LEAD STORY

Berjuan Toys is already selling its Breast Milk Baby online ($70) and expects to have it in stores later this year. The doll works by the child-"mother" donning a halter top with flowers positioned as nipples, and when the baby comes into contact with the a flower, sensors mimic sucking sounds. Although dolls that demonstrate toileting functions are already on the market, breastfeeding activists are more enthusiastic about this one, hopeful that girls' comfort with breastfeeding will result in decreased bottle-feeding later on. (Opponents have denounced the doll as forcing girls to "grow up" too soon and with choices too complicated for their age, which according to the manufacturer is as young as 3.)

-- Frances Ragusa, 75, was back in court in Brooklyn, N.Y., in June claiming child support she said was never paid by husband Philip Ragusa, 77, in their divorce settlement of 33 years ago. (The "children," of course, long ago became adults, but the $14,000 judgment has grown, with interest, to about $100,000.) Frances told the New York Post in July that she called Philip several months earlier to discuss the amount but that Philip merely began to cry. "Don't let this case go to trial," she recalled telling him. "(I)f you think I'm going to forget it, Phil, you're stuck on stupid."

-- Carole Green was fined $1,000 in July by a court in Leavenworth County, Kan., for littering the property of the same Bonner Springs resident "most afternoons" for the past two years. Green apologized and said the charge was a complete surprise. She said when she starts out in her SUV every day, and drinks a bottle of tea, it just happens that she finishes it at about the same spot on her journey -- in front of Gary Bukaty's property -- and that's where she tosses the bottle. She promised to stop.

-- The Perfect Society: Rules to assure correct, "progressive" behavior were recently proposed by the San Francisco Commission of Animal Control and Welfare and the Colorado Department of Human Services. The San Francisco agency would ban the sale of all pets in the city limits, from dogs to gerbils to goldfish. ("Why fish? Why not fish?" asked one exasperated commission member, bristling at criticism.) Animals sold as food for other animals would be included but not animals sold as food for humans. Day care centers in Colorado would be required, if it made dolls available at playtime, to have dolls of three different races.

-- A Southampton (England) University researcher told an academic conference in Stockholm in July that his work, demonstrating that women who stop smoking even after becoming pregnant will have healthier babies, is important because he found that pregnant women rationalize continued smoking, in part to have smaller babies that will be less uncomfortable to deliver.

-- Small Town Democracy: The City Council of Gould, Ark. (pop. 1,100), voted in July to make it illegal for its citizens to form "groups" without written permission from the council. (The mayor and the city council are feuding over the budget, and the council, attempting to stifle lobbying by a group supporting the mayor, has taken down all "groups" -- except that the ordinance appears to blatantly violate the First Amendment.)

-- Inmate Johnathan Pinney, 26, petitioned U.S. District Court in Chicago in July, demanding that state and federal officials stop arresting him (because he did nothing illegal, he wrote, despite his current four-year sentence for aggravated battery on a police officer). Pinney helpfully suggested a way for the federal government to compensate him for all the grief it has caused him: The government should give him $50 billion "restitution" and award him uninhabited land so that he can start his own country, with sovereign and diplomatic immunity. WBBM Radio noted that Pinney appeared to solicit romance on his MySpace page by writing that he "hopes to get into a committed relationship with a woman, but wouldn't mind if it meant 'leaving this world and marrying an alien with similar attonomy (sic) and genetics.'"

-- Even though Michigan schoolteacher Marcie Rousseau was sentenced in December to at least four years in prison for having sex with a high school boy in Saginaw and Midland counties, the episode is not over. Now, the "victim" has filed a lawsuit against Rousseau and school officials for what his lawyer described as "not consensual" sex. The unnamed, then-16-year-old admitted to at least 100 acts of sexual intercourse, and 75 "other" sex acts, and asks at least $1 million for "physical, psychological and emotional injury." (To use the "minimum" numbers, that works out to at least $5,700 per sex act, and since $1 million is sought on each of the seven federal-law claims and three state-law claims, the best-case scenario regards each sex act as a $57,000 burden.)

Jonathan Schwartz called 911 in New York City in July to report that he had stabbed his mother to death. A few minutes later but before police arrived, Schwartz called back 911 to report a correction: "No, she committed suicide." (The mother's body was found with multiple stab wounds, and police, notwithstanding Schwartz's "correction," charged him with murder.)

Jerry Prieto, 38, pleaded guilty in July in Benton County, Wash. (possession of methamphetamine and "malicious mischief with sexual motivation"), and was sentenced to 45 days in jail. Prieto had been arrested with the drugs in October 2010 in a stall at a highway rest stop. According to the prosecutor, Prieto had written sexual notes on the floor with a felt-tipped pen and drawn an arrow pointing directly to his stall. (As a condition of his sentence, Prieto is allowed in rest-stop bathrooms only for "traditional" purposes.)

(1) Ronald Adams, 49, was arrested in June for assaulting an 8-year-old boy in his home in Ouachita Parish, La., after an argument over which TV program to watch. Adams allegedly threw a TV remote, hitting the child in the head, because the kid insisted on "cartoons" while Adams preferred "wrestling." (2) Authorities in St. Lucie County, Fla., investigated an incident in May in which a woman allegedly fired an AR-15 rifle at a target inside her bedroom closet and in which the gunshots went through the wall and damaged a washing machine, springing a water leak throughout the residence. (Officials said the woman's husband fired shots, too, and that it wasn't the first time the couple had engaged in bedroom target practice.)

Arrested (again) for prostitution (this time, Columbus, Ga., April; previously in News of the Weird, in Tampa, Fla., 2009), Ms. Suk Kim Ho, 46. Charged with conspiracy to commit child molestation (Woodstock, Ga., June), Mr. Patrick Molesti, 58. Arrested for lewdness for allegedly exposing himself (Howe Township, Pa., June), Mr. Handy H. Wood, 35 (not to be confused with the man arrested in Columbia, Mo., in July, on suspicion of the same thing, Mr. Willy Wood, 54). Charged with DUI in a crash into a library (Buffalo, N.Y., July), Mr. Jack Goff, 47.

In November (2000), Mr. Auburn Mason, 62, was sentenced to four years in prison in England for a 1999 British Airways hijacking. He had grabbed a flight attendant, held scissors to her neck, and threatened to blow up the plane with the bomb he was holding, screaming "Take me to Gatwick (airport in London)!" At that point, the flight was 15 minutes away from its scheduled destination, which was Gatwick airport. (Minutes later, passengers disarmed Mason.)

For years, many traditional funerals in Taiwan -- especially in rural areas or among working classes -- have included pop singers and bikinied dancers, supposedly to entertain the ghosts that will protect the deceased in the afterlife. According to a recent documentary by anthropologist Marc Moskowitz, some of the dancers until 20 years ago were strippers who did lap dances with funeral guests, until the government made such behavior illegal. Contemporary song-and-dance shows, like the traveling Electric Flower Car, supposedly appeal to "lower" gods who help cleanse the deceased of the more mundane vices such as gambling and prostitution (compared to the "higher" gods who focus on morality and righteousness).

-- California's state and local governments are rarely discussed these days without the pall of budget cuts looming, but apparently the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is safe because it is spending a reported $1.5 million to move a big rock in from Riverside, about 60 miles away. It's a 340-ton boulder that the museum intends to display above a sidewalk ("Levitated Mass"). The move will require a 200-foot-long trailer with 200 tires, with one semi-tractor pulling and one pushing, at night, maximum speed 8 mph.

-- Tennessee State Rep. Julia Hurley apologized in July and said she would pay for the refinishing of her desk in the legislative chamber after it was revealed that she had carved her initials in it during a January session. "It was like one in the morning on the last day of the session," she told WSMV-TV. "I wasn't thinking straight." Rep. Hurley, 29, who has a daughter, 14, unseated a nine-term incumbent legislator in 2010 with a campaign that touted her time as a Hooters waitress. "If I could make it at Hooters," she wrote in the restaurant's magazine, "I could make it anywhere."

-- In June, the California Court of Appeals threw out the three counts of possession of child pornography for which Joseph Gerber had been convicted, even though what Gerber had done was paste face shots of his own 13-year-old daughter onto ordinary pornographic photos. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2002 that a conviction for making "child pornography" requires actual sexual abuse. (Gerber had also been convicted of supplying the daughter with drugs and the court ordered Gerber re-sentenced.)

-- Georges Marciano, co-founder of the clothing company Guess? Inc. and ostensibly in no trouble with IRS, nonetheless demanded in 2009 that the agency audit him over the previous several years. IRS turned him down, and he sued the agency in federal court in Washington, D.C., but in July, a judge rejected the case, declaring that federal law and the U.S. Constitution do not give anyone a "right" to demand that IRS collect more taxes from them. (Marciano perhaps hoped for IRS to uncover cheating by his former employees and accountants, whom he thought were stealing from him. Paying higher taxes might have been worth it if the agency had made it easier for him to sue any cheaters.)

-- A Singaporean army draftee caused a public stir in March when he was photographed by a visitor as he underwent physical training in army fatigues but with his maid following behind him carrying his backpack on her shoulders. (Army officials told reporters the draftee had since been "counsel(ed).")

-- Helping Disaster Victims: (1) In May, following near-record floods in fields south of Montreal, Quebec, farmer Martin Reid made sure to apply for his fishing license because he had learned the hard way that when his land gets flooded, he cannot remove the fish washed onto it unless he is a licensed fisherman. After flooding in 1993, Reid and his father failed to secure a license and were fined $1,000. A second offense brings a fine of $100,000. (2) Two weeks after the catastrophic April tornadoes hit Alabama and neighboring states, Bailey Brothers Music Co. of Birmingham offered to help. To soothe those suffering depression and grief from devastating property losses, Bailey Brothers sponsored weekly drum circles.

-- Must Be Guilty: Arrested in Woodbridge, Va., in July for burglary after being discovered by police inside the MVC Late Night adult store: U.S. Army officer Justin Dale Little Jim, 28 (who was found physically engaged with a "blow-up doll"). Little Jim's chances for acquittal are slim under News of the Weird's insightful theory of criminal culpability known as the "Three First Names" hypothesis.

-- In June in the Houston suburb of Alvin, Texas, a petite, 42-year-old Walmart customer came across three men running out of the store carrying shoplifted beer. She decided that it was up to her to take a stand because, as she said later, she was "sick of the lawlessness." The woman (whose name, coincidentally, is Monique Lawless) chased the men, climbed onto the hood of their getaway car, even jumping up and down on it, to delay their escape. The three were eventually arrested: Sylvester Andre Thompson and his brothers Sylvester Durlentren Thompson and Sylvester Primitivo Thompson.

(1) If Yogi Berra Wrote the Headline: "Woman Missing Since She Got Lost" (Chicago Sun-Times, 5-17-2011). (2) Please Explain: "Teen Dies of Shaken Baby Syndrome" (Chicago Tribune, 3-9-2011). "Man With Clown Nose in New Cumberland Poses No Serious Threat" (Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pa., 7-3-2011). (3) Run for the Hills: "Return of the Giant Carnivorous Hermaphrodite Snails" (Yahoo News-LiveScience.com, 6-3-2011). (4) Not What You Think: "Showboat Casino Hotel to Become First Dog-Friendly Casino in Atlantic City" (Press of Atlantic City, 2-3-2011) (Guests' dogs can be admitted to the floor, but dogs are still forbidden to play poker.)

The usual furtive restroom photographer is male, but sheriff's deputies in Plantation, Fla., arrested Rhonda Hollander, 47, in July and charged her with several misdemeanors and a felony stemming from an episode in which she allegedly followed a man inside the men's room at the West Regional Courthouse and snapped photos of him at a urinal. Hollander insisted she had violated no law, and indeed the charges against her were only for conduct after she was confronted by deputies (when she continued to take pictures as they led her away). Hollander is actually Judge Hollander, who works in the building as a traffic magistrate.

Advances in DNA testing have improved society in several ways in the last two decades, especially in criminal justice, but in many states, one area remains a backwater, as News of the Weird has noted over the years: men's obligation to pay support for children they did not father. Ray Thomas of Houston is the most recent frustrated complainant, with a court refusing to relieve him of the $52,000 in back child support he owes for a "daughter" that DNA has subsequently shown is not his. Ironically, in March the Texas legislature became one of the few to allow men like Thomas to present DNA evidence in order to end court-ordered support, but the state attorney general noted that the new law covers only prospective judicial orders.

Board-certified Kansas City, Mo., psychiatrist (and University of Kansas School of Medicine graduate) Dr. Donald Hinton told reporters in February (2002) that "Elvis Aron Presley, the entertainer (whom) everybody believes died in 1977," is alive and that Hinton has been treating him for migraine headaches, among other things, for five years. Hinton, 35, said he has several items from Presley containing his DNA and has continually denied that he's running a scam. An Elvis Presley Enterprises official was unfazed, insisting that Elvis is still "in the garden (at Graceland)." (Update: Dr. Hinton subsequently self-published a book, co-authored with Elvis, explaining their relationship, and was subsequently investigated by the Missouri Healing Arts Board, which ultimately closed the investigation without charges.)

LEAD STORY

A More Reputable Career: Thomas Heathfield was a well-paid banking consultant with a promising career in Maidenhead, England, but gave it up this year to move to South Africa and endure rigorous training as a "sangoma" ("witch doctor"). After five months of studying siSwati language, sleeping in the bush, hunting for animal parts, vomiting up goats' blood and learning native dances, Heathfield, 32, was given a new name, Gogo Mndawe, and is now qualified to read bones and prescribe herbal cures (among the skills expected of sangomas by the roughly 50 percent of South Africa's population that reveres them). He admitted concern about his acceptance as a white man calling out African spirits, "but when (the people) see (me) dance, perhaps those questions go away."

-- "Hundreds" of blondes paraded through Riga, Latvia, on May 28 at the third annual "March of the Blondes" festival designed to lift the country's spirits following a rough stretch for the economy. More than 500 blondes registered, including 15 from New Zealand, seven from Finland and 32 from Lithuania, according to a woman who told Agence France-Presse that she was the head of the Latvian Association of Blondes. Money collected during the event goes to local charities.

-- Snakes on a Train! A clumsy smuggler (who managed to get away) failed to contain the dozens of king cobras and other snakes he was transporting from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to Hanoi (probably to be sold illegally to restaurants). After panic broke out on the train and police were called, the snakes were collected and turned over to a sanctuary. (Upscale restaurants can charge as much as the equivalent of $500 for a meal of king cobra, beginning with the selection of the snake, and having it killed at tableside, on to a serving of a snake's-blood appetizer. In one survey, 84 percent of Hanoi's restaurants were serving illegal wild animals of some sort, including weasel, monitor lizard and porcupine.)

-- The Envy of U.S. Televangelists: In July, after India's Supreme Court ordered an inventory, a Hindu temple in Trivandrum was found to contain at least $22 billion worth of gold, diamonds and jeweled statues given as offerings to the deity by worshippers over several centuries. The wealth was until now believed to be the property of India's royal family, but the Supreme Court ruling turns it over to India's people. Authorities believe the "$22 billion" figure is conservative.

-- The notorious Santa Croce monastery in Rome was closed in May (and converted to an ordinary church) on orders from the Vatican following reports about Sister Anna Nobili, a former lap-dancer who taught other nuns her skills and who was once seen lying spread-eagled before an altar clutching a crucifix. Santa Croce was also an embarrassment for its luxury hotel, which had become a mecca for celebrities visiting Rome.

-- The Talented Mr. Zhou: Zhou Xin, 68, failed to get a callback from the judges for the "China's Got Talent" TV reality show in June, according to a CNN report (after judge Annie Yi screamed in horror at his act). Zhou is a practitioner of one of the "72 Shaolin skills," namely "iron crotch gong," and for his "talent," he stoically whacked himself in the testicles with a weight and then with a hammer.

-- The elegant, expansive, gleaming new glass-and-concrete indoor stairway at the Common Pleas Courthouse in Columbus, Ohio, opened recently, to mostly rave reviews for its sense of space and light, creating the feeling of walking suspended on air. However, as Judge Julie Lynch and other women soon discovered, the glass partitions at each step make it easy for perverts to gawk from underneath at dress-wearing women using the stairs. "(Y)ou're on notice," Judge Lynch warned her sister dress-wearers, "that you might want to take the elevator."

-- Pablo Borgen has apparently been living without neighbors' complaints in Lakeland, Fla., despite general knowledge that he is, according to sheriff's officials, one of the area's major heroin traffickers, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars a month. Following a drug sting in June, however, neighbors discovered another fact about Borgen: that he and some of his gang were each drawing $900 a month in food stamps. Formerly indifferent neighbors were outraged by Borgen's abuse of benefits, according to WTSP-TV. "Hang him by his toes," said one. "I've been out of work since February (2008). I lived for a year on nothing but ... food stamps."

-- Roy Miracle, 80, of Newark, Ohio, passed away in July, and his family honored him and his years of service as a prankster and superfan of the Ohio State Buckeyes with a commemorative photo of three of Miracle's fellow obsessives making contorted-body representations of "O," "H" and "O" for their traditional visual cheer. In the photo, Miracle assumed his usual position as the "I" -- or, rather, his corpse did. (Despite some criticism, most family and friends thought Miracle was properly honored.)

It's good to be an Arizona State University student, where those 21 and older can earn $60 a night by getting drunk. Psychology professor Will Corbin, operating with National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grants, conducts studies of drunk students' memories, response times and decision-making processes through extensive questioning -- after he has raised their blood-alcohol level to precisely 0.08 percent (which Arizona regards as presumed-impaired for drivers). Students are served one type of vodka cocktail, three drinks' worth, in a bar-like room on campus, and after 15 minutes to let the alcohol be absorbed, the questioning and testing begin. (At the end of the night, taxis are called for the students.)

Not Ready For Prime Time: Ryan Letchford, 21, and Jeffrey Olson, 22, were arrested in Radnor, Pa., in July after they had broken into a police van for the purpose of taking gag photos of themselves as if they were under arrest. However, the men somehow locked themselves inside the van, and neither they nor a friend they had called to come help could figure out how to open the doors. Finally, they were forced to call 9-1-1. Police arrived, unlocked the van, arrested the men, and locked them back up -- inside a cell.

In June, Eric Carrier, 23, of Hooksett, N.H., became the most recent person arrested for running a scam on a home-healthcare worker by pretending to be disabled and in need of someone to change his adult diapers. Carrier first told the woman that he was the father of a man disabled by a brain injury, but when she reported for work, it was Carrier himself wearing the diaper and who demanded changing and who allegedly indecently exposed himself.

Two undercover policewomen running a prostitution sting in Dothan, Ala., in October (1999) declined to arrest a pickup-truck-driving john, around age 70, despite his three attempts to procure their services. He first offered the women the three squirrels he had just shot, but they ignored him (too much trouble to log in and store the evidence). A few minutes later, he sweetened the offer with the used refrigerator in the back of his truck, but the officers again declined (same reason). On the third trip, he finally offered cash: $6 (but no squirrels or refrigerator). The officers again declined. They later said they had resolved to arrest him if he returned, but he did not.