Aggressive police questioning of a weak-willed suspect can produce an occasional false confession, but experts now believe that six men in a single case, and four in another, confessed to group crimes they did not commit, even though some described their roles in vivid detail. Recent DNA evidence in a 1989 Beatrice, Neb., murder case implicated only a seventh man, and similar evidence in a 1997 Norfolk, Va., murder case implicated only a fifth man, who insists he acted alone. (Governors in both states are currently mulling pardons for the men.) It is still possible that the six, or the four, are guilty as charged and that the DNA was left in completely separate attacks on the victims, but the more likely explanation, say psychologists, is that people with low self-esteem or mental problems, or who are drug- or alcohol-addled, are more easily convinced of fantasy.

-- Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission announced plans in December to create a third official gender for government identification: "intersex," for transsexuals, whether or not they have had surgery. Immediately, activists from Sex and Gender Education Australia called the proposal inadequate, demanding a fourth gender, also, for people who feel that "gender" is either "undefinable" or subject to daily changes of attitude.

-- Maryland lobbyist and former state assemblyman Gilbert Genn was attacked by a deer outside his home in November, butted to the ground and repeatedly stabbed by the buck's antlers in the chest and groin. Genn told WTOP Radio that after finally realizing he was in a life-or-death struggle, he managed to subdue the animal by the antlers long enough to tire it and cause it to flee. Bleeding badly, Genn said he disregarded his wife's admonitions to get to the hospital and instead dressed the wound himself and headed off for a scheduled meeting in Annapolis with Speaker of the House Michael Busch. He told the reporter, "There was no way I could miss this meeting." Only afterward did he report to the emergency room.

-- In November, the Great American Insurance Co. (Cincinnati, Ohio) sought a declaration in federal court in Houston that it was not liable to pay death benefits from a 2007 office fire because the three victims did not die from "fire." The company pointed to an exclusion in the policy for death by "pollution" (thought by most people to cover only toxic industrial discharges) and argued that the three victims were actually asphyxiated by smoke, which is "air pollution."

-- Officials in South Africa, where government only recently came to accept the connection between HIV and AIDS after years of denial that provoked the country's epidemic of cases, revealed in December that supplies of retroviral drugs are being used recreationally as hallucinogens smoked by schoolchildren. Health officials told BBC News that the drugs are prescribed to those at risk for AIDS, but are not taken seriously by symptom-free, HIV-diagnosed South Africans who are just now starting to understand the decades-old disease.

-- Might As Well Reserve Him a Death-Row Cell Right Now: According to a November sheriff's department report, an 11-year-old, Fort Pierce, Fla., boy hit his mother with a saw during an argument, lacerating her skull, and then, as she threatened to call police, offered her a $5 bribe not to. The mother said the kid had previously threatened to cut his 19-year-old pregnant sister's abdomen, "to give her a C-section," and once tried to use hair spray and a cigarette lighter to torch the family's cat.

Eugene Falle, 35, was acquitted of murder in Edmonton, Alberta, in December, as jurors apparently accepted his claim of self-defense even though the victim had 39 stab wounds. Falle said he was forced to keep stabbing the man because of previous threats by the victim and his gang and that the victim "wouldn't bleed properly the way he should've bled, according to the movies." And in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Sydney Teerhuis, on trial for killing a man, claimed self-defense even though he admitted not only stabbing the man 68 times but having sex with the body during the spree. However, unlike Falle, Teerhuis was convicted.

(1) In November, British Justice Minister Jack Straw discovered, and immediately canceled, a 10-year-old program for inmates at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire for "workshops" in comedy. (2) Scotland's Justice secretary similarly canceled a program in November after he learned that officials at Saughton prison in Edinburgh had set up poker classes, sanctioning games run on paper earnings (but which the inmates converted into real trades and favors). Said one astonished official, "Next thing, roulette wheels ... then a tap-dancing club ... because after this nothing would surprise us."

Peter Trigger, 59, was "adamant," according to England's Kettering Evening Telegraph, that he had the right to wear whatever outfits he wanted, even though his favorite hangout was in front of Woodvale Primary school in the mornings, where he usually wore schoolgirl-like short skirts but with nothing underneath. In December, after numerous complaints, a Northampton magistrate issued Trigger a five-year Anti-Social Behavior Order commanding him to stop.

Arousing Suspicion: (1) April Westfall, 40, was arrested in Reno, Nev., in December for DUI. An ambulance crew called the Highway Patrol after spotting her driving down U.S. 395 at 4:30 a.m. with a service station's nozzle and severed hose protruding from her gas tank. (2) Jeremy Aron, 33, was arrested for DUI on Thanksgiving night in Portsmouth, N.H., when an off-duty police officer spotted him driving down Lafayette Road with a fire hydrant stuck to his bumper.

Five years ago, News of the Weird reported that a Philadelphia woman had undergone $10,000 elective surgery to shorten one toe and straighten another so that her foot would look better in the fashionable shoes she coveted. According to an October report by London's Daily Mail, foot surgeons' business has improved, especially since Manolo Blahnik's sleek, narrow models have become so popular. In addition to shortening and narrowing, young women seem concerned about the symmetry of their "toe cascades" (the curve from the big toe around to the little toe) and whether their ankles are shapely enough, with some women opting for liposuction on the lower calf.

(1) In October, an armed-robbery suspect died during his getaway from a restaurant in Fresno, Calif., when he fell and impaled himself on his weapon (a screwdriver), severing an artery in his thigh. (2) A 33-year-old man in Conway, Ark., was electrocuted in August when (after having his power cut off for nonpayment) he misapplied jumper cables while attempting to illicitly hook his house back up. (3) A 65-year-old woman was killed after driving up to an outdoor ATM in Port Angeles, Wash., in December. She opened the car door to retrieve something from the ground, but the car inched forward, causing a protective post to squeeze the door against her head.

Though several restaurants in Asia had reportedly been offering delicacies made from various animals' genitals (touted for alleged virility-enhancement), the first restaurant exclusively serving such dishes, the Guolizhuang, in Beijing, opened in September 2006. The staff's nutritionist told BBC News that sheep, horse, ox and seal penises are good for "circulation" and that donkey penis improves the skin. Tiger, she cautioned, even though premium-priced, has no special nutritional value, but snakes (which have "two penises each," she said) are great for sexual potency.

In several European countries, identifying the "naughty" kids at Christmastime is not Santa's job but is left to unsavory legendary icons who have endured for centuries (according to a December series of articles in Germany's Der Spiegel). In Italy, determinations are made by the extremely ugly witch La Befana, who has the ability to fly her broomstick through keyholes into bad kids' houses. In Austria, Krampus pays the naughty ones visits as a 7-foot-tall horned devil with a long tongue and a goat's head. And in the Netherlands, Sinterklaas' helper is Zwarte Piet ("Black Pete"), who, unlike Sinter, gets sooty when climbing down chimneys delivering twigs to the shoes of misbehavers. (However, the Netherlands pair has a big advantage over the North Pole-dwelling Santa, in that they reside in sunny Spain and arrive at Christmastime by steamship.)

-- In a March change of regulations, the Pentagon began saving money by reducing "combat-injury" benefits for all except those wounded while actually fighting, explaining that combat-"related" injuries were simply not worthy of full compensation. Thus, in examples offered by The Washington Post in November, Marine Cpl. James Dixon and Army Sgt. Lori Meshell were not entitled to full combat-injury coverage for their Iraq wounds (Dixon from a roadside bomb and a land mine, and Meshell while diving for cover during a mortar attack) because neither was actually fighting at the time. (Dixon, initially denied about $16,000 by the classification, recently won a hard-fought reversal, but Meshell, drawing $1,200 less per month because of the change, is still appealing.)

-- The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, reporting the latest of 10 lawsuits against dentist Thomas Laney, 55, found "flaws" in Washington state's medical disciplinary system, in that Laney was apparently doing "full-body cosmetic surgeries." Laney was being sued this time by a woman for allegedly botching her breast-reduction. His attorney told a reporter that negative outcomes happen, but that Laney should not be held responsible unless the patient suffers deformities that are "terribly, terribly wrong." (When an earlier patient of his died after surgery, Laney was "disciplined" with a fine and an order to get additional training.)

-- The British Federation of Herpetologists announced in November that the number of reptiles kept as pets in the U.K. is probably greater than the number of dogs (8.5 million to about 6 million, with cats at 9 million). One benchmark the federation uses for its calculation is the booming sales of reptile food, such as locusts, frozen rodents and crickets (now about 20 million a week).

-- The Wishroom lingerie shop on Japan's Internet shopping mall Rakuten announced in November that it had already sold more than 300 of its new bras specially made for men (about $30 each) since the product launch earlier in the month. A Wishroom official told a Reuters reporter: "We've been getting feedback from customers saying, 'Wow,' we'd been waiting for this for such a long time."

-- Twice recently (in November, off Atlantic Beach, N.C., and in October, off Amble, Northunderland, England), anglers encountered (and rescued) dogs that were swimming about a mile from land and headed toward the open sea. The pooches, a Labrador retriever and a cairn terrier, were both said to be disoriented and uncooperative with rescuers.

-- When Arien O'Connell posted the fastest time in October's Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco, she expected of course to be declared the winner, but the shoe company apparently had promised a group of elite runners (to attract them to enter the race) that one of them would be the "winner," and consequently, first place went to a woman who ran 11 minutes behind O'Connell. After a storm of complaints, Nike reluctantly settled on calling both women "winners" and said next year it would scrap the two-tier system.

-- In November, the Swedish national newspaper Expressen revealed a 30-person bestiality ring operating out of a farm in southern Sweden, but the 45-year-old man who allegedly headed the group said his members were always respectful of animals: "Any of the times I did anything with (the dog), she was the one who backed into me and provoked it. She was in heat and made herself available. ... There were also times later when she didn't want to and then I backed out immediately."

-- London's Daily Mail reported (after an investigation under Britain's freedom of information act) that more than half of the local government councils responding admitted that they were using anti-terror laws and surveillance equipment to monitor such mundane activities as whether residents put their garbage out at the proper times for pickup. Said one prominent critic, "We are no longer living in what most would recognize as a free society."

Professionals at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, told an annual meeting of radiologists in Chicago in December that they had discovered an alarming new teenage trend of self-mutilation: girls deliberately inserting objects into their arms, hands, feet, ankles and necks (including needles, staples, wood, stone, glass and a crayon). According to the Chicago Tribune, the hospital reported extracting 52 such objects from 10 girls in a three-year period and regarded the practice as an extension of the more common self-cutting. Other studies have shown that at least 13 percent of high school students have deliberately injured themselves at least once.

-- Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) William Jarrett, 38, was charged in Hempstead Village, N.Y., in November with swiping a necklace from a 32-year-old pregnant woman and running off. Despite her condition, the woman chased him, screaming, for six blocks and caught up with him just as a police officer was arriving on the scene. (2) Muoi Van Nguyen, 31, was arrested in Spokane Valley, Wash., in November, charged with breaking a window with a hammer at a state liquor store and grabbing a bottle of wine valued at $9. Earlier, Van Nguyen had tried unsuccessfully to break the window with a rock, but decided he needed a hammer to do the job and went to a nearby store, where he purchased one for $11.

When News of the Weird last mentioned Andy Park, of Melksham, England, in 2002, he was in his eighth straight year of celebrating Christmas every single day of his life, with not only seasonal decorations and cards mailed to himself but a full holiday meal including turkey and champagne. However, as he told the Daily Mail in November, "The credit crunch is getting to me big time," and he has been forced to cut back a bit on the presents he gives himself. Nonetheless, every morning since July 14, 1994, Park continues to arise and open his presents before starting on his full meal and mince pie. He also watches the queen's Christmas speech on video. Yes, he admits, "People do think I'm (nuts)."

In 1983, convicted South Carolina murderer Michael Godwin, then 22, succeeded in getting an appeals court to reduce his death-by-electric-chair sentence to one of life in prison at the Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, S.C. Six years later, in March 1989, while sitting naked on a metal toilet and attempting to fix earphones that were connected to a television set, Godwin bit into a wire and was electrocuted.

Thanks This Week to Candy Clouston, John Ellwood, Roy Henock, Perry Levin, and Steve Wettlaufer, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo, Geoffrey Egan, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and the News of the Weird Editorial Advisors (Paul Blumstein, John Cieciel, Harry Farkas, Fritz Gritzner, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Rob Snyder, Bruce Townley, and Jerry Whittle).

One of the world's best-known strategists on the game of checkers passed away in November. Richard Fortman was Illinois state champion six times, and in the 1970s and 1980s published a seven-volume handbook on rules and tactics. Many people now considering the game would be astonished to know that, as in chess, there are masters and grandmasters, and international rankings, that experts actually study historical opening moves and endgames, and that some play, move-by-move, via the U.S. Mail. A New York Times obituary noted that Fortman played as many as 100 games simultaneously, and won games blindfolded. Until the end, according to his daughter, Fortman spent "hours each day" playing checkers online.

-- Serbians, who have previously, bafflingly, constructed large, reverential public statues of martial-arts actor Bruce Lee and movie characters Tarzan and Rocky Balboa, built one of reggae musician Bob Marley in August in the village of Banatski Sokolac. Also planned was a statue of British singer Samantha Fox, but that project fell through. One Serbian artist who helped raise money for the Rocky statue told The New York Times, "My generation can't find role models (at home) so we have to look elsewhere."

-- The Gorani, a small group of Muslims scattered through the former Yugoslavia, lead mostly unremarkable lives, except for their singular distinction: Every five years, they gather in southern Kosovo for Sunet, a festival of mass-circumcision of toddlers, with a history tracing back centuries. Last year, 130 boys born since the previous Sunet were circumcised, without anesthetic, by Zylfikar Shishko, 70, for a small fee. Many Gorani are apprehensive about 2012, according to an October dispatch in Germany's Der Spiegel, because Shishko is 70 years old and the only skilled Gorani circumciser.

-- An administrative court in Sweden overruled a government agency in November, thus requiring that the Madonna of Orgasm Church founded by artist Carlos Bebeacua be registered as a legitimate religious community. "The orgasm is God," he said, and "should be worshipped" as a "metaphor of life." It should not be limited to ejaculation but can be taught "through art or by looking at a landscape and thinking, 'Wow!'" Bebeacua already claims "a few hundred" followers.

-- The streak for the longest continuous chanting (already noted twice in the Guinness Book of World Records) is still active, according to an August Indo-Asian News Service dispatch from Ahmedabad, India. Clerics at the Shri Bala Hanuman temple started intoning "Shri Ram Jay Ram Jay Jay Ram" on Aug. 1, 1964 (more than 23 million minutes ago).

-- "Intercessionary" prayer (having other people pray for you) is proliferating on the Internet, with the oldest such broker, Unity Church, now a Web presence (200,000 requests a year) after a century's operation by mail (500,000 last year) and telephone (another 1.3 million). Other Web sites also handle requests for life-saving miracles, inner peace and financial recovery (and one, on OurPrayer.org, quoted in a November New York Times report, asked for success on her financial accounting exam: "This is my third attempt on this paper, and I pray that the Lord will grant me wisdom and a clear mind").

-- It seemed like an obviously good decision by the Toronto Transit Commission in 2006 to curb counterfeiting of its aluminum coins and paper tickets by phasing in larger metal-alloy tokens as substitutes. By earlier this year, when the tokens had completely replaced the lighter coins and paper, the commission realized that its fare-sorting room was beginning to crack at the foundations because the tokens to be counted weigh about 60 tons more than pre-2006 aluminum and paper. A commission spokesman told the Toronto Sun in November that engineers were working on a solution.

-- In September, Atlanta-area educator Phillippia Faust, working on a $455,000 annual federal sex education grant, offered a $10,000 contest prize for an engaged local couple who had so far abstained from sex and would continue to do so until the wedding. (Any sex would be "risky behavior," said Faust, but worst of all would be living together before marriage, which is a "set up for the kill.") However, despite the large population of the area, she had no takers, and as the deadline approached, she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she even considered opening the contest to engaged couples who had had sex but regretted it. Faust eventually had to scrap the contest altogether because of conflicting federal grant rules.

-- In November, a judge in Dublin, Ga., sentenced Rico Todriquez Wright, 25, to at least 20 years in prison for the 2006 shooting of Chad Blue, who had told police initially that he didn't know who had shot him. Blue later heard a thug-life song on CD, "Hitting Licks for a Living," in which rap singer Wright brags, "Chad Blue knows how I shoot" and realized Wright was the one who shot him that night.

For 15 years, Eduardo Arrocha, 46, was different from us, as "Eak the Geek," the "Pain-Proof Man" at New York's Coney Island Sideshow, where he lay on nails, walked on glass, ate lightbulbs, and put his tongue in a mousetrap. However, in 2007, he traded everything in for a spot in the class at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich., where he is in his second year ("from one freak show to another," he said, "it's the most bizarre thing I've ever done in my life"). Job interviews may be tough because a three-piece suit will hide only his chest-to-toe tattoos; recruiters can't miss the stars and planets that cover his face.

-- Embarrassing: (1) A 49-year-old Leavenworth, Kan., man was hospitalized in November after (according to police) using a front-end loader to pluck an ATM from the Frontier Credit Union. He was hurt when he drove to the edge of a 50-foot embankment and tried to drop the ATM, imagining that the fall would break it open, but instead, he, the loader, and the ATM all crashed to the bottom. (2) British Muslim convert Nicky Reilly, 22, pleaded guilty in October in Exeter, England, to attempted terrorism for detonating a homemade nail bomb in the Giraffe restaurant. The plan failed when Reilly triggered the bomb in the men's room, intending to take it into the dining area, but then could not unlock the men's room door to get out. (His lawyer called him perhaps the "least cunning" person ever to be charged with terrorism in Britain.)

As animal hoarding goes, the 30 seized from Darlene Gardner's double-wide trailer home in Kootenai County, Idaho, last year weren't particularly noteworthy, even though two of them, deer, were living inside, each in its own bedroom. Authorities released the deer and other healthy animals into the wild and euthanized the rest, and Gardner's husband pleaded guilty to one animal cruelty charge. However, in November, Darlene filed a $2 million federal lawsuit against the county's "jack-booted thugs" who, acting without a search warrant, she said, had "killed my babies," referring to the animals that "were my life and my family."

In Toronto in March 1994, Sajid Rhatti, then 23, and his 20-year-old wife brawled over whether Katey Sagal, who plays Peg Bundy on the "Married with Children" TV show, is prettier than Christina Applegate, who plays her daughter. First, the wife slashed Rhatti in the groin with a wine bottle as they scuffled, but, remorseful, she dressed his wounds, and the couple sat down again to watch a second episode of the show. Moments later, the brawl erupted again, and Rhatti, who suffered a broken arm and shoulder, stabbed his wife in the chest, back, and legs before the couple begged neighbors to call an ambulance.