News of the Weird

-- The Wall Street Journal reported in July that the Environmental Protection Agency has ordered 71 mining companies in Idaho to submit copies of all of the paperwork they have produced in the last 117 years. EPA says it needs the information to help determine who is responsible for lead pollution in Idaho's Silver Valley. According to the president of one firm, the order was so crazy that the EPA investigators "must not live on this planet." Another pointed out that there are not enough copy machines in the region to handle the work.

-- A confidential report, prepared for the Australian Foreign Ministry and with uninhibited appraisals of many South Pacific leaders, was accidentally left on a table at a regional economic ministers meeting in Cairns, Australia, in July, and reported in the press. While the Australian delegation was outwardly friendly toward its smaller, island-nation neighbors, the report described by name many of the nations' leaders as inept or corrupt. And two weeks earlier, Austria's foreign minister came under fire for his name-calling at a breakfast meeting in the Netherlands. Minister Wolfgang Schuessel reportedly called one German official "a real pig," the Belarus president a "smelly Turk," and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright "an aging Bette Davis."

-- Four young men were arrested for trespassing and attempting to remove tires from a vehicle at a car-auction lot in Des Moines, Iowa, in May. Owner Dan Carney had seen the men enter the lot late at night on his security camera and hopped on his forklift. He picked up the men's getaway car and hid it inside a building. While the men were next door inquiring whether anyone had seen their car, police arrived to arrest them.

-- In March, nighttime thieves stole the two 300-pound, $30,000 solid brass doors from a side entrance of the Baltimore court house at Calvert and Lexington streets.

-- In June, supersleuth detectives in Loudon County, Tenn., and Lexington, Ill., cracked messy burglary cases. Loudon County sheriff's deputies arrested Frederick Downing, 31, after he pawned a VCR with bird droppings on it; deputies were waiting for that because it appeared that a bird in the burglarized home regularly perched above the VCR. In Lexington, James D. Kennedy, 32, pleaded guilty after being linked to a piece of stolen railroad machinery by freshly vomited spaghetti on the casing; the Lexington police chief inquired at a local restaurant that had run a spaghetti special on the night of the burglary and received a description of Kennedy from workers.

-- Dallas police officer Raymond Dethloff Jr., 34, was suspended for 15 days in March for eating a McDonald's chicken sandwich he took from a crashed car at an accident scene he was working. The 16-year-old girl to whom it belonged had been taken away in an ambulance with minor injuries.

-- A Chicago Tribune correspondent, writing from Caracas, Venezuela, in April, reported on the recent carjacking of Rosa Clemente, who was en route with her grandmother to visit her ailing grandfather. The grandmother pleaded with the two robbers to forget about the car (they could not, they explained; they needed it for the weekend) or at least to swing by the hospital and drop the two women off (which they reluctantly did). The grandmother also got them to promise to return the car by Monday because the women needed it for continuing transportation to the hospital. The men actually returned the car, but the women couldn't use it for three months because the police were holding it as evidence.

-- Fleeing on foot just ahead of cops in hot pursuit near Collinsville, Ill., in June, murder suspect Ronald Hardwick, 24, ran into a field and attempted to hide. However, alert Texas County sheriff's deputies noticed that a few cows, rather than idly grazing, had seemed to congregate in a certain area and were staring at a particular place where the field turns into woods. Deputies headed that way and soon ran across Hardwick.

-- Irene Luby, 75, was arrested in Barrington, Ill., in April and charged with felony shoplifting. It was her 145th arrest since 1989 (under as many as 60 aliases). This time, according to police, she had lifted a whole salami, two rolls of film, and several packages of medicine from a Jewel/Osco supermarket. In the police holding room, an officer said he heard a thump on the floor at Luby's feet and looked down to see a package. "What was that?" he asked her. Luby responded, "Would you like some cheese?" The officer then added a package of cheese to the charge.

-- Robert Hayden, 30, was arrested in East Moline, Ill., in February and charged with attempted robbery of the Esquire Lodge East. According to police, Hayden walked into the lobby with a hood over his head, and simulating a weapon in his hand, and demanded money. Hayden, who is black, then sheepishly aborted the robbery when he realized that the Esquire Lodge East was black-owned and -operated. He fled, but police caught him nearby.

-- At a celebrity auction in May, Debbie Dacoba of Paw Paw, Mich., bid $8,625 for a pair of Mr. Ed's horseshoes and was so overcome with joy when she won that she had to retreat to the ladies' room for 20 minutes until she stopped crying. Later she told a reporter that she would keep the horseshoes in plastic because specks of brown residue in the nail holes "could be manure, which I hope it is because then I have a piece of him."

-- A June Associated Press profile of Bernard Williams, 77, of Hannibal, Mo., described his work over the last 13 years: He has rewritten both the Old and New Testament of the Bible into rhyme in two books published by a local man, Jim Hefley, doing business as Hannibal Books. Williams' goal was to make the scriptures more accessible to readers.

News of the Weird reported in 1996 on hard-luck Oklahoma rapist Darron Bennalford Anderson, who had received a 2,200-year sentence in 1994 but appealed and won a new trial. Unfortunately for him, he was convicted again and this time given more than 90 additional centuries behind bars, a total of 11,250 years, including 40 centuries each for rape and sodomy, 17 1/2 centuries for kidnapping, 10 centuries for burglary and robbery, and five centuries for grand larceny. In July 1997, the state Court of Criminal Appeals held that the grand larceny charge was double jeopardy on the robbery conviction and dismissed it, speeding Anderson's release date up five centuries to the year A.D. 12,744.

Jimmy Robert Jewell, 33, was arrested in May in Redondo Beach, Calif., and charged with indecent exposure. He had opened the door of his van to flash a female passerby, who just happened to be carrying a camera in order to take pictures of a house she had had her eye on. She snapped several photos, of Jewell and of his license plate, and police tracked him down a short time later.

(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.)

-- Murderer Joe Labriola, serving a life sentence at Massachusetts' Norfolk prison, told the Boston Globe in August that he would very soon legally register an inmates' political action committee to dispense money to candidates and give the incarcerated a stronger voice in state elections. (Prisoners can vote in Massachusetts.) Said Labriola, "In the '70s, we thought we could make change (on prisoner issues) with violence," but now "we can make changes by using the vote."

-- An August Associated Press retrospective on legendary Liberian Joshua Milton Blahyi, 25, caught him roaming Monrovia in a suit and tie, preaching for his Soul-Winning Evangelistic Ministry. However, for the previous several years, he was the country's most famous, fearless and vicious warrior, widely known because he and the battalion he headed waged war in the nude, and hence his moniker, Gen. Butt Naked. He says his transformation occurred one day in 1996 when he was standing nude on the front lines waiting to kill some people, and God told him to stop. (However, putting on clothes was Blahyi's own idea, he said.)

-- Recent Adulterated-Food Lawsuits: For a spider in a breakfast at a Belle Vernon, Pa., Denny's restaurant (April), the customer received a $1,500 settlement; for a human fingertip in deli ham at a Tampa, Fla., Publix supermarket (May), a jury awarded $13,000; for a cockroach in the collard greens at an Orangeburg, S.C., KFC (June), a jury awarded $607,500. On the other hand, a judge in San Luis Obispo, Calif., ruled in March that the mouse in Richard Lang's McDonald's hot apple pie had been inserted after the sale, and also in March, highly regarded scientist Michael Zanakis, 43, was indicted in Brooklyn, N.Y., for extortion for allegedly planting a rat's tail in his son's McDonald's Happy Meal and demanding $5 million.

-- Perennial Kentucky candidate Thurman Jerome Hamlin, 73, has lost races for governor and the U.S. Senate and House and several other offices without complaining of injustice. In May, however, he filed a federal class-action employment-discrimination lawsuit against the University of Kentucky because it failed to interview him recently when the position of men's basketball coach became available.

-- Misa Teresaka, 32, filed a lawsuit for about $130,000 in July against the Discovery Bay health club in Hong Kong and her personal trainer Li Ching for injuries she suffered in 1995. She said the trainer encouraged her to continue to lift weights despite severe back aches and that the pain is now so bad that her career prospects are diminished because she can no longer bow.

-- In February in Montreal, the Sisters of Our Lady of Good Counsel, an order of nuns in Chicoutimi, Quebec, filed a lawsuit against the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, an order of nuns in Quebec City, over a $30 million (Cdn) investment dispute about a shopping center.

-- Steven Weisblat of New City, N.Y., filed a lawsuit against a recently married Armenian-American couple in Hackensack, N.J., in April for various injuries incurred while he was a guest at their wedding. According to the lawsuit, as tradition, the groom was tossed into the air by dancers, but they were inebriated and tossed him too far, and he landed on Weisblat, who wasn't even on the dance floor at the time.

-- James Van Gorder, 31, filed a lawsuit in August against the Parkway Chiropractic Center in Detroit for negligence during his recent treatment for back pain. According to Van Gorder, the chiropractor had him take off his clothes and lie face down on the two-part examining table. The way he was lying, his genitals fell between the parts, and when the chiropractor adjusted the table, Van Gorder got caught. He claims extreme pain, suffering, disfigurement and loss of sexual desire.

-- In June, to publicize the fact that it would soon resume bulk trash pickups (suspended for several months because of budget problems), the District of Columbia Department of Public Works paid to make TV public service announcements demonstrating that its crews were at work. However, according to the Washington Business Journal, fresh bulk trash (appliances, sofas, etc.) was brought in, at additional cost, to give the ads the proper look, despite the fact that residents had a huge backlog of the same items that they were perfectly willing to put out on the curb for free.

-- In March, an abandoned, severely cannibalized 1974 Dodge Dart, which had been sitting on the side of U.S. 68 near Wilmore, Ky., since 1988, was finally removed. During that time, the state government and Jessamine County each relentlessly argued that removing it was the other's responsibility.

-- In July, the Nova Scotia Gaming Control Commission formally banned the popular charity fund-raiser "cow patty bingo," in which a promoter marks a field into squares, takes bets, and then releases a recently fed cow to "select" a winning square. The commission believed the game could be rigged by training a cow to use a particular spot in the field. The next day, incoming Nova Scotia Premier Russell MacLellan said the ban could be ignored. That same week, the district attorney's office in Santa Clara County, Calif., announced that a similar fund-raiser for the imminent Gilroy garlic festival, based on the famous Clydesdale horses' two-mile march through town, could not be held because it violated the state gambling law.

-- The San Jose Mercury News reported in March on some working models of the Defense Department's tiny flying machines ("micro air vehicles"), no larger than birds, including one helicopter that could fit inside a peanut shell, that are suited for tasks such as locating hostages in occupied buildings, sniffing out poisonous chemicals, and finding enemy snipers. Each micro air vehicle carries cameras, sensors, transmitters and antennas.

-- A February New York Daily News story detailed what NYPD procedures require when a squad car needs a new tire. The officer must fill out a Tire Replacement Request form and send it to the Tire Integrity Unit, go pick up a tire at a city vehicle maintenance facility, take it to a city-approved vendor to have it put on, take the old tire back to the police garage, and have the precinct commander sign the Tire Replacement Request form certifying that the new tire is actually on the car. In 1995, the last year for which figures were available, NYPD salaries during tire-changing was nearly $500,000.

-- News of the Weird Themes, Recently Updated: Latest incident of a dog stepping on a gun and causing it to discharge and shoot the dog's owner, in Tacoma, Wash., in July; latest emphysema patient to die when he lit a cigarette and accidentally ignited his oxygen supply, in La Habra, Calif., in July; latest arson charges to be brought against a firefighter allegedly just trying to get some overtime pay, in Weiser, Iowa, in July; latest fatal beatings in Africa of so-called sorcerers who are suspected of making men's penises shrink or vanish with a mere handshake, in Dakar, Senegal, in August.

(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 New York Post reported in June that New York state has provided about 25 free organ-transplant operations (costing taxpayers about $1 million) for illegal aliens during the 18 months since Gov. Pataki promised to end the practice. State officials cited by the Post said they knew of "dozens" of cases over the years in which foreigners flew into the city, applied for Medicaid, received the expensive transplant surgery (including sex changes), and then flew home.

-- Life Imitates a Simon & Garfunkel Song: In May, according to a call taken by a Madison, Wis., police officer, a 26-year-old man phoned 911 to report that when he returned from a bathroom visit in the middle of the night, a stranger wearing only boxer shorts had taken his place in bed. The man turned out to be a very intoxicated 22-year-old student from DePere, Wis.

-- In December, at least 2,000 workers at a Sanyo Universal Electric company plant in Bangkok burned down the eight-story headquarters building along with the factory, warehouse, and inventory of refrigerators and TV sets. The workers were upset that they would receive a bonus of only three months' wages, which is generous by Thai standards but still only about half of last year's bonus.

-- In June, three environmental activists from Greenpeace set up a 12-foot-by-6-foot survival station atop a narrow, barren, 65-foot-high rock called Rockall, 290 miles off the coast of Scotland, and vowed to remain there until the British government stops oil exploration in the Atlantic Ocean. In Rockall-area storms, waves often reach heights of 90 feet and more.

-- Items Recently Thrown in Protest: A live pig, thrown into the office of the Massachusetts Bar Association in Boston in February to protest the legal profession; rotting bison entrails at Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman in March in Gardiner, Mont., by a man protesting the thinning of the bison herd; about $4,000 worth of money by a man in front of city hall in Seoul, South Korea, in May, to protest corrupt politicians; and bags of excrement and rocks, hurled by Ultra-Orthodox Jews at other Jews in Jerusalem in June, to protest mixed-gender praying.

-- A January New York Times story reported on the limited success so far in eliminating, in some parts of Ghana, the practice of giving a virgin daughter to a priest in order to atone for some sin of the girl's family. One example cited was a 12-year-old girl, the product of a rape, given to the local priest by the rapist as a slave (sexual and otherwise) in order to appease spirits who otherwise would treat the rapist and his family harshly. If the sin is severe, the family must provide girls for several generations.

-- In April, Premier Lien Chan of Taiwan ordered a crackdown on the national craze of public betel-nut chewing, which he said was responsible for mouth cancer, slimy sidewalks when they are spit out, and immorality, in that they are mostly sold by young, underdressed women at sidewalk stands. The betel nut is reportedly a mild stimulant and is slightly more expensive than a cigarette.

-- The Washington Post reported in May that some tribes in Yemen routinely kidnap tourists and hold them for days, though treating them well, regaling them with propaganda, and ultimately offering them to the government in exchange for political concessions, such as new road construction. Said the speaker of the Yemen parliament, "Kidnapping is part of tourism. [The] tourist will end up learning about the customs of the tribes, as well as their good hospitality."

-- A May report in the Jakarta Post described the daily rush of ill people to the home of Cecilia Subini and her husband Florentinus Suparmo in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in order to be therapeutically licked and nuzzled by their bull Joko Andhini. Thousands believe in the power of Joko's body, saliva and urine (which some rub on their skin and others drink) to cure such maladies as incontinence, arthritis, strokes, rashes, diabetes and cancer. And an Associated Press dispatch from Hyderabad, India, in June touted the success of the sardine-and-herb asthma treatment that hundreds of thousands travel for, to the Goud family home, on the one astrologically auspicious day of the year for swallowing the fish.

-- In January, despite increasing worldwide condemnation of so-called female circumcision in certain areas of Africa, an organization called the Bondo Society (described in a Reuters news report as a "powerful women's secret society") in Freetown, Sierra Leone, arranged for the unanesthetized clitoral removals from about 600 girls in a homeless persons' labor camp.

-- According to New York City police in May, Sidonia Williams tried to open a Lord & Taylor charge account by flashing a piece of U.S. currency in the amount of $1 million. There is no such denomination. Hers was created by pasting 0's onto a $1 bill and running it through a color copier. She cheerfully pointed out that she had 194 more just like it in her bag and insisted to the federal magistrate that she had committed no crime.

-- Steven Richard King, 22, was arrested in April for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch in Modesto, Calif., without a weapon. He used his thumb and finger to simulate a gun, but unlike most robbers who use this tactic, he failed to keep his hand in his pocket while doing it. The teller, realizing he had nothing to fear, merely walked away. King got tired of waiting and walked away, too, but police caught him nearby.

-- Robert A. Jackson, 17, and another man were arrested in July and charged with robbing a St. Peters, Mo., convenience store and a Citgo gas station. According to police, after the first robbery, Jackson couldn't get his getaway car started and so apologized to the clerk and gave the money back in exchange for a jump-start. The clerk started the car, then called police, who were in the area looking for Jackson when he allegedly pulled the second job.

-- Reginald Hunter, 43, was arrested in June and charged with robbing a convenience store in York, Pa., at 3 a.m. When the clerk told police the man's footwear consisted of flip-flops, police surmised he might live nearby. Sure enough, Hunter lives a few doors down from the store.

(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.)