News of the Weird

-- Uncontrolled crime (eight times the murder rate of New York City) and a huge wealth disparity (most people either fabulously rich or appallingly poor, with few in the middle) have caused the 1 million wealthiest residents of Sao Paulo, Brazil, to protect themselves by living in 300 gated communities (and have caused some to avoid the city's crime and squalor by traveling exclusively by helicopter), according to a June Washington Post dispatch. About 4,000 people a year without helicopter access armor-plate their cars at twice the price of the car. One walled community (Alphaville) houses 30,000 people, protected by 1,100 armed guards who keep the grounds under constant surveillance and pat down the servants as they head home from work.

-- Israeli police announced in June that they were investigating reports that a syndicate in a town just north of Gaza was running daily betting pools on the site of the next suicide bombing, with odds ranging from 17-1 in the peaceful town of Eilat to 3-2 in Jerusalem. The syndicate's alleged betting cards limit the action to attacks by Arabs on Jews.

A 12-year-old girl was arrested on charges that she coerced younger girls into prostitution in one of several local cases involving adolescent "pimps" (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; April). Jimmy Kave, 75, was charged with 16 sex-related counts for impregnating an 11-year-old girl (although he claimed the girl initiated the whole thing) (Bridgeport, Conn.; April). New Scientist magazine reported in April that a retired U.S. Army researcher's study had found that adolescent African-American girls are reaching puberty as young as age 8 because of the excessive hormones in shampoos marketed specifically for blacks (such as B&B Super Gro).

-- Lawyer Steven Wise, promoting his book "Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights," told an audience at a Washington, D.C., bookstore in June: "I don't see a difference between a chimpanzee and my 4 1/2-year-old son (based on the fact that 98.7 percent of their respective DNA is the same)." (The boy, Christopher, was not available for comment.)

-- Deputy Secretary of Labor D. Cameron Findlay, complaining to a State Department official in March (according to The Washington Post) that the government often ignores the statute requiring it to help American workers who have been harmed by world trade: "(The Trade Adjustment Assistance statute) is treated like a teen-age girl in the backseat of a car. You promise her anything to get what you want. And then when you get it, you leave her."

-- Among recent comments accompanying the confessions of criminals: Jermarr Arnold, in an interview shortly before his January execution in Huntsville, Texas, explaining his record of two murders and two dozen rapes, said: "Sometimes I feel paranoid and threatened, and I (lash) out. I'm not very good with people." And Pattaya, Thailand, police Sgt. Major Charchai Suksiri, 50, explaining why his wife of 25 years was still alive after he fired several shots at her and then several more later the same day in her hospital room: "Luckily, I ran out of bullets before (she could die)." And in April, Darnell C. Smith, moments after being sentenced to life in prison for murder in Minneapolis, told the victim's relatives, "I know I'm a piece of (expletive not reported by the local newspaper). I have been all my life."

-- In May, Tampa, Fla., judge Richard Nielsen, apparently impatient that a 16-year-old burglary convict had not acquired an attorney for his hearing on restitution to the victim, ordered the boy to proceed anyway, to call witnesses and introduce evidence, even though the boy did not know what "restitution" meant and thought at first that the prosecutor was there to help him. (Florida law requires attorneys for all juveniles.) A few minutes later, Nielsen ejected the boy's mother from the courtroom because she would not stop giving the boy advice. (Nielsen's behavior might not have come to light had not a St. Petersburg Times reporter happened into the courtroom by chance.)

-- A U.S. Court of Appeals panel agreed with a lower court in December that a Missouri county judge had unconstitutionally denied defendant Gary Moore the right to converse with his attorney during his burglary trial (having ordered the two to communicate only by passing notes back and forth, which was difficult for Moore, who has problems with the written language). The St. Louis County judge, Philip Sweeney, had said at the time, "(T)here's very little that needs to be discussed during a trial."

Louis Papakostas, 35, was sentenced to eight years in prison on drug charges in Corpus Christi, Texas, in May. He had been convicted in 1987 and had gone on the lam for nearly 15 years, but he ran into his prosecutor at a restaurant in May and decided to say a nostalgic hello, apparently believing that authorities were not interested in him anymore. Papakostas even had to jog the prosecutor's memory, but once that was done, the prosecutor notified police.

Correctional Service of Canada was recently rethinking its policy of permitting inmates to keep cats in their cells in two British Columbia prisons after guards complained of dirty litter boxes during prisoner shakedowns and after several drug-sniffing dogs in the facility had gotten hurt tangling with the cats (Mission, B.C.; May). And a previously docile Siamese cat went nuts and mauled a family of four and its baby sitter over several hours, repeatedly launching itself at family members and clawing them bloody, until police subdued it (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia; May). And to deal with a flood of mice in the British Parliament, a motion was introduced in June "to invest in a House of Commons cat to try to tackle this problem."

News of the Weird reported in 2000 that New York doctoral student Erik Sprague was part-way through surgically making his body lizard-like (sharper teeth and forked tongue, and with implanted forehead bumps and scale-like skin soon to come). In June 2002, the Michigan House of Representatives considered banning tongue-forking surgery, but by 53-43 decided such bodily transformations were none of the government's business. (The issue had come to light when Bay City, Mich., tattoo artist Seth Griffin began publicly seeking a surgeon for his tongue-separation surgery after once performing it on himself only to see the tongue eventually fuse back together.)

The U.N. World Food Summit, devoted to helping the 800 million people starving worldwide, opened in Rome with a luncheon of lobster, foie gras and goose stuffed with olives for the 3,000 limousine-using delegates (June). Officials at California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory decided that their brand-new, $62 million storage facility for low-level radioactive waste was not secure enough from terrorists and that until modifications were made, the waste would continue to be stored outside, underneath a tent (May). The principal of Franklin Elementary School (Santa Monica, Calif.) banned the game Tag at lunchtime, in part because, she wrote, whoever is "it" is a "victim," "which creates a self-esteem issue" (May).

Opponents of a planned prison near Kaikohe, New Zealand, petitioned the High Court to halt construction because officials had not considered the environmental impact of "taniwha" (folkloric monsters in the area). A beekeeper was called to rid a house of thousands of bees from 12 honeycombs that had been built between the walls of the house (Kansas City, Mo.). The deputy director of Child Support Enforcement for the District of Columbia was sued by his own office for foot-dragging on support for his own 20-year-old, born-out-of-wedlock son. McDonald's began test-marketing a breakfast meal of egg, rice and Spam at its restaurants in Hawaii (where Spam is a highly revered food).

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

-- 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/.)