News of the Weird

-- The minimum age for attendance at tennis, soccer and golf academies has dropped to 2, according to a June CNN story bolstered by interviews with instructors, parents and doctors in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area. Most parents are motivated, say experts, by visions of their toddlers growing up to become top pro players or at least earning college scholarships. Said one parent, whose 3-year-old daughter hits 70 tennis balls a day, "I think you have an edge starting at 3 with all (my daughter's) friends starting at 4 or 5."

-- A May 26 high-speed car chase and Mafia shootout in Lauro, Italy (just east of Naples), illustrated the changing face of organized crime, according to local newspapers and a Reuters dispatch from Rome. The participants in the lengthy gunfight were not the usual lieutenants and soldiers but middle-aged women and teen-age girls associated with the Cava crime family, shooting it out with rival Camorra family head Salvatore Graziano and his granddaughters and their mother, presumably over control of business in and around Naples. Two women and a 16-year-old girl were killed.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (53) High-tech male perverts who hook up tiny video cameras to, among other things, bathroom smoke-detectors or bathroom ceiling fans, or their shoes, to videotape women intimately, as did, respectively, a Gibsonburg, Ohio, landlord in February, a Ballarat, Australia, factory owner in February, and a Tokyo TV personality in December. (54) And Japanese men who are rejected by women and decide to retaliate by making hundreds of silent hang-up phone calls, as with a Waseda University lecturer who allegedly made 920 such calls earlier this year to the woman who declined his offer for a first date.

-- Perth, Australia, brothel owner Mary-Anne Kenworthy closed down for a day on April 30 because the influx of 5,500 U.S. Navy personnel on shore leave had left her workforce worn out. "We're the biggest and the best," she said, "(and) I'd rather take nothing than offer a poor service." She added, "I just wish they could dribble-feed the Yanks in, fly a thousand (in) at a time." (The Bremerton (Wash.) Sun carried a wire-service version of this story but later apologized for it to its readers since many Navy families in the Bremerton-Seattle area apparently did not appreciate learning this news.)

-- A subtle but apparently widespread corporate practice came to light earlier this year when the family of a deceased Wal-Mart warehouseman in Texas learned that the company had taken out a $64,000 life insurance policy on him, naming the company as beneficiary. Companies often buy policies for their top executives, but so-called "dead janitor" policies are usually purchased in secret, as tax dodges. Critics say that such companies lose the incentive to make their workplaces safer if they stand to collect on employees' deaths. Wal-Mart purchased about 350,000 such policies but canceled them this year after the practice was exposed.

-- According to Spanish biologist J.J. Negro (Estacion Biologica de Donana), reporting in the journal Nature in April, male Egyptian vultures compete for females on the basis of how brightly yellow the males' faces are, and that brightness varies directly with the amount of excrement they eat. Cartenoids in dung produce the yellow around the vultures' eyes, and only the strongest vultures can safely eat enough bacteria-laden feces to get a rich color.

-- Scientists at the Department of Primary Industries in Queensland, Australia, involved in ongoing research to reduce ozone-layer-corrupting methane production among cattle and sheep, reported in May that they have been studying why kangaroos are less flatulent than other animals and will soon begin testing 40 potentially methane-reducing bacteria found in their digestive tracts. Australian cows and sheep release 60 million tons of gas each year.

-- Hebrew University (Jerusalem) agriculture professor Avigdor Cahaner told reporters in May that he has been breeding featherless chickens (which supposedly are less expensive to raise) for a while now and believes they (which he calls "naked chickens") can be in commercial production in two years. An Israeli animal rights activist condemned the breeding because feathers protect the bird in several ways, but Cahaner said his new birds are more likely to survive in hot climates, where the premature death rate is more than 10 percent.

Kimberly Fennessey was injured in Bryan, Texas, in May when, to test whether a .22-caliber pistol worked, she fired it at a frying pan she was holding, and it ricocheted and hit her above the right eye. And in Green Bay, Wis., Susan Winkler, 44, was charged with reckless endangerment in May for shooting her husband, Brian, in the groin, sending him to the hospital; she said the couple's sexual foreplay often included their shotgun, but this time she had forgotten it was loaded.

Police in Norfolk, Neb., are still trying to find Curtis Boyd, 23, after he skipped out on bail after allegedly trying to pass a check for $22 million at the Bank of Norfolk drive-through in May. Boyd had purchased a computer software check-writing program and apparently figured all he had to do to get the bank to give him money was to present a realistic-looking check with certain Federal Reserve code numbers. When the bank declined to take it, Boyd took the check back, decided apparently that the one imperfection in the check was the lack of an "issuing bank," and thus returned to the Bank of Norfolk after hand-writing the name "Reality Perspective Bank" at the top of the check. This time, the bank employees called the police.

A 20-year-old man on his way to an eye doctor's appointment was injured when he accidentally walked into the side of a transit bus (Ambridge, Pa., May). Iowa City High School won the Iowa State Math Championship, but afterward, officials went back over the scores, discovered they had miscounted, and named West High School (also in Iowa City) the winner (April). A 39-year-old man with a bad stuttering problem claimed unlawful discrimination when he was turned down in his quest to become a licensed driving instructor; his trainer found that the man could not utter the word "stop" fast enough (London, April).

South Korea's Supreme Court overturned theft convictions (31 incidents, about $2,400 worth of merchandise) against a woman on the ground that she was menstruating (which, according to one justice, made her like a "mentally deranged patient," "unable to control her impulses") (June). Hundreds of teen-age humans, admitted to the Buffalo (N.Y.) Zoo for free on Memorial Day, trashed the grounds and several exhibits, abused animals, vandalized toilets and set a fire (but all the zoo's nonhumans were reportedly well-behaved) (May). The Glasgow, Scotland, city council voted to give about $1,700 worth of computer equipment to each of 30 habitually truant schoolkids, in the hope that they'll begin studying at home (March).

Six people were injured (two seriously) as croquet players and softball players pummeled each other with mallets in a late-night brawl over which sport is more manly (Calgary, Alberta). After a homeowner allegedly reneged on payment, the owner of a wild-animal removal service brought back the raccoon he had taken from the property and put it back under the house (Grand Blanc Township, Mich.). A Catholic priest closed down his "Junior Professional Wrestling Association" Web site, which featured photos of teen-age boys in wrestling tights, allegedly a charitable fund-raising venture (Mont Clare, Pa.). The acting director of the Maryland Transit Administration decided she needed an indefinite leave of absence after the wheels fell off of a transit bus for the 17th time in nine months (Baltimore).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Newsweird@aol.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)

-- In a May dispatch from Cuba, The Wall Street Journal reported that Fidel Castro proposed in 1987 to alleviate a chronic milk shortage by trying to get his scientists to clone the most productive cows, shrunk to the size of dogs so that each family could keep one inside its apartment. The cows would feed on grass grown inside under fluorescent lights. Cuba was the home of the late Ubre Blanca, the Guinness book record-holder as the most milk-productive cow of all time.

-- A Dutch livestock-breeding-device manufacturer recently began selling a $27 vibrator that supposedly relaxes sows during artificial insemination to increase the chances of fertilization. Said the sales manager at the company Schippers Bladel BV, "Once the vibrator is inserted, the pig's ears will go up and she will stand ready to be serviced." The company also makes a remote-controlled plastic pig whose movements, mating sounds and scents supposedly encourage the sow to be serviced.

Among those arrested in May for inexplicable nudity: a 45-year-old man, driving naked on Interstate 95 (Cocoa, Fla.); a 23-year-old man, driving a pickup truck naked over the lawn of the state capitol (Lincoln, Neb.); a woman riding naked atop an SUV (Indianapolis); a 21-year-old prisoner who stripped and jumped against a bulletproof courthouse window in a futile escape attempt (Hillsboro, Mo.); a man in his 20s who ran onto an ice rink naked, interrupting a late-night skating class (Richmond, British Columbia); and a 20-year-old man who broke into a house and immediately removed his clothes (Eugene, Ore.).

-- They've Got the Shining: After the body of Chandra Levy was found in a wooded area of Washington, D.C., in May, former Georgia state Rep. Dorothy Pelote, who via a much-maligned psychic vision last year "saw" Levy's body in a ditch in the woods, said this proves that she has "the gift." And Fort Lauderdale, Fla., attorney William Cone told reporters in April that Federal Trade Commission fraud charges against his client, the psychic Miss Cleo, are bogus because she actually can see the future. Cone also said his California-born client's claim to be a Jamaican shaman was true, too, and gave seven possible explanations for that, saying one of them described Miss Cleo but refusing to tell reporters which one it was.

-- Testifying at the child pornography trial of John Robin Sharpe in Vancouver, British Columbia, in January, English literature professor James Miller (University of Western Ontario) said Sharpe's self-published writings were comparable to mainstream literature such as that of Dickens and Dante. According to Miller, Sharpe's book "Sam Paloc's Boyabuse: Flogging, Fun, and Fortitude: A Collection of Kiddie Kink Classics," was "transgressive literature" that "celebrates, in a ritual way, alternative visions of culture," "reveal(ing) the seismic ironies in the new world order associated with globalization." (In March, a judge acquitted Sharpe on his writings but convicted him on two counts of possessing child porn photos.)

-- In Scranton, Pa., in May, Janice Taylor, who maimed her 4-year-old son in 2000 in a stabbing attack because she thought he was the Antichrist, filed a lawsuit against two psychiatrists and an obstetrician for not giving her enough anti-psychosis medication. Taylor was pregnant at the time she attacked the boy, and her doctors were wary of prescribing more medication for fear it would harm her fetus, but they finally relented and gave small doses of Thorazine. (The baby was born unharmed, even though Taylor made a stab at it, too, plunging the knife into her abdomen.)

-- According to police in Woodinville, Wash., when Anita Durrett, 42, tried to speed away in her car with $266 worth of groceries shoplifted from an Albertson's store, an employee pursued her in his car, and when Durrett lost control and crashed at 90 mph, her 9-year-old daughter, riding in the front seat, was killed. Though Durrett has been convicted of vehicular manslaughter, she filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in May against Albertson's, claiming that they should not have chased her.

-- Italy's highest appeals court ruled in April that a 29-year-old out-of-work lawyer still has the right to be housed and financially supported by his parents. The son, Marco Andreoli, owns property and has access to a $200,000 trust fund, but he objected when his father cut off his $675 monthly allowance that had been ordered when his parents divorced, saying he needed it because he had not found a job fulfilling enough. (More than a third of all men in Italy between ages 30 and 34 still live with their parents.)

-- Born-again-Christian roommates Derrick Mitchell, 38, and Teresa Tafawa, 58, were served eviction notices in May by their landlord in Cornwall, Ontario, because of complaints that they pray loudly and often around the apartment complex. Mitchell says he can't help himself when he receives "visions," especially the holy alerts about local devil worship; he said he is moved to speak in a high, quivering voice that Tafawa calls "the ecstasies" and that the pair may pray and sing for several hours a day, even in the laundry room and the parking lot. Said Tafawa, "We try to walk with the Lord all day."

In April, Judge Gerald Jewers of the Manitoba (Canada) Court of Queen's Bench awarded Lynette Mary Sant, 55, about $63,000 (U.S.) because she believes very strongly that a company's chemical vapors made her ill even though the judge admits that there was no evidence that the vapors caused her problems. The judge found Sant's symptoms were real but that tests exposing Sant to distilled water had the same effect.

A 54-year-old school guard was accidentally shot to death by a colleague as the two demonstrated quick-draw techniques to each other outside a school dance (New Orleans, April). A 38-year-old angler was killed when he overestimated the height of a cement bridge beam he drove his boat under while speeding at midnight in a no-wake zone (Wilton Manors, Fla., March). The 22-year-old man behind the wheel of a drive-by-shooting car was accidentally killed by the passenger-side shooter, firing out the driver's-side window (Los Angeles, May).

High school students in Palm Beach County, Fla., needed only a score of 23 percent to pass a standardized state history test (55 is an A) (May). Through bureaucratic error, sensitive U.S. Air Force spy-plane parts, originally intended for destruction, wound up in private hands and were up for auction on the online eBay service (May). Also through bureaucratic error, 50 large boxes of sensitive abuse reports and medical records of foster children and other clients of Florida's embattled Department of Children and Families were offered at auction and purchased by a TV reporter for $5 (May).

Three young Amish drivers were charged with traffic violations after their late-night buggies' race caused a collision with another Amish-driven buggy (Leon, N.Y.). A 17-year-old boy who had allegedly vandalized a beekeeper's hives with a truck was identified because his family Bible had fallen out of the driver's side door during the incident (Northeast Harbor, Maine). A 24-year-old man dashed frenziedly out of his apartment after settling down to sleep and encountering a 3-foot-long snake under the sheets, left over from a previous tenant (Guelph, Ontario). Police put out bulletins for the "dork bandit," named for his demeanor, who is wanted in three robberies (Atlanta).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Newsweird@aol.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)

-- "Hundreds" of young Chinese women and men have recently endured the painful-for-months "Ilizarov procedure" to gain a few inches in height to supposedly improve their social and professional status. According to a May New York Times dispatch, the $6,000 procedure involves breaking bones in the shins or thighs, then manually adjusting special leg braces four times a day that pull the bones slightly apart, then waiting until the bones grow back and fuse together (which usually takes about six months, plus a three-month recovery). Said one 33-year-old, 5-foot-tall woman (aiming for 5-4): "I'll have a better job, a better boyfriend, and eventually a better husband. It's a long-term investment."

-- In May, Great Britain's Home Office, deciding on the proper compensation for a man who served 11 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, ruled that he was entitled to about $1.1 million, but said he would have to reimburse the prison about $63,000 for 11 years' room and board. Said the outraged Michael O'Brien, 34, who had been freed by a Court of Appeal in 1999: "They don't charge guilty people for bed and board. They only charge innocent people."

Germany's lower house of parliament voted in May to add "and animals" to its constitution's guarantee of protection for the dignity of humans. On the other hand, the director of Washington, D.C.,'s National Zoo denied The Washington Post a look at its animals' medical records in May in part to protect the animals' right of "privacy," a claim which stunned at least one animal-rights advocate. And a British ad agency came under fire in May for a cutesy commercial featuring a dog engaging (via trick photography) in X-rated undulations (supposedly imitating what he observed at a certain randy-young-singles' resort); critics said the dog in the ad was being held up to "ridicule and indignity."

-- What was described in a January Times of London story as an obscure panel of European Union bureaucrats (the Nomenclature sub-group of the Customs Code Committee) has been meeting in Brussels off and on for months now for the purpose of deciding the thorny question of how many lumps (20 percent to 30 percent) are permissible in a can of mushroom (or pasta) sauce before those foods are classified as "vegetables," which would be subject to much higher import taxes than "sauces." As of late May, there has been no announcement from the sub-group.

-- Among the most notable "pork barrel" projects in the FY 2002 federal budget, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, were: $273,000 for Blue Springs, Mo., to fight the incursion of "goth" culture among its young; $50,000 for San Luis Obispo, Calif., to remove gang members' tattoos; $450,000 to restore chimneys on Cumberland Island, Ga.; $240,000 for pecan research; $260,000 to explore asparagus technology; $200,000 to upgrade a kayak river course in Wausau, Wis.; and $600,000 to research the sex life of the South African ground squirrel.

-- According to a January report of the Department of Energy's inspector general, federal facilities in Tennessee and Ohio actually tested in all seriousness a procedure that was no more than a fancy dowsing device ("passive magnetic resonance anomaly mapping") worn on the wrist of an operator, who senses underground water, faults, buried objects and chemicals, via supposed changes in "magnetic fields." Apparently, no one at the facilities was skeptical even though the contractor said only one person in the world was "qualified" to operate the PMRAM, and he lives in the Ukraine.

-- Rodney Jones of Mendocino, Calif., was the victim of "identity theft" in 1999, facilitated by the Department of Motor Vehicles' issuing a duplicate license to the thief (who is black; Jones is white). Eventually, his records were restored, but his attempt to get DMV to pay for the inconvenience to him failed when a state appeals court ruled in April 2002 that DMV could not be held liable for issuing the bogus license. According to Jones, DMV has throughout refused to give him the name of the identity thief, citing applicants' "privacy" rights.

-- In November, the District of Columbia Department of Corrections carelessly failed to release a homeless man after charges against him were dropped because, according to The Washington Post, computer records were not updated. (He stayed in jail for five months.) And the same department, also according to the Post, mistakenly released a bank robber in March, then tracked him down at his mother's home by telephone and told him to report back to jail, but the department did not bother to send anyone to the home to get him. (He eventually returned on his own.)

James O. Riccardi III, 42, was charged with five misdemeanor counts by Higginsville, Mo., police in May in connection with bizarre phone calls to high school athletes in which the caller pretends to be a University of Missouri coach offering scholarships but then turns the conversation to the students' spanking their bare buttocks to show their dedication to college sports. The university said it has received 86 complaints about similar calls to student athletes throughout Kansas and Missouri. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch-AP, 5-26-02]

Justin Aragon, 19, was arrested in March in Albuquerque, N.M., and charged with roughing up his girlfriend and threatening to kill members of her family. According to police, his reign of terror came to an end in the incident when he collapsed and hit his head on a coffee table after informing the victim that he had laced her drink with a toxic substance but then had accidentally drunk it himself.

News of the Weird has reported several times on antisocial, and criminal, behavior in which the perpetrator commemorates his work in meticulous written detail. China News Service reported in May that Li Qingpu, 56, was sentenced to 20 years in prison following a trial in southern Hainan province for visiting prostitutes while he was supposed to be on duty as a government textile official. The evidence against him was from four file cabinets in his house, containing 95 diaries listing his sex partners by name, time and place, including lengthy descriptions of the women and what took place between them, plus fastidiously labeled pubic hair samples from 236 of them.

A "mini-industry" has developed in which pregnant South Korean women plan U.S. vacations, apparently for the sole purpose of gaining automatic American citizenship for the babies, according to the Los Angeles Times (May). An armed Buddhist monk, complaining that he was harassed by police, rushed Thailand's parliament building firing his AK-47 (May). Two British tourists caused a furor among townspeople in Mombasa, Kenya, when they spent about $140 (about half the average monthly wage in Kenya) to save the life of an injured monitor lizard they had come across (May).

An intoxicated 55-year-old man ran his car into a ditch, then climbed back to the highway, where he was accidentally hit by another car, driven by his intoxicated 43-year-old wife (Canaseraga, N.Y.). A 26-year-old college student was diagnosed with repetitive strain injury from a year's worth of hoisting about 25 pints of beer a week at a tavern (Manchester, England). Surgeons reported that a 7-year-old girl who had half of her brain removed in 1998 now speaks Dutch and Turkish fluently (Rotterdam, Netherlands). Minutes after allegedly robbing a bank, a 39-year-old man was captured when police spotted him holding forth at a bar a few blocks away (Winfield, Ind.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Newsweird@aol.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)