News of the Weird

-- A Fortune magazine-commissioned study reported in August that officers and directors of the 1,035 companies that have fallen the most from their recent bull-market peaks cashed in $66 billion worth of stock before the crash, at a time when those companies' non-insiders (and in many cases, employees) were suffering devastating investment losses. Among the "shrewdest" executives were those from AOL-Time Warner ($1.79 billion), Enron ($994 million) and Charles Schwab ($951 million).

-- One proposed remedy for the sexual frustration of Iranian men who avoid marriage because of financial cost is to permit temporary, Islam-endorsed "marriages" with prostitutes inside designated brothels. About 300,000 prostitutes are active in Iran, and the number is rising, as is the typical cost of marriage and the "corrupt" influence of Western society on Muslim youth. Those circumstances have caused at least one prominent cleric to back the idea, according to an August Reuters dispatch.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (55) The robber who carefully, purposefully smashes a store's security camera (while looking directly at it), oblivious to the fact that destroying the camera does not affect the remote video recorder that it's hooked up to, capturing his face on tape, as with the 5-foot-9 man whose picture has been circulating in Edmonton, Alberta, since July. (56) And the hard-luck checkbook thief whose victim, by chance, is an employee of the very store or bank in which the thief later tries to cash one of the checks, as happened at the Farmers State Bank, Stockbridge, Mich., in June, resulting in the arrest of a 20-year-old man.

-- Responding to his latest call-up for jury duty, habitual San Antonio jury-slacker David Williamson sent the federal judge a serious bill for $16,800 because the court had advised Williamson to be ready to serve at any time during August (21 business days, 8 hours a day, at Williamson's consultant's rate of $100 an hour). Williamson also wrote that if the judge did not pay by Aug. 31, interest would accrue at 2 percent a month, and that if the judge would like to discuss the matter, he should call Williamson for an appointment. (A few days later, Judge John H. Wood Jr. ordered Williamson to his courtroom for a contempt hearing, the result of which was pending at press time.)

-- Child-sex-assaulter Kevin R. Hill, 36, filed a lawsuit from prison against St. Clair County, Ill., in July, demanding $100,000 because county officials caused him and his family "grave personal and professional financial devastation" when they charged him with the crime (even though he ultimately pleaded guilty). And in June, inmate Kenneth Bianchi (the "Hillside Strangler" serial-killer in California and Washington in the 1970s), filed a lawsuit against Whatcom County, Wash., demanding up to $100 a day for the 23 years he has been imprisoned (for lost wages and emotional distress); Bianchi said prosecutors caused him to misjudge the strength of the case against him at trial, and that's why he pleaded guilty to the murders of seven women.

-- Matthew E. Hooker, 30, filed a $200 million defamation lawsuit in May in Los Angeles against actor Nicole Kidman because she (and many other persons and media outlets named in the lawsuit) refer to Hooker as Kidman's "stalker" (even though a judge has entered a three-year stay-away order against Hooker because of numerous past harassments of Kidman). Hooker told reporters that the "stalker" label was likely to hurt his 2004 presidential campaign.

-- In Winnipeg, Manitoba, in July, David Dauphinee, 52, and his brother Daniel, 51, both retired senior members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, were convicted of bombarding local police officers with oranges and onions while standing on a 19th-floor balcony, while the local officers were investigating a break-in on a ground floor nearby. The brothers have had other recent confrontations with law-enforcement officers, and David's ex-wife Debbie described the men as "dumb and dumber."

-- Ex-lawyer Mitchell Rothken, 44, is serving a three-to-nine-year prison sentence in New York in connection with an embezzlement scheme, which he told a judge in February he concocted to win the favor of stripper Kimberly Barbieri, with whom he was utterly obsessed. In an August interview in New York magazine, Rothken said that although his secret, four-year bond with the dancer ultimately cost him his 21-year marriage, his three sons, his real-estate law practice, and more than $1 million in gifts, Barbieri and he never actually consummated the relationship.

In May in Brisbane, Australia, suspended police officer James Arthur Mariner, 42, was set for trial on charges that over a seven-year period, under the guise of helping people qualify for the police force, he solicited pubic hair, blood and urine samples and mouth swabs from people for his own gratification. Other victims claimed that Mariner got them to make a sex video (allegedly for police training), and another said Mariner put a wrestler's "headlock" on her.

Unfamiliar With the System: Andrew Cameron was arrested in August and charged with stealing Jacqueline Boanson's debit card in Cheltenham, England. Cameron had used the card to place a horse-racing bet, and the horse won, but since he could not collect without a photo ID that matched the debit card name, the winnings (about $495) were automatically transferred to Boanson's account.

A 40-year-old man, finishing off the last of his champagne on an apartment-house rooftop, climbed down a ledge as a shortcut to go get another bottle but fell and was fatally impaled on a fence (Chicago, June). And an 18-year-old high school student, attempting to prove that heroin is not addictive, overdosed and died on his first-ever experience (his impressions of which he had just begun to chronicle on his computer before he passed out) (Fort Worth, Texas, May).

In 1999, police in Tulia, Texas (pop. 5,100), arrested 40 blacks (more than 10 percent of the black population) for alleged drug trafficking and somehow obtained convictions, with no physical evidence and no corroboration, based on the testimony of one N-word-using officer, Tom Coleman, who kept almost no records (except that he sometimes wrote notes on his leg) and who swore that he had bought drugs from several people who later proved they weren't even in town. The "ringleader" (now serving 90 years) was an impoverished farmer who lived in a dilapidated shack; a few local whites with connections to the black community were convicted as well, with one receiving a 300-year sentence. The latest coverage of the convictions (now being appealed) was by a New York Times columnist who visited the town in July.

A female suspect being questioned by police managed to fatally shoot an officer who had permitted her a bathroom break, using a gun the woman had probably concealed between her buttocks (Minneapolis). An orthopedic surgeon's license was suspended after he, in mid-operation, allegedly left the OR for 35 minutes to run to his bank and deposit a check before returning to finish up (successfully) (Cambridge, Mass.). An ex-cop awaiting trial for molesting one stepdaughter dropped dead of an aneurysm in an X-rated peep-show booth while in a compromising position with his other stepdaughter (El Paso, Texas). A woman who two years earlier had a house built on the edge of a golf course fairway filed a lawsuit against the course because balls keep landing in her yard (Ossipee, N.H.).

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

-- 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/.)