-- Plastic surgeons told The Wall Street Journal in August that requests for designer navel and nipple surgery are increasing (probably brought on by the skin-revealing tops women wear), with slim, horizontal-oval navels preferred (a preference also found by panelists in a 2000 surgical journal article), and firm, prominent nipples seen almost as an "accessory" for the excitingly dressed woman. (Almost all such U.S. surgery is in conjunction with tummy tucks or breast enhancement, but navel sculpting as stand-alone surgery has been popular for several years in Japan.)

-- Update: In July, a Texas district judge ruled that any professional thoughts that software engineer Evan Brown had in his head during his 10 years with DSC Communications (now Alcatel USA Inc.) belonged to the company even though they may never have been expressed in any tangible form. (News of the Weird reported DSC's filing of this lawsuit in 1997.) Brown had signed a contract agreeing that DSC owned any "invention" or anything "conceived" on the job but said he actually began thinking about his high-level source code solution 12 years before he started work at DSC.

Nathan A. Williams, 18, admitting that he robbed a convenience store in White River Junction, Vt., in July, told the judge, "I still don't know quite to this day why I did it." And Gerald Fitzgerald, 73, pleading guilty to a series of petty crimes in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in July: "I don't know why (I did it)." And Ms. Rie Fujii, 24, pleading guilty in Calgary, Alberta, in June to abandoning her children while she partied: "I don't know why." And Darlene Eva Gallant, 41, sentenced to two years in prison in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, in May for maliciously injecting her grandson with insulin: "I hurt someone more precious than my life, and I don't even know why." And pharmacist Robert Courtney, pleading guilty in Kansas City, Mo., in February to diluting customers' cancer drugs: "I keep asking myself, 'Why?'"

-- The several African nations' soccer teams that rely on witchcraft to give them an edge were confounded at this year's World Cup when Senegal almost made it to the semifinals after supposedly rejecting that strategy and competing solely on ability. Teams from Ivory Coast and Mali have been in the news this year for their relentless black-magic beliefs (e.g., animal parts buried on the soccer field at midnight; hexing spells by witch doctors on a team's sideline). In February, a Cameroon assistant coach was dragged off the field by Mali military personnel after he was suspected of wielding a lucky charm.

-- The traditional, manure-based "Many Weed Tea," taken by generations of rural black families in Alabama as a cold and flu remedy, is fading away despite continued testimonials to its effectiveness, according to a June Birmingham News story. Its recipe calls for forming a tea bag of cloth and filling it with two open lemons, stalks of the lavender plant, honey and several dried cow patties, preferably containing visible, undigested leaves and twigs. The brew is supposedly safe for humans provided that it is boiled long enough before steeping.

-- A group of Christian protestors disrupted a pagans' spring equinox ceremony in Lancaster, Calif., in March by blasting their car stereos to drown out the songs and chants of 300 witches and warlocks. What apparently really set off the Christians was the pagans' merry attempt at "animal sacrifice," which they accomplish by fonduing a candy bunny. When a pagan leader yelled "Sacrifice the chocolate rabbit," the Christians leaped from their cars and advanced on them, but violence was averted.

-- Bishop C. Vernie Russell's Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church (Norfolk, Va.) has raised $340,000 from his congregation in 14 months for the specific purpose of helping randomly chosen members (59 so far) to get out of debt by having their credit-card bills paid off by the church, according to a June Wall Street Journal report. At the special, monthly "debt liquidation revival," congregants dance and chant, "stomping" the devil, who is believed to be the cause of the credit-card debt in the first place. Lucky winners must cut up their cards and attend counseling, and Russell believes "cured" borrowers are much better tithers.

-- More Violence in Jerusalem: In July, Ethiopian Orthodox Christian monks brawled with monks from the Coptic Christian Church of Egypt at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the site of Jesus' burial and resurrection) after an Egyptian on the roof moved his chair into the shade. The roof space and all other space and furniture in the church have been allocated by agreement among various Christian organizations, and the Egyptian was said to have crossed a line, provoking the Ethiopians to respond by throwing rocks, iron bars and chairs. Seven Ethiopians and four Egyptians were injured.

Greeting the arrival of singer R. Kelly ("I Believe I Can Fly") at the courthouse in Chicago on Aug. 7 for a hearing on the 21 counts of child pornography he has been charged with were 40 children, yelling support and wearing T-shirts reading "Not Guilty," "Case Dismissed," and "Kill his name/Kill the fame/That's the game," among other messages. Said organizer Janet Edmond, "(People) need to stop looking at all the negative stuff and start looking at the good things R. Kelly is doing. (K)ids need something to reach for. They have no role models."

Aztar Corp. casinos in Evansville, Ind., Atlantic City, N.J., and Las Vegas have recently featured tic-tac-toe games in which gamblers compete with chickens that punch in X's and O's with their beaks, and in June, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals made a formal protest, both of the oppressive conditions under which the chickens labor and the "disrespect" of the chickens that the game represents. Also in June, traveling Alaskan circus artist Emily Harris had her expensive bicycle mistakenly sold while she visited a second-hand shop in London, and the resulting news stories called attention to her particular circus art, which is that she hypnotizes chickens and makes them play a piano.

Taketomi Miura, 30, was arrested and charged with killing a newspaper carrier, allegedly because Miura thought that a murder conviction would help obscure the shameful fact that he had been embezzling from his employer (Tondabayashi, Japan, June). Shane Sloan, 29, was convicted of killing his mother, supposedly because he was angry at her for interrupting his suicide attempt (and Sloan indeed killed himself in his cell 10 days later) (Pittsburgh, June).

Angel Martinez, 36, was only recently released after serving 17 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, 13 of those years after another man had confessed; Martinez's lawyer had never told him about the confession (New York City, June). A 22-year-old church pastor and his brother were arrested for administering an hour-long beating with a rod to an 11-year-old boy (resulting in kidney failure) because he allegedly cheated in Bible study class (San Antonio, July). Colombian rebels wounded eight humans and destroyed 20 homes with a bomb strapped onto a horse (Guadalupe, Colombia, July).

A 15-year-old girl won a talent search by "jumping" rope 100 times while seated (by raising her butt for each pass) (Keller, Texas). Witnesses said a 39-year-old youth-league soccer coach rushed onto the field during a time-out and aggressively elbowed the other team's star player (an 11-year-old girl) in the stomach (but the league has specific penalties only for coaches who attack referees) (Mississauga, Ontario). A 44-year-old man, angry that a check he was expecting didn't come, beat up the postal carrier (Shreveport, La.). A catwalk collapsed at Aquarium of the Americas, sending 10 VIP visitors into a tank with 24 sharks (but which, fortunately, had just been fed and were docile) (New Orleans).

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

-- Artist Brock Enright of Virginia Beach, Va., originally started staging rough, vivid kidnappings, using volunteers, so that he could show them on video at New York City galleries, but found so many willing, thrill-seeking victims that he now charges $500 or more for the realistic experience (but they get to keep the videos). Enright now has two dozen "fetish terrorism" (as Time Out magazine wrote) clients and is thinking of expanding to other cities. A 25-year-old sculptor, supposedly typical of Enright's clients, said he signed on because he wanted to test his limits: "I needed to believe that (the kidnapper) was going to kill me."

-- The Lane brothers of New York, Mr. Winner Lane, 44, and Mr. Loser Lane, 41 (their actual birth names), were profiled in a July Newsday report, made more interesting by the fact that Loser is successful (a police detective in the South Bronx) and Winner is not (a history of petty crimes). A sister said she believes her parents selected "Winner" because their late father was a big baseball fan and "Loser" just to complete the pairing.

An unidentified young man walked away, apparently unhurt, after leaping from between cars of a 60 mph West Japan Railway "express" train onto the platform as it roared through a "local" station (Kobe, Japan, July). Two teenage boys were hospitalized with gunshot wounds after they and other boys encircled an older man on the street and began firing at him; the man was not hit (Michigan City, Ind., March). Canadian-born Robert Moisescu, sentenced to seven years in prison for robbing a Plattsburgh, N.Y., bank, told the judge in a letter that his time should be reduced to four years because his loot was worth only 62 percent in Canadian dollars (May).

-- New Products: British engineers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau announced their "tooth telephone" (radio receiver implanted in the tooth, vibrating the signal to the inner ear) (June). Fort Worth (Texas) inventor Don Mims and marketer Ron Toms introduced a wooden "Gatling"-type gun that rapid-fires up to 144 rubber bands by turning a crank (though the rubber bands have to be hand-loaded) (March). South African researchers working in New Zealand said they are developing cockroach-shaped robots to do housework and yardwork (February).

-- Seattle computer programmer Boris Tsikanovsky told the San Jose Mercury News in April that he has developed software that will stop his cat, Squirrel, from bringing animal prey into the house when he's not at home. Squirrel can enter though a special door via a magnet on her collar and had been hiding dead mice and birds in the furniture. Consequently, Tsikanovsky developed imaging software, with a camera by the door, that permits Squirrel to enter only if her pixeled profile shows nothing in her mouth.

-- For a state visit to the drought-stricken southern African country of Malawi in July, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi arrived with an entourage in two Boeing 707s, two transport aircraft and his own personal jet; two security buses loaded with machine guns, assault rifles and rocket launchers; his own mobile hospital; 600 support personnel; and 70 armored vehicles for the drive across the country (with one of the vehicles stocked with $6 million American, much of which he tossed freely to villagers who had lined his route).

-- In May, the British real estate agents Acorns in Lewisham announced the offering of a small, split-level apartment in south London for about $200,000, even though it was recently converted from an Edwardian-style public restroom and measures about 13 feet by 13 feet. Said an agent, "It is very convenient (and) has its own front door (and) you have no one above or below you, which is unusual for a flat."

-- News of the Weird reported on black in-vitro fertilization babies born to white couples in the U.S. (1998) and the Netherlands (1993). In July 2002, a white couple at a British National Health Service fertility clinic gave birth to black twins and are now fighting the clinic's effort to award the babies instead to the father whose sperm created them. Said a NHS official, "Great steps have been taken to ensure that this sort of (mix-up) never happens."

-- Among the latest crackpot legal theories: Randall Lynn Harper, 48, was sentenced to a year in jail for resisting a police officer; he had refused to accept a traffic summons because his driver's license is typed in all-uppercase letters, which he said is legally reserved only for corporations and is therefore not binding on humans (Salinas, Calif., June). David Johnston, 54, on trial for swindling investors, subsequently formed a company with the same name as the lead plaintiff suing him, then petitioned under that company's name to dismiss the case against David Johnston, and now thus believes he has been cleared (Clearwater, Fla., July).

-- Two months ago, News of the Weird reported that Cuba's Fidel Castro once had the idea of breeding miniature cows that could be kept indoors and which would supply their owners with enough milk for the family. About a month after that dispatch from Havana appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press reported on Rockwell, Iowa, farmer Dustin Pillard, who is offering his 50 miniature cows (height: 3 feet) for sale, but primarily as pets. Said Pillard, "We're breeding just for the novelty."

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Norman Micallef, 35, created a scene (and police attention) when his van collided with a moose near Sudbury, Ontario, in June; unfortunately for him, an officer who stopped to help noticed a certain scent ($325,000 (U.S.) worth of marijuana plants in the van). And on May 18 in Torrance, Calif., as members of rival gangs began to congregate over a shooting incident, two F-15 fighter jets flew by, low to the ground, causing the gang members to freeze in apprehension; a couple of minutes later, as the F-15s made a return low pass, the gang members quickly dispersed in panic, apparently unaware that the jets were part of the nearby Armed Forces Day parade.

Arcadia, Fla., officials, citing zoning rules, voted to make Beverly Georges dig up her late husband, Rick, from the back yard, where he had chosen to be buried so as to be united with his beloved pit bull, Bocephus (July). And Linda Montgomery of Staffordsville, Ky., complained to government officials when a dog was buried in the Highland Memorial Park cemetery, six feet from her parents' graves; asked Montgomery, "Do you think they'd (sell any plots there) if they'd said, 'Oh, by the way, there's a chance you'll be buried next to a cow?'" (June). And the family of Jim Crovetti honored his wishes and buried him at the Loving Rest Pet Cemetery, beside his Rottweiler, Lady (Indianola, Iowa, July).

In the middle of a crowd booing Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, a man was arrested, apparently only because he was holding a slice of pie (since a protester had once hit Chretien with a pie) (Vancouver). Tough-love mother Karen Paape distributed mug-shot posters of her two teenage sons, asking that anyone who sees them smoking should call the police (West Bend, Wis.). A man convicted of sexually assaulting and killing his 16-year-old nephew was sentenced to be thrown off a cliff in a sack, with the provision that if he survives, he will be hanged (Mashhad, Iran). A 20-year-old man was fatally shot wrestling for a gun with a 21-year-old man with whom he had been debating which of the two was more likely to wind up in heaven (Godley, Texas).

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

-- Serial killer Coral Eugene Watts, 52, thought to have been put away for life by a Houston judge in 1982, is now scheduled to be released in 2006 because of a drafting error in his plea bargain. (Because of a paucity of evidence about the 13 murders to which Watts confessed, he was allowed to plead to "aggravated" attempted murder and be sentenced to 60 years without parole, but the prosecutor neglected to specify any "aggravated"-type weapon, and an appeals court ruled that only "aggravated" crimes justify no parole; consequently, Watts has been amassing "good time" requiring early release.) (And a judge released accused murderer Corey Pernell McNeil in Newport News, Va., in July because a clerk forgot to sign the victim's death certificate; by the time the error was corrected, McNeil could not be found.)

-- In July, for the second time in a month, a village council in Punjab province approved an abuse of females that had to be stopped by the Pakistan government. Tribal law allows a convict to be pardoned if the victim's family accepts cash compensation, but the council pardoned condemned murderers who agreed to send cash and their eight teenage daughters for marriage to elderly relatives of their victims. Two weddings had already taken place by the time the police halted the deal.

New York University researchers writing in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that sex-abstaining women and women whose partners wear condoms were more frequently depressed and concluded that hormones in semen may enter the bloodstream and pep women up (May). And Concordia University (Montreal) researchers reported that their PT141 drug seems to encourage female rats to solicit sex from males three times as often as they otherwise would and are scheduling human trials (May). And Hebrew Rehabilitation Center (Boston) researchers found that the grain in beer (which men consume far more than women) must be a major reason why men suffer less osteoporosis (July).

-- Prosecutors in Pottstown, Pa., said in May that they thought that some of rap singer Karim Ali Howard's lyrics might be used against him in his upcoming trial for cocaine trafficking. (A sample: "I'm going to sell coke until you call me pope, do dirt until the lord tries to stop me, it's gonna take hundreds of bullets just to drop me.") And in June, Russell Adam Pelletier, 24, was convicted of murder in Louisa, Va., despite arguing that a supposed confession captured by undercover wire was just freestyle verse by Pelletier, who admits he writes misogynistic and violent rap music.

-- Among recent denials of child sex-abuse: Choir official Frank Jones, 51, said he was merely massaging a 13-year-old boy with slippery sports cream and that "My hand slipped" onto a "private area" (New York City, April). And teacher Carl D. Reid, 38, said he had no idea that several female elementary school students of his had crawled under his desk, and that before he knew it, they had put their hands underneath his gym shorts and touched him (Newport, R.I., May).

-- Eleven alleged members of San Francisco's Big Block street gang claimed in a court filing in June that they have a constitutional right to carry guns, pointing to a declaration last year by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft that changed the law. Previously, the Justice Department had thought that Second Amendment rights applied only to state militias, but Ashcroft declared in May 2001 that henceforth, the Second Amendment would be regarded as giving fundamental gun-toting rights to individuals. Nonetheless, in July 2002, the federal judge trying the Big Block gang declined to dismiss the gun charges.

-- The City of New York agreed in July to pay a Sri Lankan-born schoolteacher $50,000 for the "hostile work environment" he encountered in the classroom because of his nationality. The administrators said they couldn't stop students from hassling him because they were emotionally troubled "special needs" students, protected by law.

-- Claudia Huntey, 38, who has suffered from Tourette's syndrome since age 9, filed a federal lawsuit in Denver in April after she was evicted from Torrey Pines apartment complex because her frequent screams during the night disturbed her neighbors. Huntey, whose most frequent symptom is to yell "Fire!" at the top of her lungs, claimed that since those are "involuntary vocalizations" protected under federal disability law, her neighbors would just have to get used to them.

-- The Afkhami family of Gaithersburg, Md., filed a civil-rights lawsuit in July against Carnival Cruise lines, which the plaintiffs said unlawfully denied their right to travel from a Miami port with 160 live bees, in bottles, because two of their adult children on the cruise were practicing alternative medicine involving the bees. The Afkhamis said the rights were denied because of the family's Iranian nationality.

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, 30 grams at a time in 90 tins, as art objects (though, over the years, 45 have reportedly exploded). Their price to collectors has varied from about $28,000 for a tin in 1998 to $75,000 in 1993. In June 2002, the Tate Gallery in London excitedly announced it had purchased tin No. 004 for about $38,000. (The price of 30 grams of gold at press time was a little over $300.)

Whatever Happened to the Concept of "Hiding Out"? Police in Edwardsville, Pa., on the lookout for a stolen white car, arrested two men who were busily painting the stolen white car black in the middle of a shopping center parking lot on the town's main street (June). And in Martinsburg, W.Va., following a bank robbery, law enforcement saturated the area looking for the getaway vehicle, a red Jeep Wrangler; the next day, the vehicle was spotted, with a "For Sale" sign on it, in the front yard of a 39-year-old local woman, who police say then readily confessed to the crime (May).

An orthopedic surgeon at Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospital in London was threatened with disciplinary action for racism after he became enraged that none of the recent-immigrant nurses could understand his during-surgery instructions (July). A Brooklyn, N.Y., school official convicted of embezzling millions of dollars in federal education funds is one of seven recently convicted teachers or administrators who are still in their jobs because union-friendly arbitrators refuse to allow them to be fired, according to a New York Daily News report (June).

When a car full of suspected thieves crashed after a high-speed police chase, the one person inside who was well enough to flee on foot did, but made it only a short ways before his prosthetic leg fell off (Englewood, Ohio). Another man on trial for fleeing police in his van allegedly apologized when they caught him, reasoning that he had just bought crack cocaine and wanted to go somewhere to consume it before he went to jail (Rochester, N.Y.) Three obese and unhealthy people filed a lawsuit against McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC for addicting them to unhealthful food (New York City). A 36-year-old woman sued Delta Airlines, claiming agents publicly humiliated her after finding a "sex toy" (that she and her husband had just purchased) vibrating in her checked baggage (Clearwater, Fla.).

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