News of the Weird

Update: In July 2004, as News of the Weird mentioned, a federal appeals court ruled that the leak-safety standards for the long-awaited nuclear waste depository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain were too weak, in that the Environmental Protection Agency would regard the facility as safe for only 10,000 years (almost five times the length of time since the birth of Jesus). One National Academy of Sciences panel had recommended against the site unless leak safety could be certified for at least 300,000 years. In August 2005, EPA issued a revised durability standard, now claiming the site would be free of unsafe leaks for a million years. (Context: 110 years ago, science had not even discovered radioactivity.)

-- A 1958 Pablo Picasso original, "Atelier de Cannes," was placed on sale recently by the discount chain Costco (at its Web site Costco.com), priced to move at the retail-type listing of $129,999.99. Costco began offering art on consignment from dealers last year, but "Atelier" (a crayon drawing authenticated by daughter Maya Picasso) is by far its most expensive piece. According to an August report in the New York Post, the company extends its regular guarantee of full refund if dissatisfied.

-- A Pakistani company, The Resource Group, seeking more call-center work from U.S. firms, set up an office this year in Washington, D.C., a block from the White House, and installed a receptionist, live from Karachi, via a flat-screen TV on the office wall. According to a May Washington Post report, Ms. Saadia Musa cheerily greets visitors, answers and routes phone calls to the Washington office, lets in deliverymen, and orders sandwiches from down the street.

-- In July, Uttar Pradesh Eunuchs Association, in Lucknow, India, demanded that the district magistrate and the senior superintendent of police order cops to begin exposing fake eunuchs by lifting their skirts to verify their status. Charlatans, according to the group, deprive real eunuchs of "legitimate" income (a large part of which derives from eunuchs' entering places of business and private parties, exposing themselves and otherwise being obnoxious, and demanding a fee to leave).

Police in West Hartford, Conn., arrested Matthew Flynn, 46, in August for allegedly threatening to castrate a Melly's ice-cream truck driver with a pair of hedge clippers because the driver blared his jingle on and on and on, even though Flynn told him that no kids lived on the street. And David Owen Rye, 48, was arrested in Los Angeles 10 days earlier for allegedly firing at least three bullets into a Toyota Camry in an apartment-house parking lot because its car alarm wouldn't shut off.

-- Fire-Freaking: Apparently, forest fires make the jewel beetle (also known as the black fire beetle) frisky, according to Dr. Helmut Schmitz and colleagues at the University of Bonn (Germany), for males and females will fly toward one in a mating frenzy after detecting even the faraway flickering of flames and crackling of burning wood. Schmitz, and predecessor William George Evans, hypothesized that the fire eliminates the beetle's predators and prevents tree secretion from trapping the beetle larvae, according to a March report by BBC News.

-- In research published in May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biologist Brian Langerhans and colleagues found that large genitals in some fish species (such as the western and Bahamas mosquitofish) represent evolutionary pluses and minuses. Apparently, females prefer well-endowed mating partners, but on the other hand, well-hung males tend to have shorter life spans because, weighted down as they are, they cannot swim away from predators as nimbly as can mosquitofish with smaller endowments.

Sam, the 14-year-old Chinese crested, won in June for the third time as the World's Ugliest Dog at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in California. According to an Associated Press reporter, the hairless dog's "wrinkled brown skin is covered with splotches; a line of warts marches down his snout; his blind eyes are an alien, milky white; and a fleshy flap of skin hangs from his withered neck. And then there's the Austin Powers teeth that jut at odd angles from his mouth." Owner Susie Lockheed said that even the judges recoiled when they first saw him. (Fortunately, for those concerned with dog beauty, Sam has been neutered.)

(1) On July 3 in San Marcos, Texas, Dave Newman, 48, rescued a swimmer caught in the currents of the San Marcos River, pulling the man underneath a waterfall and to shore. However, when Newman tried to climb out of the water, a police officer offered his hand but only to arrest Newman for interfering with "official" rescuers (who, of course, failed to get to the man before Newman did). (2) According to police in Jacksonville, N.C., Dorothea Thomas was shot six times by her boyfriend in June and forced to jump from her apartment's second-story balcony to survive, but by the time she returned from the hospital, her landlord of nine years, United Dominion Residential Community, had posted an eviction notice, kicking her out for letting such a dangerous man come onto the property.

-- Star wide receiver Brandon Jackson might just play in at least half of Lancaster (Texas) High School's football games this season because he doesn't go to court until Oct. 17 on six counts of aggravated robbery from two January armed holdups. Lancaster High's dedication to the presumption of innocence for high school football players is apparently so strong that the only remaining issues, at press time, were (1) whether his relocation from his previous high school will be permitted under the general rules on transfer and (2) whether he will be allowed to remove his ankle monitor during games.

-- Werner D. Anderson was arrested on several traffic violations in Missoula County, Mont., in June after a two-county car chase with deputies that ended with Anderson creeping along at 20 mph until he stopped. Deputies say that when Anderson finally got out of his van, a syringe fell to the ground, and Anderson said he had been driving so slowly at the end because he needed to shoot up with cocaine one last time before he got arrested.

Jeremy Suggs, 21, was arrested in Las Vegas in August and charged with robbing a Wells Fargo bank, done in by the familiar lapse of having accidentally left behind his wallet and a name-imprinted deposit slip. Also, according to police, he had fired two shots in the bank out of frustration at noncompliance with his demands, with one narrowly missing his own head, and had to re-count down a threat to shoot ("5, 4, 3, 2, 1") when no one gave him money the first time. His alleged partner and getaway driver, known as "Jap," had supposedly talked him into the crime by assuring him that there were no surveillance cameras, but of course there were.

(1) The owner of Al's Lock and Safe in North Platte, Neb., made a truck key in June based entirely on looking at an X-ray of the key inside the stomach of Arthur Richardson, who had accidentally swallowed it in an inept attempt to play a prank on the friend of his who owned the truck. The friend said he needed the truck right away and couldn't wait for Arthur to receive a nature's call. (2) Grandmother-of-six Mari Savage and other senior friends in Margate, England, began a campaign this summer to wear hooded sweatshirts and baseball caps, in order to discourage teenagers from dressing that way, which Savage believes encourages gang behavior. Said Savage, to the Daily Telegraph, "Once older people like us get hold of (these garments), they lose all their street cred."

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

-- In court papers filed in 1994 but which only recently drew public attention, lawyers for the Catholic Archdiocese of Portland, Ore., challenged a child-support claim against a priest by pointing out the culpability of the mother herself for failing to use birth control (which the church regards a grave sin). The 1994 document came to light when the woman went back to court in July 2005 for an increase in child support, but the court turned her down in deference to Father Arturo Uribe's vow of poverty, although Uribe's ordaining order subsequently volunteered more support. (The man who was archbishop of Portland during the 1994 case recently assumed Pope Benedict's previous job as the Vatican's chief doctrinist.)

-- In July, a team of South Korean scientists made history by cloning an Afghan hound, but many experts view the team's revelation two months earlier as even more important, when they derived 11 stem cell lines from clones of patients with specific diseases. The leader of the team, Hwang Woo-suk, told the journal Nature Medicine then that Koreans have an advantage over westerners in delicate laboratory work because of "Oriental hands. We can pick up very slippery corn or rice with the steel chopsticks."

-- Lame: (1) Ronald Schueller, convicted of attempting to hire someone to knock his estranged wife unconscious and kidnap her, said (according to prosecutors) that he was just trying to reconcile with her, based on an idea from a "Dr. Phil" TV segment in which the host said that sometimes people need a good scare to realize their delusions (Port Washington, Wis., August). (2) Jessica Stakelbeck, 22, charged with neglect when two of her diaper-clad toddlers were found on the side of a highway, blamed her lapse not on being high from her admitted methamphetamine habit but on sleepiness from missing her meth for several days (Franklin, Ind, August).

-- Eric Laverriere, 25, filed a federal lawsuit in Boston in July, claiming the Waltham, Mass., police violated his constitutional right to be drunk when they arrested him at a private New Year's Eve party even though there was no evidence that he was disturbing anyone. (The law in many states requires police to detain someone who is incapacitated and who might be a threat to himself, and indeed, some police departments have been sued if they fail to detain someone who later injures himself.) And in July, Britain's High Court declared illegal London's 9 p.m. curfew for those under age 16 who are not with an adult. Lord Justice Brooke said "everyone" should have the right to "walk the streets without interference from police."

-- Geoffrey Moore, 65, of Hightown Green, England, filed an unfair dismissal claim against his former employer, Kevin Mayhew Publishers, for firing him after he was convicted of six counts of sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl. Upon his conviction, Moore was placed on various restrictions but avoided jail time and now says that since he never actually went to jail, the company, which specializes in Christian-themed books, should take him back.

-- In Old Saybrook, Conn., in October 2004, Alan Hauser, who was parked with engine running, sitting with his mother-in-law, accidentally hit the accelerator, causing the SUV to jump a curb and plunge down an embankment into the Connecticut River, where rescuers (who were later cited for heroism) pulled the woman out 30 minutes later. (Hauser managed on his own.) The woman, 75, suffered serious brain damage from being submerged, and in August filed a lawsuit against the city for not having guardrails, not having regular patrols of trained and equipped rescuers, and not having more signs warning people of the danger of falling into the river. (Hauser was also sued, but the family's original plan, to sue individual rescuers, was scuttled.)

-- In July, Jeanette Passalaqua, 32, filed a lawsuit in San Bernardino, Calif., against the Kaiser Permanente medical organization for the death of her husband in June 2004, when he passed out from watching his wife receive an epidural anesthetic, fell over and fatally hit his head. According to the lawsuit, hospital personnel had asked the husband to hold and comfort his wife while the needle was being inserted and therefore were at fault.

-- New World Order: In April, the communist government of China presented its quinquennial Vanguard (or Model) Worker award (in the past, given to loyal factory workers, dedicated public-outhouse stewards, and the like) to Yao Ming, the Houston Rockets' basketball player who lives most of the year in the United States and earns about $15 million annually from playing and from product endorsements (which is about 15,000 times the average earning of Chinese urban workers).

-- More Ironies: (1) Criminal defense lawyer Donald Johnson apprehended the man burglarizing his home in Cornwall, Ontario, in May, and discovered it was one of his clients, Scott Best, 34 (who apparently was unaware of whose home he had entered and wanted to telephone Johnson from the station house). (2) Among the items stolen from the All Souls Church in Peterborough, England, in July was a 2-foot-high statue of St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost and stolen items.

About 200 major league baseball players wear $23 titanium necklaces made by the Japanese company, Phiten, according to a June New York Times report, with many accepting the company's claim that they improve circulation and reduce muscle stress. Said a company spokesman: "Everybody has electricity running through their bodies. This product stabilizes that flow of electricity if you're stressed or tired." Said New York Mets pitcher Heath Bell (who has two necklaces): "If you think it works, it's going to work. If you don't think it works, it's not going to work. But I'm going to keep wearing it, because next year, there will be something new we'll all have to get."

Steven Newell was hospitalized in London, Ontario, in June after his large plastic swimming pool, which he had just placed on his second-floor balcony and then filled with water, caused the balcony to collapse and plunge to the ground. The pool, 8 feet in diameter and filled with water as it was to a height of 20 inches, would require about 640 gallons, weighing more than 2 1/2 tons. Newell had relocated the pool to the balcony in order to avoid the safety requirement of building a fence around it.

Lawyers for horror novelist Stephen King acknowledged in June that King had been sued once again by Anne Hiltner, who now claims that the obsessed, psychotic nurse in the movie "Misery" must have been based on her. She had earlier claimed that a psychic character from King's TV show "Kingdom Hospital" was based on her and sued him before that for allegedly breaking into her home and stealing manuscripts.

News of the Weird has often mentioned cases of bestiality, but the death of a 45-year-old man in Enumclaw, Wash., in July was extraordinary. The death was reported in the local media as having occurred after "sex with a horse," but bestiality usually involves the human as the penetrator. In this case, though, the man died of acute peritonitis from a perforated colon, indicating that the horse was the penetrator. Investigators reportedly also seized videotapes of the activity, which took place at a nondescript farm that was apparently known in Internet bestiality chat rooms to be a covert haven for sex with livestock. (Washington is one of 17 states without a specific anti-bestiality law, and authorities said that the act was probably not a crime, in that the state's animal-cruelty law would require showing that the horse suffered.)

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

In July, film director David Lynch announced that he had formed a foundation to raise $7 billion to fund 8,000 Transcendental Meditation practitioners to bring world peace by creating a "unified field" of stress-free brain waves over the Earth (which TM'ers accomplish, as they unironically describe it, by detaching their minds from the "thinking process"). Training expenses have increased dramatically in 12 years, for TM maven Dr. John Hagelin needed only $4.2 million in 1993 to bring 4,000 TM'ers to Washington, D.C., to reduce crime for eight weeks, and TM founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi asked for only $1 billion in 2002 to train 40,000 meditators to calm the world after Sept. 11.

-- In separate incidents on Tuesday, July 26, mothers in Falls Church, Va., and Zephyrhills, Fla., kicked their young sons (ages 4 and 7, respectively) out of their cars on busy highways and abandoned them as punishment for backtalk. Channoah Alece Green, 22, in Virginia even knocked her son down driving off on Interstate 495 as he tried to climb back in. The problem addressed by Lori Heine, 46, in Florida was that her son wanted a McDonald's Cheeseburger Happy Meal when she had already bought him a McNuggets Happy Meal.

-- In incidents two weeks apart in July, men in New York City and Trenton, Ohio, arrived for Internet-chat-room-arranged trysts with "teenage girls" (who were, of course, police officers operating stings), even though they apparently could not find baby sitters. Alan Schaefer, 43, was arrested in Greenwich Village while walking down a street with his 14-month-old son in one arm and holding the hand of a very young-looking policewoman. Would-be Clinton Township, Ohio, politician Hank Hill was arrested when he showed up to meet a "14-year-old girl," and according to WEWS-TV, in his truck were Viagra, condoms, lubricant and his 22-month-old son.

-- In Brentwood, N.H., on July 30, police responded to an emergency call to find an intoxicated man with a padlock around his scrotum. He was taken to Exeter Hospital, and a locksmith freed him. And the day before that, in Worcester, England, Geoffrey Hughes, 51, was given a two-year "anti-social behavior order" in Magistrates Court for a series of incidents, one of which was appearing in public wearing only a hat and, on his scrotum, a padlock.

-- For a six-month period four years ago, government scientists in Florida studied a "miracle" liquid called "Celestial Drops" as a cure for the canker menace that ravages the state's citrus crops. According to a July report by the Orlando Sentinel, the research was recommended by then-secretary of state Katherine Harris, who later said she had learned of Celestial Drops from New York rabbi Abe Hardoon, who is associated with the popularized version of Kabbalah, whose organizers sell its followers ordinary water that is supposedly "blessed" by being stored in a room with sacred texts. Celestial Drops, which was promoted as having "improved fractal design," "infinite levels of order" and "high energy and low entropy," was ultimately revealed by the scientists to also be water.

-- In May, a Philadelphia Daily News columnist described a cattle-call-type ritual at the local airport Sheraton hotel, by which most of the candidates for the city's judgeships in that month's Democratic primary shuffled into a room and offered checks of $1,000 or $2,000 to each of the city's ward leaders for "election day expenses," with each leader accepting the checks of those he would support. At a similar gathering at the Ritz-Carlton, one candidate said, "I thought to myself, 'What if we all just walked out. Refused to pay.' But none of us had the courage."

The Thames Water company succeeded in pressuring artist Mark McGowan to abandon his project at the House Gallery in south London in July in which, to protest society's profligate use of water, he turned on House's faucet and planned not to turn it off for a year (wasting an estimated 3.9 million gallons). And in Chicago, it was only a couple of days after photographer Kerry Skarbakka announced his "Falling" project that he was pressured into abandoning it. Skarbakka said he was awed by the sight of people falling or jumping from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and said he would, in tribute, repeatedly plunge four stories from Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (but was quickly excoriated for poor taste).

-- Reuters reported in July that a court in Macerata, Italy, had scheduled Amelia Cuccioletti's property-rights case for further proceedings at 9:30 a.m. on March 25, 2010. Cuccioletti is 98 years old. (The average civil case runs about eight years in Italy.) And in London in May, lawyer Nicholas Stadlen finally came to the end of his opening remarks for the defense in a creditors' lawsuit against the failed BCCI bank. He spoke for 119 days and referred to files stacked so high that neither side's lawyers could see each other. The plaintiff's lawyer had taken only 73 days.

-- In July, a jury in Los Angeles awarded Robert Johnson, the former "chief physician and surgeon" at California State Prison at Lancaster, $1.6 million in compensatory damages for age discrimination after he had been forced to retire in 2001 at age 80. Most of that award represents future salary for Johnson, signifying that the jury perhaps accepted trial testimony that Johnson was fit to continue in his job until the age of 96.

Adam Tyson, 18, Jason Krueger, 20, and two pals were hospitalized in Clermont, Fla., in July with severe bee stings after imprudently deciding to vandalize a beehive colony in an orange grove; their truck got stuck in the sand just after they had set 50,000 bees swarming. And in July in Sparta, Wis., Darkalena Large, 43, insisted that she and her car were fine, but police arrested her anyway on suspicion of drunk driving after finding her in the car, which was stuck on a curb with one tire missing and the wheel's rim badly mangled (and recently on fire, according to a witness). Also, a nearby resident brought over part of the rim, which had been broken off and propelled into the air and through his second-floor window.

Among the more astonishing repeat stories in News of the Weird are reports of people who had somehow managed to swallow their toothbrushes. The Saudi Press Association reported in January that doctors at King Abdul Aziz Hospital in Taif had removed a toothbrush from the stomach of a 70-year-old man (who claimed to have accidentally swallowed it 22 years ago). And in July, the Associated Press reported that a Taiwan surgeon had removed an eight-tooth, accidentally swallowed lower denture from the bronchial tube of a 45-year-old man. The man said he had misplaced the denture three years ago and had been looking everywhere for it.

Erik K. Low, 37, was convicted of manslaughter in Salt Lake City in June for fatally shooting a friend who had just moments before given him a "wedgie." And Judy Castillo-Thomas, 29, was actually acquitted of manslaughter in July in Brooklyn, N.Y., even though she admitted accidentally stabbing her husband to death after he had beat her and taunted her for having buttocks that were "too small."

-- London's Sunday Times reported in July that Prime Minister Blair had spent the equivalent of about $3,300 on makeup and makeup artists over the last six years, and according to campaign disclosure statements reported by the Boston Globe in May, U.S. Rep. Steve Lynch of Massachusetts spent $2,506 on makeup services only in the previous eight months.

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