Freud de Melo, 73, operates a quirky tourist park in central Brazil that features stone models of Noah's Ark and other sculptures, but he also notoriously suffers from taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive, and one of his sculptures is his own elaborate, fear-assuaging crypt. His vault houses a TV and fruit pantry, has access to fresh air, and features two built-in plastic cones that act as megaphones to the outside, reassuring de Melo that if he is buried too soon, he will be able to protest (as he demonstrated for a Wall Street Journal reporter, for an October dispatch, screaming into the countryside, "Help me! Come quick! I've been buried alive!"). (Taphephobia was more common in centuries past, afflicting George Washington among others, because doctors often missed lingering signs of life in sick patients.)

-- Recently, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources has been seeking 75 volunteers to be trained in listening to frogs so that the state can complete its annual frog survey. Georgia has 31 frog species, each with distinctive ribbits and croaks, and surveyors, after practicing detection, will monitor frog habitats to help officials measure population trends. Tracking season begins this week.

-- A Houston Chronicle investigation revealed in November that Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to act against 75 percent of all self-identified illegal aliens convicted of local crimes in the Houston area recently, including immigrants who had committed felonies ranging up to sexual assault of a child and even capital murder. After ICE declined to hold them, that 75 percent were simply released back into the community. Nationally, during that same approximate time period, ICE was deporting twice as many illegal aliens with clean records (clean, except for being undocumented) as those with criminal rap sheets.

-- Rats Oppressed, But Bats Live Large: Environmental activists announced in November the intention to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for reducing by 80 percent the California sanctuary area of the endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rat (distinguishing feature: only four toes on its hind feet). In Britain, however, the Ministry of Defense has shown great sensitivity to bats that were living in antiquated military housing in two Hampshire facilities. Remodeled buildings for 18,000 personnel will include special cavities built into the structures so that the bats can resume cohabiting with the military.

-- Robert Christianson, 64, was arrested in October upon his arrival at Tampa International Airport, based on a hold requested by Canadian customs officials. Christianson was being sought only on two warrants: allowing a dog to run at large and having no license for his dog.

-- Indicted for cocaine possession in Montgomery County, Ohio, in November: Mr. Dalcapone Alpaccino Morris, 20. Charged in Columbia, S.C., in November with running down her boyfriend with her car and breaking his leg: Ms. Princess Killingsworth. Charged with felonious battery in Bloomington, Ind., in October: Ms. Fellony Silas. Arrested in Carrollton, Ky., in December for allegedly hitting a man in the face with a hammer: Mr. Jamel Nails. Among those arrested in a drug roundup in Greenwood, S.C., in December were people with the street names Black Pam, Lil Bit, Goat, Ewok and Truck Stop.

-- Britain's association of police officers complained to the Daily Telegraph in November that bureaucratic requirements are "emasculating" law enforcement, offering as one example the Home Affairs Department's insistence that a seven-page form be submitted for any surveillance work, even if the "work" is merely observing via binoculars. And in December, the Daily Telegraph reported that 45 officers from the Lancashire county police were assigned to help install speed indicator signs but only after being sent to a two-hour class that included safety instructions on climbing a 3-foot ladder. Said a spokesman, "If we didn't do it and people were falling off ladders, we would be criticized."

-- (1) By a 2-1 vote, a Florida appeals court ruled in December that Andrew Craissati could stop paying alimony to his ex-wife. The couple's agreement called for alimony only until she remarried or was "cohabit(ing)" with another person for at least three months, and Craissati pointed out that his ex-wife, recently convicted of a serious DUI offense, is now "cohabiting" with a cellmate in prison. (2) In November, a judge at Killorglin District Court in Kerry, Ireland, dismissed two DUI cases because the blood-alcohol readings were not administered properly. The suspects should have been isolated for 20 minutes before the test but had been permitted to use urinals, and the judge accepted lawyers' arguments that "steam" from the urine might have wafted into the men's noses and raised their readings.

-- More Fine Points of European Law: (1) In November, Sweden's Social Insurance Agency stopped Jessica Andersson's disability payments despite her lingering back pain from a work-related accident six years ago; a doctor found that Andersson's back pain would subside, enabling her to return to work, if only she underwent breast-reduction surgery. (2) Germany's highest court ruled in December in favor of a male inmate who had challenged a prison rule barring men from purchasing skin-conditioning products.

-- Joseph Goetz, 48, was charged with trying to rob the Susquehanna Bank in Springettsbury Township, Pa., in November, even though he had to leave empty-handed. The bank had just opened for the day, and cash had not yet been delivered to tellers' stations. Employees said that Goetz was highly irritated at having wasted his time, and that he threatened to file a "complaint" about the bank's operations.

-- Benedict Harkins, 46, was charged with attempted petty larceny in Jamestown, N.Y., in December after he had filed an insurance claim against the Farm Fresh Market for having tripped over a rug at the front door. Shortly after the filing, Harkins was informed that the store's front-door surveillance camera had captured a sequence in which he had sat down and adjusted the rug to make it look like he had tripped. Harkins then immediately withdrew the claim but was arrested anyway.

H. Beatty Chadwick, 72, is approaching his 14th consecutive year behind bars, though he has not been charged with a crime. In a 1995 divorce hearing, a judge thought Chadwick was lying about $2.5 million in assets (his wife said he was hiding them; he said he lost them in a business deal) and locked him up for contempt of court, and he has been there ever since. News of the Weird first mentioned him in 2002, when he was closing in on the American record for contempt of court, which he now holds. Chadwick has never wavered in his story, and after an independent retired judge investigated in 2004 and failed to find any money, Chadwick's lawyer compared the "missing" money to Saddam Hussein's "missing" weapons of mass destruction (and also pointed to some Pennsylvania murderers who do less time than Chadwick has).

In February in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, Phillip Buble's father was convicted of attempting to murder Phillip, 44, by smacking him in the head with a crowbar because Phillip would not cease public displays of affection with Lady, a mixed-breed dog to whom Phillip considers himself married "in the eyes of God." The next month, Phillip gave a 30-minute presentation to a state legislative committee urging that it not pass a pending anti-bestiality bill (though Phillip describes himself personally as a "zoophile" and not a bestialist). Lady had to wait for him in the car because dogs are not allowed in the chamber. In April, Phillip was fined $50 for having an unlicensed dog (not Lady; it was apparently a side dog).

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).