In April, a research ship will begin surveying the Atlantic Ocean floor off of Nova Scotia as the first step to building, by 2013, a $300 million private fiber-optic line connecting New York and London financial markets so as to speed up current transmission times -- by about five milliseconds. Those five milliseconds, though (according to an April report in Bloomberg Business Week), will enable the small group of firms that are underwriting the project (and who will have exclusive use of it) to earn millions of dollars per transaction by having their trade sales arrive five milliseconds before their competitors' sales would have arrived. [Bloomberg Business Week, 4-2-2012]

-- Brazil's Safety Net for the Poor: Dr. Ivo Pitanguy, the most celebrated plastic surgeon in the country, apparently earned enough money from well-off clients that he can now "give back," by funding and inspiring more than 200 clinics to provide low-income women with enhancement procedures (face lifts, tummy tucks, butt lifts) at a reduced, and sometimes no, charge. A local anthropology professor told ABC News, for a March dispatch, that "(i)n Brazil, plastic surgery is now seen as something of the norm" (or, as the reporter put it, "(B)eauty is (considered) a right, and the poor deserve to be ravishing, too"). [ABC News, 3-23-2012]

-- In a March interview on Bolivian television, Judge Gualberto Cusi, who was recently elected to Bolivia's Constitutional Tribunal from the indigenous Aymara community, acknowledged that occasionally, when deciding tough cases, he relied on the Aymaran tradition of "reading" coca leaves. "In moments when decisions must be taken, we turn to coca to guide us and show us the way." [BBC News, 3-15-2012]

-- In February, the Life-End Clinic in the Netherlands announced that six mobile euthanasia teams were placed in service countrywide to make assisted-suicide house calls -- provided the client qualified under the nation's strict laws. (Euthanasia, legal in the Netherlands since 2002, is available to people who suffer "unbearable, interminable" pain and for which at least two doctors certify there is "no cure." Panels of doctors, lawyers and ethicists rule on the applications.) [Agence France-Presse via Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3-1-2012]

-- Two lawsuits filed in Los Angeles recently against the founding family of the religious Trinity Broadcasting Network allege that televangelists Paul and Jan Crouch have spent well over $50 million of worshippers' donations on "personal" expenses, including 13 "mansions," his-and-hers private jets, and a $100,000 mobile home for Mrs. Crouch's dogs. The jets are necessary, the Crouches' lawyer told the Los Angeles Times, because the Crouches receive more death threats than even the president of the United States. Allegedly, the Crouches keep millions of dollars in cash on hand, but according to their lawyer, that is merely out of obedience to the biblical principle of "ow(ing) no man anything." [Los Angeles Times, 3-23-2012; Daily Mail (London), 3-23-2012]

-- High-ranking Vatican administrator Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, 68, fired back at critics in April after an Italian website reported his extensive collection of guns and love of shooting. He told reporters that he owns only 13 weapons and that, "above all," he enjoys "repairing" them rather than shooting them (although, he admitted, "I used to go to shooting ranges"). [Agence France-Presse via Ottawa Citizen, 4-12-2012]

(1) In April, the Tampa Police Department issued preliminary security guidelines to control areas around August's Republican National Convention in the city. Although the Secret Service will control the actual convention arena, Tampa Police are establishing a zone around the arena in which weapons will be confiscated (including sticks, rocks, bottles and slingshots). Police would like to have banned firearms, too, but state law prevents cities from restricting the rights of licensed gun-carriers. (2) South Florida station WPLG-TV reported in March that vendors were openly selling, for about $30, verbatim driver's license test questions and answers, on the street in front of DMV offices. However, when told about it, a DMV official shrugged, pointing out that test-takers still had to memorize them to pass the closed-book exam. [Tampa Bay Times, 4-3-2012] [WPLG-TV, 3-30-2012]

-- Perp's Remorse: (1) Jason Adkins was charged in March in Cynthiana, Ky., with stealing electronic equipment from the home of a friend. According to police, Adkins admitted the break-in but said he felt guilty the next day and returned the items. However, he then admitted breaking back into the home two days after that and re-stealing them. (2) Ivan Barker was sentenced in March in England's Stoke-on-Trent Magistrates Court for stealing a laptop computer and cigarettes from the home of a wheelchair-bound man of his acquaintance. Barker subsequently visited the man and apologized for the theft, but then, during that visit, Barker stole the man's new replacement laptop computer and more cigarettes. [Cynthiana Democrat, 3-23-2012] [ThisIsStaffordshire.com, 3-22- 2012] 

-- At a March town meeting in Embden, Maine, residents turned down proposals to rename its most notorious street "Katie Road." Thus, the name will remain, as it has for decades, "Katie Crotch Road." Some residents, in addition to being embarrassed by the name, also noted the cost of constantly replacing the street signs stolen by giggling visitors. (A Kennebec Journal report noted uncertainty about the name's origin. It might refer to how the road splits in two, forming a "Y" shape. On the low side, the name might refer to an early settler who would sit on her front porch without underwear.) [Kennebec Journal, 3-10-2012]

-- Lumpkin County, Ga., judge David Barrett, apparently frustrated by an alleged rape victim's reluctant testimony at a trial in February, blurted out in court that she was "killing her case (against the accused rapist)," and to dramatize the point, pulled out his own handgun and offered it to her, explaining that she might as well shoot her lawyer because the chances for conviction were dropping rapidly. (Five days later, following news reports, Barrett resigned.) [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2-25-2012; Gainesville Times (Gainesville, Ga.), 3-1-2012]

-- For the first time in years, there was no Easter bunny at Central City Park in Macon, Ga., this year because the county commissioner who runs the sponsoring organization said he was tired of violent parents hogging the Easter egg hunt by "helping" their kids. (Two years ago, Olney High School in Philadelphia barred players' parents from its boys' junior varsity basketball games unless they registered and vowed to obey a code of conduct. In February 2012, the president of the Egyptian Football Association similarly announced that the season would continue but without spectators, because of the probability of violence. Of course, Egypt, unlike Macon, Ga., and Olney High School, has just been through a bloody civil war.) [Macon Telegraph, 4-5-2012] [WTXF-TV, 1-12-2010] [Ahram Online (Cairo), 2-15-2012]

Relentless: (1) In the early hours of Jan. 31, police in Gaston, N.C., were alerted to five burglaries in a two-block area that left shattered glass, broken doors and other damage, but no missing property. There was also a blood trail leading from one store, likely from a break-in boo-boo. (2) In March, England's Canterbury Crown Court heard the evidence against a gang of five who in August and September 2010 attempted to break into seven ATMs, using fancy power tools, but came away empty-handed each time. Brick walls were smashed around three machines, and twice explosives were used, resulting in fires. In each case, alarms were triggered, sending the men away prematurely, including once from an ATM that contained the equivalent of $223,000. [Gaston Gazette, 1-31-2012] [Daily Mail, 3-28-2012]

The Japanese delicacy "fugu" (blowfish) must be properly filleted by trained chefs because of the highly concentrated poison in its tissue, and indeed, a few deaths are reported every year in Japan from people who prepare fugu at home, since a single drop can be fatal. (The additional training, and chef-licensing, partly explains why Tokyo restaurants charge the equivalent of $120 or more for the dish.) However, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which is apparently newly concerned about restaurant competition, announced recently that it would soon no longer require formal training of fugu chefs, leaving it to individual restaurants to set their own standards. Said one 30-year veteran chef, "We licensed chefs feel this way of thinking is a bit strange." [Reuters, 4-2-2012]

Thanks This Week to Joshua Guthrie and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Fast-Food Culture Shock: Since December, the White Castle restaurant in Lafayette, Ind., has provided diners with a stylish experience that includes table service and a wine selection to go with its iconic "slider" hamburgers. A state wine industry expert told The Wall Street Journal in February, after a tasting, that she would recommend the Merlot, although the Moscato was "fun" and the Chardonnay passable (though all wines come in $4.50, screw-off-top bottles and is served in clear plastic glasses). (As for the sliders, said the wine expert, eyeing the burgers on her plate, "At some point, that was a cow, I guess.") [Wall Street Journal, 2-22-2012]

-- When workers at the Carlsberg Beer plant in Vilnius, Lithuania, decided to walk out over poor pay and conditions, the company went to court to block them, and in March, a judge ruled for the company, temporarily halting a strike as not in the national interest because Carlsberg Beer is "vitally essential," thus placing the brew in the same legal category as medical supplies. (Said a British labor union official, "This is probably the most ridiculous decision in the world.") [Daily Telegraph, 3-5-2012] 

-- Recurring Theme: In March, a new peak was reached in New York City's ongoing search for the most preposterously underpriced (because of rent control) apartment in the city. The Gothamist website identified a one-bedroom apartment at 5 Spring Street in Manhattan's SoHo district renting for $55 a month even though, according to a real estate agent, it should be drawing $2,500. The tenant's parents moved in upon immigrating from Italy in the 1940s, and since the tenant, now in his 70s, has a much younger wife, the apartment could remain under rent control for decades. (New York City rent controls were imposed to meet an "emergency" in housing during World War II, but the law gets routinely renewed.) [Gothamist, 3-18-2012]

The Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia recently won a $36,000 grant to study the genetic basis of Trimethylaminuria, otherwise known as the disorder that causes sufferers to smell like dead fish. The first case reported in medical literature was in the 1970s, but according to a Science News report, "an ancient Hindu tale describes a maiden who 'grew to be comely and fair, but a fishy odor ever clung to her.'" [ABC News via WLS Radio (Chicago), 3-6-2012; Science News, 3-15-1999]

-- Eight to Go: (1) After the year-old house cat Sugar survived a 19-floor fall at a Boston high-rise in March, an Animal Rescue League official explained to MSNBC that extra fur where the legs attach to the body enables cats to "glide" and partially "control" their landing. Research suggests that steep falls are thus easier to survive, as cats have time to spread themselves out. (2) The 5-year-old cat Demi survived a 40-minute tumble-dry (temperature up to 104 F) in Whitchurch, England, in March (although she needed oxygen, fluids and steroids to recover). Jennifer Parker, 45, had tossed a load of clothes in, unaware that Demi was in the pile. [Time, 3-22- 2012] [The Sun, 3-21-2012]

-- Something Else to Worry About: A computer science professor working with the Bonobo Hope Great Ape Trust Sanctuary in Des Moines, Iowa, has developed a bonobo robot that can be controlled by live bonobos. Among the first applications of the robot, said Dr. Ken Schweller in March, is a water cannon that bonobos will be taught to operate via an iPad app in order to "play chase games" with each other -- "or to squirt guests." [IEEE Spectrum (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), 3-29-2012]

-- In January, Kentucky state Sen. Katie Stine, presiding over a ceremony in the state capitol honoring the Newport Aquarium, posed with aquarium officials and with Paula, a blackfooted penguin brought in for the warm-and-cuddly photo opportunity. It fell to Senate President David Williams to gently interrupt Stine's speech and inform her that Paula was in the process of soiling the floor of the august chamber. [Herald-Leader (Lexington), 1-24- 2012]

Drive-By Etiquette: In February, Kendall Reid, 36, was extradited from New Jersey back to LaPlace, La., where he had been sought for allegedly shooting at a car on Interstate 10 on Christmas Eve. According to police, Reid failed to hit the car he was aiming at, instead inadvertently shooting out the back window of a car in which two women were riding. However, as the damaged car stopped on the side of the road, Reid pulled his Corvette over, too, walked up to the women, and apologized ("Sorry, wrong car") -- before resuming his pursuit of his intended target. [Times-Picayune, 2-13-2012]

(1) A 41-year-old man was treated with antivenom at the USA Medical Center in Mobile, Ala., in March after he was bitten by a cottonmouth. The man had seen the snake at an encampment, beaten it to death with a stick and decapitated it. At that point, according to the man's friend, he for some reason started to "play with" the head. (The dead snake's teeth still contained venom.) (2) James Davis of Stevenson, Ala., vowed in April that he would forever resist a judge's order that he dig up his late wife's body from his front yard and rebury it in a cemetery. "I'm in it for the long haul," he said, promising to wait out the authorities. "I don't have much to do but sit around (and) think about what's going on." [WALA-TV (Mobile), 3-28-2012] [WAFF-TV (Huntsville, Ala.), 4-2-2012]

Thought of Almost Everything: Mishelle Salzgeber, 20, was arrested in March in New Port Richey, Fla., after failing a drug test, which was a condition of her probation for an undisclosed crime. Apparently, Salzgeber knew that she would probably fail on her own and had gone to the trouble of inserting a small tube of someone else's urine into her vagina. Unfortunately for her, a pre-test body-scan revealed the tube. (Besides, authorities tested the urine in the tube and found that it also failed.) [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 3-20-2012]

Bill Dillon, released from a Florida prison in 2009 after 27 years' wrongful incarceration, received a public apology in March from Gov. Rick Scott (and will get $50,000 from the state for each year of lockup). Dillon is one of the first inmates to have received justice among as many as an estimated 60 who were convicted with the help of the now-deceased dog trainer John Preston, whose supposedly heroic-nosed German shepherds could somehow track smells through water and pick out lone scents among highly contaminated crime scenes -- thus magically confirming speculative parts of prosecutors' cases when no other evidence was available. Pushover judges allowed Preston a free hand until one thought to subject the dog to a simple courtroom smell test, which the dog totally failed. Though satisfied with his own outcome, Dillon begged authorities to open other cases involving Preston's dogs. [Orlando Sentinel, 3-3-2012]

In March, authorities in Davis, Okla., after viewing surveillance video, charged Jimmy "Hawkeye" Jeter, 77, with a "detestable and abominable crime against nature" for "violating" a show pig at a barn on the property of the local school system. According to a KFOR-TV report, Jeter told investigators (in farm language, apparently) that he "poured corn out to hold the gilt still" and then "stuck my finger up her private." Nonetheless, he assured them that he was "not trying to poison the gilt" and that he had done this "in the early '70s." Later, he acknowledged that he was acting for sexual gratification. [KFOR-TV, 3-9-2012]

Thanks This Week to Josh Levin and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

As the U.S. government's role in health care is debated, the French government's role was highlighted in February with a report on Slate.com about France's guarantee to new mothers of "10 to 20" free sessions of "la reeducation perineale" (vaginal re-toning to restore the pre-pregnancy condition, a "cornerstone of French post- natal care," according to Slate). The sessions involve yoga-like calisthenics to rebuild muscles and improve genital flexibility. Similar procedures in the U.S. not only are not government entitlements, but are almost never covered by private insurance, and besides, say surgeons, the patients who request them do so almost entirely for aesthetic reasons. The French program, by contrast, is said to be designed not only for general health but to strengthen women for bearing more children, to raise the birth rate. [Slate, 2-15-2012]

-- Drill, Baby, Drill: U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas may have been joking, but according to a February Washington Post story, he seemed serious at a Natural Resources Committee hearing when searching for yet more reasons why the U.S. should support oil drilling in Alaska. Caribou, he said, are fond of the warmth of the Alaskan pipeline. "So when they want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline." That mating ritual, Rep. Gohmert concluded, is surely responsible for a recent tenfold increase in the local caribou population. [Washington Post, 2-7-2012]

-- In assigning a bail of only $20,000, the judge in Ellisville, Miss., seemed torn about whether to believe that Harold Hadley is a terrorist -- that is, did Hadley plant a bomb at Jones County Junior College? In February, investigators told WDAM-TV that the evidence against Hadley included a note on toilet paper on which he had written in effect, "I passed a bomb in the library." However, no bomb was found, and a relative of Hadley's told the judge that Hadley often speaks of breaking wind as "passing a bomb." The case is continuing. [WDAM-TV (Hattiesburg, Miss.), 2-8-2012]

-- John Hughes, 55, was fined $1,000 in February in Butte, Mont., after pleading guilty to reckless driving for leading police on a 100-mph-plus chase starting at 3:25 a.m. After police deflated his tires and arrested him, an officer asked why he had taken off. Said Hughes, "I just always wanted to do that." [Montana Standard, 2-4-2012]

-- Melvyn Webb, 54, was acquitted in March of alleged indecent behavior on a train. An eight-woman, four-man jury in Reading (England) Crown Court found Webb's explanation entirely plausible -- that he was a banjo player and was "playing" some riffs underneath the newspaper in his lap. "(S)ometimes I do, with my hands, pick out a pattern on my knees," he said. (On the other hand, the female witness against him had testified that Webb "was facing me, breathing heavily and snarling.") [Daily Mail, 3-7-2012]

-- Earl Persell, 56, was arrested in Palm Bay, Fla., in February when police were summoned to his home on a domestic violence call. Persell's girlfriend said he had assaulted her and held her down by the neck, and then moments later, with his truck, rammed the car she was driving away in. The subject of the couple's argument was legendary singer Tina Turner and her late, wife-beating husband, Ike. [Florida Today (Melbourne), 2-3-2012]

-- U.S. military forces called to battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, including reservists and National Guardsmen on active duty, have their civilian jobs protected by federal law, but every year the Pentagon reports having to assist personnel who have been illegally fired or demoted during their tours of duty. Of all the employers in the United States who are seemingly ignorant of the law, one stands out: civilian agencies of the federal government. The Washington Post, using a Freedom of Information Act request, revealed in February that during fiscal year 2011, 18 percent of all complaints under the law were filed against federal agencies. [Washington Post, 2-19-2012]

-- Mark "Chopper" Read only wanted to help out his son's youth athletics program in the Melbourne, Australia, suburb of Collingwood in February, but was rebuffed. He had offered his assistance at track meets by, for instance, firing the starter's pistol for races, but officials declined after learning that Read had recently been released from prison after 23 years and had boasted of killing 19 people and once attempting to kidnap a judge at gunpoint. [The Mercury (Hobart), 2-14-2012]

-- Damien Bittar of Eugene, Ore., turned 21 at midnight on March 15 and apparently wanted to get a quick start on his legal-drinking career. By 1:30 a.m., his car had been impounded, and he had been charged with DUI, reckless driving and criminal mischief after he accidentally crashed into an alcohol rehabilitation center. [KVAL-TV (Eugene), 3-15-2012]

Internal Revenue Service is battling the estate of art dealer Ileana Sonnabend over the value of a Robert Rauschenberg stuffed bald eagle that is part of his work "Canyon." IRS has levied taxes as if the work were worth $65 million, but the Sonnabend estate, citing multiple auction-house appraisals, says the correct value is "zero," since it is impossible to sell the piece because two federal laws prohibit the trafficking of bald eagles, whether dead or alive. (Despite the law, IRS says, there is a black market for the work, for example, by a "recluse billionaire in China (who) might want to buy it and hide it.") [Artinfo, 2-23-2012]

(1) Maureen Reed, 41, was charged with DWI in March in Lockport, N.Y., after arriving at a police station inebriated. She had gotten into an altercation with two others at the Niagara Hotel and left to go press charges. The police station is about 200 feet from the hotel, but Reed unwisely decided to drive her car there instead of walking. (2) Two men were robbed in a motel room in Bradenton, Fla., in February by Cedrick Mitchell, 39, who pulled a handgun on them, but lost it in a struggle when the men started to fight back. One of the men pepper-sprayed Mitchell, sending him fleeing. He returned a few minutes later and begged to buy the gun back for $40, but all he got was another pepper-spraying. Police arrested Mitchell nearby. [Lockport Journal, 3-13-2012] [Bradenton Herald, 2-23-2012]

Dr. Peter Trigger, 62, apparently suffered a relapse in Thorplands, England, in February. Dr. Trigger violated his Anti-Social Behavior Order (the one reported in News of the Weird in 2009) by standing passively alongside the grounds of the Woodvale Primary School as parents dropped kids off for classes. As before, he was wearing a thigh-length gray skirt and a blue Northampton Academy Blazer even though forbidden to be near a school while dressed in either a skirt or a school uniform. His lawyer said that Dr. Trigger desperately wants to be a woman. [Northampton Chronicle, 2-29- 2012]

(1) Asian News International, citing a March China Today report, disclosed that a 68-year-old woman from the countryside, visiting her son in the city of Dalian, China, for the first time, used an unheard-of (for China) 98 tons of water over a two-month period because she was apparently mesmerized by the wonder of seeing her first flush toilet (which she continually engaged approximately every five minutes). (Her use breaks down to 391 gallons a day, somewhat higher than the average U.S. household.) (2) In Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in March, police finally straightened out the street confrontation between several men and a wheelchair-using man who, they thought, was making their penises disappear. According to National Network Newspapers, the police brought all parties to the station and ordered pants to be pulled down. All organs were said to be intact, but one man still complained that his had been made "lifeless." [China Today via ANI, 3-28-2012] [National Network Newspapers (Port Harcourt), 3-21-2012]