Chinese media reported that on May 4th, at the Xiaogan Middle School in Hubei province, high school students studying for the all-important national college entrance exam worked through the evening while hooked up to intravenous drips of amino acids to fight fatigue. A director of the school's Office of Academic Affairs reasoned that before the IVs were hung, weary students complained of losing too much time running back and forth to the school's infirmary for energy injections. After the media reports, there was a public backlash, but less against the notion that China was placing too much importance on the exams than against reports that the government was subsidizing the cost of the injections. [South China Morning Post, 5-9-2012]

-- Desmond Hatchett, 33, was summoned to court in Knoxville, Tenn., in May so that a judge could chastise him for again failing to make child-support payments. Official records show that Hatchett has at least 30 children (ages 14 down to "toddler") by at least 11 women. He said at a 2009 court appearance that he was "through" siring children and apparently has taken proper precautions since then. (In Milwaukee, Wis., in April, Sean Patrick was sentenced to 30 years in prison for owing more than $146,000 for 12 children by 10 mothers, and the city's Journal Sentinel newspaper reported that, before being locked up, two convicted pimps, Derrick Avery and Todd Carter, had fathered, respectively, 15 kids by seven women and 16 children with "several" mothers.) [Los Angeles Times, 5-18-2012] [Journal Sentinel, 4-3-2012]

-- The Associated Press reported in May that Kentucky prison officials were working behind the scenes to resolve the thorny question of whether inmate Robert Foley deserves a hip replacement. Normally, a prisoner in such extreme pain would qualify. However, Foley, 55, is on death row for killing six people in 1989 and 1991, and since he has exhausted his appeals, he is still alive only because a court has halted all executions while the state reconsiders its lethal-injection procedure. Furthermore, all local hospitals queried by the prison to perform the procedure have declined to take Foley because the prison considers him dangerous. [Associated Press via AzCentral.com (Phoenix), 5-17-2012]

-- Chilean artist Sebastian Errazuriz recently created "Christian popsicles" made from wine that Errazuriz obtained by trickery after a priest consecrated it into "the blood of Christ." The popsicle's stick is actually a figure of Jesus on the cross, as sort of a reward for finishing the treat. (Also, The Icecreamists shop in London, England, recently began offering a popsicle made with absinthe -- and holy water from a spring in Lourdes, France, which many Catholics revere for its healing powers. The "Vice Lolly" sells for the equivalent of about $29.) [CNN, 5-17-2012] [DigitalSpy.com (Hearst Publications), 5-31-2012]

-- The official class photo of Eileen Diaz's second-grade kids at Sawgrass Elementary School in Sunrise, Fla., was distributed this spring with the face of the front-and-center child replaced by a dark-on-white smiley face. Apparently there was miscommunication between the school and the photographer about redoing the photo without the child, whose parents had not given permission for the shot. (Another child without parental authorization was easily edited out of the photo, but the front-and-center student could not be.) [WPLG-TV (Miami), 4-3-2012]

-- In May, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled, 3-0, that it is not necessarily improper under federal law for Minute Maid to name a beverage "Pomegranate Blueberry" even though those two ingredients constitute only 0.5 percent of the contents. A competing seller of pomegranate juices had sued in 2008, pointing out that 99.4 percent of the Minute Maid beverage was merely apple and grape juices. Minute Maid's owner, Coca-Cola, called the competitor's complaint "baseless." [San Francisco Chronicle, 5-18-2012]

-- Almost all companies that collect customer data publish their policies on how they keep the data "private" (even though those "privacy" policies almost always explain just precisely the ways they intend not to keep the data "private" -- and are not required to by law). Researchers writing in the journal I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society (summarized in an April post on the blog TechDirt.com) found that if typical consumers bothered to read all of the detailed privacy policies they encountered, it would take from 181 to 304 hours per year (22-38 workdays), depending on shopping habits. (If every consumer in America did it, it would take from 40 billion to 67 billion hours a year, or 5 billion to 8.3 billion workdays a year.) [TechDirt.com, 4-23-2012]

-- In April, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it was fining Google for deliberately impeding the agency's investigation into the company's collection of wireless data by its roaming Street View vehicles and that the agency had decided, based on Google's "ability to pay," that it needed to double its staff-proposed fine in order to "deter future misconduct." Hence, it raised Google's fine from $12,000 to $25,000. (As pointed out by ProPublica.org, during the previous quarter year, Google made profits of $2.89 billion, or $25,000 every 68 seconds.) [ProPublica, 4-16-2012]

-- In April, police in Newtown Township, Pa., searched (unsuccessfully, it turns out) for a "skinny" black male, between ages 35 and 45, wearing a black tracksuit. He had indecently exposed himself at a place of business -- the offices of the Bucks County Association for the Blind (although, obviously, at least one sighted person reported his description). [PhillyBurbs.com, 5-1-2012]

-- District of Columbia Councilman Marion Barry initially was scorned in May for criticizing the influx of "Asian" shopkeepers into the ward that he represents. "They got to go. I'll say that right now." Later, after re-thinking the issue, Barry announced that his ward should be "the model of diversity," and issued an apology to Asian-Americans. But, he lamented, America has always been tough on immigrants. "The Irish caught hell, the Jews caught hell, the Polacks caught hell." (The preferred terms are "Polish" or "Poles.") [WTOP Radio (Washington, D.C.), 5-24-2012]

(1) A team of scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, following up on a Harvard study that found dramatic weight-loss qualities from eating yogurt, did its own yogurt study. The results, summarized in Scientific American in May, noted that yogurt-eating male mice have 10 times the follicle density of other mice, producing "luxuriantly silky fur" and larger, outward-projecting testicles that made them far more effective inseminators. (2) British researchers from the University of Liverpool and the University of Bristol concluded in an April journal article that caterpillars of the large white butterfly, which defends itself against predators by vomiting on them, are less likely to do so when the caterpillars live in groups. The researchers hypothesize that gratuitous vomiters are seen as poor mating risks. [Scientific American, 5-4-2012] [Science Daily, 4-12-2012]

The most recently reported morbidly obese person who required that her home be partially torn apart by firefighters so that she could be lifted out to be taken to a hospital was teenager Georgia Davis in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. Davis, 19, weighs nearly 800 pounds, and 40 people were involved in extricating her in May from her upstairs bedroom, via scaffolding. (Several years ago, Davis enrolled in a weight-loss camp in the U.S. and got down to about 250 pounds, but she quickly gained it back.) [WalesOnline.com, 5-24-2012]

A time-honored defense used by many older men when charged with having sex with underage girls is now so common that it must be retired from circulation. In February in Bridgeport, Conn., Norberto Millet, 60, denied raping the 9-year-old girl, accusing her of actually attacking him -- and said he had to fight her off. In fact, Millet told police, a lot of girls 8- to 10 years old try to have sex with him. And in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in May, Lyle Moodie, 47 at the time, said much the same about his 16-year-old accuser. "She just suddenly grabbed me by the pajama bottoms. I pulled back and said, 'No, stop.' I didn't know what to do." [Connecticut Post, 2-10-2012] [Canoe.ca, 5-16-2012]

Thanks This Week to Gary Goldberg and David Henshaw, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisers.

Norway is home to perhaps the most inmate-friendly prison in the world (as mentioned previously in "News of the Weird"), but the correctional system has an imminent crisis, as Anders Behring Breivik (the confessed killer of 77 people last year) is nearing formal conviction and sentencing. Officials fear the sociopathic Breivik will try to kill inmates to add to his toll, yet Norwegian law forbids solitary confinement as cruel. Consequently, according to a May report by Norway's Verdens Gang newspaper, the officials have begun a search to select, hire and train appropriate "friends" to hang out with Breivik behind bars to win his trust and prevent further mayhem. Among Breivik's favorite recreational distractions: chess and hockey. [Daily Telegraph (London) via MSNBC, 5-31-2012]

-- Collections of comically poor translations are legion, but the Beijing municipal government, in sympathy with English-speaking restaurant-goers, published a helpful guidebook recently of what the restaurateurs were trying, though inartfully, to say. In an April interview with the authors, NBC News learned the contents of "Hand Shredded A$$ Meat" (sic) (merely donkey meat) and other baffling English descriptions (all taken from actual menus), such as "Cowboy Leg," "Red-Burned Lion Head," "Blow-up Flatfish With No Result," and the very unhelpful "Tofu Made by Woman With Freckles" and "Strange Flavor Noodles." [MSNBC, 4-20-2012]

-- Competitive facial-hair-growers are revered in some countries, with Pakistan and India featured in recent reports. Pakistani Amir Muhammad Afridi, 42, whose handlebar lip hair extends in an arc almost to the top of his head, told reporters he had to move from his rural home to the more secular Peshawar because of threats that his pride and joy was un-Islamic. And the Guinness Book record- holder, Ram Singh Chauhan, 54, of India, offered grooming tips in an interview with BBC News, revealing that he keeps his 14-foot-long moustache conditioned by cleaning and combing it for an hour each day (treated with coconut-based hair oil) and lamented that he must wind it around his neck to keep it from interfering with his daily activities. [Daily Telegraph (London), 4-9-2012] [BBC News, 5-17-2012]

-- In the spirit of the empowerment of dissidents around the world, activists in Ukraine and South Africa recently erected downright disrespectful statues lampooning leaders. In Kiev and the western city of Lvov, Ukraine, activists unveiled 5-foot-high statues of former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin urinating. (Police in both cities took them down quickly, however.) And South African artist Brett Murray museum-exhibited a red, black and yellow acrylic painting of President Jacob Zuma ("Hail to the Thief II") with his genitals exposed, an allusion to Zuma's having beaten a rape charge in 2006. (The Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, which first resisted pressure, agreed in May to remove the painting.) [RIA/Novasti (Moscow), 5-8-2012] [BBC News, 5-18-2012]

-- Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare announced in April that it would begin a national inquiry over the alarming number of bathtub deaths in 2011 -- nearly three times the number of those killed in traffic accidents. News reports pointed out that many Japanese workers relax in tubs at the end of the day, even when they have overimbibed and are vulnerable to drowning. [Daily Telegraph (London), 4-30-2012]

(1) In Kent, Washington, in May, Yong Hyun Kim, 21, was charged with assault at a movie house. Annoyed by a group of kids in the row behind him who were constantly talking, laughing and throwing popcorn during "Titanic," Yong slapped the nearest boy, bloodying his nose and knocking out a tooth. (2) In Pirmasens, Germany, in May, a 61-year-old woman was fined the equivalent of almost $1,000 for assault. Frustrated by telemarketers' constantly cold-calling her, she took it out on one by blowing a whistle into the telephone, allegedly causing permanent damage to the telemarketer's hearing. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5-22-2012] [The Local (Hamburg), 5-22-2012]

-- Google Trends notes that five of the top seven countries in the world whose residents search "sex" are Muslim, and in Iran, especially, a "virtual cottage industry" has developed of clerics turning into amateur sexologists, according to the May/June Foreign Policy -- often with mockable results. For example, one cleric declared, "If a person has intercourse with a cow, a sheep or a camel," it is not proper to consume the animal's milk. Leaders, from former president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr (who believed that women's hair emits sexual rays) to the current Ayatollah Khamenei (who approves the concept of Islamic "temporary marriages" that justify quick assignations) promote internal friskiness while at the same time denouncing outsiders (especially Americans) for attempting to corrupt the country's morals. [Foreign Policy, May/June 2012]

-- Two veteran Church of England vicars were in the news in May for their unique approaches. Rev. Andy Kelso left the church after 25 years to start an Elvis Presley Gospel Tribute act as "Elvis Prayersley." Said Kelso, "I felt God say to me very strongly, 'Take Elvis to the church.'" And Rev. Nick Davies of Cheltenham, England, promises to continue breathing fire part-way through his sermons (to mark Pentecost, in which the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus' disciples, appearing as "tongues of flame"). [Metro (London), 5-24-2012] [BBC News, 5-27-2012]

-- Hard Month for Gays and Lesbians: Internet video excerpts of church services, all posted during May, recorded Christian pastors prescribing harsh futures for homosexuals. Pastor Sean Harris (Fayetteville, N.C.) recommended roughing up a limp-wristed son if the boy acts effeminately (but said later he was joking). Pastor Ron Baity (Winston-Salem, N.C.) wants gays and lesbians "prosecuted" (though the excerpt was not clear what particular statute was violated). Pastor Charles Worley (Maiden, N.C.) wants gays and lesbians rounded up and isolated behind an electrified fence so they won't breed to the larger population. Pastor Curtis Knapp (Seneca, Kan.) said "the government" should just kill them all (according to biblical commandment, he said). Pastor Dennis Leatherman (Oakland, Md.) likes "the idea" of killing them but added that it would be wrong. And at the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle in Greensburg, Ind., a 3-year-old boy's rendition of "Ain't no homo going to make it to heaven" also made it around the world on the Internet. [CNN, 5-8-2012] [Winston-Salem Journal, 5-8-2012] [CNN, 5-23-2012] [Huffington Post, 5-30-2012] [Huffington Post, 5-31-2012] [WRTV (Indianapolis), 5-31-2012]

-- Ms. Stormy Moody was arrested and charged with aggravated burglary in Henderson County, Tenn., in May after her next-door neighbor returned from a trip and discovered that quite a few items (from the petty to the more expensive) were missing from the home. For some reason, Moody felt secure enough to be wearing some of the clothing as she chatted sympathetically with the victim about the missing items. [WBBJ-TV (Jackson, Tenn.), 5-23-2012]

-- Most public officials caught "sexting" immediately turn remorseful, but not Michigan appeals court judge Wade McCree III. In April, when the husband of a female bailiff in McCree's court saw that the judge had sent the bailiff a shirtless photo of himself, McCree told a curious reporter for Detroit's WJBK-TV, "Hot dog, yep, that's me." "I've got no shame in my game." "I'm in no more clothes than I'll be at the Y this afternoon when I swim my mile." The still-irate husband said he would pursue a judicial commission complaint against McCree. [Fox News, 4-24-2012]

(1) Calvin Hill, 54, was arrested in Greenwood, S.C., in May after allegedly stabbing a 41-year-old man with whom he was arguing in the back seat of a car. The police report stated that the men were arguing "about who can have the most sex." (2) WJBK-TV reported in June that two men in the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit wound up in a gunfight over which one made Kool-Aid better. (Neither man was hit, but two bystanders were reportedly wounded.) [The Smoking Gun, 5-8-2012] [WJBK-TV, 6-1-2012]

In Stockholm, N.Y., in May, a 24-year-old man became the most recent to have a friend shoot him just because the man wanted to know what it felt like to get shot. The friend, Shawn Mossow, 25, relented, finally, and fired a .22-caliber rifle shot into the man's leg, but the man is expected to make a full recovery. [Associated Press via WSYR-TV (Syracuse), 5-15-2012]

CORRECTION: Contrary to "News of the Weird" of 5-27-2012, prominent "breatharian" Ellen Greve is not dead, which clearly means that she has been cheating on the "sun and air only" diet that she promoted during the 1990s. In reading a news story, I must have confused Greve with one of her followers (who apparently faithfully observed the diet).

Thanks This Week to Gary DaSilva, Max Noriega, Gerald Sacks and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

No insect is in greater need of a public relations boost than the cockroach, and Dr. Mathieu Lihoreau of Rennes, France, provided it in a recent issue of the journal Insectes Sociaux. Roaches are highly social, suffer when isolated, recognize members of their own families, and appear to make "collective decisions for the greater good" of their community, according to a review of the research in May by BBC Nature. They act in "emergent forms of cooperation" -- "swarm intelligence." Functioning mostly through chemical cues, they advise their homeboys where to find food and water, where the good crawl-into cracks are for sleeping, and how to stay attached to their social networks. [BBC Nature, 5-2-2012]

-- Dr. Jason Burke rolled out his "Hangover Heaven" medical bus fleet in Las Vegas in April, offering revelers a faster, clinically proper recovery from their night of excess drinking for a $90 to $150 fee. After giving their medical history, "patients" receive intravenous saline, with B and C vitamins and whatever prescription or over-the-counter drugs are appropriate, says Burke (a licensed anesthesiologist). No drunks are served; the patient must be in the "hangover" stage. One M.D., who hosts a radio show, told CBS News, "I think many doctors are kicking themselves because they didn't think of this first." [CBS News, 4-23-2012]

-- No Trademark for You: (1) A restaurant set to open in April in West Palm Beach, Fla., named with a Japanese word suggesting "good fortune, wealth and prosperity," was denied a trademark by the Florida Division of Corporations. The name in question: the Fuku. (2) In April, Alabama's alcoholic beverage control agency rejected Founders Brewing Co.'s request to sell its Dirty Bastard beer in the state, even though Founders pointed out that the state already permits another company to sell Fat Bastard wine. The agency acknowledged the similarity, but said Fat Bastard was approved years ago and that no one at the agency now recalls why. [WPTV (West Palm Beach), 4-26-2012] [Associated Press via AzCentral.com, 4-19-2012]

-- In April, the Taiwan tabloid Apple Daily profiled a 27-year-old man who said he has tripled his previous salary by becoming a public snitch, turning in videos of litterers and spitters violating Taipei laws that reward informants a fee of one-fourth the amount of any fines. In the last two years, the man ("Chou") said he has had 5,000 cases result in fines, for which he has been paid the equivalent of $50,000. He said he now teaches classes in snitching. [Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Hamburg) via MonstersandCritics.com, 4-18-2012]

-- Researchers Need to Believe: Surely the world's longest-running science experiment is the 85-year-old continuing project to visually ascertain whether "pitch" (a tar) is liquid. Begun at England's Cambridge University, the project is now housed at the University of Queensland in Australia, where the custodian believes the next drop (the ninth ever) will fall in 2013. The previous teardrop-shaped bead descended in 2000. [Daily Mail (London), 5-11-2012]

-- Dung beetles are known to researchers to roll perfectly made balls with their back legs and to periodically mount the balls, pirouette and climb down to be on their way. Emily Baird of Lund University in Sweden explained why in a January issue of the journal PLoS One: The beetles are gathering celestial readings to help shepherd their balls home, away from predators. Baird's specialty is learning how animals with tiny brains perform complex tasks, and to test the dung beetle, she patiently watched 22 of them guide their balls through an obstacle course her team created. [Scientific American, 1-18-2012]

-- People with the condition Alternating Gender Incongruity (AGI) say they periodically, but repeatedly, sense themselves as of the opposite gender, sometimes imagining to have "phantom genitalia" of that gender. Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, of the University of California, San Diego's Center for Brain and Cognition, tested 32 previously undiagnosed AGI sufferers and found mild correlations with multiple-personality disorder, bipolar disorder and, oddly, ambidexterity. His research appeared in April in the journal Medical Hypotheses and was reviewed by Scientific American. [Scientific American, 4-19-2012]

-- Only about 16 percent of stock market transactions consist of what most people think of as buying or selling of company or mutual fund shares ("real" investors, interacting with actual brokers). The rest, according to analysis by Morgan Stanley's Quantitative and Derivative Strategies group and covering October to December 2011, were performed by computers acting automatically, at staggeringly high frequency, using software algorithms, buying or selling mindlessly, based on what trading firms needed to fill out their portfolios' profitably on a second-by-second basis. [Financial Times, 4-24-2012]

-- Two homeless, penniless men in Fresno, Calif., are setting a high bar for frequency, and expense, of ambulance trips to the hospital. A 41-year-old who says he has "a major problem with my liver" and a 51-year-old allegedly seizure-prone man called for a combined 1,363 trips in 2011, which at the market rate would have cost them $545,000 (apart from evaluations by the hospital, which would have additionally cost more than $500,000), according to a February investigation by the Fresno Bee. Taxpayers and the insured foot the bills (reduced somewhat because the ambulance company and the hospital take lower fees). Neither the ambulance company nor the hospital can refuse to serve the men, and attempts to talk the men out of the trips are either futile or too laborious for the emergency technicians to attempt. [Fresno Bee, 2-12-2012]

-- The expense of caring for a pet, at least among the affluent, appears to be recession-resistant, amounting to about $50 billion in the U.S. for 2011, according to a trade association. Much of that spending is on advanced medical services such as bone marrow transplants at North Carolina State University (65 already performed) and stent procedures to open clogged bladders or kidneys (630 last year) at the Animal Medical Center in New York City. Said one man, who had paid about $25,000 to treat his 10-year-old dog's lymphoma, "I wondered if I was doing this for selfish reasons. I asked myself, 'If I were a 10-year-old dog, would I want to go through this?'" (Unfortunately, considering dogs' short life spans, cancer remissions are almost always short-lived.) [New York Times, 4-6-2012]

-- But sometimes, the weird news is heartwarming. KTUL-TV, reporting in April on the Sooner Golden Retriever Rescue in Tulsa, Okla., profiled Tanner (a Golden Retriever blind from epilepsy and suffering seizures, incontinence and biting frenzies), who took a shine to the arrival of Blair (a homeless black Labrador with a gunshot wound). Almost immediately, noted Rescue personnel, Tanner became playful, as Blair led him around the grounds in much the way that assistance dogs guide blind humans. Both dogs have thus staved off being euthanized and are being considered for joint adoption. [KTUL-TV (Tulsa), 5-2-2012]

Bad Strategies: (1) James Cruz, 58, was arrested in May in West Palm Beach, Fla., after allegedly pulling out a gun at a McDonald's drive-thru lane in order to squeeze his car in ahead of another. The other driver backed off, but of course got a full view of Cruz's license plate. (2) Two weeks earlier, in Wilmer, Texas, Keithan Manuel, 18, was arrested after he allegedly walked into the Wilmer police station with a white towel covering his hands, and told the dispatcher, "(G)ive me all your money." [WTVJ-TV (Miami), 5-25- 2012] [KRLD-TV (Dallas), 5-9-2012]

Though several cases have been reported in medical literature (and twice in News of the Weird), credulity is still strained by reports that people might accidentally swallow (whole!) a typical toothbrush (usually 7 to 8 inches long). In the most recent episode, Ms. Bat-El Panker, 24, of Kiryat Yam, Israel, had trouble with disbelieving doctors at her local hospital and had to go to Carmel Hospital in Haifa, where a gastroenterologist, using ordinary tools of the trade, manipulated the brush until it was at an angle that made it removable without damaging her digestive tract, according to a report on Ynet News. [Ynet News, 5-16-2012]

Thanks This Week to Brett Steidler, Tracey Nixon, Jay Scott, Esteban Bazan, Perry Levin, and Sandy Pearlman, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and Board of Editorial Advisors (Tom Barker, Paul Blumstein, Harry Farkas, Sam Gaines, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Rob Snyder, Stephen Taylor, Bruce Townley, and Jerry Whittle).