It's clear, based on a May Time magazine dispatch, that Norway's felons and miscreants are of a superior class than America's. When Norway's brand-new Halden prison opened in April, the country's King Harald V headlined a glitzy gala that celebrated what has been called the world's "most humane" lockup. Among the facilities: a sound studio, jogging trails, a guest house for inmates' visitors, and a scrumptious-smelling "kitchen laboratory" where murderers and bandits can learn to cook. Guards are unarmed (half are women) and intermingle with the rapists, drug dealers and others, dining with them and joining them in intramural sports. The recidivist rate for Norwegian prisoners in general is only 20 percent (versus 50 percent to 60 percent in the United States), but it is still early to tell whether Halden's prisoners will find life behind bars so pleasant that they don't mind risking another stretch there by returning to crime.

-- Cutting-Edge Products: (1) A Portland, Ore., inventor recently began offering a colorful patch designed to cover the area just below a dog's tail. The "Rear Gear" is featured on the handmade-crafts' site, Etsy.com. (2) Tyrone Henry and Fermin Esson, of Opa Locka, Fla., near Miami, told reporters they were recently granted a patent for "saggy pants" that they say will satisfy young men's street-fashion sense yet not run afoul of municipal laws around the country banning exposed underwear.

-- Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission, On Edge: Last November, the government of North Korea made an ultimately disastrous decision to radically devalue its currency, overnight making 100 North Korean won worth 1 North Korean won, and the country's citizens (as well as, reportedly, the Dear Leader himself) were not pleased. Three months later, without much fanfare, came the official announcement that the government's (i.e., the Workers' Party's) chief finance minister, Pak Nam-gi, had been executed by firing squad.

-- In May, the German manufacturer Ex Oriente Lux AG set up its "Gold To Go" vending machine in the lobby of Abu Dhabi's Emirates Palace Hotel, offering gold coins and one-, five- and 10-gram bars of gold, based on the current world price at the time of the transaction.

-- Intelligent Design: Among the new species first reported this year are a "nose" leech, a "Dracula" fish, a "psychedelic" frogfish and a "bombardier" worm, according to scientists at the University of Arizona and medical school researchers in Lima, Peru. The Peru-based leech, which is fanged and probably has been around since the time of dinosaurs, prefers nasal mucus as a habitat. The "Dracula" fish of Myanmar, with "canine-like fangs," has an extraordinarily flexible mouth. The multicolored frogfish has apparently adapted to live among the colorful, venomous coral off Bali, Indonesia. The "bombardier" worm, found in California's Monterey Bay, releases glow-in-the-dark projectiles when threatened.

-- Until recently, researchers were certain that at least one ability separated humans from higher-functioning apes: the creation and use of tools for sex. However, primatologists writing in a recent issue of Science described a male chimpanzee's repetitive use of a dried leaf in the same way that a male human of a certain class might employ a fast car. In the presence of a female chimp, the male carefully crinkles the leaf until she, seemingly accustomed to such leaf-crinkling, notices the male, along with his generous erection, and may then choose to join him.

-- Too Much Information: British and Australian researchers, writing in a journal article in March, concluded that the world's strongest insect (relative to body weight) is the male dung beetle, which can lift more than 1,100 times its weight (equivalent for an average male human: 80 tons). Since the beetles mate inside dung patties, their every move is a struggle against the resistance posed by the feces. (On the other hand, the researchers also found weaker dung beetles that mated just fine helped not by their strength but by unusually large testicles.)

-- Sounds Like a Joke: University of Michigan computer engineer Wei Lu revealed in April that he and colleagues were working on a new supercomputer design that is a radical departure from current computer architecture. Wei Lu's design breakthrough (which has piqued the interest of the Pentagon's DARPA think-tankers) is to model the operating system like the brain of a cat, he said, even though his supercomputer could never actually outperform the cat's brain.

-- Last September, James Jones, 33, and a friend were issued disorderly conduct citations by police after witnesses reported that the pair, inebriated, had placed their genitals on a vegetables' weighing scale in a supermarket in Edinburgh, Scotland. (They were acquitted in April 2010 when the only witness admitted that she only saw the men zipping up after claiming to have weighed themselves.)

-- Fluids Festivals: (1) A 44-year-old man was charged with battery in Crestview, Fla., in April as a result of a fight with his girlfriend, during which he pinched off one of his nostrils and blew mucus and blood out of the other (with contents landing on her "face, chest, arms and pants"). (2) Madison, Wis., neighbors Nina Bell, 56, and Arnessa Battles, 38, were cited for disorderly conduct in March in a dispute over Battles' dog's winter-long output of droppings that had just been revealed by melting snow. According to the police report, by the time an officer arrived on the scene, both of the women had smeared each other's cars with large quantities of dog poop.

World-class sword-swallower Chayne Hultgren, 32, is a veteran of such exhibitions as Scotland's Kamikaze Freakshow, as well as this year's Psycho Sideshow in Australia, and he holds the Guinness Book record by downing 18 swords simultaneously. Part of his skill, he told Sydney's Daily Telegraph in April, is learning to relax his body, but he also credited his 5-inch-longer-than-normal stomach and his decision to implant a row of magnets along his breastbone that he says ever-so-slightly diverts the metal swords away from vital organs. Reminiscing, Hultgren noted that once, during a show's run in Belgium, an average of seven spectators a night were fainting (known in the trade as "falling ovations"). What does Hultgren 's future hold? "I've never had another job."

Not Ready for Prime-Time Crime: (1) Jacob Collins, 28, was arrested in April and charged with burglary of Matlack's Hometown Pharmacy in Landisville, N.J., despite the fact that the medicine he stole was probably by mistake. Police said they were almost certain Collins was after the painkiller "Oxycontin" but instead swiped a supply of "Oxybutynin," which treats overactive bladder. (2) On the other hand, Sean Almond, 43, was charged on the same day as Collins for allegedly robbing the Kangaroo Mart on Wilroy Road in Suffolk, Va., and could have used some Oxybutynin. Almond was caught immediately after the robbery because his getaway was delayed. He was spotted in a nearby alley, where he had been overcome by a sudden urge to relieve himself.

In March (1995), after the president of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives accused him of illegal drug use, Sen. Freddie Valentin denied the charge and led reporters into a restroom in the Capitol building in San Juan, where he yielded a urine sample that he later submitted to the Senate leadership. A TV cameraman shot over Valentin's shoulder, and journalist Sonia Salgado's play-by-play radio report ended, "I have just transmitted, for the first time ever, a senator taking a pee before the media."

America What a Country! In 2007, after a stay in the United States distinguished mainly by his acquisition of a long police record, illegal immigrant Cecil Harvey, 55, was deported to his native Barbados. However, according to records revealed by the New York Post in May, Harvey received, in late 2009, one last remembrance of America: $145,000 from the city of New York in settlement of his lawsuit over having once been held at Rikers Island jail for about a month longer than the law permitted.

-- Betty Lou Lynn, 83, was mugged and had her wallet stolen in her new hometown of Mount Airy, N.C., in April. Lynn is the actress who played Barney Fife's best girl, Thelma Lou, in the Andy Griffith TV show and had lived in Los Angeles until she became alarmed at the city's crime rate. She decided in 2007 to move to the quieter, peaceful Mount Airy, which was Griffith's birthplace and the model for the TV town of Mayberry.

-- Gary Null filed a lawsuit in New York City in April against the maker of a nutrition supplement called Ultimate Power Meal, alleging that he had suffered constant pain, kidney damage and internal bleeding from the product's recommended daily regimen. Ultimate Power Meal is one of the "health" supplements packaged under the label of ... Gary Null, a nationally prominent pitchman for homeopathic remedies. Null is suing the manufacturer who supplies the product on which Null affixes his Ultimate Power Meal label. (According to consumer advisers at Quackwatch.org, Null is "one of the nation's leading promoters of dubious treatment for serious disease.")

-- According to court records cited by The Washington Post in April, Rene Fernandez, 45, will plead guilty to one count of a DUI-caused injury in connection with a 2009 traffic accident in Montgomery County, Md., that severely injured a retired county judge and his wife, both in their 80s. Fernandez and the judge, Edwin Collier, had met previously, in 1998, when Judge Collier pronounced sentence on Fernandez for DUI. At that time, Judge Collier released Fernandez on probation, even though Fernandez had been arrested for DUI twice in the previous three months.

-- Paula Wolf, 41, was arrested in Stevens Point, Wis., and charged with hitting four pedestrians at random with projectiles on April 21. In Wolf's car, police found a blow gun, a slingshot and a bucket of rocks, and after questioning, Wolf told police that she just "liked to hear people say 'ouch.'"

-- Lame: (1) The reason career criminal Kevin Polwart gave for his brief February escape from New Zealand's Auckland Prison was to demonstrate that he posed no threat to society on the outside (and thus that he should be parolled). (Instead, authorities added nine months to his sentence.) (2) A judge in Scotland went lenient on George McIntosh, 53, who had been convicted of embezzling the equivalent of about $87,000 from two pro golfing organizations. McIntosh claimed that his medication for Parkinson's disease had made him "compulsive(ly)" generous so that he needed to embezzle money in order to buy gifts for his friends.

-- In April, George Black's lawsuit to be compensated for his injuries was permitted to proceed to trial, following an Ontario Superior Court decision. Black was playing third base (the "hot corner") in a softball game in Hamilton when he lost track of a line drive in the sun. The ball hit him in the head, smashing his glasses into his face and causing serious trauma to his eye. Black figures his injury is the fault of the owner of the softball field for failing to put up any kind of shade to block the late afternoon sun.

-- Melanie Shaker filed a lawsuit recently against the Fases Salon in Chicago for her 2008 injuries, which she incurred when she fell through the salon's front window and badly slashed herself. She fell after losing her balance while attempting to kick her husband during a quarrel along Sheffield Avenue following dinner (and, of course, drinks). Shaker suffered deep cuts to her arm, back and feet, which she now says was the salon's fault in that they had neglected to use "safety glass" in their front window, which would not have shattered into glass shards.

-- Jo Ann Fonzone's four-year quest to divorce the rock singer David Lee Roth (of Van Halen) continues, according to a May report in the Morning Call of Allentown, Pa. Roth, through his publicist, denied any connection whatsoever to Fonzone, who has filed nearly two dozen lawsuits against various people who she claims have done her wrong, including Hollywood executive Cary Woods and MTV CEO Judy McGrath, who each has been accused of trying to steal Fonzone's identity. Judges have noted that Fonzone's claims are unaccompanied by any "evidence" (such as a marriage license to Roth, or even photographs of the "couple" together), and most judges who have heard her claims regard the lawsuits as "frivolous." Said a court records chief of Fonzone's prolific filings, "When (the clerks) see her, they all want to run." Fonzone actually has a law degree, from Western State University in Fullerton, Calif.

In April, warehouse workers at the Copenhagen, Denmark, brewery that makes Carlsberg beer went on strike after the company cut back on its allowance of providing up to three free beers per shift, which workers thought made their mundane jobs easier to take. As of April 1, only one beer per shift was provided, and only at lunch. (The previous "right" belonged also to delivery drivers, according to a Reuters report, but it was not clear how that right squared with drunk-driving laws.)

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) John Campana, 18, was detained by police after they found him with several pieces of expensive jewelry in Gainesville, Fla. As they were questioning him about where he got the jewelry, Campana (according to the police report) started shaking and sweating, and then fainted. (He was charged several days later with burglary.) (2) Jason Robinson, 22, was arrested at a Burger King in Pine Bluff, Ark., in May after robbing the restaurant manager at gunpoint. As the manager handed over the day's proceeds, Robinson set his gun down on a counter to grab the money. Not surprisingly, the manager picked up the gun and shot Robinson in the leg.

Recurring Theme: Police in Austin, Texas, executing a search warrant in May, discovered an elaborate, three-story tunnel complex extending as far as 35 feet underground, beneath the home of Jose Del Rio, 70, which he apparently dug over at least a two-year period. Police also found 19 guns, plus ammunition, batteries and compressed gas (which presented a serious safety hazard). The property showed signs of caving in and posed a threat to adjacent property, as well. Police noted that Del Rio (who neighbors said "kept to himself") was cooperative during the search although he offered no particular explanation for the tunnels.

The New York Daily News reported in April (1994) on a cellblock fight between prominent New York mass murderers Colin Ferguson and Joel Rifkin while they were awaiting trials at the Nassau County jail. (They were later convicted.) Reportedly, Ferguson was using a telephone and told Rifkin to be quiet. According to the Daily News source, Ferguson told Rifkin, "I wiped out six devils (white people), and you only killed women." Rifkin allegedly responded, "Yeah, but I had more victims." Ferguson then allegedly punched Rifkin in the mouth.

American families from certain Asian and African cultures continue to ritually "circumcise" their young daughters, though the practice is illegal in the U.S. and most of the world. In May, the bioethics committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics changed its policy from absolutely banning such surgery to one which would sanction a minor "pinprick" on girls' genitals (comparable, it said, to ear-piercing), with the hope of satisfying parents so they would not opt to send the girls to the home countries for full genital "mutilation." U.S. anti-female-circumcision support groups were outraged. Said one advocate, "We don't let (husbands) beat their wives a little bit" just because their cultures permit wife-beating. (On May 26, following that storm of criticism, the academy rescinded the policy change.)

-- The local government of Bolton, England, responding in March to a citizen's report of a discarded mattress on the side of a road, sent an official to assess the scene. He wrote a work order for four men (a driver, an assistant and two supervisors) and a 1.7-ton construction vehicle, and the pickup was scheduled for the following week, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. (When a Bolton councilman saw the schedule, he, with the help of a friend, drove a council van to the scene and hauled the mattress to a dump site.)

-- A Hollywood, Fla., leukemia patient on Medicaid had endured six months of grueling chemotherapy in order to be healthy enough for a long-awaited bone marrow transplant when, in March, a Social Security Administration caseworker called her up out of the blue to inform her that her son was eligible for disability payments, which the woman immediately signed up for. However, almost as immediately, Medicaid removed her from its rolls because the disability check raised her income beyond the qualifying maximum, and her transplant was, life-threateningly, canceled. (In April, the hospital persuaded Medicaid to cover the transplant.)

-- In April, officials in Hudson, N.Y., proudly unveiled their state-of-the-art water fountain for the disabled in the county courthouse, a fixture whose installation was agreed to in a 2003 settlement with federal officials enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, the fountain was installed on the courthouse's second floor, which is accessible only by stairway. In defense, county officials said the fountain had several features for handicapped people other than those in wheelchairs.

-- Apparently, the death penalty is so important to Californians that they spend $125 million a year administering it, plus $400 million recently for a new death row and execution chamber even though the state is notoriously nearly bankrupt and even though, in a death-row population of more than 700, only 13 have been executed in the past 30 years. (As News of the Weird mentioned last year, one killer demanded the death penalty instead of life in prison because death row has better facilities and because, like nearly everyone on death row, he expects to die of disease or natural causes before the state can execute him.) Said the outraged mother of a raped-and-murdered teenage boy, of her son's killer, "(Scott Erskine) is (in) there watching television knowing I am going to die before he does."

-- Susan Collis' conceptual art, "Since I Fell for You," debuted at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England, in May, consisting of an empty room with pieces of lumber on the floor, along with a broom propped against a wall and an empty laundry bag. Though the Birmingham Mail quoted several annoyed visitors, Collis defended her work. "Often a work that looks very careless ... takes a long time to produce."

-- Just finishing up in May at New York City's Museum of Modern Art is a tribute to performance artist Marina Abramovic for her lifetime achievements in making patrons uneasy. Videos played, including one in which the artist screams at the top of her lungs until such time as she loses her voice, and visitors faced unsettling live demonstrations, including being asked to enter a room by squeezing between a naked man and woman facing each other in the doorway. The artist herself planned to attend the entire run sitting at a table in the museum's atrium, silent and motionless, all day long, during which time patrons could stare back at her.

-- A 2009 Minnesota law gives local police the authority to make traffic stops to enforce the stand-alone offense of failure of a passenger to wear a seat belt. According to a report in the Pioneer Press, police in the St. Paul suburb of Maplewood take it seriously. An undercover cop, posing as a homeless man with a "will work for food" sign, roamed an intersection, peering into cars and secretly signaling colleagues, who subsequently pulled over violators, and all unbelted passengers were issued $108 tickets: $25 for the violation, $75 for a brand-new "surcharge" for petty misdemeanors, and an $8 general state fee (none of which, according to the legislative history, represented a "tax increase").

-- Veteran Dallas attorney Sandra McFeeley, 67, was arrested in April after refusing to stop pruning the excess vegetation and dead tree limbs at her neighborhood's Wynnewood Parkway Park, which she had been doing regularly for three years, thus violating a municipal trespass ordinance. McFeeley remained upbeat. "I met some neat people (at the police station). I'd never been in a perp walk before. It was cool." Said a supporter, "It's hard enough to keep that neighborhood nice without having the police haul people off for felonious gardening."

-- Galena Park, Texas, high school teacher Fernando Gonzalez, 35, was sentenced to seven years in prison in March as a result of his being caught using his classroom computer to watch child pornography from his many disks. He tried to explain that he had no other choice, in that his wife had already banned him from watching child porn at home.

-- Mary Merten, 43, pleaded guilty in March to four felonies in connection with an eight-year-long spree in which, as bookkeeper for a two-lawyer firm in Kingston, N.Y., she stole over $800,000 via embezzlement and theft of the lawyers' identities. However, as she awaited sentencing, she wrote her former bosses: "I would ask that you consider keeping me employed. ... I truly enjoy my job and want to continue to work for the both of you to make up for my imperfections." (At press time, she was still awaiting sentencing.)

(1) James Fall, 58, told police in Mound, Minn., in March that his "marriage" to his 10-year-old niece was perfectly acceptable in that he is a "prophet of God," citing Corinthians 6:12. (2) Terrill Dalton, 43, who refers to himself as the Holy Ghost, moved his small congregation to Fromberg, Mont., in March as the latest stop in avoiding law enforcement investigations in Utah and Idaho. He credits his holiness to his collection of rocks, several of which he said are powerful "seer stones." (3) Adam Disabato, who said he is "the Messiah," was arrested in Pittsburgh in April after he drove his car into the Poale Zedeck synagogue, causing about $30,000 in damages. "I'm not crazy, and I don't hear voices. I just got a feeling sent by God to drive real fast for some reason."

In December 1994, the Air Force Times reported that Army soldier Joseph Cannon had recently ended his six-year career having not received a single military paycheck after boot camp. Officials said Cannon's records were lost at his first duty station, but that he had never complained, though he missed 144 paychecks totaling, in 1994 dollars, about $103,000. Apparently, Cannon lived only in the barracks, ate only in the mess halls, and borrowed money from relatives whenever he had special needs.