Researchers Having Fun: Scientists from the Primate Research Institute at Japan's Kyoto University reported in an August journal article that they had given helium gas to apes (gibbons), which, predictably, made their voices goofily high-pitched. However, it was not a fraternity prank or lab assistant's initiation, but a way for the scientists to determine whether the famously sonorous gibbons could yell just as loudly at a higher-than-natural pitch. The gibbons succeeded, showing a rare talent similar to that of the world's greatest human sopranos, who maintain their booming amplitude by altering the shape of their vocal tract, including their mouth and tongue. [Reuters via Christian Science Monitor, 8-23-2012]

-- The seaside city of Qingdao, China, is (as described in August by NPR) "not a vacation community for superheroes" even though many beachcombers wear masks while lounging and sunbathing. The garments are "face-kinis," or light cloth coverings that protect against the "terror of tanning." While Western cultures celebrate skin-darkening, many Chinese associate it with lower-status, outdoor occupations, and a pale skin suggests having lived a pampered life. [NPR, 8-20-2012]

-- Fine Points of the Law: (1) Italy's highest court ruled in July that one man's telling another, in front of others, that he has "no balls" can be criminal conduct that warrants payment of damages. Said Judge Maurizio Fumo, such a comment places at issue male virility as well as competence and character. (2) In August, after an eight-day trial, a court in Hamburg, Germany, awarded money damages to a man who called another an "asshole" ("arschloch") in a parking-space dispute and fixed the payment at the equivalent of about $75,000. (Courts in Germany can base the amount of damages on the transgressor's income.) [ANSA (Rome) via Daily Telegraph (London), 8-1-2012] [The Local (Berlin), 8-23-2012]

-- A Saudi Arabian agency is raising the equivalent of about $130 million to break ground in 2013 on an entire city to be managed and staffed by female employees, with three more such cities being contemplated. Raising women's employment rate is a goal of the kingdom, where until last year, nearly all jobs were held by foreigners and Saudi males, including jobs as sales clerks in women's lingerie shops. [The Guardian (London), 8-12-2012]

-- A centuries-old practice of China's upper crust continues today, reported Slate.com in August, except with a bit more circumspection. Rich and/or powerful people on trial or convicted can still get away with hiring replacements to serve their sentences -- but because of ubiquitous Internet videos, only if the replacements facially resemble the perps. Since the rich person winds up paying for his conviction (though a relatively small price), Slate called the practice ("ding zui") sort of a "cap-and-trade" policy for crime. [Slate.com, 8-2-2012]

-- Prayer failed for Leslie Burton, 26, and Terrell Williams, 22, in St. Paul, Minn., in July. As they sat in the back seat of a police car while officers searched their own car, the pair, touching hands (according to the cruiser's video camera), quietly begged divine intervention that the guns in their car not be found. However, not only were the guns spotted, but a subsequent strip search revealed a baggie of suspected Ecstasy pills in Williams' rectum. [Star Tribune (Minneapolis), 7-6-2012]

-- In August, an abbot at the Wat Phra Dhammakaya Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand, reported that Steve Jobs is doing well now as a "mid-level angel." He was reincarnated as "a half-Witthayathorn, half-Yak," which the Bangkok Post took to mean that Jobs continues to be a "giant" and a seeker of scientific knowledge and apparently resides in a "parallel universe" near his former office in Cupertino, Calif. [Bangkok Post via CNBC, 8-24-2012]

-- The mayor of Triberg, Germany, touted his town's new public parking area in July by noting that 12 of the spaces were wider, and well-lit, compared to the others, and would be reserved for female drivers. The harder-to-access "men's spaces" required maneuvering at an angle around concrete pillars. "(M)en are, as a rule, a little better at such challenges," the mayor said, predicting that the men's spots would become a visitors' "attraction" for the town. [The Local (Berlin), 7-12-2012]

-- Bright Ideas: New signs were posted on doors of single-use restrooms in two medical clinics in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in July and immediately confused a transgender activist interviewed by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News. Three silhouette figures appear on the door: a man, a woman, and what is supposedly a gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender (which is a half-man, half-woman with the right-hand side of the figure wearing a dress and with sloping shoulders and the left-hand side with the thicker pant legs of a man). Said the activist, "I understand they were trying to ... make people feel included, but..." [CBC News, 7-13-2012]

Finally responding to defense lawyers, the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged that it has been trying to keep certain North Carolina inmates locked up even though judges had declared them legally innocent. About 60 prisoners, according to a June USA Today investigation, were victims of an incorrect interpretation of federal gun-possession law supposedly rectified by a May 2011 U.S. Court of Appeals decision, but the Justice Department had continued to demand holds, for 12 months, arguing that somehow it still needed time to consider the men's records. (Some of the inmates are serving time for multiple counts and would only be eligible for sentence reductions.) In August, the department, sportingly, said it would stop opposing release of the men who had been ruled innocent more than a year earlier. [USA Today, 8-14-2012, 6-14-2012]

Not Into Politics: Lowell Turpin, 40, was arrested in Anderson County, Tenn., in July after he became jealously enraged at a stranger's photo on his live-in girlfriend's Facebook page and, demanding to know who the man is, allegedly punched her in the face and smashed her computer. According to the police report, it was a campaign photo of Mitt Romney. [Knoxville News Sentinel, 7-30-2012]

People Who Are a Mess: (1) St. Paul, Minn., police arrested Brian Wutschke, 45, in August after a female pedestrian said she saw him stop his truck beside her and perform oral sex on a dildo. Officers who patted Wutschke down at the scene noted a "vibrating sex toy" that Wutschke had inserted in a bodily orifice but declined to disturb it while it was still running. Wutschke was cited for indecent conduct. (2) Lab technician Coley Mitchell was arrested in a locker room at Georgia Health Sciences University in Augusta in August, intoxicated, with his pants down with two lab monkeys nearby that had been released from their cages. [St. Paul Pioneer Press, 8-23-2012] [Augusta Chronicle, 8-17-2012]

Men Who Accidentally Shot Themselves Recently: A man in Wawa, Ontario, in July, clubbing a mouse with the butt end of a rifle. The 56-year-old man in Sparks, Nev., who brought his handgun with him to "The Bourne Legacy" after the Colorado massacre and was shot in the buttocks when it fell to the floor. Two men who shot themselves in the genitals (a 45-year-old in Birmingham, Mich., in June and 36-year-old Tavares Colbert in Oklahoma City in July). Tough guys like the 18-year-old in Philadelphian who fired the unloaded (he thought!) gun at his own head after his "manhood" was challenged, and the 17-year-old in Largo, Fla., in June who lost in the first round at Russian roulette. Two people didn't even need a gun to shoot themselves: a Modesto, Calif., weightlifter whose dumbbell slipped to the floor in April and landed on a bullet, and a 56-year-old woman in Montoursville, Pa., who apparently carries bullets in her purse, and somehow had one explode, wounding her. [Wawa: [Toronto Sun, 7-21-2012] Sparks: [Associated Press via Salon.com, 8-15-2012] Birmingham: [Detroit Free Press, 6-15-2012] Oklahoma City: [KWTV (Oklahoma City), 7-16-2012] Philadelphia: [Philadelphia Daily News, 6-7-2012] Largo: [Tampa Bay Times, 7-1-2012] Modesto: [Associated Press via WMBF-TV (Myrtle Beach, S.C.), 4-13-2012] Montoursville: [Williamsport (Pa.) Sun-Gazette, 6-11-2012]

Thanks This Week to Corby Kistler, Joe Guidali, Steve Dunn, Peter Smagorinsky, John McGaw, Ken Wilder, Gerald Sacks, Josh Levin, Bruce Leiserowitz, Eddie Earles, David Oldridge, Scott Huber, Hal Dunham, and Sandy Pearlman, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Are We Safe? In August, Daniel Castillo'a Jet Ski broke down in New York City's Jamaica Bay, forcing him to swim to the nearest shore -- at JFK International Airport. As Castillo roamed the grounds, he somehow failed to disturb the airport's $100 million, state-of-the-art Perimeter Intrusion Detection System of cameras and motion sensors, stumbling into the Delta terminal before an employee noticed him. This happened two weeks after the now-notorious "peace" protest of nun Megan Rice, 82, and two colleagues, who cut through fences at the Oak Ridge (Tenn.) nuclear reservation's Y-12 facility that houses more than 100 tons of highly enriched uranium. They braved numerous (though apparently unmonitored or malfunctioning) alarms and sensors for up to two hours before a lone guard stopped them. [ABC News via Yahoo News, 8-13-2012; New York Times, 8-8-2012]

-- Challenging Business Models: (1) In June, owners of the legal brothel Stiletto in Sydney, Australia, revealed their multimillion-dollar expansion to create the country's (and perhaps the world's) first "mega-brothel." (2) Short-stay "love hotels" proliferate in Brazil, but in July in the city of Belo Horizonte, Fabiano Lourdes and his sister Daniela were about to open Animalle Mundo Pet, which they described as a love hotel for dogs. Owners would bring their mating-ready canines to rooms that feature the dim lighting and heart-shaped ceiling mirrors traditional in love hotels (to appeal to the party paying the bill, of course). [Agence France-Presse, 6-20-2012] [Agence France-Presse via Daily Telegraph (London), 7-11-2012]

-- Oh, Dear: New York City is the scene this summer of a particularly nasty turf war among ice cream trucks vying for space on the city's choicest blocks. Most aggressive, according to a July New York Post report, are the drivers of Mister Softee trucks. Said a Yogo frozen yogurt vendor, "If you see a Mister Softee truck, you know bad things are coming," including, reported the Post, such hardball tactics as cutting rival trucks' brake lines. [New York Post, 7-25-2012]

The Treasury Department's inspector general reported in August that the IRS doled out more than $5 billion in fraudulent income tax returns in 2011 (owing to its mission to provide refunds promptly without first vetting the claims). The agency "refunded" $3.3 million to a single address in Lansing, Mich. (supposedly the home of 2,137 different tax filers) and nearly $4 million to three Florida addresses (518 to one in Tampa, 741 to one in Belle Glade, and 703 to a post office box in Orlando). In all, refunds were claimed by, among others, 105,000 dead people. [Associated Press via Washington Post, 8-2-2012; South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8-6-2012]

-- "Pheromone parties" attract men and women seeking romance not via often-insincere conversation but based on the primal-scent signals emitted by each other's slept-in T-shirts. Organizers have staged parties in New York City and Los Angeles and plan to expand, according to a June Associated Press report. The organizers' initial conclusion: People prefer lovers with a somewhat-different genetic makeup than their own, but not too different. [Associated Press via USA Today, 6-23-2012]

-- In a study published in August, women with the feline-oriented Toxoplasma gondii parasite in their systems showed an elevated risk of depression and suicide perhaps caused by the brain's being deprived of serotonin. Since toxoplasmosis is most often passed via handling of cat feces, women's fondness for and time spent with cats might thus put them at greater risk than previously believed. (T.gondii is believed capable of reproducing only inside cats' intestines, and might, hypothesizes prominent Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr, have learned that the surest route to the intestines is by hacking into the brains of delicious rats and mice.) [Science Daily, 8-16-2012; The Atlantic, March 2012]

-- 100 Pounds or "15 Minutes"? Wesley Warren Jr., 47, of Las Vegas, suffers from rare elephantiasis of the scrotum, which accounts for about 100 of his 400 pounds and severely hampers urination and sex. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in October 2011 that Warren was on the verge of accepting an offer to cover the expensive corrective surgery, but when the newspaper followed up in June 2012, it found him hesitant because he had become accustomed to his celebrity status (TV's The Learning Channel and "Tosh.0" program and Howard Stern's radio show). Said he, "It was fun going to Los Angeles (for "Tosh.0") in the big van they sent for me." [Las Vegas Review-Journal, 6-18-2012, 10-16-2011]

-- In July, the U.K.'s Wildlife Aid Foundation took in a dying, parasite-infested cuckoo bird, but by the time it had been nursed back to health, it had missed its species's winter migration toward Africa. Consequently, according to BBC News, the foundation bought an airline ticket for a handler to carry the bird to Italy, where satellite tracking indicated it could meet up with the end of the migrating flock, and the handler released it. [BBC News, 8-14-2012]

-- Latest Orangutan News: (1) Jungle Island zoo in Miami uses tricked-out iPads so that orangutans can order food by pointing at their choices on a screen. As zookeeper Linda Jacobs noted, "They have all the intelligence they need (but not) developed vocal chords and voiceboxes." (2) A Taru Jurug Zoo official in Central Java, Indonesia, reported in July that "Tori," its famous, 13-year-old cigarette-smoking orangutan, had been moved with her boyfriend to an isolated island with recreational facilities so she could kick her nicotine habit. At Taru Jurug, visitors kept enabling her by tossing her cigarettes. [Associated Press via Fox News, 5-9-2012] [Jakarta Globe, 7-26-2012]

It has been well known to the U.S. Congress that the Postal Service is guaranteed to run an estimated $5 billion deficit by the end of the year. Still, since the 112th Congress was convened in January 2011, no remedial legislation has been formally offered. However, during that time period, legislators have introduced 60 bills to rename post offices in their districts (passing 38 of them, which represents 17 percent of the legislation passed on all subjects during that time). [ABC News via Yahoo News, 8-1-2012]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) The thief who snatched the brand- new bike from Wheelworks in Belmont, Mass., in August got away, but police saw surveillance photos of him when he returned to the store two hours later and asked to see some locks (presumably so he could secure the bike he had just stolen). Incredulous employees gave chase, but the thief ran faster. (2) Kristen DeCosta, 30, was charged with 17 recent burglaries around Somerset, Mass., in August. According to Police Chief Joseph Ferreira, DeCosta is perhaps the only perp ever not to understand that, since she was wearing a GPS ankle monitor (from an earlier arrest), all 17 break-ins were tracked. [WBZ-TV (Boston), 8-2-2012] [WJAR-TV (Providence), 8-14-2012]

Bill Dillon, 52, was featured in News of the Weird in May 2009 and April 2012 for having served 27 years in a Florida prison for murder after a fanciful conviction based largely on "testimony" of dog-handler John Preston's "wonder" German shepherd that seemingly found precise, impossible scents exactly where prosecutors needed to find them. It wasn't until 2009 that one central Florida judge challenged Preston -- and exposed the dog's incompetence. Dillon was exonerated, Florida's governor apologized, and the state legislature provided generous financial compensation. And on July 18, musician Dillon accepted an invitation from the Tampa Bay Rays to sing the National Anthem before a game, including the now-ironic lyric, "And the land of the free." [Tampa Bay Times, 7-18-2012]

(1) Jacob Kost, 23, was charged with murder after allegedly running down a man with his truck in Cornelius, N.C., in June following a barroom altercation. According to police, the two men were challenging each other as to which one had the best truck. (2) Within the space of a month, in Deep Gap, N.C., and Park City, Utah, 4-year-olds were killed when gravestones fell over on them. The North Carolina girl was at play in June at a Bible study camp. [Salisbury Post, 6-18-2012][WFMY-TV (Greensboro), 6-9-2012; Associated Press via ABC News, 7-7-2012]

Thanks This Week to Neb Rodgers, Bill Bloxham, Peter Smagorinsky, Sandy Pearlman, Gary DaSilva, and Mike Gwilliam, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

In August, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration dropped all charges against a doctor who has been at the center of a prescription-drug fraud case because, said prosecutors, they have too much evidence against him and not enough space to store it. The U.S. attorney in northern Iowa said her office needs to clear out the 400,000 paper documents and two terabytes of electronic data (the latter of which under current technology takes up little space but in DEA's antiquated computer system hogs 5 percent of the agency's worldwide electronic storage). The accused, Dr. Armando Angulo, has lived since 2004 in Panama, which will not extradite him. (He remains under indictment on state charges in Florida.) [Associated Press via Ames Tribune, 8-16-2012]

-- If Megan Duskey's parents had been with her that night in 2010, they perhaps would have insisted she (dressed as the comic book hero Silver Spectre) not try to slide down the railing during the Halloween-themed ball at Chicago's Palmer House Hilton hotel, but she did slide down, and she fell four floors to her death. Nonetheless, in July 2012, the parents filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Hilton and other entities, claiming that the death of Ms. Duskey at age 23 was the hotel's and the sponsors' fault. [Chicago Sun-Times, 7-25-2012]

-- In July, a California appeals court reinstated police officer Enrique Chavez's lawsuit against the Austrian gun manufacturer Glock for its "unsafe" design. Chavez is now paralyzed from the waist down because his 3-year-old son got hold of the gun and accidentally fired it, hitting his dad. Chavez, in violation of police policies, had left the gun loaded underneath the front seat of his car, and his son, whom Chavez had not belted into a child seat, was free to explore while Dad drove. The gun is regarded as of safe design by dozens, if not hundreds, of police departments, and the LAPD disciplined Chavez over the incident. [San Francisco Chronicle, 7-24-2012]

-- Didier Peleman, 41, is a major-party candidate for the city council in Ghent, Belgium, and, like most, has champions and detractors. Though he has been active in "community work" for 11 years, Peleman is candid about a mental disability that noticeably slows down his speaking and writing and which some voters fear impedes his reasoning ability. His Flemish Christian Democrats Party said it is important that people with disabilities challenge constraints. [TV-Novasti (Moscow), 8-7-2012]

-- A July battle in the House of Representatives pitted austerity-driven members striving to cut $72 million in spending on NASCAR against North Carolina House members determined to keep the money in. (Most NASCAR teams are headquartered in the state, as is the Charlotte Motor Speedway and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.) More than a third of the money would go to the National Guard for sponsoring driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. The North Carolina legislators believe military recruitment will suffer unless the race- car connection is maintained. [News and Observer (Raleigh), 7-19-2012]

-- Karma: (1) In July a 30-year-old man suspected of skipping out on a bar bill at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester, N.H., did not make it far. As he tried to hop an iron fence, he impaled his leg and eventually required eight firefighters to rescue him using hydraulic cutting tools. (2) Greyston Garcia, 26, who was cleared of murder charges in January under Florida's "stand your ground" defense (even though he had chased the victim more than a block to stab him to death after the man took his radio), was inadvertently killed in June by random gang gunfire in Miami. [WHDH-TV (Boston) via NBC News, 7-17-2012] [USA Today, 6-27-2012]

-- Csanad Szegedi, a member of the European Parliament representing the anti-Semitic Jobbik Party of Hungary (a party whose presidential candidate described Jews as "lice-infested"), resigned in August after admitting that he had learned two years earlier that his own mother was (and therefore he is) a Jew. Initially, Szegedi tried to quash the revelation via bribery but eventually resigned, apologized, and vowed to pay respects at Auschwitz. [Associated Press via CBS News, 8-14-2012]

-- Mark Worsfold, 54, a former British soldier and martial arts instructor, was sitting along a road on July 28 watching the Olympic men's cycling race when he was detained because police on security alert said his "behavior" had "caused concern." According to a report in The Guardian, Worsfold, after being handcuffed and taken to a police station, was told he was arousing suspicion because he "had not been seen to be visibly enjoying the event," to which he replied, truthfully, that he has Parkinson's disease, which causes facial rigidity. (After two hours of detention, he was released without charges.) [The Guardian, 8-8-2012]

-- Dennis Brown, 55, was arrested in August in Tyler, Texas, after police saw him taking pictures, surreptitiously, of women and high school girls near Robert E. Lee High School. Since people in public spaces generally have no legal expectation of privacy, Brown could not normally be charged with a crime. However, Brown admitted to police that the mundane photos of the clothed women were for his sexual enjoyment. He was perhaps unaware of a Texas Penal Code provision that requires consent for any type of photo of another person if it is for "sexual gratification" (a motive that, regarding ordinary photographs, is nearly impossible to prove -- unless the accused volunteers it). [Tyler Morning Telegraph, 8-10-2012]

Problems of the First World: Third World teenagers often must deal with conscription, sweatshop labor and life as street beggars, but in affluent New York City (according to a June report in The New York Times), a major anxiety of teen and almost-teen girls is having to endure sleepaway summer camp with hairy legs. Said celebrity makeup designer Bobbi Brown, "If she's going to be in a bunk with all these girls," and "insecure" about lip or leg hair, "You do whatever you can do to make her feel good." (Seemingly drawing on the Times story, Uni K Waxing of New York City announced a July-only special -- with girls 15 and under receiving a 50 percent discount on bikini-waxing.) [New York Times, 6-7-2012] [Huffington Post, 7-6-2012]

As the frenzied pace of contemporary life becomes less appealing, Dull Men's Clubs have grown since their News of the Weird mention in 2007. A July Wall Street Journal dispatch from Pembroke, Mass., revealed recent themes for that club's excitement-challenged members, including why one of them carries a spoon everywhere and the old standbys of which way toilet paper should hang and the wisdom of a city's street grid system. DullMensClub.com has about 5,000 members who always, according to legend, "think inside the box" about such topics as remembering to keep their staplers filled and which way, in airports around the world, luggage carousels turn (clockwise or counter- clockwise). [Wall Street Journal, 7-19-2012]

Christian Hobbs, 44, was arrested in Salem, N.H., in August after a woman discovered him underneath her mobile home, looking up at her through a hole in the floor of her bathroom. The woman said Hobbs had sold her the home two years ago and recently done some handyman work for her, leading to this unauthorized modification. Police said Hobbs had taken cellphone video of the woman and her toddler in the bathroom and that the food, beverages and tissues found underneath the home suggested that Hobbs had been there for as long as two days. [Union Leader (Manchester), 8-16-2012]

From a July report on NewZimbabwe.com (motto: "The Zimbabwe News You Trust"): On July 11, as many as 26 women in two villages presided over by Chief Njelele of Gokwe awoke missing their panties, which were later found in a heap down the road, with 17 pairs "positively identified" by the victims. Just as the chief was making arrangements to bring in a "prophet" to find the evil local "wizard," a huge owl swooped down a few feet away and carried off a dog. "It's mind-boggling what's going on in the area," the chief said. [NewZimbabwe.com (Harare), 7-24-2012]

Thanks This Week to Cindy Hildebrand, Brian Bixby, Hal Dunham, Alan Magid, Roy Henock, John McGaw, and Mark Tegtmeyer, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.