Taken from the NEWS OF THE WEIRD column by Chuck Shepard. © UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

* Authorities in Texarkana, AK, arrested Johnny Brown, 18, and Justin Calhoun, 17, and charged them with breaking into an abandoned neon sign plant in December and taking away containers of a shiny, silver liquid that, according to witnesses, they later played with all around town. The liquid was highly poisonous mercury, which Brown, Calhoun, and some friends, among other stunts, dipped their arms in just to watch it bead up and drip. Since the break-in, the young men's mercury spree has forced the evacuation of ten homes, the boarding up of a Subway sandwich shop, the temporary closing of Pleasant Grove High School, and the medical treatment of 64 people.

* In February, two Russian cosmonauts aboard the Mir space station hawked NASA space pens ($32) and other paraphernalia on the American QVC shopping channel, in an effort to raise some money for their country's under funded space program. A total of 530 people bought something, including 11 who paid from $90 to $2,500 for tiny Mars rocks. Six others submitted to credit inquiries about buying $25,000 Sokol KV-2 spacesuits.

* In Columbus, OH, in May, a suspected burglar in his mid-20s was found dead, his body hanging outside a second-floor apartment; he had apparently squeezed his head through the narrow window bars to enter when his ladder tipped over. And a 15-year- old boy in Odenton, MD, jokingly holding a gun to his head in front of his girlfriend, shot himself to death in February, apparently yet another casualty of ignorance about semiautomatic pistols; though he had removed the magazine, he had not realized that one round remained in the chamber.

* While Joe Camel-type ads lose favor in cigarette promotions in the U.S., ads in other countries are stepping up their use of sensitive sales images, according to an April San Francisco Examiner report. A Marlboro ad in Cambodia features girls around eight years of age; in Poland, the backdrop of a Camel ad is a school; and in the Philippines, the tobacco industry association used (along with packs of Winston and Camel) the Virgin Mary on its 1998 promotional calendar.

* Shirley Jean Shay, 41, was arrested near Salt Lake City in April after commandeering a 25-ton fire truck and leading police on a 50-mile chase at speeds up to 70 mph, including the last 20 miles after all six tires had been punctured by road spikes. No motive was given. And a man led police on a brief vehicle chase on Interstate 215 in Perris, CA, in March before being subdued. The chase had ended several blocks earlier when the man's car ran out of gas, but then he got out and pushed it in a futile attempt to stay ahead of the police.

* In March, after four hours of questioning and waiting, police in Springfield, IL, gave up and got a search warrant for the mouth of Mr. Eunice Husband, 27. Husband had stuffed three marble-sized bags of crack cocaine in his mouth and refused to open up, though he continued to talk to officers through his clenched teeth. After getting the warrant, police took Husband to a hospital, where he was sedated and the bags removed.

* Last year, the six-member city council of Glendale, CO, passed tough restrictions on strip clubs that so angered many citizens that they joined strip-club owner Debbie Matthews in forming the Glendale Tea Party, whose candidates in the April 1998 council election won all three contested seats, giving the Party a chance now to repeal or weaken the ordinance. Said Matthews, "I don't think [the old council] realized [how many] people like the club."

* In April, indictments were returned against New York City inmates Hector Muniz, Carlos Martinez, and Troy Jennings for their alleged getrich scheme at Rikers Island prison. Authorities said Muniz, who had a day job on the outside, smuggled a gun inside so that, at Jennings's direction, Martinez could shoot Jennings in the leg, which he did. The plan was that Jennings would sue the city for "millions" for negligence in allowing the gun inside and insist on the release of all three men as a condition of settlement.

1997 Highlights!

*In December 1996, Phillip Johnson, then 32, was hospitalized in Prestonburg, KY, after shooting himself in the left shoulder with his .22caliber rifle "to see how it felt," he told ambulance personnel. The sheriff described him as "screaming about the pain, over and over." On October 2, 1997, an ambulance crew was again called to Johnson's home, where he was bleeding from another left-shoulder gunshot. According to the Inez Mountain Citizen newspaper, Johnson said the earlier shooting "felt so good," he had to do it again.

*When Maria DiGiulio was booked in July for robbing the Everett (Mass.) Co-op Bank, she answered police Lt. Robert Bontempo forthrightly. "Occupation?" he asked. "Bank robber," she said.

* Steven Richard King, 22, was arrested in April for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch in Modesto, CA, without a weapon. He used his thumb and finger to simulate a gun, but unlike most robbers who use this tactic, he did not have his hand in his pocket.

JUSTICE!

*In this space last year appeared hard-luck Oklahoma rapist Darron Bennalford Anderson, who in 1994 had received a 2,200- year sentence but had appealed and won a new trial, only to be convicted again and re-sentenced to more than 90 additional centuries behind bars, including 4000 years each for rape and sodomy, 1,750 years for kidnapping, 1,000 years for burglary and robbery, and 500 years for grand larceny. But Anderson was not to be denied; 1997 was his year. In July, the state Court of Criminal Appeals held that the grand larceny charge was double jeopardy on the robbery conviction and thus dismissed it. Just like that, the court cut Anderson's sentence by 500 years, speeding up his release date to the year 12,744 A.D.