental Practice in Romford, England, of injecting Novocain in preparation for an extraction but then refusing to pull the tooth until he had handed over an additional 30 pounds ($47) cash. (The patient had to go home to get his ATM card, according to a Daily Mail report, and did not make it back until the Novocain had begun to wear off.) (2) Police in the Bavarian town of Neu-Ulm said they were investigating a dentist who allegedly barged into the home of a 35-year-old patient in September, tied her hands, forced her mouth open, and removed dentures worth the equivalent of about $500 because the woman's insurance company had declined to pay.

-- Blind Justice: An administrator of criminal-case appeals in Louisiana committed suicide in 2007, partly (according to his suicide note) because of guilt that, for 13 years, he had complied with a judge's order to deny, sight-unseen, all appeals filed by defendants who were acting without lawyers. (Under state law, only death row convicts get assistance for appeals; all others, even convicted murderers, either fend for themselves or forfeit the appeal right, no matter how indigent.) According to the administrator (the extent of whose claims are still being investigated by the state Supreme Court), none of the supervisory judges involved in denying the 2,400 appeals ever read a single word in them.

(1) In October, Travis Fessler of Florence, Ohio, broke the Guinness Book record by holding 11 Madagascar hissing cockroaches in his mouth for the mandatory 10 seconds. (2) Briton Sarah Burge, 49, broke the Guinness Book record for the most cosmetic surgery, having now spent a total of 539,500 pounds ($850,000) on more than 100 procedures, according to an October report in London's Daily Mail.

In November, after two years of controversy, the school board in Jacksonville, Fla., voted 5-2 to retain the designation of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School, which is named for a Confederate general who was also an early Ku Klux Klan leader. Advocates for change described Forrest as one of America's biggest Civil War slave traders, but a local Confederacy historian said his research indicated that Forrest was "nice" to his slaves and that "(t)hey loved him."

(1) The Sun reported in September that officials at London's Holloway Prison had recently staged a morale-boosting costume dance party for female inmates, even though Holloway houses Britain's worst female murderers. As a result, families of murder victims learned that the killers had a jolly good time dressed up as, for example, vampires and ghouls covered with fake blood. (2) Britain's Prison Service issued guidelines recently calling for guards to refer to their male charges by "Mr." and their surnames, to foster "decency" and "respect." Inmates should be treated, said one official, "like (we expect) our children to be treated."

(1) Police in Cobb County, Ga., said in October that County Commissioner Annette Kesting had asked local "high voodoo priestess" George Ann Mills to perform a "death ritual" on her longtime political rival Woody Thompson ("cancer" or a "car accident" preferred). Mills acknowledged helping Kesting on some "family" issues, by sacrificing three hens and a rooster, but said she would never help take a human life. (2) In Flint, Mich., two people (an assistant to the mayor and a local activist) accused City Councilwoman Jackie Poplar of assault following a rancorous council meeting. Poplar allegedly sprayed the pair with a can of Raid, proclaiming, "Pests! We need to get rid of these pests!"

(1) Akira Hino, 51, was arrested in Tokyo in September and charged with stealing a woman's underpants, using a fishing rod to reach a laundry pole on an apartment balcony. Police found more than 500 women's undies in his apartment. (2) A 34-year-old primary-school teacher was convicted in September for a 2007 incident in Clydebank, Scotland, in which, during a drive to work, he was arrested after he stopped in front of a high school and was caught watching students while fondling himself with an electrical vibrator plugged into his car's cigarette lighter.

Jose Diaz Jr., 35, was arrested and charged with shoplifting from a Wal-Mart in Madison Township, Ohio, in October after attempting to run from the store with a digital camera. He first crashed into the glass front door (which looked open, but was closed), cutting himself badly, but then exited into the parking lot, where he almost immediately ran into a cement post, allowing security personnel to catch up with him.

The latest evidence that, for men, size is important: (1) Following a men's room argument in Durban, South Africa, in September, five men of Indian descent left a bar, returned with guns and killed three patrons. According to police, the altercation started when one Indian man at a urinal called attention to a white South African man's "small" size, and the incident escalated. (2) In August, the indecent-exposure conviction of a Houston urologist was upheld on appeal despite the doctor's insistence that he is so "small" (2.8 inches) that it would have been impossible for his sex organ to be seen by anyone, even if he had tried to expose himself.

Initially, authorities ruled the March shooting death of Texas restaurant executive Thomas Hickman, 55, a kidnap-murder, since he had been shot in the back of the head and the body dumped in the New Mexico desert. Later, however, investigators found the murder weapon nearby, attached to balloons that had snagged on cactus, and in July concluded that Hickman had killed himself but rigged helium-filled balloons to carry the gun away as he lay dying (a plan that resembled a 2003 episode of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation").

Researchers at Plymouth University in England, with a small Arts Council grant, could not quite test whether an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters could produce the works of Shakespeare, but did see what six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys would write with a computer over a four-week period. According to a report in The Guardian, the apes produced about five pages of text between them, mostly consisting of the letter S. According to professor Geoff Cox, the monkeys spent a lot of time sitting on the keyboard.

(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.)