The royal family of Qatar, apparently striving for art-world credibility, purchased a Paul Cezanne painting ("The Card Players") last year for the equivalent of about $250 million, which is twice as much as the previous most-expensive painting sold for. (Qatar is vying with the United Arab Emirates to become the Middle East's major intellectual hub.) At the same time that Qatar's purchase was made public in February, artwork of the probable value of about $200 million became news in reports of the imminent Facebook initial public offering. Graffiti artist ("muralist") David Choe stood to make about that amount because he took stock instead of money to paint the lewd themes on the walls of Facebook's first offices. Even though Choe was quoted as saying, originally, that he found the whole idea of Facebook "ridiculous and pointless," his shares today are reportedly worth up to one quarter of 1 percent of the company. [Vanity Fair, 2-2-2012] [New York Times, 2-2-2012; Washington Post, 2-4-2012]

-- Last year, the Cape Town, South Africa, "gentlemen's club" Mavericks began selling an Alibi line of fragrances designed for men who need excuses for coming home late. For example, as men come through the door, they could splash on "I Was Working Late" (to reek of coffee and cigarettes) or "My Car Broke Down" (evoking fuel, burned rubber and grease). [The Times (Johannesburg), 1-19-2012]

-- Bipartisanship: White supremacist Richard Treis, 38, was arrested in February in St. Louis, along with his alleged partner, black gang member Robert "Biz" Swinney, 22, and charged with running a huge methamphetamine operation. The two, who had met at a prison halfway house, had allegedly meshed their unique talents -- Treis as a meth cook and Swinney as a skilled street seller who recruited people to buy restricted pseudoephedrine products from pharmacies. Said a deputy, "They put away their differences to get the job done." [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2-17-2012]

-- Can't Possibly Be True: "(A) growing number of scientists" are at work on biocomputer models based on movements of slime to solve complex-systems problems, according to a December report in London's Daily Telegraph. Though slime molds are single-cell organisms lacking a "brain," said professor Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Japan's Future University Hakodate, they somehow can "organize" themselves to create the most direct route through mazes in order to find food. Said professor Atsushi Tero, of Kyushu University, ordinary computers are "not so good" at finding such ideal routes because of the quantity of calculations required, but slime molds seem to flow "in an impromptu manner" and gradually find the best routes. [Daily Telegraph, 12-29-2011]

-- Medical Marvels: (1) Claire Osborn, 37, of Coventry, England, was diagnosed in October with an aggressive, inoperable throat-mouth cancer and given a 50 percent chance of survival. However, less than a month later, during a severe coughing spell, she actually coughed out the entire tumor in two pieces. Subsequent tests revealed no trace of cancer in her body. (Doctors hypothesized that, fortuitously, the tumor was growing on a weak stalk that was overcome by the force of the cough.) (2) In January, doctors at North Carolina State University performed knee-replacement surgery on a cancer-stricken house cat. Such surgery on dogs has been done, but because of cats' smaller bones and joints, doctors had to use micro techniques usually employed on humans. [Daily Mail (London), 1-11-2012] [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 1-27-2012]

The Houston Funding debt collection company in Houston, Texas, had fired receptionist Donnicia Venters shortly after she returned from maternity leave when she announced that she intended to breastfeed her child and needed space in the office to pump her breast milk. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Houston Funding for illegal discrimination based on "pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions," but in February, federal judge Lynn Hughes (Mr. Lynn Hughes) rejected the EEOC's reasoning. The law does not, he wrote, cover "lactation" discrimination. [Houston Press, 2-8-2012]

-- In an incident reported in February by the Indo-Asian News Service, a Pakistan International Airlines captain made a revenue-enhancing decision for his full flight PK 303 from Lahore to Karachi. Two overbooked passengers would not have to make alternative arrangements if they accepted seats for the 640-mile flight in the plane's restrooms. [IANS News Service via The Times of India, 2-16-2012]

-- Real estate reassessments hit Pittsburgh like a bombshell in December when county officials announced enhanced estimates of property value in order to raise needed tax revenue. In the first wave of assessments (which engendered criticism countywide, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story), a real estate attorney who lives in the Mount Washington neighborhood was stunned to find his condominium apartment had jumped $55,000 in value, now "worth" $228,700 and, worse, his private parking space on the ground floor of the building, previously valued at $5,000, now "worth" $287,800. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12-30-2011]

-- In December, National Geographic lamented that the number of South Africa's rhinoceroses killed by poaching increased by a third in 2011, to 443, as a response to the booming street price of rhino horns. MSNBC reported that the horns' market price "soared to about $65,000 a kilogram, making (them) more expensive than gold, platinum, and in many cases, cocaine." The reason for the price is an escalating, though science-free, belief in Asia that rhino horn powder can cure cancer. [MSNBC, 12-30-2011]

In February, a jury in Thousand Oaks, Calif., acquitted Charles Hersel, 41, of molesting children. Though Hersel admitted through his lawyer that he paid high school students to spit in his face and yell profanities at him, and had offered to pay them money to urinate and defecate on him, jurors found that he must have done those things for reasons other than "sexual gratification" and therefore, technically, did not violate the statute under which he was charged. [KTLA-TV (Los Angeles, 2-21-2012]

According to prosecutors in Camden, S.C., in November, Christopher Hutto, 30, needed money badly to buy crack cocaine, but the best plan he could devise was getting a friend to telephone Hutto's mother and demand a ransom. Though Hutto, according to the phone call, supposedly had been beaten up by kidnappers and dumped in a secret location and was "near death," the "kidnapper" asked only for $100. The un-eager mother dawdled a bit until she and the caller had negotiated the ransom down to $60. (The money drop was made, and sheriff's deputies arrested Hutto running from the site with the booty.) [McClatchy Newspapers via Sacramento Bee, 11-18-2011]

Airbags Save Lives: News of the Weird has previously chronicled the breast-obsessive Sheyla Hershey, the Guinness Book record-holder for largest artificially enhanced bosom (size 38MMM). (To recap, the Brazil-born, Houston-area woman had her implants removed two years ago for health reasons but then, after depression set in over her "loss," she wanted them back, but no U.S. surgeon would meet her requirement of 85 fluid ounces of silicone per breast. Finally, she found a surgeon in Cancun, Mexico, and received slightly smaller implants -- 38KKK.) Hershey, 32, was charged with DUI as she drove home after a Super Bowl party in February. Her car spun around and hit a tree, and according to Hershey, who was not wearing a seat belt, it was likely that her breasts saved her from injury by cushioning her as she was thrust against the steering wheel. [Daily Mail, 2-9-2012; Huffington Post, 2-17-2012, 2-20-2012]

Like many cities, Taipei, Taiwan, has a dog-litter problem that has proved unsolvable, as citizens continue to ignore pleas to pick up after their dogs and keep sidewalks clean. Finally, city officials designed a successful program (announced in December): a dog-poop lottery. Anyone handing in a bag of dog litter would get a ticket (one ticket per bag) to a drawing with prizes ranging up to pieces of gold worth the equivalent of about $2,000. (Citizens would be on the honor system as to whether the "litter" in the bag came from a dog or from another source.) [Agence France-Presse via Google News, 12-7-2011]

Thanks This Week to Charles Nicholson and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Newspapers in Sweden reported in January that two of the country's most heinous murderers apparently fell in love with each other behind the locked doors of their psychiatric institution and, following a 26-day Internet-chat "courtship," have decided to marry. Mr. Isakin Jonsson ("the Skara Cannibal") was convicted of killing, decapitating and eating his girlfriend, and Michelle Gustafsson ("the Vampire Woman") was convicted of killing a father of four and drinking his blood. Said the love-struck Jonsson (certainly truthfully), to the newspaper Expressen, "I have never met anyone like (Michelle)." The pair will almost certainly remain locked up forever, but Gustafsson, on the Internet, wrote that she hopes they will be released, to live together and "have dogs and pursue our hobbies, piercing and tattoos."

-- In December, music teacher Kevin Gausepohl, 37, was charged in Tacoma, Wash., Municipal Court with communicating with a minor for immoral purposes, allegedly convincing a 17-year-old female student that she could sing better if she tried it naked. Gausepohl later told an investigator of his excitement about experimenting at the "human participant level" to determine how sexual arousal affects vocal range. The girl complied with "some of" Gausepohl's requests, but finally balked and turned him in.

-- Thinking Outside the Box: (1) Rock Dagenais, 26, pleaded guilty recently to weapons charges after creating a siege by bringing a knife, a sawed-off rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition to a Quebec elementary school. He eventually surrendered peacefully and said he was only trying to send the kids a message not to disrespect each other by bullying. (2) Daniel Whitaker has been hospitalized in Indianapolis ever since, in November, he drove up the steps of the Indiana War Memorial with a gun, gasoline and an American flag, and set the steps on fire. In an interview in December, he told WRTV that he was only trying to get everyone's attention so they would think of Jesus Christ and "love each other."

-- Ghosts in the News: (1) Michael West, 41, of Fond du Lac, Wis., at first said his wife hurt herself by falling, but finally acknowledged that she was attacked -- but by ghosts, not by him. (He was charged, anyway, in January.) (2) Anthony Spicer, 29, was sentenced in January in Cincinnati after being discovered at an abandoned school among copper pipes that had been cut. He denied prosecutors' assertions that he was collecting scrap metal -- because he said he was actually looking for ghosts, since the school "is supposed to be haunted."

-- The 547-acre FBI Academy on the grounds of Quantico (Va.) Marine Base houses a firing range on which about a million bullets a month are shot by agents in training, but it also happens to be a de facto wildlife refuge for the simple fact that the academy is off-limits to Virginia hunters. Thus, according to a December ABC News dispatch, deer learn that, despite the gunfire (sometimes at astonishingly close range as they wander by the targets), none of them ever gets hit. The academy is also a "sanctuary" for foxes, wild turkeys and other critters.

-- Equity Lifestyle Properties of Chicago fired receptionist Sharon Smiley after 10 years' service because she violated company policy by declining to stop working during her lunch hour. (The company's strict policy is apparently based on avoiding liability for overtime pay, but Smiley had in fact clocked out for lunch while remaining at her desk.) Smiley subsequently applied for unemployment benefits, but the administrator denied them because the firing was for insubordination. However, in January, a state appeals court granted the benefits.

-- A South Carolina circuit court ruled in December that the sales contract on a former theater in downtown Laurens, S.C., was binding and that the rightful owner is the African-American-headed New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church -- even though the property's only current tenant is the Redneck Shop, which features Confederacy and Ku Klux Klan merchandise. (New Beginnings purchased the church in 1997 from a Klan member who was unloading it because of a personal riff with the head klansman and who wanted it back after they reconciled.)

-- Librarians typically can shush patrons whose conversation disturbs others, but, at least in Washington state, librarians are powerless to prevent another "disturbance" -- when a pornography user's computer screen disgusts other library patrons who inadvertently glimpse it. A visitor to the Seattle Public Library complained in February that the librarian said she was bound by a 2010 state supreme court decision upholding the right of consumers of otherwise-legal pornography not to be censored.

-- Non-Humans' Human Rights: (1) Elena Zakharova of New York City became the most recent litigant to challenge a state law that regards pets as "property" (and that, thus, the owner of an injured or disfigured pet is entitled to no more consideration than for a defective appliance). She sued a pet store that had sold her a dog with allegedly bum knees and hips, claiming that dogs are living creatures that feel love and pain, that have souls, and that should be compensated for their pain and suffering. The case is pending. (2) In February, a federal judge in San Diego, Calif., heard arguments by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that SeaWorld was confining its show whales in violation of the U.S. Constitution's 13th Amendment (the Civil War-era prohibition of slavery). Two days later, he ruled that the amendment applies only to human slavery.

In Plain Sight: The embarrassing disclosure in November by the Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah, of the CIA's major clandestine operations in Beirut, likely resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen anti-Hezbollah CIA "assets," according to ABC News reports. Among the details made public by Hezbollah was that it learned of the agents' meetings with the potential "assets" (which took place at a Beirut Pizza Hut restaurant) by intercepting agents' email messages that used the sly, stealthy "code" word "PIZZA."

News of the Weird has long reported on gallery patrons' inability to distinguish "abstract impressionist" works by human artists (even by masters) from the scribbles drawn by toddlers -- and even animals. To attempt to add sophistication to the topic, a museum at University College London recently opened a comparative installation of "works" from an elephant and several kinds of apes, leading the museum manager to observe that "art produced by apes is a lot more creative." The elephant, with brushes affixed to its trunk, "is not deliberately doing anything" when it stomps or swirls the paint around on the canvas, but ape art is "much freer" and "expressive" -- "almost indistinguishable from abstract art by humans ...." But, he added sheepishly, "Whether this is actually art is the big question."

-- (1) South Korea's Customs Service arrested eight men in January for a 2010 scheme to smuggle gold into Japan without paying import fees. The smugglers allegedly broke down gold bars into small beads and brought them in in their rectums. (2) In an advertising campaign in December for a new line of extreme push-up bras, the Dutch department store Hema hired as its fashion model the androgynous (but flat-chested) superstar Andrej Pejic.

-- Antidote to Multitasking: The U.K. household services broker LocalTraders.com announced in December that it is planning, for central England in 2012, a "world watching-paint-dry championship," with a short list selected on "mental strength, concentration and endurance." Finalists will be asked their favorite color, which will be painted on a wall, and whoever stares the longest without turning away will win. Said a spokesman, "Previous paint-watching experience is not essential."