The firm Triumph International Japan announced it would soon market the Armageddon Bra, with a sensor in the shoulder strap to warn wearers against millennial doomsday objects falling from the sky. Labor activist Dan Craig, 25, accepted a plea bargain in January in Toronto that will keep him out of jail, despite his having protested layoffs at an aerospace plant by suspending himself from a factory ceiling and playing "Amazing Grace" on his bagpipes for four solid hours. And in West Union, Ohio, last winter, Berry Baker, 54, protested the school district's placing Ten Commandments statues on school lawns by demanding equal space for statues promoting his "Center for Phallic Worship", which he said copies a religion practiced in some countries. (In February, Baker filed a lawsuit against the district; in June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill authorizing the Ten Commandments, but not stone phalluses, to be displayed on public property.) Sean Barry, 23, was arrested in Chandler, Ariz., in May after summoning police for help when he couldn't unlock the handcuffs he had playfully put on his wrists. When officers arrived, they ran a routine check on Barry and discovered he had an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court on a traffic charge. They decided to leave the cuffs on him until they got him to the station. John Michael Haydt, 34, was arrested in Mountain View, Calif., in April and charged with burglary after he called 911 to rescue him from the Danish Concepts furniture store at 2 a.m. According to police, Haydt had broken in through a window but had cut himself so badly that he didn't think he could climb back out. Easy Collars: Philip Racicot was arrested in Norwich, Conn., in April for carrying an unlicensed gun; he had called attention to himself when, trying to hide the gun in his car, he shot himself in the buttocks. And in May, a 17-year-old boy identified as Lukasz S., was captured by police in Bydgoszcz, Poland, after an assault; Lukasz slowed down considerably after he shot himself in the foot during the chase. And an unidentified 17-year-old boy, fleeing police in San Francisco in February after vandalizing a construction site, accidentally shot himself to death with a sawed-off shotgun he was trying to hide in his car. Gary Patton and two 17-year-olds were arrested in Grand Junction, Colo., in January and charged with robbing a Norwest Bank branch. They were exposed when one of the teen-agers sent a pair of pants to the laundry without checking the pockets, one of which, according to police, contained the trio's holdup note ("Put the money in the bag and don't say a word or I will kill you"). In January, preparing for a joyous festival at the end of Ramadan, the Taliban government in Afghanistan decided to clean up the six trees in Kabul on which had been hanging the amputated left feet of recently convicted robbers, exhibited as crime deterrents. The director of the sewer system in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, told reporters in June that the city's pipes may burst by winter from the gases released by the backup caused by last year's Hurricane Mitch, thus potentially showering the city with waste. And neither local officials nor the FAA is certain yet who has been causing the dozen or so instances of fecal bombardment of homes in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, since April; owners of the houses hit by the gobs of thick, raw sewage initially blamed airliners but now suspect an airborne vandal in a smaller plane or someone on the ground using a catapult. An inmate was executed in the Philippines when the president's last-minute-reprieve phone call couldn't get through because of busy signals. An Israeli man filed for divorce from his wife of 51 years because she had abandoned the hard-liners and voted for moderate Ehud Barak. A Lockheed aeronautics executive said the company lost as much as $70 million because of a misplaced decimal point in a sales contract. A newly arrived British NATO peacekeeper mistakenly turned right instead of left in Salonika, Greece, and wound up in Athens (250 miles away) instead of at his Macedonian border post (50 miles away). In July, Birmingham, England, office worker Beverley Lancaster, 44, won about $110,000 in damages from the city because of job-related stress based on her having been promoted to a better job against her will. Lancaster testified that the city insisted she take the higher-paying job, for which she was not qualified, by offering her extra training, which she said it did not deliver, causing her to become severely depressed. David Sanchez Hernandez, 18, was convicted in June in Punta Gorda, Fla., of egging two police officers on foot patrol. Hernandez, who said he did it in order to win a $2 bet with his brother, was fined $750 and sentenced to 25 hours of community service. In April, Geraldine Batell filed a complaint against the American Stage in St. Petersburg, Fla., because the characters in the Noel Coward play "Private Lives" were puffing cigarettes (as they were supposed to do), causing smoke to waft to her second-row seat and, she said, violating Florida's Clean Indoor Air Act. And in February, Matthew and Amanda Parrish of Centerville, Utah, filed a lawsuit against their downstairs condominium neighbor because they could somehow smell his smoke when he lit up inside his own apartment. (The local American Cancer Society said it would not support the Parrishes' lawsuit.) Two female drivers stopped and fought on an Oakland, Calif., street in May after one had become angry and tossed a half-eaten burrito through the window at the other. And Alan Parsons was sentenced in July in London, England, to three years in jail for the robbery of a bakery; his getaway had been slowed when the owner hit him with a bun during the chase. And in separate incidents in June, two San Diego men were charged with assaulting people with large tunas, causing not-insubstantial injuries both times. A 7-year-old boy accidentally killed his 3-year-old brother in the course of demonstrating the pro-wrestling "clothesline" maneuver (Dallas). A bank's new push-button, upthrusting teller's security shield was successful, trapping a 33-year-old robber by the neck until firefighters freed him (Chester, England). A Harvard study revealed that college students who binge-drink are twice as likely to own guns as non-binge-drinkers. An arson suspect had to be hospitalized after he fell off the roof of a building while admiring the fire he allegedly started (St. Louis). Bangkok police, trying to end traffic-stop bribes, started offering free rice to ticketed motorists who come to the station to pay their citations. The city of Graz, Austria, said it would start paying beggars about $260 per month to stay out of sight. A fire extinguisher exploded from the heat of a fire in the home of a 70-year-old woman and spewed foam wildly, which doused the fire (Rochester, Minn.). About 1,000 Pakistani cricket fans angrily surrounded the home of a player on the national team and threw rocks at his windows two days after the team lost the world title to Australia. Latest Highway Truck Spills: Several tons of chocolate bars (Hershey's, Reese's, etc.) on Interstate 80 near Grinnell, Iowa, March (which caught fire and burned out of control because of the chocolate's oil); a truckload of rock salt in Pittsburgh, March (giving great protection against ice to a small patch of East Carson Street); a tanker truck of tequila near Opelousas, La., June; and 20 tons of explosive black powder just before rush hour in Springfield, Va., at the Capital Beltway's busiest interstate interchange. Sounds Like an Urban Legend, But It's Not: In April in Fayetteville, Ark., exploding beans and rice tore a hole in the roof of Steve Tate's home. Tate had packed the food in frozen carbon dioxide in 6-foot-long pipes for later storage at a cabin, but the gas needed some room to expand. Bomb technicians from nearby Springdale exploded the other pipefuls Tate had prepared. Livermore, Calif., whose population includes many smart people who work for two nuclear research labs, organized digging crews in June to search for its time capsule, which was created with great fanfare in 1974 but now cannot be found because no one remembers where it was buried. It is about the size of a beer keg but was interred unceremoniously by a work crew so as not to encourage thieves. In February, Japanese tourist Satoshi Kinoshida, 48, was hospitalized in Taipei, Taiwan, after he tripped at a hotel and fell onto a chopstick he was holding and had it penetrate about an inch into his right eye socket. (It missed his eyeball, and he was not seriously hurt.) And in March, a 20-year-old man in Thisted, Denmark, had to be taken from a bar to a machine shop late at night so a technician could disassemble a condom machine in which his finger had become stuck. In April at the Westchester (N.Y.) Medical Center, surgeons were preparing a patient for a long-awaited kidney transplant when they realized that the kidney -- on ice in a plastic box in the operating room -- was missing. Ninety minutes later, after an all-out search, the box and kidney were found in a trash bin, having been mistakenly set out for recycling. According to Medical Center officials, the kidney was still viable when implanted, but later failed for other reasons. An April Associated Press feature reported on people (mostly rural Southerners) with a fondness (or addiction) for eating kaolin, the smooth clay used in chalk, paint products and ceramics. Small snack bags of kaolin (even though labeled"not for human consumption" are sold at convenience stores in central Georgia, where half the world's kaolin is produced, and even at farmer's markets in Atlanta. Some kaolin eaters say it settles the stomach, but medical authorities say it leads to constipation and serious liver and kidney damage. Women With Too Many Cats (and very smelly houses): Alice Tyhurst, Watsonville, Calif. (43 cats, discovered by authorities in May); Dixie Bielenberg and husband John, Decatur, Ill. (211 cats, December); Linda Marie Reynolds, age 50, Wilmington, N.C. (12 cats and 28 dogs, February); a 56-year-old woman, Omaha, Neb. (104 cats, along with a bathtub half-filled with cat waste, May); Janice Van Meter, Dale City, Va. (68 cats, April); Julie Harris, age 37, head of the "Feral Cat Project" Portsmouth, N.H. (31 cats, April). Two grown men robbed a 9-year-old boy of $6 at his curbside lemonade stand (Cincinnati). A Baptist pastor with 24 years in the pulpit was arrested at a mall doing underskirt videotaping (Atlanta). A high school science teacher was forced to resign after showing her class an execution video to demonstrate "electricity" (Savannah, Ga.). A woman who plays bagpipes for tourists' tips withdrew her lawsuit against Swissair for lost income due to last year's crash of Flight 111 (Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia). A sanitation plant computer-system test for Y2K problems was unsuccessful, resulting in a 4 million-gallon spill of untreated sewage into streets and a park (near Los Angeles).