-- In 1993 India Scott dated both Darryl Fletcher and Brandon Ventimeglia when she lived in Detroit and moved in with Fletcher in 1994 when she was about to give birth. Neither man knew about the other, and she told each he was the father. For two years, Scott managed to juggle the men's visitation rights, but in March 1997 when she announced she was marrying another man and leaving the area, both Fletcher and Ventimeglia separately filed for custody of "his" son. Only then did Ventimeglia and Fletcher find out about each other. They took blood tests to determine which was the real father of the boy they had been caring for for more than two years, and in May the blood test revealed that neither was.

-- Connecticut Police Academy: Robert Jordan filed a lawsuit in May against the New London, Conn., police department for illegal discrimination, claiming he was rejected as an officer solely because he scored too high on an intelligence test, which the department claims is evidence that Jordan would get bored on the job and be a bad officer. And an Associated Press report from New Haven, 50 miles away, revealed that new-recruit police classes include training in the arts (watercolor drawing, ballet, etc.), which was the brainchild of former police chief Nicholas Pastore, who himself resigned in February after admitting that he had fathered a child with a prostitute.

-- More than 200 students at Molalla (Ore.) High School petitioned officials in May to overturn the school's mandatory-brassiere policy after two girls were sent home for not wearing them. Protesters complain that the dress code is not fairly enforced, in that more heavily endowed violators are more frequently punished than less-endowed violators.

-- The National Labor Relations Board ruled in December that Caterpillar Inc. workers who were on strike from June 1994 to December 1995 were entitled to be compensated for the popcorn, sodas, ice cream and other snacks that the company provided workers who remained on the job during that time.

-- In February, the student government at Oxford University in England appointed a person to patrol the grounds and stop couples' public displays of affection. In one place, petting was banned from the dining hall, and another facility was divided into heavy- and light-petting-allowed zones. The government also banned sexual intercourse in libraries between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. (although no student leader claimed to have actual knowledge that it had ever occurred). The actions were taken because some students who did not have dates found the behaviors offensive.

-- Two inmates serving life sentences at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola filed a lawsuit in February claiming officials have denied them the chapel space and equipment necessary to observe their religion of Satanism. Even though they allegedly cannot practice faithfully, their credentials for the Satanic afterlife seem substantial: One plaintiff is in for first-degree murder and the other for rape, robbery and kidnapping.

-- According to police in Mesa, Ariz., Jean K. Dooley opened fire with a handgun in Valley Lutheran Hospital in 1995, intending to kill her husband, who was a patient there. (She missed but managed accidentally to hit a nurse and a paramedic.) In January 1997, she filed a lawsuit against the hospital for negligently failing to stop her from bringing the gun inside.

-- In March, the New York Appellate Division of the Supreme Court unanimously took away the $15 million award that a jury had made to Jose Barretto, who is paralyzed from the waist down. Barretto sued Richmond Hill High School in New York City for not stopping him from horsing around before volleyball practice in 1988, when, with the coach momentarily out of the gym and allegedly to show off for his friends, he ran toward the net from 30 feet away, dived over it, and landed on his head. Said Barretto, "I accept part of the blame, but what about the responsibility of the teacher and the school?"

-- Federico Perales, 52, was arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, in April and charged with stabbing his wife to death in front of their two teen-age kids because he was angry that the three of them started dinner before he arrived at the table. According to the Peraleses' son, Perales' last words to his wife were, "You pushed me to the limits. You did this to yourself."

-- In April, Mary Durante, the inheritor of a house in Newark, N.J., found 133 neatly stacked boxes upon her first visit to the attic, each with the remains of a cat wrapped in newspapers that dated back to 1945. She was startled by the discovery but said she knew the house once belonged to the late Newark Star-Ledger pet columnist, William H. Hendrix.

-- Sandra L. Archer, 35, was sentenced to two years in jail in April in Omaha, Neb., for disorderly conduct and cruelty to animals after videotapes surfaced of her having sex with her boyfriend (Mark W. Williams, 36, who is awaiting trial) atop groups of dogs, including sick ones, that had been obtained from local shelters.

-- The Mainichi Daily News (Tokyo) reported in April that a 24-year-old local man from Adachi-ku was arrested and charged with assaulting a 17-year-old schoolgirl on her way home. According to police, the man rubbed saliva in the girl's hair as an expression of anger because her socks were too loose around her ankles. Police quoted him as saying, "When I saw those socks, I just went crazy."

-- According to a recent Canadian documentary film, Troy Hurtubise, a scrap-metal dealer from North Bay, Ontario, was so disappointed at his 1984 first encounter with a grizzly bear that he embarked on a 10-year, $100,000 project to build a safety suit that would enable him to wrestle and defeat a grizzly. He has not yet found a bear to wrestle, but he has spent money so obsessively on the suit that he recently had to file for bankruptcy.

Michael Forgue, a Jackman, Maine, restaurateur, expressing doubt in May that his neighbor James Darrow was guilty of the murder for which he had been arrested and which he had allegedly claimed credit for: "They don't call (him) 'Big Jim the Liar' for nothing. You name it, he lied about it."

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- In March, armed with evidence that a drug dealer had been killed with a single gunshot during a robbery by two men, Torrance, Calif., district attorney Todd D. Rubenstein obtained separate jury convictions for both men for firing the fatal shot. Both robbers' guns had fired, but one missed, and a conclusion as to which one could not be drawn from ballistics tests. Rubenstein asserted confidently to one jury that Stephen Edmond Davis, 19, shot the man, and just as confidently to the other jury that it wasn't Davis, but rather John Patrick Winkleman, 19.

-- Correen Zahnzinger, 24, filed a lawsuit in Santa Ana, Calif., in May against her boyfriend of three years (and husband of one year), Ms. Valerie Inga, 29, who pretended the whole time to be a man. ("They did have a sexual relationship," said Zahnzinger's attorney, "but I'm not allowed to say how it was perpetrated.") And two weeks earlier in Arlington, Va., Margaret Hunter, 24, was awarded $264,000 in her lawsuit for fraud against her ex-husband, Ms. Holly Anne Groves, 26, who had posed as a man in their four-month marriage in 1996.

-- According to the 1997 platform of the Natural Law Party (based on teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) in Canada, released in May, people should stop using the south and west entrances to their homes because they are inharmonious and should instead use north and east entrances. Furthermore, Canadians entering the United States should do so from Niagara Falls, whose entrance (from the east) is the only nonsouthward entrance in the country. The party proposes to eliminate the federal deficit by "eliminating problems" and to create an "invincible" national defense through yogic flying (which resembles hopping like a frog). The party got 84,000 votes in 1993.

-- In October, Jay Urdahl, an incumbent running for county supervisor in Mason City, Iowa, was charged with criminal trespass while out campaigning. According to homeowner Debbie Opheim, Urdahl just walked right into her house to meet her without the benefit of an invitation or a knock on the door. Said Opheim, who heard a "hello," "I ran down the stairs, and he was standing in my living room." After Opheim ordered him out, she said, "He looked at me like I was insane."

-- In March, arguing for the legalization of holiday fireworks in Arizona, state Rep. Richard Kyle denounced opponents who said sparklers were dangerous: "I put them in my hair. I have stuck them in my clothes. They do not burn." (He lost.)

-- In April, North Providence, R.I., council member Charles A. Lombardi was charged with misdemeanor vandalism -- according to police, the drive-by egging of a car owned by a relative of his political opponent, Mayor Ralph Mollis. Said Lombardi, "This is politics in North Providence."

-- In a March New York Times story on vote-buying in Dodge County, Ga., a spokesperson for the Georgia secretary of state tried to describe the depth of the problem: "We literally had people who said they had no idea that selling your vote was illegal. One guy said, 'It's my vote; I can do what I want with it.'"

-- In January, the U.S. Postal Service in Miami issued bulletins announcing a $25,000 reward for the return of something stolen from a mail carrier, but refused to say what it was, referring to it only as a "device." Said a postal inspector to a reporter, "I can't tell you what it is. I can't tell you what it's used for."

-- Former Prestonburg, Ky., school board member Wood R. Keesee, 59, filed a lawsuit in May against a female court clerk to whom he had allegedly loaned money in 1996. Under the terms of the $1,800 loan, according to Keesee, she was to have 18 sexual encounters with him, but when she stopped after three, he filed the lawsuit.

-- One week apart in March, in Ardmore, Okla., and San Francisco, Calif., schools disciplined female students who reported that they were raped on campus. A 15-year-old girl had been briefly suspended from Ardmore High for having sex at school despite the fact that her clothes were soaked in blood, as was the locker room area where she said the rape occurred. An 18-year-old woman was threatened with eviction from San Francisco State University housing because she had kept a hunting knife in her room, illegally, which she used to chase off the alleged rapist.

-- Among the recipients of the American Lung Association's "Thumb's Up" motion-picture awards, presented at the time of the Oscars in March to honor those films and characters who present a no-smoking image, was Woody Harrelson for his role in discouraging his movie wife from smoking in "The People Vs. Larry Flynt." However, in the movie, both Flynts are heavily addicted to illegal drugs and seem to be indifferent to sharing needles for injecting them.

-- A leading TV news program in Bogota, Colombia, reported in January that Jimmy Pacheco had been kidnapped for a month in the city of Cucuta in a scheme to pry undisclosed concessions from either friends or co-workers, but that to keep things low-key, Pacheco was permitted to return home every night so as not to alarm his family. The kidnappers would watch Pacheco's house at night and snatch him again in the morning as he left for work.

In February, Avi Kostner, 52, pleaded guilty in Newark, N.J., to the murders of his kids, aged 10 and 12, which he said he committed because he feared his ex-wife would not raise them as Jews. (In arguing successfully against the death penalty, Kostner's lawyer continually referred to Kostner in front of the jury as merely "less than perfect.") And in May, Harry Charles Moore was executed in Oregon for the 1992 murders of his in-laws because he was afraid they would persuade his ex-wife and infant daughter to move to Las Vegas and possibly get involved in prostitution and drugs.

Smoking: In April, authorities on North Carolina's Figure Eight island said they suspected the cause of the fire that destroyed the vacation home of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. president Andrew J. Schindler was a lighted cigarette butt. And after a New Year's Day domestic argument in Campinas, 60 miles north of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Silas Leite da Silva was Bobbittized by his wife because, among several reasons, according to police, he would not stop smoking at home.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- The first copies of the European Union's 24-page user's manual for boots recently hit the market in England, reported The Daily Telegraph in May. The booklet comes with the shoes and advises the consumer how to choose footwear, how to use and care for the boots, and how to wear them safely. It also explains how to read the EU-mandated boot comfort ratings, though it also advises, "Each boot should be tried for fitting before use."

-- Dueling Misjudgments: In April, expecting a $3 million gift destined for Children's Zoo in Central Park from philanthropists Edith and Henry Everett, the New York City Art Commission nonetheless approved only a small donor-name plaque on one entrance marker to the zoo, rather than the slightly larger plaque requested by the Everetts. Consequently, the Everetts snatched back their gift, jeopardizing the zoo's long-overdue renovation.

-- One of the members of the Mug House Players pub darts team in Worcester, England, commenting in February on his team's 50-match losing streak: "I think we all drink too much (during the matches). One regular feature (of our games) is to miss the board completely."

-- Fernando Magana-Rodriguez, 24, pleading not guilty to bigamy in Kelowna, British Columbia, in January: "I'm Mexican. I never knew you could go to jail for marrying two women, or I never would have done it."

-- John H. Bergantini, a candidate for tax assessor in Exeter, R.I., commenting in March on his being sued by the town for $2,678 in back property taxes: "My ability to write a check for a certain amount of money has nothing to do with (my ability to judge) how much a piece of property is worth."

-- Rochester, N.Y., Assemblywoman Susan John, who is the chair of the Assembly's Alcohol and Drug Abuse committee, upon her guilty plea in March for driving while impaired: "This will give me additional insights into the problem of drinking and driving, and I believe, will allow me to do my job even more effectively."

-- Owatonna, Minn., elementary school principal Kevin A. Thompson, 37, was charged in January with peeping into the window of a home and was apprehended hiding under the deck of another house. According to police, Thompson said he was merely checking street addresses in connection with the redrawing of school bus pickup boundaries.

-- Public television's "Frugal Gourmet," Jeff Smith, has denied that he sexually molested any of the five men who have since January filed complaints against him for having fondled them as boys. One of the men, Keith Thomas, who had worked for Smith in the 1970s as part of a high school work-study program, said that at the time he had shrugged off Smith's hugs and kisses as "weird, but (I thought) maybe that's the way it is with people in the food business."

-- According to the Berlingske Tidende newspaper of Copenhagen, Denmark, in January, an unidentified man drove his car onto the ice at the Augustenborg Fjord 120 miles to the south, but it broke through. The man managed to escape in the shallow water, though, and then minutes later attempted the crossing with a four-wheel drive vehicle, with the same result. He next tried it with a tractor (same result), then with another tractor (same). It took rescuers seven hours to pull the four vehicles out.

-- Daniel Sutherland of Indiana, Pa., accidentally shot himself in the mouth in February while he was blowing down the barrel of a gun to see whether it was loaded. Said Sutherland, haltingly, to a reporter, "You know that hanging-down thing in the back of your mouth (the uvula)? I lost mine."

-- According to a police report in the Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin in February, a man wearing a flowered dress, swearing and making obscene gestures, was subdued by police officers but only after he had softened himself up by accidentally running smack into a car and then a brick wall. At the police station, he tried to escape but wound up colliding with the wall in a stairwell.

-- In Bozeman, Mont., in March, according to Gary Gerhardt, the owner of County Lanes bowling alley, a man walked in, told the cashier he had just gotten out of prison for having robbed County Lanes several years before, and said he would like to look around on top of the ceiling to see if he could find the wallet he had dropped during that job. When Gerhardt ordered him to leave, the man just shrugged and walked away.

-- Brothers Patrick and Daniel Worthing were charged in December with attempted corporate espionage. Patrick was a supervisor for a cleaning contractor working for PPG Industries in a suburb of Pittsburgh, and in a letter full of misspellings and grammatical errors allegedly offered to sell many PPG corporate secrets to competitor Owens Corning. According to the prosecutor, Patrick had sent PPG's financial statements (actually "finacial" statements, providing "intimant details" that would be "of intrest"), asked only $1,000 for all the information Owens Corning could use, and had given PPG's fax number for any return calls. At his first court appearance, Patrick asked the magistrate, "If we, like, fully cooperate with all the details, is there, like, a lesser sentence?"

Cleveland county clerk Gordana Giovinale was suspended for three days in April as punishment for leaving $65,000 in taxes and fee receipts in a bag in the restroom stall he was using. After finishing his business, he apparently just forgot that he had been headed to another office to drop off the money. And Mike Shreckengost appeared in court in Somerset, Pa., in April to reclaim the $20,000 that he had tossed onto the side of a road in February 1996 as a trooper approached his stopped car. He drove off without the money and made no inquiries about what happened to it until he heard in August 1996 that the trooper was claiming the money under a "finders-keepers" law.

Carrollton, Ga.: In March, a sheriff's investigator learned that Jodi Denman Cecconi had elaborately faked the leukemia death of her 2-year-old daughter (hospital vigils, funeral arrangements, grave-site selection, obituary in the newspaper, etc.) to win back her estranged boyfriend, Neal Casey, who bought onto the story for a while before learning that the child was in good health. And the next month, Carrollton country-music radio station manager Amy Bullington, 23, who was charged with shooting her boyfriend to death, surrendered to police only after having aired her favorite song, "Has Anybody Seen Amy?"

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)