"When I get to Africa, I have to worship him," said Elizabeth Osei, part-time first lady of the Akwamu people of eastern Ghana, speaking of her husband Isaac, who is the Akwamu chief. "When I get back, he has to worship me" (because Elizabeth is the president of the couple's New York City taxi company, where they work 12-hour days when they're not Ghanian royalty). Isaac's reign, according to an August New York Times report, covers several months a year and requires divine-like wisdom in adjudicating his people's disputes. Another New Yorker with a prestigious double life is Mohamed Mohamed, a state transportation bureaucrat, who recently returned to his cubicle in Buffalo, N.Y., after nine months as prime minister of Somalia. The Buffalo News reported that the Somali native, though shocked by the level of the country's dysfunction, at least got to stand up to "terrorists, pirates and warlords" and "address dignitaries from the United Nations."

-- The convenient Russian myth that "beer" (up to 10 percent alcohol by volume) is a "soft drink" will end shortly, following the enactment of restrictions signed by President Dmitry Medvedev in July. Beer had been rapidly replacing vodka as the country's primary alcoholic beverage, as people drank it with impunity around the clock in public places (since they pretended they were consuming nothing more powerful than a "cola").

-- Until recently, impoverished Indonesians sought to cure various illnesses (such as diabetes and high blood pressure) by lying on railroad tracks as trains approached, thus allowing electrical charges from the tracks to course therapeutically through their bodies. A combination of anecdotal successes and dissatisfaction with the state-operated health care system led to the instances in which hundreds at a time lay on the tracks, according to an August Associated Press dispatch.

-- What Goes Around, Comes Around: In February, 12 villagers from a South African shantytown allegedly burned down a pastor's home and killed him out of anger and fear that he was using an "invisible penis" to seduce women. The accused, who are due to answer for their superstition in court in September, according to African Eye News Service, became 11 in May when one of the men died mysteriously, and those 11 are now terrified that the pastor's family has placed an active curse on them.

-- My Rules: The Aug. 6 revival spectacular in Houston, billed as a day of prayer and attended by 30,000 people at Reliant Stadium, was also billed as a day of fasting, which apparently took at least a few worshipers by surprise, and Reliant's concession stands (which were open all day) only added to the temptation to ignore the fast. One otherwise-devout man from San Angelo, Texas, told the Texas Tribune that it was OK for him to eat because of an "agreement" he "made with God earlier."

-- Defining "Smite" Down: Fed up with the theft of Bibles from the Basilica of San Salvatore al Monte in Florence, Italy, the Franciscan priests in charge posted signs and spoke prayers urging the pilferer to repent. In the event that he does not, reported London's Daily Telegraph in August, the prayer asked that the thief be afflicted with "a strong bout of the (runs)."

-- My Kids Live With a Child-Killer? John and Kristine Cushing married and raised two daughters, but Kristine became mentally ill and in 1991 killed the girls as they slept. She was hospitalized for four years and eventually monitored for 10 more. Meanwhile, John divorced her and married Trisha, and they raised two sons, but eventually divorced and reached a shared-custody agreement. By 2005, Kristine had been approved by California doctors to return to society, and soon she and John reconnected. Understandably, Trisha became horrified at the prospect that Kristine might relapse, in which case her and John's two sons would be at risk. In August, a judge in Seattle (where John and Kristine once again cohabit), influenced by Kristine's clean record since her release, turned down Trisha's request for sole custody.

-- Highly Questionable: (1) German Paz, 33, was sentenced in Orlando to 15 years in federal prison in June for sexual exploitation of a minor via the Internet. He had begun contacting a 13-year-old girl and was using the screen name The Delightful Deviant. (2) Gareth Shand, 6, was welcomed into the first grade in San Antonio in August with an immediate in-school suspension. He is growing his hair long for a cancer-support organization, but that puts him in violation of his school's dress code.

-- Direct Pipelines from the Pentagon to U.S. Enemies: (1) A U.S. military investigation disclosed (according to a July Washington Post report) that at least four of the eight Afghan trucking firms involved in a $2.16 billion Pentagon contract designed to ferry supplies to American troops are likely to have employed subcontractors with direct ties to the Afghan Taliban. (2) United Nations investigators revealed (according to an August New York Times report) that about half of the U.S.-supplied weapons for Ugandan and Burundian troops to battle the Somalian terror group al-Shabab have ultimately wound up in al-Shabab's hands. (The poorly paid Ugandan and Burundian troops apparently found arms sales more profitable than fighting terrorists.)

-- Ned Nefer, 38, pushed a 6-foot mannequin along U.S. Highway 11 in June, for 65 miles from Syracuse, N.Y., to Watertown, N.Y., because "(The mannequin and I) really love the outdoors." The mannequin, Nefer said, is his wife "Teagan," who came to Nefer merely as a head but for whom Nefer constructed a body and "married" in 1986. Said a Watertown social services worker, to the Watertown Daily News, "I wouldn't classify (Nefer) as dangerous at all. He seemed quite happy in his own little world." Nefer's "first" wife passed away, and it is possible, the social services lady said, that this is his way of dealing with the loss.

-- Charged with crimes that could send him to prison for life, Gary LaBon, 50, nonetheless chose to defend himself at trial and told the jury in August that any kidnapping, rape or assault he might have committed on the 69-year-old woman in Hawthorne, Calif., in 2009 was "self-defense." LaBon insisted that he was in fear for his life because the woman was a "gang member." Judge Kathryn Solorzano took the unusual step of advising the jury to "disregard most of what Labon said during his argument," according to the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif. (Jurors quickly convicted LaBon on all counts, and he awaits sentencing.)

-- From time to time, Tibetan Buddhists inadvertently support the seafood industry with campaigns of "liberation" of living beings. In August, a Buddhist group purchased 534 lobsters from a Gloucester, Mass., wholesaler, sprayed them with holy water, clipped off their claw bindings, and released them into the Atlantic Ocean. (Of course, the lobsters were almost certainly re-caught, by Gloucester lobstermen.) (A 2004 News of the Weird story from Marina del Rey, Calif., reported that a Buddhist group made monthly pilgrimages to the harbor, purchased bait and "liberated" it, though it almost certainly was immediately eaten by fish.)

A two-week spree of five customer holdups in front of ATMs in Cambridge, Mass., came to an end in November (2003) with the arrest of Richard McCabe, 38. In four of the five robberies, bank security cameras photographed the perpetrator, and McCabe was apparently so disliked by so many that when police released the photos, more than 100 people called, eager to rat him out. Said a detective, "Many ... people knew him personally from dealing with him in the past."

For the Self-Indulgent: (1) The fashion designer Chandrashekar Chawan recently created gold-plated, diamond-studded contact lenses that make eyes "sparkle" (not always a good thing, admitted Chawan, citing reviews calling the look "cringeworthy" and "demonic"). According to an MSNBC report, the "bling" part never actually touches the cornea. (2) Among the trendiest avant-garde beauty treatments are facial applications made from snail mucus, according to a July report by London's Daily Mail. South Korean glamour consultants were the first to use mollusk extract's generous moisturizing properties, though a dermatologist warned (on NBC's "Today" show) that no "controlled" studies have yet demonstrated snail-goo superiority.

-- Augustin James Evangelista is only 4 years old, but he nevertheless has certain financial needs -- which amount to about $46,000 a month, according to the child-support request filed by his mother, "supermodel" Linda Evangelista. A Wall Street Journal reporter concluded that the figure is about right for rich kids in New York City, what with needing a driver, designer clothes, around-the-clock nannies and various personalized lessons. And soon, according to a consultant-to-the-rich interviewed in August by the Journal, Augustin James will become even more expensive, as he graduates from his exclusive preschool and enters his exclusive kindergarten.

-- The highest-paid state government employee in budget-strapped California in 2010 was among the least productive workers in the system, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation reported in July. Jeffrey Rohlfing is on the payroll as a surgeon in the state prison system (base pay: $235,740), but he has been barred from treating inmates for the last six years because supervisors believe him to be incompetent. Last year, Dr. Rohlfing earned an additional $541,000 in back pay after he successfully appealed his firing to the state's apparently easily persuaded Personnel Board. Currently, Dr. Rohlfing is assigned records-keeping duties.

-- (1) Colorado inmate Daniel Self filed a federal lawsuit in July against the Sterling Correctional Facility because prison personnel saved his life. They revived him after he had stopped breathing from an attack of sleep apnea, but he contends he had previously demanded to officials that he never be resuscitated, preferring to die rather serve out his life sentence. (2) Terry Barth complained to hospital officials that he was "kidnapped" by paramedics and thus cannot be liable for the $40,000 he has been billed by Enloe Medical Center in Chico, Calif., where he was brought by ambulance following a motorcycle crash in August 2010. Barth said he had insisted at the scene that paramedics not take him to a hospital because he had no medical insurance. (Paramedics are legally required to take anyone with a serious head injury.)

-- The first published instance of a woman's nipple appearing on the sole of her foot was noted in a 2006 report in the journal Dermatology and reprised in a series of U.S. and British press reports in July 2011. The reporting physicians, led by Dr. Delio Marques Conde, acknowledged that out-of-place breast tissue, while extremely rare, has shown up before on the back, shoulder, face and thigh. The foot nipple was "well-formed," with areola and sebaceous glands.

-- British college student Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones, 19, recently had her tongue surgically lengthened just so she could better pronounce the Korean letter "L." London's Daily Mail reported in August that the student had become fascinated with Korean culture and intends to live and work in South Korea eventually -- and would need to speak like a native to succeed. She is now satisfied that she does.

-- Ruth Adams called on Northampton College in central England to measure the purring sound of her gray-and-white tabby cat, Smokey, aiming for a Guinness World Record. The result, she told The Associated Press in March, was 73 decibels, many multiples louder than the average cat's purr and about as noisy, according to the AP, as "busy traffic, a hair dryer or a vacuum cleaner." (According to cat-ologists, Smokey's purring could reflect either extreme happiness or extreme stress.)

-- What took them so long to think of this? "Most wineries rely on the human nose [to detect out-of-place odors]," said the vintner of the Australian boutique wine Linnaea, "but that is time-consuming, costly, and nowhere as reliable as Belle." Miss Louisa Belle is a 7-year-old bloodhound possessing, of course, a nose that is reportedly 2,000 times more sensitive than the human nose. Her primary job, the vintner told Melbourne's Herald Sun in July, is to sniff out tainted corks during the bottling process.

-- At a medical board hearing in Manchester, England, in August, anesthesia consultant Dr. Narendra Sharma was accused of placing the hand of a sedated female patient underneath the operating table so that he could fondle his own private parts using a "stranger's" touch. Two medical workers claimed to have seen him, one of whom said she saw Sharma "exposed." Sharma explained later that his pants had inadvertently fallen down during one procedure because a previous patient had kicked loose the tape holding them up.

-- (1) Police in Roseville, Mich., arrested a 24-year-old roofer in August and charged him with reckless driving after he hit four cars. He had noticed that his brakes had failed but unadvisedly tried to drive on, anyway, by extending his left leg out the driver's side door and braking "manually" (yes, as in "The Flintstones"). According to police, the man was completely sober. (2) In Durango, Colo., Sean Ogden, 19, was seriously burned in July when he tried to break down fireworks he had purchased in order to build even bigger ones. He was mixing them in a coffee-bean grinder.

-- Two hundred ethnic groups in Cameroon still practice painful "breast ironing," affecting one-fourth of the puberty-age girls in the country, according to a July CNN dispatch. The situation has barely changed from when News of the Weird mentioned it in 2006. Mothers flatten their daughters' breasts with a fire-hot pestle to make them less sexually desirable and thus more likely to stay in school and avoid early pregnancy. (In America, ironically, The New York Times reported two weeks later that spa-indulgent women are complaining about "creases" in their breasts -- from sleep posture that creates unsightly "cleavage wrinkles" visible in low-neckline fashions. Several remedial products are available to help women keep their breasts separated, and thus smooth, at night.)

In 1978 the Oakland Raiders' Jack Tatum made a vicious "clothesline" hit on New England Patriots' receiver Darryl Stingley's neck, causing permanent paralysis. At the time, Tatum arrogantly defended the play as legal and warned other opponents that they could expect the same from him. However, in January 1997, Tatum applied for disability benefits of $156,000 a year from the NFL Players' Association, pointing to the mental anguish he has suffered having to live with the incident. (The $156,000 was, in 1997, the highest-payout category and was the same category that Stingley was in.) (Update: Tatum died in 2010, Stingley in 2007.)

For the Self-Indulgent: (1) The fashion designer Chandrashekar Chawan recently created gold-plated, diamond-studded contact lenses that make eyes "sparkle" (not always a good thing, admitted Chawan, citing reviews calling the look "cringeworthy" and "demonic"). According to an MSNBC report, the "bling" part never actually touches the cornea. (2) Among the trendiest avant-garde beauty treatments are facial applications made from snail mucus, according to a July report by London's Daily Mail. South Korean glamour consultants were the first to use mollusk extract's generous moisturizing properties, though a dermatologist warned (on NBC's "Today" show) that no "controlled" studies have yet demonstrated snail-goo superiority.

-- Augustin James Evangelista is only 4 years old, but he nevertheless has certain financial needs -- which amount to about $46,000 a month, according to the child-support request filed by his mother, "supermodel" Linda Evangelista. A Wall Street Journal reporter concluded that the figure is about right for rich kids in New York City, what with needing a driver, designer clothes, around-the-clock nannies and various personalized lessons. And soon, according to a consultant-to-the-rich interviewed in August by the Journal, Augustin James will become even more expensive, as he graduates from his exclusive preschool and enters his exclusive kindergarten.

-- The highest-paid state government employee in budget-strapped California in 2010 was among the least productive workers in the system, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation reported in July. Jeffrey Rohlfing is on the payroll as a surgeon in the state prison system (base pay: $235,740), but he has been barred from treating inmates for the last six years because supervisors believe him to be incompetent. Last year, Dr. Rohlfing earned an additional $541,000 in back pay after he successfully appealed his firing to the state's apparently easily persuaded Personnel Board. Currently, Dr. Rohlfing is assigned records-keeping duties.

-- (1) Colorado inmate Daniel Self filed a federal lawsuit in July against the Sterling Correctional Facility because prison personnel saved his life. They revived him after he had stopped breathing from an attack of sleep apnea, but he contends he had previously demanded to officials that he never be resuscitated, preferring to die rather serve out his life sentence. (2) Terry Barth complained to hospital officials that he was "kidnapped" by paramedics and thus cannot be liable for the $40,000 he has been billed by Enloe Medical Center in Chico, Calif., where he was brought by ambulance following a motorcycle crash in August 2010. Barth said he had insisted at the scene that paramedics not take him to a hospital because he had no medical insurance. (Paramedics are legally required to take anyone with a serious head injury.)

-- The first published instance of a woman's nipple appearing on the sole of her foot was noted in a 2006 report in the journal Dermatology and reprised in a series of U.S. and British press reports in July 2011. The reporting physicians, led by Dr. Delio Marques Conde, acknowledged that out-of-place breast tissue, while extremely rare, has shown up before on the back, shoulder, face and thigh. The foot nipple was "well-formed," with areola and sebaceous glands.

-- British college student Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones, 19, recently had her tongue surgically lengthened just so she could better pronounce the Korean letter "L." London's Daily Mail reported in August that the student had become fascinated with Korean culture and intends to live and work in South Korea eventually -- and would need to speak like a native to succeed. She is now satisfied that she does.

-- Ruth Adams called on Northampton College in central England to measure the purring sound of her gray-and-white tabby cat, Smokey, aiming for a Guinness World Record. The result, she told The Associated Press in March, was 73 decibels, many multiples louder than the average cat's purr and about as noisy, according to the AP, as "busy traffic, a hair dryer or a vacuum cleaner." (According to cat-ologists, Smokey's purring could reflect either extreme happiness or extreme stress.)

-- What took them so long to think of this? "Most wineries rely on the human nose [to detect out-of-place odors]," said the vintner of the Australian boutique wine Linnaea, "but that is time-consuming, costly, and nowhere as reliable as Belle." Miss Louisa Belle is a 7-year-old bloodhound possessing, of course, a nose that is reportedly 2,000 times more sensitive than the human nose. Her primary job, the vintner told Melbourne's Herald Sun in July, is to sniff out tainted corks during the bottling process.

-- At a medical board hearing in Manchester, England, in August, anesthesia consultant Dr. Narendra Sharma was accused of placing the hand of a sedated female patient underneath the operating table so that he could fondle his own private parts using a "stranger's" touch. Two medical workers claimed to have seen him, one of whom said she saw Sharma "exposed." Sharma explained later that his pants had inadvertently fallen down during one procedure because a previous patient had kicked loose the tape holding them up.

-- (1) Police in Roseville, Mich., arrested a 24-year-old roofer in August and charged him with reckless driving after he hit four cars. He had noticed that his brakes had failed but unadvisedly tried to drive on, anyway, by extending his left leg out the driver's side door and braking "manually" (yes, as in "The Flintstones"). According to police, the man was completely sober. (2) In Durango, Colo., Sean Ogden, 19, was seriously burned in July when he tried to break down fireworks he had purchased in order to build even bigger ones. He was mixing them in a coffee-bean grinder.

-- Two hundred ethnic groups in Cameroon still practice painful "breast ironing," affecting one-fourth of the puberty-age girls in the country, according to a July CNN dispatch. The situation has barely changed from when News of the Weird mentioned it in 2006. Mothers flatten their daughters' breasts with a fire-hot pestle to make them less sexually desirable and thus more likely to stay in school and avoid early pregnancy. (In America, ironically, The New York Times reported two weeks later that spa-indulgent women are complaining about "creases" in their breasts -- from sleep posture that creates unsightly "cleavage wrinkles" visible in low-neckline fashions. Several remedial products are available to help women keep their breasts separated, and thus smooth, at night.)

In 1978 the Oakland Raiders' Jack Tatum made a vicious "clothesline" hit on New England Patriots' receiver Darryl Stingley's neck, causing permanent paralysis. At the time, Tatum arrogantly defended the play as legal and warned other opponents that they could expect the same from him. However, in January 1997, Tatum applied for disability benefits of $156,000 a year from the NFL Players' Association, pointing to the mental anguish he has suffered having to live with the incident. (The $156,000 was, in 1997, the highest-payout category and was the same category that Stingley was in.) (Update: Tatum died in 2010, Stingley in 2007.)