At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships in May in Anchorage, Alaska, four local heroes defeated the usually dominant German contingent in the 18-category pageant, including overall champ David Traver of Girdwood, Alaska, whose woven chin hair suggests a long potholder.

A physical fitness video, purportedly made in April by a US-based al- Qaida operative, gives workout tips to jihadists, urging that they train as hard as possible to inflict maximum damage on the enemies of Allah, according to an ABC News report.

Over a 10-week period this summer, nearly 200 young Saudi women are auditioning for a beauty pageant, but one called Miss Beautiful Morals, in which physical attractiveness is irrelevant, replaced by judging of the ladies observance of traditional Saudi values, especially the honoring of their mothers.

In a nondescript building next to a mosque in downtown Karachi, Pakistan, the Qadeer brothers discreetly make and market a million dollars worth of fetish and bondage products a year for Americans and Europeans (through sales to stores and on eBay).

In April, the district attorney in Vilas County, Wis. announced that he was seeking volunteers for a forensic test to help his case against Douglas Plude, 42, who is scheduled to stand trial soon for the second time in the death of his wife.

Convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, now serving a life sentence in the Florence, Colo. Supermax prison, filed a 39-page federal lawsuit in March alleging unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment because the refined-food, lowfiber meals give him chronic constipation [and] bleeding hemorrhoids.

Consensual Living parenting, which was developed in 2006 and now has many hundreds of followers, supposes that every family members needs are equally valid and respectworthy. Even pre-adolescents are assumed able to understand their own needs and respect those of others.

In April at a New York City gallery, the Australian performance artist Stelarc starred in a video of his surgery in which an ear is implanted into his left forearm (right now, just a prosthesis, but to which stem cells will be added), which will house an internet-accessed, Bluetoothcapable microphone.

When Alcoa prepared to build an aluminum smelting plant in Iceland in 2004, the government forced it to hire an expert to assure that none of the countrys legendary hidden people lived underneath the property. The elf-like goblins provoke genuine apprehensiveness in many of the countrys 300,000 natives (who are all, reputedly, related by blood).

The US National Nuclear Security Administration recently postponed its crucial program to rejuvenate quartercentury-old Trident missile warheads because no one can remember how to make a key component of the weapons (codenamed Fogbank), according to a March 2 report of the Government Accountability Office.