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Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

In the early morning hours of a July day on the Eastern Freeway in Doncaster, Australia, when a driver on a restricted permit was stopped for speeding (at the equivalent of more than 120 mph), he told the officer in apparent seriousness that he didn't realize the police worked that late. (We're a "24-hour organization," said a police spokesman.)

British insurance companies occasionally write policies on unconventional risks, as News of the Weird reported in 1996, when Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson wrote a $160,000-equivalent policy covering alien abduction (including pregnancies resulting from the abduction, even if it is a male who gets pregnant, in the event that the aliens have such extraordinary powers that they can impregnate males).

In July 2005, sponsors of the Visit Scotland Adventure Triathlon in Loch Ness announced they had purchased insurance from the company NIG to pay up to the equivalent of $1.8 million in case any of the competitors are attacked by the Loch Ness monster.

Judge Jeffrey K. Sprecher of Berks County, Pa., dismissed charges against a man in August for buying beer for his underage neighbor, ruling that the prosecutor hadn't proved all of the elements of the crime. Specifically, said Sprecher, there was no evidence offered that Miller Genuine Draft is "beer." (Prosecutors usually submit a government-created listing of beers as proof but failed to do that.)
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD