Genetic modification sounds like frighteningly complicated lab work, but amateurs are routinely doing it in garages and dining rooms across the country, according to a December Associated Press report.

Freud de Melo, 73, operates a quirky tourist park in central Brazil that features stone models of Noahs Ark and other sculptures, but he also notoriously suffers from taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive, and one of his sculptures is his own elaborate, fear-assuaging crypt.

Aggressive police questioning of a weak-willed suspect can produce an occasional false confession, but experts now believe that six men in a single case, and four in another, confessed to group crimes they did not commit, even though some described their roles in vivid detail.

In several European countries, identifying the naughty kids at Christmastime is not Santas job but is left to unsavory legendary icons who have endured for centuries (according to a December series of articles in Germanys Der Spiegel).

One of the worlds best-known strategists on the game of checkers passed away in November. Richard Fortman was Illinois state champion six times, and in the 1970s and 1980s published a seven-volume handbook on rules and tactics.

The Christmas Nativity scenes in northeast Spains Catalonia region have, for three centuries, featured not only Mary and the Three Wise Men but the ubiquitous caganer icon, always portrayed with pants down answering a call of nature (and often so obscured in the scene as to popularize Wheres-Waldo-type guessing by children).

Change Oregonians believe in: The voters of Sodaville (pop. 290) elected Thomas Brady Harrington, 33, mayor in November, notwithstanding his criminal rap sheet showing robbery, eluding a police officer, felon in possession of a gun and other crimes (with his electoral success perhaps due to voters’ confusing him with his father, a respected town elder).

The Brazilian designer Lucia Lorio introduced womens lingerie in October containing a global positioning device to enable the wearer to be tracked by satellite. The creator said the password protected lace bodice would make it easier for women kidnapped by thugs or terrorists to be located and rescued.

When a four-bedroom house inhabited by 50 tenants partially collapsed in October in Honolulu, at least 10 of the residents said they had been pressured to let the property manager give them experimental stem-cell injections.

Dutch designer Eric Klarenbeek, 29, has developed jewelry consisting of tiny crystals or flowers that hang directly from the eye via micro-thin medical wire attached to either prescription or blank contact lenses and, in the light, give the appearance of tears streaming down the cheek.

Recent research in the Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy sheds light on the thorny social issue of why females continue to earn less money than males, even in similar jobs. Competing hypotheses have been advanced: Its either gender discrimination or simply that more women than men de-emphasize career aggressiveness in favor of family.

Donna and Joel Brinkle of Deltona, Fla. raised a family and held respectable jobs until, in the 1990s, they declared themselves a sovereign nation and stopped paying taxes.

Legendary banjo player Eddie Adcock, age 70 and suffering hand tremors that failed to respond to medication, volunteered for a revolutionary neurosurgery in August in which he finger-picked tunes while his brain was exposed, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center surgeons tried to locate the defective area.

The worlds most extensive array of animal rights took effect in Switzerland in September. Dog owners must take, at their own expense, classes in pet care (and anglers must take a class in humane treatment of fish). Animals listed as social (including goldfish, hamsters, sheep, goats, yaks) must be kept with or near another of their species.

The ashram-museum in Ahmedabad devoted to Indias highly revered icon of freedom Mahatma Gandhi recently re-installed a replica of the spiritual leaders personal toilet, in that Gandhis own hygiene-consciousness was such a part of his legacy.

Angela Pusateri, 79, may be unconventional, but, according to Jenna, 13, She really is a cool grandmother. The Hallandale Beach, Fla. woman is a rap-music singer with a new CD (Whos Your Granny?) and occasional playdates, where she shows up in hockey jersey, jewels, sunglasses and baseball cap.

Deja Vu: The two states whose electoral votes decided the presidential races in 2000 (Florida) and 2004 (Ohio) are provoking anxiety this time around, also. In Palm Beach County, Fla. (home of the “butterfly ballot” in 2000), 3,478 optical-scan votes disappeared between primary-night counting on Aug.

Italian and UK legal authorities have recently discarded rule interpretations based on embarrassingly anachronistic stereotypes of women.

The other “Fight Clubs” are for sissies: At the August Dog Brothers “Gathering of the Pack” in southern California, it was “[A]nything goes,” according to one warrior (look ing to fight with “blunted knives”). A Reuters reporter witnessed two men without padding beat each other with heavy sticks and two others fight with electrically charged knives.

“What was once a gentleman’s hobby among a few dozen enthusiasts at the turn of the 20 th century,” wrote The New York Times in July, “has evolved into a multimillion dollar industry,” namely, collecting strands of hair of famous people.