News of the Weird

Higher Calling

Spain: Almudena Cathedral, in Madrid, has a new take on Mammon. Worshippers, fearful of being mugged, were not bringing much cash with them. The Cathedral has installed a credit-card machine for their offerings.

Queens: The Rev Ngozi Osuji, of the Church of Notre Dame in Manhattan, was on his way to holiday in Nigeria when security men at JFK airport intervened. When they searched him, they found that he had a handgun and bullets concealed in a box of washing powder. He told them that he had not packed his suitcase himself.

Florida: In Tallahassee, Senator John Grant moved to allow that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all state-owned buildings. His request was not allowed.

Indiana: In Auburn, the Ten Commandments will be displayed in De Kalb County courthouse - in an exhibition of historical documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution - but there will also be a notice alongside to point out that no public funds were spent on putting up God's Word.

Organisational Skills

Florida: An apartment building in Fort Lauderdale was covered, the tenants were told to spend the night elsewhere, and poison-gas was sprayed to kill termites - and two men who did not get the message.

In Their Wisdom

Arizona: the State University hired James Hann to teach criminal justice, but he was fired before he could do so. Twenty-four years ago, he had shot and killed somebody during a drugs deal. The university was very understanding - "He did something real stupid when he was 17 years old. Why the hell should we condemn him for the rest of his life?" - but the world at large was not.

Hong Kong: Seventy-six-year-old Wong Tai-fuk was so disgruntled at being arrested and fined for hawking jade on the pavement, and so miffed at not being given all his precious stock back, that he decided to set fire to himself in North Kowloon Court and died two days later.

Australia: Gregory Carr, a trumpeter with Opera Australia, has won back his job, after being fired because there was fear that his epileptic fits - kind of blue - were a danger to other players.

California: The city of Compton has been found guilty of the death of Viola Woods. Her son, Calvin Cooksey, reported that the family had received threats after his being star witness in a murder trial. The city took no action, and his mother was gunned down. Cooksey, however, received no damages; jurors decided that he had not suffered serious emotional distress.

France: An appeal court in Rennes has deemed that a restaurant was excessive in sacking an employee who purloined for his dog something which belonged to the business - slices of sausage left on the plate by a customer.

St Leonards: Anne Etherbridge is suing East Sussex County Council and the pupil who dropped a basketball on her head from the top of some stairs at Robertsbridge Community College.

Washington: Bob Glaser, a lawyer, had better steer clear of France. He went to an Elton John concert in San Diego and was totally outraged that women used a urinal trough while he did so himself. He sued not only the city, for $5.4m, but also the company that had sold him the beer which he was returning to the earth. The Supreme Court has thrown out the case as frivolous.

Ohio: Olakune Osaba, charged with dealing in heroin, has been sent to jail by Judge John Holschuh, who did not buy his claim of being jinxed by the voodoo spells that had continued to be cast by a witch after their relationship bust up. In dreams, she demanded that he send her money, hence the drug-dealing.

Causing Offence

Michigan: When a couple bought a house in Detroit, something was left out in the estate agent's details. Their new home is recorded as belonging to a sex-offender.

Arkansas: An eye doctor, Fay Boozman, failed in his bid for the Senate after remarking that raped women rarely become pregnant because the adrenaline caused by fear brings on hormonal changes. He now hopes to become state chief health officer.

Nice Try

Holland: The Dutch have just completed a 40-volume dictionary after 147 years - and its vocabulary stops at 1976.

Los Angeles: A mortgage company wrote to offer Jay Ranellucci a $50,000 loan on "your house at 1750 Vine Street" - the splendid Capitol Records building where he works.

Elders and Betters

Australia: Dilange Gamage, eight weeks old, was woken rudely one morning when his mother, mistaking the gears, drove her car through his bedroom window. His cot was splintered, glass flew - but when a neighbour started moving the rubble, a small arm appeared so they pressed down the mattress to keep the weight of the vehicle off the child, whose heart continued to beat.

Canada: Some money went missing at Kingsville High School in Ontario - so the vice-principal, John Macdonald, told the gym teacher, Dan Bondy, to organise a strip search of 19 pupils, who all had to drop their trousers and bend over. The money was not found.

Ohio: Douglas Dials, of Columbus, was released from jail last year. He had been found guilty of theft and drunken driving. Moreover, he owed $48,000 in child support. But he is now able to pay it, after winning the same amount from the $1.3m which his estranged wife won from Franklin County after their son was murdered by a convict who escaped en route to court.

Smalls

Rotterdam: Damien Hirst is a Norman Rockwell beside the exhibition Up to the Bare Bones. It contains such defunct items as an exposed brain, skeletons, an arm in formaldehyde, foetuses, a 17th-century tongue - and something that fulfils David Bowie's lines about "keeping all your dead hair to make up underwear". This could restore Marks & Spencer's fortunes.

Human Rights

West Sussex: Jack Straw's decision about General Pinochet has had unexpected ramifications. Forty Scouts are due to fly to Chile on Boxing Day for an international jamboree. Each scout has raised pounds 2,500 for the jaunt. Their scout-leader, Glyn Pullen, says: "There will be a lot of upset people if we are not allowed to go."

Shipping News

Gulf of Mexico: The poor crew of the Delta Pride is likely to have a rather miserable Christmas. The ship had been held in Tampico, Mexico while local agents tried to get back the $300,000 due to them from the ship's Pakistani owners, Tristar Shipping Lines, now bankrupt.

Even though the crew had not been paid for five months, they were not allowed off the ship, and their passports were confiscated. Denied food and water, they threatened to kill themselves - at which point, the captain set sail for America in the hope of greater leniency. But no dice: the ship is still at anchor, the crew are still aboard, and everything now hinges on whether the Allied Bank of Karachi will come up with the readies.