-- Largo, Fla., private school principal (and Disney fanatic) Dick Baker, 52, was under pressure in August to resign after revelations by the St. Petersburg Times that he took chosen middle-school-age girls (his "princesses") on dozens of overnighters to the Disney World resort, during which he supplied them with Disney-themed costumes and swimsuits (and wore his own Disney pajamas). One princess made 81 trips. Baker's friends and neighbors, and all the princesses, and most parents, support him, calling a recent police investigation (that was completed without charges) a witch hunt, but enough other people were puzzled by Baker's frequent hugging and tickling of the girls, plus his Disney obsession, to call for his resignation.

-- In June, Milwaukee police officer Robert Henry, 34, was awarded lifetime disability benefits because of work-related stress, which he said was caused by the department's decision to fire him for roughing up a misdemeanor suspect in a 2002 incident caught on videotape. (He was reinstated on appeal, but shortly after that filed for disability.) Henry, who had a total of four years' service, will receive $23,000 immediately, then $39,000 a year for 29 years, and then collect his standard pension.

Police in Westerly, R.I., arrested Robert Brayman, 51, and his disciple Hobart Livingston in July and charged Brayman with commissioning Livingston to build a pipe bomb to kill a woman whom Brayman was stalking. According to police, Livingston believes Brayman has spiritual powers and submits himself nearly totally to Brayman, including having paid Brayman more than $13,000 over a three-year period for protection of actress Natalie Portman, whom Livingston believes is in danger from creature-implanted eggs that might otherwise hatch without Brayman's guardianship. Among the exercises Brayman uses to upgrade Livingston's avoidance of evil spirits: having Livingston try to dodge BB's fired by Brayman at a local cemetery.

According to an Associated Press dispatch, a bolt of lightning struck the steeple at the First Baptist Church in Forest, Ohio, on July 1 (damage: $20,000) just as a guest evangelist was beseeching God for a sign from above. And, though it's not quite the rocket ship of the urban legend, a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter is being configured with a 39,000-horsepower jet engine by a team of retired aircraft mechanics in Pierce County, Wash., to challenge the world land-speed record, according to a June story in the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune.

-- The family of the late Ben Martinez filed a lawsuit in June against the Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe (N.M.) because a priest had castigated lapsed-Catholic Martinez during his funeral, telling guests that the Lord "vomited people like Ben out of his mouth to hell." (The priest, Scott Mansfield, has since moved to another parish.) And Cheryl Bartges has not yet filed a lawsuit but did tell WABC-TV in New York City in July that her late father suffered grievously in the last hours before his death because a priest sent from the Diocese of Rockville Centre (N.Y.) to administer the last rites refused to do it, following an argument about the Catholic Church's culpability in the child-molesting scandals.

-- Popular Lutheran pastor Thorkild Grosbold was suspended in June from his church in Tarbaek, Denmark, after he declined to retract his statements to a newspaper that he doesn't believe in a "physical God," or an afterlife, but believes instead that God is only a constant moral force; Denmark is a highly secular nation, but church leaders say that pastors still must believe in an actual God. And Tulsa, Okla., Christian evangelist Carlton Pearson recently expanded his "Gospel of Inclusion" (providing for universal salvation) to make clear that even Satan would be admitted to heaven if he apologized; the resurrection of Jesus, Pearson says, shows that hell is only a temporary condition, not a place.

-- Smited: Kim Russell, 35, collapsed and died in a hotel room in Yeovil, Somerset, England, in December (probably of "sudden death syndrome," an inquest decided in July). She was in the room for a first-time rendezvous with the man with whom she had been carrying on an Internet-based romance and had been so excited to meet him that she had walked out on her husband and two children two days before Christmas.

-- Darrell Krumnow, 29, pleaded guilty in Waco, Texas, in March to taking so-called "upskirt" photographs of a 19-year-old female clerk at Richland Mall. Krumnow was done in because, unlike other upskirt photographers who have figured out that they need to be discreet, Krumnow used a flash, which caught everyone's attention.

-- In July, a judge in Sacramento, Calif., overruled a defense by two California Highway Patrol officers and decided that the lawsuit against them could proceed (by relatives of a man who accidentally fell down a gorge adjacent to Interstate 5 and who died because no one called for help). The officers had contended that, though they knew the man had fallen, law enforcement officers are under no duty to help if they had nothing to do with the original fall.

-- The Florida Legislature, faced with a mounting traffic accident rate caused by its increasingly older population but habitually unable to address the problem because of resistance by senior voters and their lobbyists, finally passed a law in May to improve highway safety. From now on, seniors' eyesight will be tested at every license renewal, but only for drivers age 80 and older.

Recently arrested for murder: Michael Wayne Sears, 54, Charlottesville, Va. (May); Dale Wayne Eaton, 58, Denver (April); Ricky Wayne Brown, 39, Manassas, Va. (wanted in Florida) (May). Sentenced for murder: Michael Wayne Fisher, Chester County, Pa. (March). Executed for murder: Allen Wayne Jenecka, 53, Huntsville, Texas (July); Bobby Wayne Swisher, 27, Jarratt, Va. (July).

Australian biologist Mark Elgar, writing in Nature magazine, described the tiny male Zeus bug as having the idyllic, work-free life, with food, transportation (piggy-back) and unlimited sex being eagerly provided by the female Zeus (though Elgar said he is baffled at how the male got so lucky) (July). And Agence France-Presse reported from Seville, Spain, during a political forum just prior to the national elections, that a female campaign worker shouted to Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar that "you have really nice ones" and "You may be short, but you've got them firmly attached" (May).

A 23-year-old man who opened the passenger door of a pickup truck to urinate (even though the truck was zooming along Houston's Southwest Freeway at the time) fell out and was fatally run over (June). And Sonny Morris El, 32, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a collision that caused the death of a 25-year-old woman, who was sitting in his lap having sex with him while he drove (Monmouth, Ill., June). And driver Michael Lappin, 18, was set for trial after his arrest for fatally hitting another driver after losing control of his car because he was receiving oral sex from a woman as he drove (Green Bay, Wis., June).

A courthouse had to be closed for a week, as judges, lawyers and employees were attacked by an infestation of fleas (Henrietta, Texas). Two Harare, Zimbabwe, mortuary workers were charged with renting out corpses to motorists so they could go to the head of gas-station lines, since hearses get preferred treatment. A 30-year-old man was sentenced to probation for entering a funeral home's living nativity scene last Christmas and having sex with one of the sheep (Charleston, W.Va.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

-- Toning up one's body is apparently a need that unites diverse soldiers in America's so-called culture war. In July, USA Today profiled the Lord's Gym in the West Palm Beach suburb of Greenacres, catering to devout Christians (sales pitch: "Your body is a temple for Christ"), where mothers say they can bring their teenage daughters without men ogling them. But in April, Reuters profiled a "Slavercise" class in New York City, where dominatrix "Mistress Victoria" led her clients through punishing fitness and weight-loss routines while wielding an intimidating riding crop.

-- You Break It, You Bought It: Australia's High Court ruled 4-3 in July that because Dr. Stephen Cattanach's sterilization surgery on Ms. Kerry Melchior had failed, it was Cattanach's (and the Queensland Health Department's) responsibility to pay the cost of raising the Melchiors' unwanted child until age 18. The decision stunned the medical profession and insurers in Australia, especially because Cattanach had relied on Melchior's inaccurate statement that her right fallopian tube had been removed at age 15 (and so performed surgery only on the left tube).

-- The Salon Mexico restaurant in New York City introduced a $45 burrito in July, with a filling of filet mignon and truffles. And the founder of Paul Mitchell salon products recently launched John Paul Pets (shampoos for dogs), joining Estee Lauder's Origins line in the so-far-uncrowded upscale pet hair-care field. And a June runway show at Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo featured eight dogs modeling fashions such as a yellow dog raincoat (US$72) and a wedding dress and matching hat for dogs.

-- At a New York legislative committee hearing in May, a Manhattan building owner revealed that he had hired as a lobbyist former U.S. Sen. Alfonse d'Amato to make a single telephone call to the chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority regarding a real-estate issue that eventually was decided in the owner's favor and for which he paid d'Amato $500,000.

Until May, Darlene Heatherington, 40, was a well-regarded, high-achieving city councilwoman in Lethbridge, Alberta, but then she traveled to Great Falls, Mont., on city business, during which trip an incident occurred. In several shifting public statements since then, Heatherington said she was drugged, kidnapped to Las Vegas and raped. However, police in Las Vegas, Great Falls and Lethbridge have contradicted her accounts, and (in Great Falls and Lethbridge) have charged her with filing false reports. Still, she has stuck to her story (baffling most people in Lethbridge) and denies any emotional problems ("I'm a long way from nuts," she said). (A National Post columnist wrote in June that, most likely, she had a consensual tryst and was then tormented by her own super-straight image.)

Brian Kline, 10, playing with his father's old handcuffs (Dad used to be a security agent) on Father's Day, lovingly cuffed himself to dad William Kline Jr., 33, but the key was lost, and William called police (in Des Moines, Iowa) to get the cuffs off. As is routine, police ran Kline through their database, found two arrest warrants outstanding, and re-cuffed Kline for real. And in Tulsa, Okla., in July, suspected shoplifter Jacob Wise, 18, had cleverly removed security tags from clothes he was allegedly walking out of a store with, but the alarm went off anyway because he had merely put the removed tags in his pocket.

In July, at an isolated hospital in Peru's Andes mountains, Dr. Cesar Venero realized that patient Centeno Quispe could not be airlifted to a full-service hospital in time to save his life from a brain injury incurred during a street fight. Luckily, the hardware store in the town of Andahuaylas was open, and with a drill and pliers, Venero (who earns the equivalent of about US$5,000 a year) saved Quispe's life by making the necessary holes in the skull to remove the clots that were putting pressure on the brain.

-- According to Norway's Newspaper VG (which is currently running a series on odd summer jobs), teenager Svein Tore Hauge's job may take the prize: Armed with a shovel and a container, he works at Saerheim Plant Research, following cattle around and catching their excreta before it can hit the ground. Because the work-product is used for scientific study, it must be "pristine," free of grass, dirt, foreign bacteria, etc. Sometimes, it's easy, he said, but, "Sometimes it just sprays in all directions."

-- A labor tribunal in Denmark concluded in May that the rule about not drinking alcoholic beverages on the job, issued by management of MJ Mason Co. (Broenderslev, Denmark), was illegal and could not be enforced. The Mason owner had issued a no-drinking rule, but since he did not follow the procedure in the union contract, it was declared void, at least as to employees' break times.

-- In the latest news from Philadelphia's Monell Chemical Senses Center, a researcher said in June that his study had found that men's underarm odor has a stress-reducing effect on women. The week before that, The Wall Street Journal, profiling the Gillette Co.'s research lab, reported that lab director Ahmet Baydar is working not just on ordinary antibacterial-plus-fragrance products but on a substance that actually blocks odor receptors in other people's noses. (Gillette's tests use a synthetic malodor compound so strong that more than a few molecules can make a room uninhabitable, and involve five odor judges who sniff actual armpits and rate them 1 to 10, with 10 meaning "your head snaps back.")

-- The 50th Vienna Biennale opened in Austria in June with its usual array of avant-garde art, including another chapter in Canadian videomaker Jana Sterbak's series on reactions to pain. This time, she strapped a camera to a Jack Russell terrier, Stanley. Among his experiences was an innocent but intrusive exploration of a porcupine, which eventually provoked a quill attack, at which point the video goes haywire as Stanley jumps and writhes in pain. (Stanley appeared with Sterbak at the exhibit and, by his demeanor, apparently has no hard feelings.)

-- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit recently ruled that just because convicted marijuana dealer Frederick R. James had sent the judge invoices for $500,000 each time the judge uttered his name during the trial (which his threats to do were reported in News of the Weird in 2002), that was not proof that James was legally insane. The court thus rejected James's appeal of his 22-year sentence, which makes it further unlikely James will ever collect on the $151 million he says District Judge Michael R. Reagan owes him for the "copyright" violations.

Syracuse, N.Y., dungeonmaster John Jamelske, 68, sentenced to 18 years to life in July for holding a series of girls and women as sex slaves underneath his house (though all were eventually released), told the judge that he thought of the slaves as his "buddies," that he would get together with them in the "party room," and that he did not "kidnap" them because no ransom was requested. And in Doylestown Borough, Pa., in May, ex-pediatrician Alva Hartwright, sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison for sexually abusing homeless teenage boys in his care, continued in May to insist that the many enemas he gave them were "medically necessary" and that the reason he had a huge cache of child pornography was because he found the pictures "aesthetically pleasing," in the same way as his other photos of landscapes and wildlife.

A man allegedly seeking a street-corner prostitute was arrested and, per local law, had his vehicle confiscated, even though his vehicle that night was a municipal transit bus, which he was returning after a shift (Cicero, Ill.). A 45-year-old man fleeing police in a high-speed chase between Oak Ridge, Texas, and Lebanon, Okla., kept calling 911 on his cell phone, asking the operators to tell police to stop chasing him. The Cranbrook (British Columbia) Daily Townsman profiled Irene Weller's cat, Patches, which nurses not only her kittens but also two mice that Weller had recently ejected from the home.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

-- On the heels of a journal report on increased use since 1999 of posthumous sperm extraction (so the family line can be continued even after the father passes away) came a June report than an Israeli researcher had grown maturing ovarian tissue in the lab after extracting it from aborted fetuses. If Dr. Tal Biron-Shenton's work eventually makes way for fully developed eggs, it would mean that a baby could be born even though her mother never was.

-- In June, Reuters profiled Jerri Lyons, 55, of Sebastopol, Calif., who conducts seminars on the legalities and etiquette of do-it-yourself funerals, which are supposedly becoming more popular as alternatives to $5,000 funeral home services. According to one Lyons client, personally bathing and dressing a deceased friend made the loss easier to accept. Tip: Ice must be applied after about 24 hours (packages of frozen vegetables OK). A funeral-industry analyst said Lyons was not a threat; of more concern to the industry these days was, as Reuters put it, "a soft mortality rate due in part to a weak flu season."

(1) "Man Gets Life Sentence for Spitting" (a Tulsa World report on the sentence of domestic abuser John Marquez, 36, who got one year for the assault and life for spitting on the arresting officer, Sapulpa, Okla., May). (2) "Male Infertility Can Be Passed on to Children" (a Reuters story on Cornell professor Gianpiero Palermo's work, which reports that sperm from a low-sperm-count man can be injected into an egg to create an embryo, but that the embryo will still possess the genetic defect that led to the father's low sperm count, July).

-- According to a wrongful firing lawsuit filed in June by a former media relations assistant for the Sacramento Kings pro basketball team, star player Doug Christie is not permitted to speak to any female other than his wife, for any reason. The assistant said she was fired because she innocently passed along a telephone message to Christie in the course of her work, but that when Mrs. Christie found out, she pressured the organization to fire her and reaffirm the Christie family policy.

-- Child Care by Ultimatum: Norcross, Ga., police arrested parents Khalidan Tunkara, 28, and Olin Washington, 32, after one of whom, following a squabble in a parking lot, left their 9-month-old girl on the ground and drove away, intending to pressure the other parent to take the kid, but that parent then drove off, too (April). The same thing happened with parents Jennifer Jones, 21, and the father of her 3-week-old girl, in front of a beauty salon in Elgin, Ill., where police found the baby in the street (February). The same thing happened with parents Christy Leann Radacy, 23, and the father of her 2-year-old twin daughters in Lake Worth, Texas, where police found the girls lying on busy state road 199 (May).

-- Earlier this year in Mobile, Ala., Daina Sancho, 42, and Irwin Vincent ("I.V.") O'Rourke III, 14, were married after a several-months' courtship. Said the boy's approving father (of Sancho's infatuation), "If you've met the man of your dreams, why wait?" The couple live in Gonzales, La., but I.V. could not marry there until he turns 16; Alabama permits 14-year-olds to marry if they have their parents' permission.

-- On May 25 in the town of Baqubah, Iraq, Ms. Iman Salih Mutlak, 22, was gunned down by U.S. soldiers, who said she relentlessly charged at them, despite orders to halt, intending to explode the 10 grenades she was carrying. While some Iraqis treated her as a courageous martyr, her family in Zaqaniyah, Iraq, was disgusted with her, not because they are pro-American, but because she shamed them by leaving home without permission. Said her father, to an Associated Press reporter in May, "Had she returned home, I would have killed her myself and drunk her blood."

-- The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said that the June test launch of an SM-3 rocket in Hawaii, which failed to hit the incoming missile it was programmed to shoot down, was not a failure but actually a success. Said MDA spokesman Chris Taylor, "(I)ntercept was not the primary objective," but rather, the gathering of "great engineering data" was. (A recent General Accounting Office report criticized the MDA for using "immature technology.")

-- Where the Fault Lies: Gilbert D. Walker, 43, arrested (and then released) in Panama City, Fla., after crazily breaking into a neighbor's house and chasing her with a dagger, said the problem was that he had drunk too much jasmine tea (July). And heroin-cocaine addict Amanda C. Hagan, 29, brought to a Norristown, Pa., hospital after an overdose, said it was the hospital's fault that she shot up again in her bed because it let in the visitor who resupplied her (June). And fired Rochester, N.Y., police officer Clint Jackson, 24, convicted of fondling eight women during traffic stops, said he was contemplating a lawsuit against the police department for inadequate training (July).

In June in the state penitentiary near Indiana, Pa., Raymond Davenport, 19, doing time for aggravated assault, told fellow inmates that he did not believe them when they told him that another inmate had recently gotten his hand stuck in a prison toilet. It was impossible, he said, and Watch this! -- he would show them. A short while later, guards had to call in civilian firefighters with an air chisel to free Davenport's arm.

Tyrone Henry, 30, appeared here in 2000 when arrested in Tucson, Ariz., for running a scheme in which female college students were paid $10 to "test" facial cream but which cream turned out to be Henry's sperm. He was convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison, but is still (according to a June 2003 Tucson Weekly story) aggressively proclaiming that he violated no law. Argues Henry: The women were adults; there was no sexual contact; they were paid; Henry did not "expose" himself because the girls were blindfolded. Henry said he was just pursuing "the American dream" with his Web site selling men photos of women's sperm-adorned faces.

-- In May at the 24 Hour Fitness Center in Englewood, Colo., a 55-year-old client died of a heart attack during a workout, but before the body could be properly removed, several club members continued their workouts less than 6 feet away. And Ukrainian scientists told the Agence France-Presse news service in April that worms that survived the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl (where radioactivity is still 100 times higher than normal) are more reproductively active than they were before the disaster.

-- Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (63) Genetic modification experiments using DNA from jellyfish to create some organism or other that lights up, such as an aquarium-pet zebrafish that glows yellow and green, created in Taiwan by the Taikong Corporation (June). (64) And the man with a police obsession who dresses as a cop and makes free-lance traffic stops with emergency flashers on his car, only to discover that the person he stopped is a real police officer, as happened when Clifford Holloway, 30, stopped off-duty officer Matthew Bandler in Kansas City, Mo. (June).

-- Becky Nyang, 26, was hospitalized while on holiday after being struck by lightning, attracted to her face by her tongue stud, leaving her with severe blisters about the mouth, face and feet (Corfu island, Greece). Mongolian sumo champion Asashoryu was disqualified during the Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament when he inexplicably pulled a World Wrestling Entertainment move and took down his opponent by yanking his hair (Nagoya, Japan). And a 4-year-old girl was hit by a computer that came flying out of a 12th floor apartment window, flung by a father angry that his 12-year-old daughter wouldn't stay off the Internet (Seoul).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)