-- According to a Chicago Tribune report in September, some parents in Oak Park, Ill., are objecting to what they believe is an implicit anti-Americanism in a "Pledge to the Planet" that some Hatch Elementary School teachers require students to recite along with the "Pledge of Allegiance." (The controversial oath: "I pledge allegiance to the Earth, this unique blue-water planet, graced by life, our only home. I promise to respect all living things, and to protect to the best of my abilities all parts of our planet's environment, and to promote peace among the human family, with liberty and justice for all.")

-- Five people were indicted in Brenham, Texas, in August for a scheme to kidnap a pig, which had just lost a livestock show judging in Houston, and spirit it away to another show in San Angelo, Texas (where, by the way, it won first place, worth $4,000). The pig had belonged to one of the five people accused, but under the rules of the Houston contest, all losing pigs automatically became the property of a slaughterhouse.

In May, a judge in Red Deer, Alberta, sentenced Nelson Dicks, 32, to 21 days in jail for making a false claim on an unemployment insurance form. Jail time is not usually given on first offenses, but Dicks got in additional trouble by volunteering that life was tough for him and that he might be forced to apply for benefits again even though he was working, provoking the judge to ask him, point-blank, "So you'll lie again?" Responded Dicks, "You're damn right."

In August, Douglas Illingsworth, 83, had his driver's license suspended for a year by a court in Barnsley, South Yorks, England, after several incidents in which he tied up traffic by driving less than 15 mph on thoroughfares, including a stint at about 1 mph. And in Dale City, Va., in June, a 30-year-old motorist was beaten with a steering-wheel-locking device (which was apparently the closest available weapon) at a traffic light by a 33-year-old woman who was incensed that he had been driving too slowly.

In May, residents of Qiongshan village in Guangdong province, China, blew up a brand-new bridge on a main artery because they believed it had been constructed in violation of the principles of feng shui (spiritual beliefs about the arrangement of objects in a space). And New York feng shui authority Eliza Arekelian told The Independent of London that the July scaffolding collapse in Times Square was caused in part by the Concorde jet's nose on a nearby billboard, pointing the wrong way. And Newsweek reported in May that business was booming for New York City "smudger" Eleni Santoro, who charges real estate agents $200 an hour to erase the negative energy from a property.

Just before an April angling tournament in Appling, Ga., as Verdell James, 70, was tying his line, he sneezed his $300 false teeth into Thurmond Lake and had to fish them out before getting down to business. And in July, near Calgary, Alberta, a 19-year-old man being pursued by police after he hijacked a car dumped the car and hid out in the tall grass in a field but blew his cover when he couldn't suppress a sneeze.

-- Nissan's quality-assurance director at its plant in Sunderland, England, announced in July that the company had developed a substance based on the most destructive forms of bird poop they had found throughout the world, for the purpose of rigorously testing its automobiles' paint jobs. Added the director, John Burke, "It looks like the real thing: It's white, it's viscous and it smells horrible."

-- In July in the remote Australian town of Ravensthorpe, newly arrived family doctor Steve Hindley saved the life of 23-year-old football player Hayden McGlinn, who suffered a rapidly hemorrhaging head injury and would not have survived an airlift to surgery. Dr. Hindley cleaned off a rusting brace-and-bit drill from a woodshed and made a hole in McGlinn's temple to relieve the life-threatening pressure, which allowed time for him to be sent to a hospital in Perth.

-- Physicist Juan Atanasio Carrasco announced in August in Guijuelo, Spain, that he was using CAT scan technology to determine how salt makes its way through delicate Iberian hams in the process known as curing, in order to improve the hams' quality and minimize spoilage.

-- Mrs. Xian's Delight: In March, China's official Xinhua news agency reported that surgeons at a military hospital in Chongqing had successfully removed two of the three tongues of farmer Xian Shihua, 32, enabling him to eat and speak comfortably for the first time in 20 years. His birth tongue, 13 inches long, remains; the other two (about 3 inches each) had grown during adolescence.

News of the Weird reported that in January 1998, the executor of the estate of the late Larry Lee Hillblom (founder of the DHL international courier service) agreed to pay out $90 million to four Pacific Islands teen-agers if they could prove paternity by Hillblom's DNA. At the time, proof seemed imminent, but shortly afterward, the children's lawyers reported that not only had all of Hillblom's belongings disappeared from his house in Northern Mariana Islands but that the house had been sanitized to such a degree that not even a single hair could be found. Also, the site of Hillblom's 1995 plane crash was devoid of even a single speck of blood. In June, a former Hillblom associate was identified as a suspect in the movie-plot-like cleaning.

In September at a bar in Porto Hel, Greece, British vacationer Daniel Littlewood, 23, died showing off to a female companion that he was impervious to pain; he had instructed her to place a Swiss Army knife against his abdomen while he leaned into it with great force, but he miscalculated. And in August, Ivory Coast army Col. Pascal Gbah, 49, shot himself to death while testing a supposedly "magic" belt that the manufacturer (Gbah's cousin) said would protect the user from gunfire.

(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.)

-- According to a Reuters wire service report in August, lobbyists in Bonn, Germany, called the Working Group for the Unemployed held a series of rallies to demand six weeks' annual paid vacation for people out of work, pointing out that those looking for work often are under greater stress than those with jobs and thus need a longer holiday.

-- In September, federal, state and local authorities raided a field near Salinas, Calif., and seized about 1,000 khat plants, which produce a controlled substance that is still fairly new to the U.S., probably having been introduced by soldiers who served in Somalia. Khat is said to produce bliss, clarity of thought, euphoria and excessive energy. And the Chicago Tribune reported in August that Abbott Laboratories has just completed successful human trials of ABT-594, a drug said to be 200 times as powerful as morphine but still nonaddictive. The drug comes from a tiny Ecuadoran frog whose highly poisonous secretions have long been used to coat blowgun darts.

U.S. News & World Report disclosed in July that Iraq, with a supposedly hungry populace yet limited to buying only essential "humanitarian" items under the U.N. trade embargo, ordered 25 rowing machines and four liposuction devices from a German company. And in August, in a 13-page bequest released by the Register of Wills in Bethlehem, Pa., Robert Allan Miller of Bethlehem was revealed to have set aside $5,000 for 10 monthly awards "to the most conscientious police officer(s), who (give) the most traffic tickets to motorists who double-park." Said a friend, "(Miller) lived on a really narrow street."

In August, a 26-year-old woman reported being raped by five men in her van on a street in Spokane, Wash., and a massive police manhunt began. Several days later, she apologized and said the sex was consensual, part of a fantasy she lived out by picking the men up, and that her husband was involved. And in August, a couple from Silver Spring, Md., were arrested for indecent exposure at an adult cinema in Baltimore after the husband had arranged for four men to have sex with his wife on the premises. According to police, several other males in the theater complained, apparently because the live sex interfered with their watching sex on the screen.

John Grotluschen, police chief of Clarksville, Iowa, accidentally shot himself in the hand in August while cleaning his gun. And Bruce Seal, sheriff of Claiborne County, Tenn., accidentally shot himself in the foot in July while reaching into his pocket for his car keys. And Chuck Lewis, police chief of Coggon, Iowa, revealed to reporters in July that because of his 1995 assault conviction, Sheriff Don Zeller won't give him a license to carry a gun.

-- Rev. Muhamed Siddeeq, spiritual adviser to Mike Tyson, telling the New Jersey State Athletic Commission in July that the fighter is of such great character that not only should he get back his boxing license (which was removed after he bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear in his last fight) but is a prime candidate to succeed Kofi Annan as U.N. secretary general: "I see Mike solving many of the world's problems."

-- Mary Lauro, head of a civic group seeking to incorporate the new town of Imperial in Jefferson County, Mo., upset in May that her issue was not being taken seriously enough by the county commission: "(Commissioner Jon Selsor) is right next to Hitler, Stalin and all the other dictators."

-- The Los Angeles Times reported in July that in addition to construction of a small park in Washington, D.C.,'s Dupont Circle neighborhood named for the late Sonny Bono, there is "talk" at the University of California, Riverside, of creating a Sonny Bono School of Government.

-- In July, a 28-year-old man was ticketed for speeding in Great Falls, Mont., allegedly doing 104 in a 45 mph zone. According to the Cascade County Sheriff John Strandell, the man said he had just washed his car and needed to drive fast to dry it off.

-- In September in Arusha, Tanzania, former Rwandan prime minister Jean Kambanda was convicted of genocide in a United Nations tribunal for his role in the slaughter of 500,000 Rwandan Tutsis in 1994 but professed surprise that he was sentenced to life in prison. His lawyer said that because Kambanda had cooperated with authorities in naming his henchman, he was hopeful of doing no more than two years.

James L. Liddell was arrested in Granite City, Ill., at his home, about an hour after police say he robbed a Magna Bank branch. Police said Liddell apparently decided to rob the bank while in line to cash a $12.19 payroll check made out to him, which was recovered at the scene, along with the ID he intended to use to cash it.

News of the Weird reported in 1995 on the preferred expression of worship at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship Church, Toronto, Ontario: falling to the floor in soothing laughter over the greatness of the Holy Spirit. Worshipers came from around the world seeking the "Toronto Blessing" that is likened to the euphoria in other religions that causes adherents to speak in tongues. Among the more successful programs in the U.S., according to recent reports in the Chicago Sun Times (August) and the Providence Journal-Bulletin (September), are the nondenominational Fun Church in Chicago that also attracts busloads of worshipers from Indiana and the "Laughing Revival" of the New Life Worship Center in Smithfield, R.I., whose parishioners may remain on the floor for up to an hour, giggling.

In September in Lanham, Md., a 26-year-old man lost control of his motorcycle and crashed, killing himself. Police said it was alcohol-related; four hours earlier, the man had been driven home from a part-time job, which was to get drunk at a police training class so officers could practice doing sobriety tests on him. When he left work, he had a 0.12 blood-alcohol level.

(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 August, Ukrainian Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko began a crackdown on tax delinquents to collect the $3.5 billion the government is owed. The centerpiece of the campaign is to call the top 1,500 tax scofflaws, mostly business executives, to a military base near Kiev to live for an undetermined time in tents, to listen to lectures on civil defense preparedness for natural disasters until apparently out of sheer boredom they decide to pay up.

-- The notorious Japanese TV game show "Super Jockey" (which features stunts such as contestants competing to eat repulsive-flavored ice cream) began selling commercial time on the show recently by inviting potential sponsors to present bikini-clad women who would endure dunkings in scalding-hot water and then be rewarded with commercial time equivalent to the number of seconds they endured the pain.

In July, the Tennessee Supreme Court reinstated patient Frances Blanchard's lawsuit against Memphis dentist Arlene Kellum for allegedly committing battery by attempting to pull out all 32 of her teeth in one sitting. (Blanchard, who has a gum disease, said she thought it would be done over several visits.) Kellum was half done when Blanchard fainted and had to be hospitalized for six days. And a jury in Oklahoma City awarded $1.3 million to Mark Macsenti in June for brain damage he suffered when dentist Jon D. Becker went to sleep during an appointment and left Macsenti hooked up to nitrous oxide for about 10 hours.

In July, Canada's Human Resources Development office announced it was creating a special legal category for strippers entering the country to address what a leading immigration lawyer called "a shortage of exotic dancers." And according to a Times of London report in April, a glut of British fashion models was crowding out British computer tech people in the fight for valuable work permits in California this summer, to the chagrin of Apple, Texas Instruments and other firms, since the law that authorizes work permits explicitly puts models on even footing with anyone who has a college degree.

Georgia state Sen. Ralph David Abernathy III, son of the late civil rights leader, announced his retirement from politics in July after his $400 re-election filing fee check bounced. His legislative career included an incident of following a female into a state Capitol ladies' room and of being caught with marijuana in his underwear at the Atlanta airport. He said he plans to enter the seminary.

(1) Chewing Gum Rage: A 5-foot, 380-pound man who accidentally sat on chewing gum in a Bellevue, Neb., movie theater in July took off his sticky pants, walked around, yelled and seethed, and punched out a glass case. (2) Spelling Rage: Bronx, N.Y., school board member Dennis Coleman disrupted a July meeting by haranguing the staff and refusing to be quieted by the chancellor when he discovered that the word "rescind" was misspelled on a resolution to be voted on. (3) Barber Rage: In July, Providence, R.I., barber Sam Johnson, 53, upset that a 21-month-old customer wouldn't be still, allegedly whacked the kid in the head with his electric clipper and then sprayed alcohol to make the cut sting.

-- Convicted killer Robert Hunt lost his appeal to the Nebraska Supreme Court in June. In his closing argument at trial, Hunt's lawyer, in an effort to gain the jury's sympathy for Hunt, had called him a "creepy, slimy, sexual degenerate," and Hunt complained that the strategy obviously backfired, in that he got a life sentence. The Supreme Court said Hunt would probably have been convicted anyway (but took no position on whether the lawyer's statement was accurate).

-- In July, Diane Parker accompanied her husband, Richard W. Parker, (who had been accused of drug trafficking) to federal court in Los Angeles. According to friends, Diane was so supportive that she had come prepared to put up her investment property and her mother's townhouse to make Richard's bail. However, the prosecutor began reciting to the judge facts about Richard's double life that included a mistress and a safe house, and Diane's expression changed dramatically. She removed her wedding ring with a flourish, walked out of court, immediately drove to an Orange County office where the mistress worked, and punched her several times before being restrained.

-- In March, students from Madrona Middle School, visiting Torrance (Calif.) Superior Court to learn about the legal system, were ushered by their teacher into a trial in session despite a warning to the teacher that the subject matter was "sensitive." Virtually the first thing the kids saw was, in a child molestation case, the prosecutor's propping up two 10-inch dildos on the railing of the witness stand so as to make her line of questioning more vivid for the jury.

-- Petty-theft defendant Ronnie Hawkins, acting as his own lawyer in a Long Beach, Calif., courtroom in July, thought incessantly talking back to Judge Joan Comparet-Cassani was a good strategy, but Hawkins had been fitted with a remote-controlled "stun belt" under his clothing, and the judge ordered a bailiff to send Hawkins a bone-rattling 50,000 volts of electricity, causing him to grimace and his body to turn as taut as a board for the 8-second blast. Five days later in Oakland, Calif., Brian Tracey Hill suffered the same fate during jury selection on an assault charge. However, Hill was behaving perfectly; a sheriff's deputy had leaned over in his chair and accidentally nudged the stun belt's trigger.

-- Murder-trial juror Gillian Guess, 43, was convicted in June of obstruction of justice when a court in Vancouver, British Columbia, found that she was having a torrid sexual affair with the defendant, who was eventually acquitted in large part through jury-room advocacy by Guess. Witnesses said Guess appeared to be attracted to defendant Peter Gill early in the 1995 trial and frequently sat facing him instead of the witness box, sometimes with her legs wantonly uncrossed.

-- Michael H. Egli was found in contempt of court in Daytona Beach, Fla., in August. He had tried to get out of jury duty by sending the court clerk two messages announcing that he "hate(s)" "(epithet for blacks), cops and judges." Egli has a kidney condition that requires regularly scheduled dialysis and was surprised when the judge told him he would automatically have been excluded from jury duty, anyway.

From time to time News of the Weird has reported on the fluctuating value of the late Italian artist Piero Manzoni's personal feces, which he canned in 1961 as art objects in 90 tins, 30 grams at a time. The Baltimore Sun reported in 1993 that one tin sold for $75,000 at the top of the market. The latest sale, in July 1998 at Sotheby's in London, was for about $28,800. However, even with the drop in price, as Forbes magazine pointed out, Manzoni's feces is still about $1,000 per gram, almost 100 times the price of gold ($9.50 per gram).

A 17-year-old boy was killed in Navarino, Wis., in July when shrapnel from a mailbox he was playfully blowing up with a firecracker severed his carotid artery. And a 28-year-old man drowned in Mount Clemens, Mich., in July in an apartment-house pool while winning a game with his friends as to who could hold his breath under water the longest.

(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.)