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WEIRDNUZ.426 (News of the Weird, April 5, 1996)
by Chuck Shepherd

LEAD STORY

* In February, the British Columbia Supreme Court acquitted a
26-year-old man with a sleep disorder of sexually assaulting a 4-
year-old girl because the assault occurred while he was allegedly
asleep.  In 1995, a man in Calgary was acquitted of sexual
assault using the same defense, and in 1987, an Ontario man who
stabbed his mother-in-law to death after having driven 20
kilometers on a busy highway to get to her house also proved he
had a sleep disorder and was acquitted on the same ground.
[Sault Star-CP, 2-3-96] Kirchmeir

GOVERNMENT IN ACTION

* A Houston Chronicle investigation published in February
revealed that only rarely does a complaint to the state Board of
Examiners of Psychologists result in suspension or revocation of
a license.  One Temple, Tex., psychologist admitted pointing a
gun to his head in a suicide threat, shooting a gun inside his
home, seducing a patient, and carving a pentagram into his arm
with a knife; he's still practicing.  While the Board is not quick
to pull licenses, it often requires that troubled psychologists get
psychological counseling. [Dallas Morning News-Houston
Chronicle, 2-5-96]

* The Washington Post reported in March that the Department of
Agriculture required Iowa's Oink-Oink, Inc., last year to begin
dying green its best-selling dog treat, Pork Tenderloin (which is
made from the penises of hogs).  Oink-Oink thought the green
dye would make the product unappealing and took a $100,000
loss killing the product and enraging dog owners who loved the
treat.  The Department's only reason for requiring the dye was so
the treats would be more obviously identified as not for human
consumption. [Washington Post, 3-1-96]

* In October, Pennsylvania Rep. Alan Butkovitz introduced
legislation to end a disparity in state law.  Under the
unsatisfactory law, a drunk driver who causes an accident and
fails his blood-alcohol test is subject to a felony charge, but one
who manages to flee the scene before the cops get there, sober
up, and turn himself in later is subject only to a misdemeanor.
[Philadelphia Inquirer, 10-3-95]

* Former Orange County (Calif.) Treasurer Robert L. Citron,
who is awaiting sentencing for fraud in mishandling the county's
finances, said in December that the reason his investment
decisions plunged the county into the biggest local- government
bankruptcy in history in 1994 was the bad advice he had received
on interest rates from a mail-order psychic.  The good news for
Citron, according to Anaheim, Calif., channeler Barbara Connor,
is that Citron told her that he learned during two trances last year
that he would receive community service but no jail time for his
conviction. [Las Vegas Review-Journal, 3-13-96]

* Program analysts hired by the CIA to evaluate its $20 million
project to use psychics to gather intelligence concluded in
November that the psychics were accurate about 15% of the time.
Among the psychics' tasks were to track down Moammar
Gadhafi so that he could be hit in the 1986 bombing of Libya and
to locate the plutonium squirreled away in North Korea.
According to columnist Jack Anderson, the Pentagon adopted the
program in the early 1970s because the Soviet Union was making
extensive use of psychics. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch-AP, 11-30-
95] Washington Post, Oct95]

* In December, less than three months after he had sold federal
land worth $1 billion in mining rights to a Danish company for
$275, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt was forced to sell
another $2.9 billion piece of land in Arizona for $1,745.  Babbitt
is required to make these sales under an 1872 federal law, which
Western Senators refuse to change. [Tampa Tribune-AP, 12-2-
95]

OOPS!

* Recent Highway Truck Spills:  two dozen bags of coins from
an armored truck, and kegs and bottles from a beer truck, in
Washington, D. C., in November; a half-ton of cat litter, in
Stafford County, Va., in March; dozens of boxes of socks in
Decatur, Ala., in January; and animal blood, which dripped out
of a tanker and stained a highway for 20 miles near Syracuse,
Kan., in February. [Washington Post, 11-8-95] [Fairfax Journal,
11-10-95] [Washington Post, 3-14-96] [Decatur Daily, 1-10-96]
[Northwest Florida Daily News, 2-9-96]

* In December, Eric Dulkin, 19, failed his driver's test in
Chicago when he inadvertently accelerated as he was leaving the
parking lot, causing his car to fishtail and smash through a
window in the licensing-office building.  In Greenville, S. C., in
November, a 15-year-old boy driving a stolen car saw his
grandmother driving toward him in traffic, ducked down to avoid
her seeing him, and inadvertently hit the gas pedal, causing his
car to smash into hers. (Injuries were minor.) [Chicago Sun-
Times, 12-14-95] [Columbus Dispatch, Nov95]

* In February in Winona, Minn., firefighters had to be called to
rescue Mary Tyler, 39, after her hand got stuck in her toilet as
she tried to retrieve a deodorant container that had fallen in.
[Winona Post, 2-11-96]

* Lowell Altvater, 80, was charged with negligent assault in
Sandusky, Ohio, in November after he thought he saw a rat in his
barn and fired his shotgun at it.  It turned out to be his wife's
hat, which she was wearing.  Mrs. Altvater begged police not to
file charges, but they did, in part because Lowell had shot
himself in the leg in 1992 in the same barn after thinking then,
too, that he had spotted a rat. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel-
Toledo Blade, 12-20-95; Columbus Dispatch, Nov95]

* In January near Branford, Conn., Mark Sullivan, 41, was about
to bite into a Big Mac while driving on an icy road when his car
spun into a concrete divider.  The first rescuer on the scene found
"McDonald's wrappers and french fries all over the place" and
Sullivan turning blue, the sandwich having been thrust down his
throat by the impact.  (He's fine now.) [Hartford Courant, 1-5-
96]

* Reading, Pa., county controller Judith Kraines complained at a
commissioners' meeting in January about having to type letters
and do other business on a typewriter because her computer was
old and no one had been able to get it to work for two years.  "If
we had a computer," she said, "letters would go out faster."
Three days later, she announced that the computer she was
complaining about in fact had not been plugged in to any
electrical outlet and that when the plug was inserted and the
computer was turned on, it worked fine. [Reading Eagle-Times,
1-21-96]

Copyright 1996, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers.  No commercial use
may be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.