(1) A February St. Petersburg Times report found several local people who regularly cook gourmet meals for their dogs and who revealed their dogs (or maybe just their) favorite recipes

Pastor John Renkens Xtreme Ministries of Memphis, Tenn. is one of a supposedly growing number of churches that use mixed martial arts events to recruit wayward young men to the Christian gospel. Typically, after leading his flock in solemn prayer to a loving God, Pastor Renken adjourns the session to the back room, where a New York Times.

When Dexter Blanchs dog nearly died from complications during spay surgery, he decided to use the event as inspiration and recently brought to market a chastity belt to give pet owners more control of their animals animal instincts.

A Toronto restaurant, Mildreds Temple Kitchen, announced that its Valentines Day promotion this year would not just be a romantic dinner but would also include an invitation for couples to have sex in the restrooms.

(1) April Gaede, who four years ago guided her teenage daughters, Lynx and Lamb (performing as Prussian Blue), to a brief music career singing neo- Nazi songs, announced a new project recently on the white nationalist website Stormfront.org.

Lame: (1) Ex-convict John Stephens told a Floyd County (Ind.) judge in December that he had a full-time job and intended to turn his life around, but had slipped when he tried to rob the Your Community Bank. If I hadnt been watching the news and seeing [other successful] bank robberies, he said, he wouldnt have been tempted.

In December, a prominent online game player, Buzz Erik Lightyear, won the auction for ownership of a virtual space station in the Planet Calypso game, paying 3.3 million Project Entropia Dollars (PEDs), which at various points entered the games playlike economy at an out-of-pocket cost of 10 actual US cents per PED.

Big-time traffickers who smuggle illegal immigrants into the US from Mexico rely on GPS devices to evade the Border Patrol, but starting in June, border-jumpers who travel on their own can have protection, too.

Natives of the Erromango section of the Pacific island Vanuatu recently held a formal "conciliation" with the great-great-grandson of the British missionary whom the islanders' ancestors ate when he came ashore in 1839. Charles Milner-Williams

In Somalia, which is without a central government to speak of and where very little functions beyond an Islamic resistance and individual warlords' fiefdoms, a robust "stock market" has emerged in the city of Haradheere