"Genetic modification" sounds like frighteningly complicated lab work, but amateurs are routinely doing it in garages and dining rooms across the country, according to a December Associated Press report. Hobbyists (some terming themselves "biohackers") are busy creating new life forms and someday, observers say, may turn up a cure for cancer or an accidental environmental catastrophe. The community lab DIYbio in Cambridge, Mass., has patrons who typically work on vaccines and biofuels, but might also whimsically create tattoos that glow. One amateur bought jellyfish DNA containing a green fluorescent protein (for about $100), and built a DNA analyzer (less than $25) so she could alter yogurt bacteria to glow green when it detects melamine (the substance recently discovered in deadly Chinese baby formula and pet food).

-- As the British government was poised in November to re-classify lap-dancing clubs from "entertainment" to "sexual encounter establishments" (thus imposing tougher licensing standards), the industry's trade association insisted to a Parliamentary committee that the clubs are not sexual. "(T)he entertainment may be in the form of nude ... performers, but it's not sexually stimulating," said the chairman of the Lap Dancing Association. That would be "contrary to our business plan."

-- Not My Fault: (1) Bruce George, 20, admitted to police that he had molested a 6-year-old girl in Anchorage, Alaska, in October but said he needed to do it to acquire the courage to kill himself. He said he needed motivation for suicide by doing something that totally disgusted him. (2) In October, a man unnamed in news reports filed a lawsuit in Selkirk, Manitoba, against the woman who supposedly caused him mental distress by suing for child support. The man said he had been sound asleep during that 2006 encounter, but awoke to discover the woman having sex with him. He ordered her to "cease and desist," he said, and she complied (but nonetheless, a pregnancy resulted).

-- Karma: A few animals were rescued from an early morning fire at a Humane Society shelter in Oshawa, Ontario, in December, but cats suffered heavy casualties, with nearly 100 perishing. The Fire Marshal's office said the blaze was probably started by mice chewing through electrical wires.

-- Drunk-Driving News: (1) Kathleen Cherry, 53, was arrested for DUI in Carson City, Nev., in December. She is a phlebotomist working on contract with the sheriff's office and was driving to the jailhouse to administer a blood test to a DUI suspect. (2) Stephen Foster, 28, was jailed briefly in June in Edmonton, Alberta, when he showed up in court drunk for his DUI trial. The driving charge was postponed until December, and at that time a court found him not guilty.

-- In December, Lorraine Henderson, the port director for the federal Customs and Border Protection agency's southern New England area, was charged with hiring illegal immigrants to clean her home and instructing them how to avoid detection by her agency. According to court documents, she told one worker, "You have to be careful, 'cause they (meaning, her agency) will deport you."

-- Elizabeth Shelton, 21, filed a lawsuit in Houston in December against the truck driver that she accidentally rear-ended in a 2007 crash, while she was intoxicated, and in which her boyfriend was killed. Though she was convicted of manslaughter, she is now suing for $20,000 damage to her Lexus SUV and for "pain and suffering," basing her claim on the fact that the blameless driver she hit was uninsured. In all, her lawsuit names 16 defendants, including insurance companies and banks. Shelton is the daughter of a state court judge.

-- In November, Michigan state circuit court judge Robert Colombo Jr. almost single-handedly quashed thousands of apparently bogus lawsuits for asbestos-related injuries by exposing the principal examining doctor as unqualified. Dr. Michael Kelly had diagnosed injuries on 7,323 patients' x-rays over 15 years (earning $500 per screening), which in one sampling was 58 times the abnormality-detection rate of independent radiologists. Judge Colombo found that Kelly is neither a radiologist nor a pulmonologist, had failed the certification test for reading x-rays, and performed lung-function tests improperly 90 percent of the time. On the day Judge Colombo commenced the investigation of Dr. Kelly, plaintiffs' attorneys, realizing they had been busted, promptly withdrew all of their lawsuits except one.

-- Poor Babies! (1) Two customers who lined up for the 5 a.m. November "Black Friday" opening at the Long Island, N.Y., Wal-Mart (in which a worker was crushed to death) filed lawsuits against the store because of the crowd's unruliness. Fritz Mesadieu, 51, and son Jonathan, 19, said they got neck and back pain from the surge of customers and that their medical and legal expenses amounted to at least $2 million. (2) More than 130 lawsuits were filed in November and December by inmates at a state prison in Beaumont, Texas, who claimed to suffer psychological trauma because prison officials failed to prepare them well for Hurricane Ike, which hit the city in September.

-- Questionable M.O.s: (1) Jessica Cohen, 20, was re-arrested in Cincinnati in December. She had gone to the local Public Defender's Office seeking a lawyer to represent her on a theft charge, and while there, according to police, stole an employee's cell phone. (However, she had already filled out paperwork with her name and address.) (2) Robert Dendy, 59, was detained by police in Tonawanda, N.Y., in November after he dropped by police headquarters to give them a holiday wreath as a token of his gratitude for their service. One of the officers happened to notice that the wreath was the same one that had just been stolen from a market next door to the station, and after investigating, found more suspicious missing goods at Dendy's home.

Poor at Multitasking: (1) In Britain's Manchester Crown Court in December, Imran Hussain, 32, was sentenced to eight years in prison for his DUI-related crash that killed two people in August. (Hussain was also masturbating at the time.) (2) Louise Light, 21, was not hurt when she crashed into guideposts in Woodstock, Ontario, in November, but she did get milk all over her because she was eating cereal from a bowl while driving.

(1) In December, a Flybe Airline flight from Cardiff, Wales, was preparing to land as scheduled at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris when the pilot announced that they had to return to Cardiff because, he said, "Unfortunately, I'm not qualified to land the plane in Paris." Because of the heavy fog, the plane would have to be instrument-landed, and the pilot had not yet completed certification. (2) In September, after a Chinese Shandong airline flight landed safely in Zhengzhou, the engine died, and the airline was forced to enlist some of the 69 passengers to help employees push the plane to the gate.

Willie Windsor, 54, of Phoenix has for several years lived as a full-time baby, wearing frilly dresses, diapers and bonnets, sucking on a pacifier, eating Gerber cuisine and habitually clutching a rag doll, in a home filled with oversized baby furniture. According to a long Phoenix New Times profile in June, the diaper is not just a prop. Windsor said he worked hard to learn to become incontinent, even chaining the commode shut to avoid temptation, and the reporter admitted feeling "disconcert(ed)" that Windsor might be relieving himself at the very moment he was describing his un-toilet training. Apparently, Windsor's brother, ex-wife, girlfriend and a neighbor tolerate his lifestyle (though no girlfriend has yet been willing to change his diapers). Windsor is a semi-retired singer-actor and said he's been celibate for nine years.

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.