Officials at England's 12th-century St. Peter's Church in Seaford, East Sussex, which is renowned for its eerie quiet, created a 30-minute CD recently of near-total silence, first as a small-scale fundraising project, but later for general sales (since word-of-mouth had attracted orders from as far away as Ghana). Those who have heard it said they could make out only the occasional squeaking of footsteps on the wooden floor (and the very distant hum of passing cars). Said one admiring parishioner, "People sometimes like to sit down and just have a bit of peace and quiet." [Daily Mail (London), 1-27-2013]

-- France has seen its wolf population gradually increase from near-extinction in the 1930s, but still classifies the predator as a "protected" species. However, sheep farmers increasingly complain that wolves' attacks are reducing their herds. Therefore, in a recently proposed "National Wolf Plan," the government boldly gave headline-writers around the world material for rejoicing: a national program to "educate" the wolves. Individual wolves known to have attacked sheep would be caught, marked and briefly detained, with the hope that they would learn their lesson from that trauma and from then on, pass up sheep and turn instead to rabbits, boar and deer. (Said one critic, "You might as well try to educate a shark.") [TheLocal.fr (Paris), 2-7-2012]

-- Updates: The Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration revealed in January that twice as many fraudulent income tax refunds were paid to inmates in 2011 (173,000) as for the tax year 2010. However, the IRS claimed that the fraudulent returns it did manage to stop totaled $2.5 billion (almost half of which was disingenuously claimed by two inmates). Also, the Department of Health and Human Service's inspector general revealed in January that Medicare was illegally billed for $120 million from 2009 to 2011 for services used by inmates and illegal immigrants -- neither category of which is authorized to use Medicare. [Associated Press via Tampa Bay Times, 1-18-2012] [Associated Press via New York Times, 1-25-2013]

-- Recurring Theme: As of January, New York City music teacher Aryeh Eller, 46, has almost reached a milestone in his battle with the Board of Education. Soon, he will have earned a million dollars in salary and benefits since the board removed him from the classroom 13 years ago and dispatched him to a light-duty "rubber room" after complaints of fondling and sexual harassment in the one year that he actually taught. An arbitrator had found insufficient evidence for his termination, but the board refuses to let him back in the classroom, fearing he is a danger to students. [New York Post, 1-27-2013]

-- Not Expected to Fly Off the Shelf: Iceland's menswear designer Sruli Recht's autumn/winter 2013 collection, debuting in Paris in January, included a ring made from a four-inch slice of his own skin (removed during recent abdomen surgery, then salted and tanned to give it sturdiness). The ring (called "Forget Me Knot") carries a price tag of $500,000 -- considering that the rest of the ring is 24k gold. [Huffington Post, 1-22-2013]

-- In Russia's coldest region (the Siberian republic of Yakutia), artist Mikhail Bopposov created a massive, nearly 900-pound cobra statue (honoring the Chinese Year of the Snake) -- made entirely of cow dung. Though at this time of the year the sculpture freezes, Bopposov plans to sell it when it melts, since fertilizer is a valuable commodity during the region's short summers. (Actually, this is Bopposov's second foray into dung art, after last year's winged serpent he created for the Chinese Year of the Dragon.) [RIA Novosti (Moscow), 1-11-2013]

-- Hard Times: According to police in Idaho Falls, Idaho, Mark Carroll, 18, masked and armed with a handgun, is the one who threatened and robbed the night-shift clerk at the Maverik convenience store on New Year's morning. The clerk was Donna Carroll, Mark's mother, but police said that it was not an "inside" job and that she still does not believe the man behind the mask was her son. [KIDK-TV (Idaho Falls), 1-23-2013]

-- Major Crimes Unit: (1) Sheriff's deputies in Tampa were searching in January for the thief who stole a wallet from a car and used the victim's debit card three times -- once at a gas station and twice to wash clothes in the laundry room of the Countrywood Apartments. (2) Edward Lucas, 33, was arrested in Slidell, La., in November and charged with theft from the sheriff's department headquarters. Lucas reportedly had walked in and requested a file, and while he was waiting (as surveillance video later confirmed), he furtively swiped three ball-point pens from the reception area. [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 1-10-2013] [Associated Press via Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.), 11-21-2012]

-- Judges in Danger: (1) Sheriff's deputies in Ozaukee County, Wis., identified Shelly Froelich, 48, as the woman who allegedly called the jail in January and asked if Judge Thomas Wolfgram was in, and when informed that he wasn't but that he'd be in court the following morning, said, "Good. Tell him I have a hit on him." Deputies said Froelich's son was in lockup and that his mom had several times before issued threats to judges after her son had been arrested. (2) James Satterfield, 58, was arrested in Cobb County, Ga., in December after police said he wrote a letter to the wife of Judge Reuben Green vowing to eat the couple's children after "cook(ing) them first to make them more palatable." [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1-23-2013] [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1-14-2013]

Michael Selleneit, 54, pleaded guilty in January to several charges including attempted murder in an October 2011 attack on a neighbor, who Selleneit had declared was raping Selleneit's wife -- "telepathically." In fact, police said, Selleneit had been making that claim "for years," though he had not taken action until October 2011. His wife, Meloney, was also charged, as she allegedly goaded her husband on, telling him to "go for it," and even supplying the gun. Both spouses have been extensively examined by mental health professionals, and it turns out that Michael is the saner of the two. He had been ruled "competent" to stand trial, but Meloney has so far not been. [Deseret News (Salt Lake City), 1-14-2013]

Joint findings of Great Britain's Ministry of Justice, Home Office and Office for National Statistics, published in January, revealed that 99 out of every 100 recent sexual offenses in England and Wales have ultimately gone unpunished. According to the report (covering 2011), 473,000 sexual offenses occurred, with 53,700 recorded by the police and 5,600 resulting in convictions. The lack of official reporting by victims is even less understandable than in the United States, since government compensation is available to certain victims under British law. [Justice.gov.uk, 1-09-2013]

A massive, fraudulent test-taking scheme spanning three Southern states came to a halt in 2009 after going undetected for 15 years. In February 2012, Clarence Mumford Sr., 59, pleaded guilty as the mastermind of the syndicate that charged schoolteachers thousands of dollars to have proxy test-takers sit for them in mandatory qualifications exams. The 2009 incident that brought the scheme to light was when one hired proxy (Memphis, Tenn., science teacher Shantell Shaw) decided to take both a morning test for one teacher and an afternoon test for another teacher, at the same location, while wearing the same pink baseball cap. [New York Times, 2-2-2013]

Overachievers: (1) Cheyenne Labrum, 39, was arrested in Provo, Utah, in December, and charged with robbing a man in a motel room of $14 cash and a 12-pack of beer. Police records show it as the 66th time Labrum has been booked into the local jail. (2) Scott Morris, 40, was arrested for speeding and suspicion of DUI in Boulder, Colo., in November. It was only the 44th time Morris had been traffic-stopped -- although Morris might be held to a different standard, in that he is a Boulder police detective. [Provo Daily Herald, 12-14-2012] [Denver CBS, 12-7-2012]

Thanks This Week to James Hoban, Sandy Pearlman, and Annie Thames, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

An estimated 3.2 million kids aged 5 to 12 take mixed-martial arts classes, training to administer beatdowns modeled after the adults' Ultimate Fighting Championships, according to a January report in ESPN magazine, which profiled the swaggering, Mohawked Derek "Crazy" Rayfield, 11, and the meek, doll-clutching fighting machine, Regina "The Black Widow" Awana, 7. Kids under age 12 fight each other without regard to gender, and blows above the collarbone are always prohibited (along with attacks on the groin, kidneys and back). "Crazy" was described delivering merciless forearm chest smashes to a foe before the referee intervened, and the Black Widow won her match in less than a minute via arm-bar submission. Parental involvement appears to be of two types: either fear of their child's getting hurt or encouragement to be meaner. [ESPN The Magazine, 1-7-2013]

-- Breaking Bad (and Quickly!): Tyrone Harris, 26, reported for his first shift at Dunkin' Donuts in Morristown, N.J., in January and received his name tag. Seven minutes later, according to police, he was on his way out the door with $2,100 from his supervisor's desk. (Apparently, the supervisor had opened his drawer a little too far when reaching for the name tag, giving Harris a glimpse of the cash.) [NJ.com (Newark), 1-21-2013]

-- In a January submission to India's Supreme Court, an association of the country's caste councils begged for greater sympathy for men who commit "honor killings" of wayward females. The councils denied encouraging such killings, but emphasized that fathers or brothers who murder a daughter or sister are usually "law-abiding, educated and respectable people" who must protect their reputations after a female has had a "forbidden" relationship -- especially a female who intends to marry within her sub-caste, which the councils believe leads to deformed babies. [Daily Telegraph (London), 1-15-2013]

-- Aubrey Ireland, 21, a dean's-list senior at the University of Cincinnati's prestigious college of music, went to court in December to protect herself from two stalkers -- her mother and father, who, she said, had been paranoiacally meddling in her life. David and Julie Ireland put tracking devices on Aubrey's computer and telephone and showed up unannounced on campus (600 miles from their home), telling officials that Aubrey was promiscuous and mentally imbalanced. A Common Pleas Court judge ordered the parents to keep their distance. [Cincinnati.com, 12-27-2012]

-- Medium-Tech Warfare: (1) The mostly rag-tag army of Syrian rebels fighting the Assad regime unveiled its first jerry-built armored vehicle in December. The "Sham II" is an old diesel car with cameras for navigation, a machine gun mounted on a turret with a driver looking at one flat-screen TV and a gunner another, aiming the machine gun via a Sony PlayStation controller. (2) Video transmissions from drone aircraft rose stiflingly to more than 300,000 hours last year (compared to 4,800 in 2001). With input expected to grow even more, Air Force officials acknowledged in December seeking advice from a private-sector company experienced in handling massive amounts of video: ESPN. [The Atlantic Wire, 12-9-2012] [USA Today, 12-19-2012]

-- Dog trainer Mark Vette showed off his best work in Auckland, New Zealand, in December: dogs driving a Cooper Mini on a closed course. Using knobs fitted to the dogs' reach, Vette taught mixed-breed rescue dogs "Monty" and "Porter" 10 discrete actions, including handling the starter, steering wheel, gearshift, and brake and gas pedals, and then put them behind the wheel on live television. Monty handled the straightaway flawlessly, but Porter, assigned to steer around a bend, ran off the road. [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 12-11-2012]

-- Stress Relief for Students: (1) In November, students at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, ordered three therapy dogs and set up a room for "super stressed" final-exam studiers. The dogs typically are loaned to hospital patients and senior citizens. (2) In December, Cornell University staff installed a patch of grass inside the Olin Library (trucked in from the Adirondack mountains) because, said an employee, the sight of it has a "cognitive relaxing effect." [National Post, 11-29-2012] [Cornell Daily Sun, 12-3-2012]

-- Jorge Sanchez, 35, was arrested in Burbank, Calif., in February after walking into a Costco store, brazenly stuffing 24 quart cans of motor oil under his clothing (some affixed with bungee cords), and heading for the exit. A security guard noticed him, but Sanchez fled and actually outran the guard (though some of his cargo came loose). Still carrying 15 cans, he made it eight blocks before police overtook him. Sanchez said he services cars part-time and that motor oil prices were just too high. [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 2-1-2013]

Gregory Bruni, 21, was arrested in North Fort Myers, Fla., in January after allegedly breaking into a residence at about 7 p.m. (first scurrying across the roof and jumping on one resident who came to investigate). According to police, Bruni was naked, ran maniacally around screaming in gibberish, failed to be intimidated when the female resident fired three "warning shots" with a handgun, fell to the floor after the third shot and began masturbating, and defecated near the front door and in a hallway. Police soon arrived and Tasered him. [Fort Myers News-Press via WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 1-25-2013]

The issue of "background checks" for gun purchases occupies center stage in the current gun-regulation debate, even though, ironically, current federal law on such checks is apparently half-heartedly enforced. In the latest data available (from 2010), nearly 80,000 Americans were denied the right to purchase guns because their applications contained false information (even though applicants swear, under penalty of law, that all information is true). However, The New York Times reported in January that of the nearly 80,000 applicants, only 44 were prosecuted for lying, and federal officials said the practice, well-known among applicants with shaky backgrounds, is known as "lie and try." [New York Times, 1-14-2013]

Lawrence Adamczyk, 49, was arrested in Riverside, Ill., in January after reports that he was loitering at Riverside Brookfield High School during a swim meet. Police said he was quite talkative in custody, admitting that he was at the school to leer at boys (after being tipped off via "brainwave" messages from the singer Justin Bieber) and that moments before police arrived, he had been engaged in a solo sex act while ogling the swimmers. Amazingly, police found that Adamczyk was not on any sex offenders' registry even though he had been arrested (with at least one conviction) for similar incidents in 2005, 2009 and 2011, and was on parole at the time of the Riverside arrest. [WBBM-TV (Chicago), 1-13-2013]

(1) After a 51-year-old man was found dead in Everett, Wash., in January with his heavier girlfriend (192 pounds) lying face down on top of him, sheriff's deputies attributed cause of death as his having been smothered by the 50-year-old woman's breasts. Neighbors said they had heard the man screaming for the woman to get off of him. (2) In January, New York City police, arriving to check out an altercation and a death on the tracks at the East 125th Street subway station, found that the two incidents were unrelated. The man who was killed had actually fallen off of a train near the station while he was squatting between cars, defecating. [KIRO-TV (Seattle), 1-14-2013] [New York Times, 1-15-2013]

(1) Sophie Laboissonniere pleaded guilty in January to participating in the 2011 street riot in Vancouver, British Columbia, as part of a crowd that broke into a drugstore following the hometown Canucks' loss in the Stanley Cup finals. Months before the riot, in the Miss Coastal Vancouver beauty pageant, she had been voted Miss Congeniality. (2) On Nov. 4, "Holly" -- Jacob and Bonnie Richter's 4-year-old cat -- fled the couple's motor home (apparently frightened by fireworks) parked at the Daytona International Speedway and did not return. Searches were futile, and the Richters drove home to Palm Beach Gardens, about 190 miles away. Two weeks later, Holly appeared, disheveled with paws rubbed raw, about a mile from the Richters' home, and the finder returned her to the Richters based on Holly's microchip ID. [Associated Press via CBS News, 1-9-2013] [WPBF-TV (West Palm Beach), 1-7-2013]

Thanks This Week to Derek Costello, Jon Johnson, Bruce Leiserowitz, Annie Thames, Perry Levin, John McGaw, and Rich Heiden, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Cliche Come to Life: The Kerry, Ireland, county council voted in January to let some people drive drunk. The councillors reasoned that in the county's isolated regions, some seniors live alone and need the camaraderie of the pub, but fear a DUI arrest on the way home. The councillors thus empowered police to issue DUI permits to those targeted drivers. Besides, reasoned the councillors, the area is so sparsely populated that such drivers never encounter anyone else on the road at night. (The councillors' beneficence might also have been influenced, reported BBC News, by the fact that "several" of the five voting "yea" own pubs.) [BBC News, 1-22-2013]

-- Spare the Waterboard, Spoil the Child: William Province, 42, was arrested in Jefferson County, Mont., in December and charged with waterboarding four boys, two of whom were his own sons, at his home in December. (Also in January, Kirill Bartashevitch, 52, was charged with making "terroristic" threats to his high-school-age daughter after he allegedly pointed his new AK-47 at her because her report card showed 2 B's instead of all A's. He said he had recently purchased the gun because he feared that President Obama intended to ban them.) [KXLF-TV (Butte), 12-20-2012] [St. Paul Pioneer-Press, 1-16-2012]

-- Emma Whittington, of Hutchinson, Kan., rushed her daughter to the ER in December when the girl, 7 months old, developed a golf-ball-sized lump on her neck. Two days later, at a hospital in Wichita, a doctor gently pulled a feather out of the lump and hypothesized that it had been in the midst of emerging from her throat. Doctors said the girl probably swallowed the feather accidentally, that it got stuck in throat tissue, and that her body was trying to eject it through the skin. [KWCH-TV (Wichita), 12-13-2012]

-- As if 9/11 and the resultant air travel restrictions had never happened, travelers for some reason continue to keep Transportation Security Administration agents busy at passengers' carry-on bag searches. From a TSA weekly summary of confiscations in January: 33 handguns, eight stun guns and a serrated wire garrote. Among highlights from 2012: a live 40mm grenade, a live blasting cap, "seal bombs" and six pounds of black powder (with detonation cords and a timing fuse). [The TSA Blog (blog.tsa.gov), 1-11-2012]

-- A man with admittedly limited English skills went to a courthouse in Springfield, Mass., in December to address a traffic ticket, but somehow wound up on a jury trying Donald Campbell on two counts of assault. Officials said the man simply got in the wrong line and followed jurors into a room while the real sixth juror had mistakenly gone to another room. The jury, including the accidental juror, found Campbell guilty, but he was awarded a new trial when the mistake was discovered. [The Republican (Springfield), 12-13-2012]

(1) Timothy Crabtree, 45, of Rogersville, was arrested in October and charged with stabbing his son, Brandon, 21, in an argument over who would get the last beer in the house. (2) Tricia Moody, 26, was charged with DUI in Knoxville in January after a 10-minute police chase. The officer's report noted that Moody was still holding a cup of beer and apparently had not spilled any during the chase. (3) Jerry Poe, 62, was charged in a road-rage incident in Clinton on Black Friday after firing his handgun at a driver in front of him "to scare her into moving" faster, he said. (Poe said he had started at midnight at one Wal-Mart, waited in line unsuccessfully for five hours for a sale-priced stereo, and was on his way to another Wal-Mart. [Kingsport Times-News via KnoxNews.com (Knoxville), 10-16-2012] [Knoxville News Sentinel, 1-22-2013] [Knoxville News Sentinel, 11-26-2012]

Twin brothers Aric Hale and Sean Hale, 28, were both arrested on New Year's Eve in Manchester, Conn., after fighting each other at a hotel and later at a residence. Police said a 27-year-old woman was openly dating the two men, and that Sean thought it was his turn and asked Aric for privacy. Aric begged to differ about whose turn it was. [Hartford Courant, 1-3-2013]

-- Voted in December as vice presidents of the U.N. Human Rights Council for 2013 were the nations of Mauritania and the Maldives, both of which permit the death penalty for renouncing Islam. In Mauritania, a person so charged has three days to repent for a lesser sentence. (An August 2012 dispatch in London's The Guardian reported widespread acceptance of slavery conditions in Mauritania, affecting as many as 800,000 of the 3.5 million population. Said one abolitionist leader, "Today we have the slavery (that) American plantation owners dreamed of (in that the slaves) believe their condition is necessary to get to paradise.") [Reuters via Yahoo News, 12-10-2012; The Guardian, 8-14-2012]

-- Non-medical employees of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have been campaigning for union representation, suggesting that their current wages leave many workers dangerously close to poverty. Though raises have not materialized, UPMC (according to a November Pittsburgh City Paper report) has now shown sympathy for its employees' sad plight. In a November UPMC newsletter, it announced that it was setting up "UPMC Cares" food banks. Employees (presumably the better-paid ones) are urged to "donate nonperishable food items to stock employee food pantries that will established on both (UPMC campuse)." One astonished worker's response: "I started to cry." [Pittsburgh City Paper, 12-11-2012]

-- In December, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed, through a public records check, that the appointed Collector of Revenue for St. Louis County has failed since 2008 to pay personal property taxes. Stacy Bailey and her husband owe taxes on three cars and in fact filed for bankruptcy in 2011. Bailey's boss, Director of Revenue Eugene Leung, told the Dispatch that he had checked Bailey's real-estate tax status but not personal property taxes. Nonetheless, he said, "Knowing what I know now, she's still the most qualified person for the job," among the 155 applicants. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12-13-2013]

First-World Problems: Before "cellulite" appeared in popular culture around 1972, almost no one believed the condition especially remarkable, wrote London's The Guardian in December. Similarly, the new concern about "wobbly" arms -- flesh dangling loosely when a woman's arm is raised horizontally -- seems entirely made-up. However, Marks & Spencer and other upscale British retailers now sell "arm corsets" to fashionably hold the skin tighter for sleeveless tops. Wrote the Guardian columnist, "I wish I didn't know that my arms weren't meant to wobble. I'd be happier." [The Guardian, 12-8-2012]

Julie Griffiths, 43, of Newcastle-Under-Lyme, England, received her first Anti-Social Behavior Order in 1999 for too loudly berating her husband, Norman (who one neighbor told the Daily Telegraph is "the sweetest man you could ever meet"). After many complaints (from neighbors, never from Norman), Griffiths was fined the equivalent of about $700 in 2010 and vowed to be quieter. The complaints hardly slowed, and in July 2012, environmental-health officials installed monitoring equipment next door and caught Griffiths venting at Norman 47 times in three months. However, the Stoke-on-Trent Magistrates Court merely issued a new, five-year ASBO. [Daily Telegraph, 12-20-2012]

(1) Recently, a 67-year-old woman set out to drive to a train station in Brussels, Belgium, 38 miles from her home to pick up a friend, but her GPS was broken, and she wound up three countries away, in Zagreb, Croatia, before she sought help. Drivers older than her have been similarly lost, but not to the extent of crossing five borders and passing road signs in three languages while traveling 900 miles. (She said only that she was "distracted.") (2) In January, a 68-year-old Florida man got out of a van to open a garage door so that his friend could back in, but he left the van door open, and the driver's dog leaped excitedly into the vehicle and landed on the gas pedal. The man was fatally crushed against the garage door. [Daily Mail (London), 1-14-2013] [Panama City News Herald, 1-15-2013]

Thanks This Week to Chris O'Hare, Margaret Thomas, Kelly Egnitz, Rey Barry, John.McGaw, Michael Hull, Mark Svevar, and Jan Linders, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.