"Fulton Jail Will Get Working Cell Locks," read the Dec. 19 Atlanta Journal-Constitution headline. The county commission serving Atlanta had finally voted to break a longstanding 3-3 tie that prevented buying new jailhouse locks -- even while knowing that inmates could jimmy the old ones at will and roam the facilities, threatening and assaulting suspects and guards. The three recalcitrant commissioners were being spiteful because a federal judge had ordered various improvements to the jail, costing $140 million so far, and the three vowed to spend no more. The 1,300 replacement locks will cost about $5 million -- but will not be installed right away. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12-19-2012]

-- The Chinese fashion designer "Ms. Lv" told China Newsweek in November that her sales had "quintupled" since she began using her 72-year-old grandfather to model her clothing styles for girls. "(It's) helping my granddaughter," Liu Xianping said. "I'm very old," he said, and "I have nothing to lose." [China Newsweek via New York Daily News, 11-20-2012]

-- Challenging Business Plans: (1) British "medical illustrator" Emily Evans recently created eight pricy, bone china dinner plates emblazoned with the microscope images of tissue slides of the human liver, thyroid, esophagus and testicles ($60 per plate, $200 for a set of four). (2) In October, a shop in London's St. Bart's Pathology Museum ran a special sale of cupcakes as part of a sexually transmitted disease awareness campaign. Each pastry's icing was crafted to resemble the lesions, boils and warts of gonorrhea and other maladies. [Daily Mail (London), 12-13-2012] [The Sun (London), 10-22-2012]

-- Leading a "jerky renaissance" is Krave, a Sonoma, Calif., company creating nontraditional flavors such as turkey jerky and jerky flavored with basil citrus or lemon garlic. Actually, Krave points out, jerky is rich in protein, with low calories and fat (but with, admittedly, sky-high sodium) and could be reasonably pitched as a healthy snack. However, jerky's main obstacle (a Krave competitor's CEO told The Wall Street Journal in September) is "jerky shame," in which some male consumers remain mortified that their girlfriends might see them enjoying the snack. [Wall Street Journal, 9-26-2012]

-- Behold, the "McGyver" Spider: Biologist Phil Torres, working from the Tambopata national park in Peru, revealed in December that he had witnessed a tiny Cyclosa spider construct a replica of an eight-legged spider in a web made of leaves, debris and dead insects. Since the real spider was found nearby, Torres hypothesized that the wily arachnid had built a decoy to confuse predators. [News.com.au (Sydney, Australia), 12-19-2012]

-- Artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso, already known for her "circus" of performing fleas at Australia's Sydney Festival 10 years ago, has since become a legitimate academic expert on the sex organs of fleas and other insects. She debuted the Museum of Copulatory Organs last year near Sydney, teaching visitors such esoterica as: In many insect species, females are promiscuous; snails are hermaphrodites in which one shoots sperm "darts" that form rigid chastity-belt-like blockages on his mate; and a male flea copulates for eight hours straight (but only mates three times in his life). [Sydney Morning Herald, 4-21-2012]

A team of French researchers writing recently in the journal PLOS ONE described a species of European catfish, growing to a length of five feet, that feeds itself pigeons by lunging out of the water ("cat"-like) and snatching them, even if the leap carries it to shore. Like Argentinian killer whales, the catfish are able to remain on land for a few seconds while wriggling back into the water where they can enjoy their meal. The lead researcher said he filmed 54 catfish attacks, of which 15 were successful. [DiscoverMagazine.com, 12-5-2012]

Another "Airline-Pricing" Model: The Jiangdu District kindergarten recognizes that providing a quality education requires supporting the child emotionally as well as helping develop reading and other skills, and toward that end, it now requires teachers to hug each pupil twice a day -- provided that the parent has paid the monthly "hugging fee" of the equivalent of about $12.80. An education agency investigation is under way, according to a December Shanghai Daily report, but one teacher defended the trial program as boosting a child's confidence and establishing a "good mood" for learning. [Shanghai Daily, 12-12-2012]

-- First-World Crisis (I): Tufts University opened America's first animal obesity clinic at its veterinary hospital in North Grafton, Mass., in September, to supply nutrition information and to help owners develop weight-loss regimens for their pets. Without treatment, veterinarians told the Tufts Daily newspaper, pet obesity can lead to pancreatitis, joint disorders and skin disease. One of its first clients was a golden retriever (a breed known for its desire to run but also known for its adaptability to non-running lifestyles), who now requires $90 prescription dog food -- though the owner reports that his best friend has lost eight pounds and is thus almost halfway to his goal of 87. [Tufts Daily, 9-21-2012]

-- First-World Crisis (II): Researchers writing in the December issue of the journal Urology reported a "five-fold increase" over 10 years in emergency room visits for accidents caused by pubic-hair "grooming." Unsurprisingly, 83 percent of all injuries appeared to be shaving accidents, but only 56 percent of the patients were women, according to a summary of the research on MedicalXPress.com. [MedicalXPress.com, 12-17-2012]

-- Demarco Thomas, 30, was arrested in Tucson, Ariz., in November, as a drug courier for what the Arizona Daily Star called a "local cartel," after Thomas himself had called police the day before. Thomas feared being whacked by the cartel because he had come up $20,000 short in the latest delivery. According to police, Thomas brought money in suitcases from North Carolina to his Tucson contact -- except for a little bit that he had somehow "misplaced." A police search of Thomas revealed almost exactly $20,000 on his person, and Thomas, about to be arrested, allegedly asked officers if they would please write a note to the cartel informing them that police had merely seized the $20,000 -- and not that Thomas had tried to steal it. They declined. [Arizona Daily Star, 12-4-2012]

-- Prosecutor's Delight: (1) Police in Guntersville, Ala., suspected that Tara Hampton had resumed dealing drugs, in violation of a first-offender's program that had kept her out of jail, and they knocked on her door to ask about some evidence they had come across. According to the police report, when Hampton opened the door for them, she was absentmindedly holding a bag of crack in her hand. (2) William Cook Jr., 27, was arrested after a manager at a Wendy's restaurant in Rome, Ga., complained that Cook was acting strange and disturbing customers, and when police asked for his ID, he provided bogus information. In a search, officers found a note in his pocket, reading, "How Bill Cook intends to rob the Wendy's on Martha Berry and get away with it," followed by lists labeled "Plan A" and "Plan B." [WAFF-TV (Huntsville, Ala.), 12-10-2012] [Rome News-Tribune, 12-12-2012]

(1) Unlucky Gary Haines, 59, was arrested in December in Charlotte County, Fla., after he was spotted stealing a trailer by hitching it to his own truck and driving off with it. The "spotter" was the trailer's owner, David Zehntner, who was out flying in his private plane and happened to be passing over his property at the moment Haines was hitching up. He easily followed Haines from the air and called in Haines' destination to police. (2) Jason DeJesus, 36, and Chanelle Troedson, 33, who share an upscale 4,600 square-foot home (with pool and courts for playing tennis and beach volleyball) in Morgan Hill, Calif., were arrested in December and charged with luring a 50-year-old handyman to their home, forcibly detaining him, and requiring him to make various repairs for them over a six-hour period (before he managed to escape and notify police.) [WWSB-TV (Sarasota), 12-31-2012] [KPIX-TV (San Francisco), 12-5-2012]

Thanks This Week to Bill Bloxham, Bruce Hilpert, Michael Waugh, Tim Kirby, Grady Bautista, Cherie Marcus, Peter Smagorinsky, Beth Anne Wasdin, and Dick Sonier, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The usual 20,000 or so visitors every year to Belgium's Verbeke Foundation art park have the option (365 of them, anyway) to spend the night inside the feature attraction: a 20-foot-long, 6-foot-high polyester replica of a human colon created by Dutch designer Joep Van Lieshout. At one end, of course, another body part is replicated (and gives the installation its formal name, the Hotel CasAnus). The facility, though "cramped," according to one prominent review, features heating, shower and double bed, and rents for the equivalent of about $150 a night. The 30-acre art park is regarded as one of Europe's "edgiest" art destinations. [Huffington Post, 12-12-2012]

-- Giuseppe Tedesco took the witness stand in Newton, N.J., in December and swore that all six shots that hit his girlfriend, Alyssa Ruggieri (one of them fatal), were "self-defense" "accidents." After she discovered his .25-caliber handgun in sofa cushions, he said he reached for it and in the struggle was shot in the hand, but he still managed to grip the gun tightly, and the pair tumbled down some stairs. During the struggle, "both" hands shot Ruggieri twice. Despite their injuries, they both maintained their vice-like grips on the gun, he said, and "they" shot Ruggieri twice more. The final shot, he said, came with Ruggieri holding the gun point-blank at his face, and when he pushed it away, "they" fired another shot that hit Ruggieri in the temple. (At press time, the trial was continuing.) [Star-Ledger (Newark), 12-19-2012]

-- The issues director of the fundamentalist American Family Association told his radio audience in November that God's feelings will be hurt if America stops using fossil fuels for energy. "God has buried those treasures there because he loves to see us find them," said Bryan Fischer, who described Americans' campaigns against fossil fuels as similar to the time when Fischer, at age 6, told a birthday-present donor that he didn't like his gift. "And it just crushed that person." [AFA "Focal Point," 11-29-2012, via Raw Story.com]

-- Retrials and appeals are sometimes granted if a convicted criminal demonstrates that he received "ineffective assistance of counsel." Among the reasons that the lawyer for convicted Joliet, Ill., quadruple-murderer Christopher Vaughn offered in his November motion was the ineptness of other lawyers (but not himself). Specifically, he argued, the lawyers for the convicted wife-killing police officer Drew Peterson put on such a disgusting case that they gave all defense lawyers a bad name. (The website LoweringTheBar.net pointed out that Vaughn lawyer George Lenard himself violated a lawyers' "kitchen sink" standard by overlisting 51 separate reasons why his client deserved a new trial.) [Chicago Tribune, 11-26-2012; LoweringTheBar.net, 11-27-2012]

Mauricio Fierro gained instant fame in December in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as the reported victim of a car theft (captured on surveillance video) when he dashed into a pharmacy. He went to a police station to file a report, but encountered the pharmacy owner making his own report -- that Fierro was actually robbing him at the moment the car was taken. More surveillance video revealed that while Fierro was standing outside the pharmacy, wondering where his car was, a man ran by and stole the stolen cash. Fierro then immoderately complained to the police even more about Sao Paulo's crime rate and lack of security. Afterward, Fierro admitted to a local news website that in fact he had stolen the very car that he was reporting stolen. [New York Daily News, 12-13-2012]

-- Former undercover cop Mark Kennedy filed for damages in October against the London Metropolitan police, claiming post-traumatic stress syndrome based on the department's "negligence" in allowing him to have such a robust sex life on the job that he fell in love with a woman whose organization he had infiltrated. Kennedy's wife has filed for divorce and is also suing the department, and 10 other women (including three of Kennedy's former lovers) have also filed claims. [The Guardian, 11-25-2012]

-- Sarah Childs won a restraining order in Denham Springs, La., in December, forbidding the town from shutting down her "Christmas" lights decoration. The large outdoor display (in a neighborhood with traditional Christmas displays) was the image of two hands with middle fingers extended. [WAFB-TV (Baton Rouge, La.), 12-21-2012]

-- In a 3-2 decision, the Board of Adjustment in the Seattle suburb of Clyde Hill ruled that a homeowner must chop down two large, elegant trees on his property because they obstruct a neighbor's scenic view of Seattle's skyline. The board's majority reasoned that the complaining neighbor (who happens to be former baseball all-star John Olerud) would otherwise suffer a $255,000 devaluation of his $4 million estate. (Olerud was ordered to pay for the tree removal and to plant the neighbor two smaller trees in place of the majestic ones). [Seattle Times, 11-8-2012]

(1) New York's highest court ruled in November that subway "grinders" (men who masturbate by rubbing up against women on trains) cannot be charged with felonies as long as they don't use force to restrain their victims (but only commit misdemeanors that usually result in no jail time). (2) Police in Phuket, Thailand, announced that their all-points search for a public masturbator who harassed a restaurant's staff had produced no suspects -- although a spokesman said they did find "a few people (nearby) who were masturbating in their vehicles, but none of them were the man we are looking for." [New York Daily News, 9-17-2012] [Phuket Gazette, 10-4-2012]

Update: Four months have passed since News of the Weird mentioned that at least 60 North Carolina prisoners have been improperly incarcerated -- legally innocent based on a 2011 federal appeals court decision. (Still others are at least owed sentence reduction because they had been convicted of offenses in addition to the incorrect one.) A June USA Today story revealed the injustice, and the federal government took until August to release holds on the inmates, but since then, only 44 of the estimated 175 affected prisoners have been correctly adjudicated. USA Today reported in December that the recent delay has been because of the obstinacy of some North Carolina federal judges, including cases involving citizens by now wrongfully locked up for more than 18 months. [USA Today, 12-26-2012]

(1) The week before Christmas, a Nottingham, England, officer wrote parking tickets to drivers of two ambulances that were taking too long to board wheelchair-using schoolchildren who had just sung carols for an hour downtown to raise money for the homeless shelter Emmanuel House. (Following an outpouring of complaints, the Nottingham City Council revoked the tickets.) (2) An ambulance on call, with lights and siren, pulled into the parking lot of Quicky's convenience store in New Orleans in November to treat a customer, but one employee nonetheless obeyed what he believed to be his employer's no-parking rule and applied an immobilizing "boot" to the ambulance. The man, Ahmed Sidi Aleywa, was later fired. A co-worker said Aleywa was an immigrant who had said he was not familiar with "ambulances." [Nottingham Post, 12-19-2012] [WWL-TV (New Orleans), 11-30-2012, 12-3-2012]

Recurring Themes: (1) Marquis Diggs, 29, entering the county administration building in Jersey City, N.J., in December for a hearing in family court over his mother's restraining order against him, became the most recent drug possessor not to have realized that he might be subjected to a search. Police confiscated 32 baggies of "suspected marijuana." (2) Cleland Ayison, 32, got a sentencing break in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in December when federal judge William Dimitrouleas pitied him. Ayison got only house arrest and community service because his crime -- trying to pass a U.S. Federal Reserve note with a face value of $500 million -- was so "silly." [Jersey Journal, 12-18-2012] [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 12-4-2012]

Ironies: (1) A 20-year-old man's life ended when he was shot to death in an altercation in San Bernardino, Calif., on Friday, Dec. 21, while attending a Mayan-inspired "End of the World" party. (2) The next night, in Fort Worth, Texas, a 47-year-old drummer collapsed of a seizure and died onstage. He had played with several bands, including Rigor Mortis. [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 12-25-2012] [Rolling Stone via NBC News, 12-25-2012]

Thanks This Week to Bruce Leiserowitz, Gary DaSilva, and Gerald Sacks, 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).

Updating "The Smell of Napalm in the Morning": A cosmetics company in Gaza recently began selling a fragrance dedicated to victory over Israel and named after the signature M-75 missile that Hamas has been firing across the border. "The fragrance is pleasant and attractive," said the company owner, "like the missiles of the Palestinian resistance," and comes in masculine and feminine varieties, at premium prices (over, presumably, the prices of ordinary Gazan fragrances). Sympathizers can splash on victory, he said, from anywhere in the world. [The Times of Israel, 12-6-2012]

-- The Philadelphia Traffic Court has been so infused with ticket-fixing since its founding in 1938 that a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court report on the practice seemed resigned to it, according to a November Philadelphia Inquirer account. One court employee was quoted as defending the favoritism as fair (as long as no money changed hands) on the grounds that anyone could get local politicians to call a judge for him. Thus, said the employee, "It was the (traffic) violator's own fault if he or she didn't know enough" to get help from a political connection. Traffic Judge Christine Solomon, elected in November 2011 after a career as a favor-dispensing "ward healer," said the ticket-fixing was "just politics, that's all." [Philadelphia Inquirer, 11-25-2012]

-- One of the principal recommendations following the Sept. 11 attacks was that emergency and rescue personnel have one secure radio frequency on which all agencies that were merged into the Department of Homeland Security could communicate. In November, the department's inspector general revealed that, despite $430 million allotted to build and operate the frequency in the last nine years, it remains almost useless to DHS' 123,000 employees. The report surveyed 479 workers, but found only one who knew how to find the frequency, and 72 percent did not even know one existed (and half the department's radios couldn't have accessed it even if employees knew where to look). [ProPublica.org, 11-21-2012]

-- Remember Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere"?: In November, the Anchorage Daily News reported the Army Corps of Engineers is building a harbor on the Aleutian native community's island of Akutan, even though there is no road away from it. Thus, reported KUCB Radio, the only way to get into or out of the harbor is by boat. Any connector road to the only town on the island is "likely years in the future," according to the Daily News. As well, there is no assurance that the largest business in the area, Trident Seafoods, would ever use the harbor. [KUCB Radio (Unalaska, Alaska) via Anchorage Daily News, 11-15-2012]

In October, Austrian artist Alexander Riegler installed a one-way mirror in the ladies' room at a cafe in Vienna to allow men's room users to peer inside (in the name of "art," of course). Riegler said he wanted to start a "discussion of voyeurism and surveillance." Men could see only the faces of women standing at the lavatories, and he said then that in January, he would reverse the process and allow women to peer into the men's rooms. (The cafe had posted a sign advising restroom users that they would be part of an "art" project.) [Associated Press via Fox News, 10-22-2012]

-- Anthony Johnson, 49, was convicted in October in Hartford, Conn., of stealing an improbably large amount of money -- as much as $70,000 a weekend, off and on for five years -- by crawling on the floor of darkened theaters and lifting credit cards from purses that movie-watching women had set down. The FBI said Johnson was careful to pick films likely to engross female viewers so that he could operate freely. He was often able to finish up, leave the theater, and make cash-advance withdrawals from ATMs before the movie had ended. [Hartford Courant, 10-22-2012]

-- Things That Almost Never Happen: In October, a 34-year-old man being detained by Port St. Lucie, Fla., police on an indecent-exposure complaint convinced the officer to free him based on showing the officer his testicles. (A woman had complained that the man was masturbating in public, but the man apparently demonstrated an impressively severe rash that he said he could not avoid scratching.) [TCPalm.com (Stuart, Fla.), 10-23-2012]

-- Niles Gammons of Urbana, Ohio, apparently did some partying on Saturday night, Nov. 3, because he managed a rare DUI daily double. He was first cited for DUI at 1:08 a.m. Sunday and then, 60 minutes later, he was again cited for DUI at 1:08 a.m. (The first was during daylight saving time; the second was after the changeover.) [WHIO-TV (Dayton, Ohio), 11-7-2012]

Human rights activists have for years deplored the preferences for male offspring in India and other nations -- ranging from cultures that marginalize female babies to some that practice discreet infanticide of girls. Increasingly, though, because of "advances" in science, Westerners can buy expensive in vitro fertilization procedures that use a laser to breach a fertilized embryo to determine whether it contains XY chromosome pairs (i.e., males) or larger XX ones so that only the desired-gender embryos are chosen. Noted Slate.com in September, such procedures are illegal in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom (except for bona fide medical reasons), but legal in the United States. [Slate.com, 9-14-2012]

Justin Jedlica, 32, of New York City, bills himself as the "human Ken doll" after a 10-year odyssey of cosmetic surgery (90 procedures) to achieve the "perfect" body. "I love to metamorphosize myself, and the stranger the surgery, the better," he told ABC News in October, even though the amount of silicone in his body, say doctors (when told of Jedlica's various implants), has reached a dangerous level. He dismisses actually "earning" the body, through gym workouts, as just "not exciting, not glamorous." (Of course, the "perfect" body is never perfect, Jedlica acknowledged, as illustrated by his recollection of his first surgery -- to get a perfect nose -- which is still not done after three follow-ups. "Just got to get that nose up a few more millimeters," he said. [ABC News via Huffington Post, 10-16-2012]

Emerging democracies have experienced brawls and fisticuffs in their legislatures as they learn self-government, with Ukraine perhaps the most volatile. When some legislators rose to change party affiliations in December, a fracas broke out and, according to Yahoo News, "Images ... showed a scene that resembled a WWE pay-per-view event, with parliament members using full nelsons, choke holds and other moves familiar to American wrestling fans." In fact, a man with the same name as a WWE heavyweight ("Rybak") had just been elected speaker, and the country's well-known boxing champion Vitali Klitschko was in attendance (as a member of a minority party called "Punch"). (One 2010 brawl in the Ukrainian legislature sent six deputies to the hospital with concussions.) [Yahoo News, 12-13-2012]

This, the 1,300th edition of News of the Weird, marks birthday No. 25. So, what was happening in 1988 in that first batch of stories published by that first adventurous editor? Well, there was the Alton, Ill., woman who died with a will specifying that her husband, who was an enthusiastic transvestite, was to receive not a penny of her $82,000 cash estate -- but all of her dresses and accessories. And there was Hal Warden, the Tennessee 16-year-old who was granted a divorce from his wife, 13. Hal had previously been married at age 12 to a 14-year-old, who divorced Hal because, she told the judge, "He was acting like a 10-year-old." Happy Birthday to News of the Weird.

Thanks This Week to Craig Cryer and Bob McCabe and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.