In March, twin sisters Louise and Martine Fokkens, 70, announced their joint retirement after more than 50 years each on the job -- as Amsterdam prostitutes. (In February, the minimum age for prostitutes in the Netherlands was raised to 21, but there is no maximum.) The twins estimated they had 355,000 client-visits between them, and Martine noted that she still has one devoted regular who she'll have to disappoint. Louise, though, appeared happier to hang up her mattress for good because of arthritis. The sisters complained about the legalization of brothels in 2000 (with East European women and pimps out-hustling the more genteel Dutch women) and ensuing taxation (which required the women to take on more clients). [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-14-2013]

-- "Traditional Taiwanese funerals (combine) somber mourning with louder, up-tempo entertainment to fire up grieving spirits," reported BBC News in February. They are tailor-made, in other words, for Ms. Liu Jun-Lin, 30, and her Filial Daughters Band with their acrobatic dance routines because Liu has the reputation as Taiwan's most famous professional mourner. After the musical festivities, Liu dons a white robe and crawls on her hands and knees to the coffin, where she "performs her signature wail." [BBC News, 2-25-2013]

-- Norwegian Wood: A 12-hour TV miniseries shown this winter on Norway's government channel NRK, "National Firewood Night," was conceived as a full series, then cut to "only" 12 hours, eight of which focused entirely on a live fireplace. Nearly a million people tuned in to the series, and at one point 60 text messages came in complaining about whether the wood in the fireplace should have been placed with bark up or bark down. "(F)irewood," said the show's host, "is the foundation of our lives." A New York Times dispatch noted that a best-selling book, "Solid Wood," sold almost as many copies in Norway, proportional to the population, as a book's selling 10 million copies in the U.S. [New York Times, 2-19-2013]

-- Imagine the Person Who First Suggested This: The newest beauty-treatment rage in China, according to Chinese media quoted on the Inquisitr.com website in March, is the "fire facial," in which alcohol and a "secret elixir" are daubed on the face and set ablaze for a few seconds, then extinguished. According to "ancient Chinese medicine," this will burn off "dull" skin -- and also alleviate the common cold and reduce obesity. [Inquisitr.com, 3-7-2013] [CBS News, 12-5-2007]

-- Most of Iceland's 320,000 inhabitants are at least distantly related to each other, leading the country to compile the "Book of Icelanders" database of family connections dating back 1,200 years. With "accidental" incest thus a genuine problem, three software engineers recently created a mobile phone app that allows strangers to "bump" phones with each other and know, instantly, whether they are closely related. In its first few days of release in April, the developers said it had already been used almost 4,000 times. [Associated Press via USA Today, 4-18-2013]

-- New York City Councilman Dan Halloran was charged in April with aiding state Sen. Malcolm Smith's alleged bribery scheme to run for mayor -- thus bringing Halloran's extraordinary back story light as the first "open" pagan to be elected to office in the U.S. Halloran converted in the 1980s to medieval Theodish, whose outfits and ceremonies resemble scenes from Dungeons & Dragons -- horns, sacrifices, feasts, duels using spears and public floggings. (The Village Voice reported in 2011 that Halloran was the "First Atheling" of his own Theodish tribe of 100, called New Normandy, but Halloran said in April that today he is merely an "elder.") [New York Post, 4-6-2013]

-- The Lord Works in Strange Ways: At least 11 people were killed and 36 injured on March 15 in Tlaxcala, Mexico, when a truck full of fireworks exploded as Catholic celebrants gathered. Rather than remain in the safety of their homes, they had been moved to honor Jesus Tepactepec, the patron saint of a village named after him. [Reuters via NBC News, 3-15-2013]

-- Recent Icons: (1) In March, a vegetable wholesaler in India's Jharkland state decided that a pumpkin he purchased was so enormous (about 190 pounds) that it must be a reincarnation of the god Shiva -- and he began worshipping it. A priest counseled the man to continue his fealty until the following Sunday, a holiday, after which he should carve it into pieces for devotees. (2) In Buri Ram, Thailand, in March, a woman sliced open a sausage to find the distinctive body of a very small kitten, which she took to be a symbol of some sort deserving to be placed onto an altar. Neighbors gathered to pray to it, also, and several said they had considered the woman so fortunate that they played her age (52) in a local lottery, and won. [Times of India, 3-5-2013] [Bangkok Post, 3-18-2013]

An unnamed man was hospitalized in April in Tucson, Ariz., after firefighters, finding him unconscious at 3 a.m. pinned under an SUV parked in his driveway, lifted the vehicle and dragged him to safety. A police spokesperson learned that the man was trying "a stunt in which he was going to put the SUV in reverse, jump out and lay on the ground behind it, have the vehicle (roll) over him, and then get up and (get back into) the SUV in time to stop it before it collided with anything." [Arizona Daily Star, 4-12-2013]

While "comprehensive immigration reform" winds through the U.S. political process, a few countries (including the United States) have already severely bent the nationalistic standards supposedly regulating entry of foreigners. The U.S., Britain, Canada and Austria allow rich investors who pass background checks to qualify for an express lane to residence or citizenship, and the line is even less onerous in the Caribbean nations of Dominica and St. Kitts & Nevis, which offer quick citizenship for investments of $100,000 and $250,000, respectively -- the latter especially valuable, allowing access to 139 countries including all of Europe. (The U.S. minimum is $1 million, or half that for investment in an "economically depressed" area, but the reward is only a "green card," with citizenship still five years away.) [Associated Press via WNEW-TV (New York City), 2-12-2013]

The man who was "citizen of the year" in Waynesville, Ohio, in 2006, businessman Ron Kronenberger, 53, was charged in January with belt-whipping one of his tenants on his bare buttocks -- though he had a good reason, he said, because the tenant was late again with the rent. A magistrate said he intended to drop the charge in six months if Kronenberger stayed out of trouble, but in March, a man who worked for Kronenberger filed a lawsuit accusing him of spanking him on four occasions, using a belt and a paddle. [Dayton Daily News, 2-20-2013, WLWT-TV (Cincinnati), 3-29-2013]

Questionable Judgment: The Narcotics Task Force of Jackson County, Miss., arrested Henry Ha Nguyen, 41, in April as operator of a large marijuana grow house -- a facility that would normally reek of the distinctive pot fragrance. However, Nguyen had thought of that and tried to mask the smell, but chose the alternative scent produced by buckets full of what appeared to be human feces. [WLOX-TV (Biloxi) via WXIX-TV (Cincinnati), 4-10-2013]

(1) A vendor at the largest bazaar in Buenos Aires has recently been selling knock-off "toy poodles" that were actually artistically groomed ferrets raised on steroids. A news dispatch from June 2012 suggested that such a report might be an "urban legend," but a Buenos Aires TV investigation exposed the scam in March, revealing two victims, one of whom paid the equivalent of about $150 for his "pure-bred." (2) Wayne Klinkel's golden retriever Sundance, locked in a car while Klinkel, of Helena, Mont., went to dinner in December, set about dining himself on whatever he found, including the five $100 bills Klinkel had stashed. Klinkel managed to recover the scraps (in precisely the way you suspect he did), washed and dried them several times, and as of early April, was still awaiting word whether the U.S. Treasury would exchange his scraps for five new ones. [Huffington Post, 4-8-2013] [Independent Record (Helena), 4-8-2013]

Thanks This Week to Lincoln Lancaster, Gary DaSilva, Bruce Hilpert, Dick Sonier, and Alex Boese, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The Precocious Tots of Finland: A University of Kansas professor and two co-authors, in research in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Finance, found that children age 10 and under substantially outperformed their parents in earnings from stock trading in the few days before and after rumors swirled on possible corporate mergers. A likely explanation, they said, is that the parents or guardians were buying and selling for their children's accounts using illegal insider information that they were cautious about using in their personal accounts, which would more easily arouse suspicion. While the parents' accounts had nice returns, the kids' accounts (including those held by the very recently born) were almost 50 percent more profitable. (The study, reported by NPR in April, covered 15 years of trades in Finland, chosen because that country collects age data that the U.S. and other countries do not.) [NPR, 4-9-2013]

-- Delicate Marketing Required: (1) A fluoride-free chocolate toothpaste "proven" to strengthen teeth and regenerate enamel is now on sale in limited markets in the U.S. Theodent (active ingredient: "rennou") is also available in mint flavor, said its New Orleans-based inventor, Dr. Tetsuo Nakamoto. (2) One of the 12 Canadian foods chosen to accompany the country's International Space Station astronaut in December is the limited-issue dry cereal especially noted for its fiber, organic buckwheat and various nontraditional ingredients. "Holy Crap" cereal is available throughout Canada and in 19 other countries. [WBRZ-TV (Baton Rouge, La.), 2-19-2013] [Newswire Canada, 12-14-2012]

-- "Even to Icelanders accustomed to harsh weather and isolation," reported The New York Times in March, the city of Grimsstadir "is a particularly desolate spot." Nonetheless, Chinese billionaire land developer Huang Nubo has announced he intends to build a luxury hotel and golf course in the area for his countrymen seeking "clean air and solitude." Since snowfalls often run from September until May, locals are skeptical of Huang's motives, but he continues to press for a long-term lease covering about 100 square miles for a project estimated to eventually cost about $100 million. [New York Times, 3-22-2013]

-- Since gastrointestinal noroviruses are so infectious and can be fatal in countries with marginal hygiene, scientists at the U.K. government's Health and Safety Lab in Derbyshire needed to study the "reach and dispersion" of human "vomitus," especially its aerosolizing. Working with nauseous patients would be impractical, and thus, researcher Catherine Makison created "Vomiting Larry," a puke-hurling robot with a range of almost 10 feet. (According to a University of Cambridge researcher, one can be infected by fewer than 20 norovirus particles, each droplet of puke can contain 2 million particles, and the virus remains active on hard surfaces for 12 hours.) [Reuters via The Register (London), 1-3-2013]

-- Research published in February by Britain's Royal Society science association found that male guppies in mating mode prefer to congregate with plainer, less colorful males, probably for an obvious reason: to look better by comparison. Said Italian researcher Clelia Gasparini, "You want to impress (a female potential mate)." Would you "look more attractive in comparison with (the dowdy, awkward comic star) Mr. Bean or George Clooney?" [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 2-13-2013]

-- Hottentot golden moles reside underground, which is not so oppressive because they're blind and navigate by smell and touch. Nonetheless, some scientists spend years studying them, and in a recent issue of Mammalian Biology, South African researchers disclosed that females choose mates largely by penis size. While some human females also favor this particular "pre-copulatory mechanism," the scientists hypothesized that the moles' reliance on touch leaves them with no alternative. [BBC News, 2-20-2013]

-- Premium Health Care for Lovable Animals: While some Americans cannot get medically necessary health care, a few lucky animals every year receive exactly what they need from wildlife conservation centers. Most recently, in March, a sandhill crane received deluxe surgery by a facility in Abbotsford, British Columbia, after having his leg shattered on a golf course. Doctors tried several surgeries, then amputated the leg, and have fitted the crane with a prosthesis that allows balance-preserving mobility. (In February, Suma Aqualife Park near Kobe, Japan, fitted a 190-pound loggerhead turtle with rubber fins kept in place by a vest -- to replace fins damaged in what doctors guessed was a shark attack.) [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 3-24-2013] [National Geographic, 2-20-2013]

-- The Dark Side: Even though human hearts open warmly to helpless animals, kindness is not universal. As Clemson University animal conservation student Nathan Weaver found with a quick experiment late last year, some drivers will deliberately swerve into a turtle trying to cross a busy road -- seven drivers, he found, in the space of one hour (though most drivers easily avoided the realistic rubber model). (In the 1979 movie "The Great Santini," an overbearing fighter-pilot-husband who squishes turtles while driving late at night tells his wife, "It's my only sport when I'm traveling, my only hobby.") [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 12-27-2012]

Wealthy Russians have recently found a way around the country's horrid traffic jams: fake ambulances, outfitted with plush interiors for relaxation while specially trained drivers use unauthorized lights and sirens to maneuver through cluttered streets. London's Daily Telegraph reported in March that "ambulance" companies charge the equivalent of about $200 an hour for these taxis. [Daily Telegraph via National Post (Toronto), 3-22-2013]

While Americans Just Sigh: After a trial on fraud charges, the Iranian judiciary sentenced four bankers and their collaborators to death in February and several others to public floggings for obtaining loans by forgery in order to purchase government properties. The total amount involved reportedly was the equivalent of about $2.6 billion -- tiny compared to losses suffered since 2008 by investors and customers of large American banks' illegality, money-laundering and corner-cutting, for which no one has yet been jailed even for a single day. [PressTV.ir (Tehran), 2-18-2013]

So Far, So Good ... Oops!: (1) Husband Jared Rick and wife Ashley walked out of the Wal-Mart in Salem, Ill., in February with about $2,400 in shoplifted merchandise, apparently home free, but in the parking lot got into a loud domestic argument that drew the attention of security officers, who saw the merchandise and matched the Ricks with surveillance video. (2) Corey Moore, a Washington, D.C., "street legend," according to The Washington Post, for beating one arrest after another on murder and firearms charges, was finally convicted in February and faced at least 15 years in prison. The case was broken by a foot policeman in the suburb of Takoma Park, Md., who saw Moore toss an open bottle of beer into some shrubbery. After a sidewalk chase, a search yielded cocaine, which enabled a search of Moore's apartment that supplied crucial evidence the police had been lacking for years. [WJBD Radio (Salem), 2-27-2013] [Washington Post, 2-11-2013]

Romanian lawyer Madalin Ciculescu, 34, said in April that the next stop for his lawsuit is the European Court of Human Rights after two Romanian courts turned down his claims against Orthodox bishops who failed to exorcize the demons that were causing his flatulence. He sued the archdiocese because at least two exorcisms (one in his office, one at home) proved useless, thus harming his business as well as rendering his home life unpleasant. An archdiocese spokesman said the exorcisms were done properly, by the book. [Daily Mail (London), 4-6-2013]

Took It Too Far: (1) The school board in Windham, Mass., voted in March to ban popular, ubiquitous dodgeball from the district's curriculum because the game treats players as "human targets." Dodgeball (even though played these days with a foam ball) also suffers from "eliminating" players as the game progresses, which an education professional warned renders them less active than the good players. (2) The Castle View School in Britain's Essex County issued a specific ban in March against serving popular "triangle-shaped" pancakes after one was thrown at a pupil. (Not affected, reported London's The Independent, were "rectangle-shaped" pancakes, even though those, of course, have four firm corners instead of three.) [Eagle Tribune (North Andover, Mass.), 3-27-2013] [The Independent, 3-25-2013]

Thanks This Week to Peter Smagorinsky, Perry Levin, Roy Henock, Jim Peterson, and Pete Randall, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

To counter the now-well-publicized culture of rape in India, three engineers in Chennai said in March that they are about to send to the market women's anti-rape lingerie, which will provide both a stun-gun-sized blast of electricity against an aggressor and a messaging system sending GPS location to family members and the police about an attack in progress. After the wearer engages a switch, anyone touching the fitted garment will, said one developer, get "the shock of his life" (even though the garment's skin side would be insulated). The only marketing holdup, according to a March report in The Indian Express, is finding a washable fabric. [The Indian Express (New Delhi), 3-31-2013; Daily Beast, 4-10-2013]

In March, Washington state Rep. Ed Orcutt, apparently upset that bicyclists use the state's roads without paying the state gasoline tax for highway maintenance, proposed a 5 percent tax on bicycles that cost more than $500, pointing out that bicyclists impose environmental costs as well. Since carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas, he wrote one constituent (and reported in the Huffington Post in March), bike riders' "increased heart rate and respiration" over car drivers creates additional pollution. (Days later, he apologized for the suggestion that bicyclists actually were worse for the environment than cars.) [Huffington Post, 3-4-2013]

-- So, For a While There, It Actually Worked: The maker of the "all-natural herbal extract" Super Power (which promises "powerful erections") issued a voluntary recall in January after "independent" lab tests revealed that the supplement mistakenly contained a small amount of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. Such unregulated dietary supplements cannot legally contain drugs without Food and Drug Administration approval. (Also, in March, the Federal Trade Commission ordered three retailers, including Neiman Marcus, to re-label some fake-fur garments because they, mistakenly or intentionally, contained real fur.) [DailyFinance.com, 1-29-2013] [CNN, 3-20-2013]

-- A Boston Herald reporter said in March that he had been kicked out of a State Ethics Commission training session (which might not be unreasonable, as the meeting was for Massachusetts House members only). However, at least two people in attendance refused to give their real names to the reporter as they left. Rep. Tim Toomey insisted he was not a member (though he is) but was "just passing through," and Commission chairman Charles Swartwood III (a former federal judge magistrate) refused to give his name at all, telling the reporter, "I'm not saying because that's a private matter." [Boston Herald, 3-21-2103]

Aspiring rap music bigshot Bernard Bey, 32, filed a $200,000 lawsuit in February in New York City against his parents, alleging that they owe him because they have been unloving and "indifferent" to his homelessness and refuse even to take him back in to get a shower. Bey, who raps as "Brooklyn Streets," said everything would be forgiven if they would just buy him two Domino's Pizza franchises so that he could eventually earn enough to become "a force to be reckoned with in the hip-hop industry." (His mother's solution, as told to a New York Daily News reporter: "[G]o get a job. He's never had job a day in his life.") [New York Daily News, 2-21-2013]

-- Police in Knoxville, Tenn., confiscated five venomous snakes during a February traffic stop, and Pastor Jamie Coots of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name (of Middlesboro, Ky.) is demanding them back. Coots said he possesses them openly during his services in Kentucky, but Knoxville police said they are illegal to own in Tennessee. Said Coots, "If I don't have them, then I'm not obeying the word of God." [WKYT-TV (Lexington, Ky.), 2-12-2013]

-- In Bristol, England, Anthony Gerrard, 59, had been arrested for possessing child pornography, but after an inventory, police found only 11 images of his massive 890GB porn stash were of children (which Gerrard said he unknowingly downloaded in his quest for legal, adult pornography), and he went to court in January to demand his collection back (minus the child porn). So far, police have said that it is "impractical" to cull the child porn images. [Bristol Post, 1-29-2013]

U.S. companies large and small legally deduct the expenses of doing business from their gross profits before paying income tax, but purveyors of marijuana (in states where possession is legal and where prescription marijuana is dispensed) cannot deduct those expenses and thus wind up paying a much higher federal income tax than other businesses. As NPR reported in April, "Section 280E" of the tax code (enacted in 1982 to trap illegal drug traffickers into tax violations) has not been changed to reflect state legalizations. The effect, experts told NPR, is that legal dispensaries in essence wind up paying tax on their gross receipts while all other legal businesses are taxed only on their net receipts. (The federal government, of course, continues to regard marijuana as illegal.) [NPR, 4-2-2013]

Ferris Bueller caused lots of mischief on his cinematic "Day Off" in the 1986 movie starring Matthew Broderick, but he never mooned a wedding party from an adjacent hotel window by pressing his nude buttocks, and then his genitals, against the glass in full view of astonished guests. In March, though, a young Matthew Broderick-lookalike (http://huff.to/14XQEJ6), Samuel Dengel, 20, was arrested in Charleston, S.C., and charged with the crime. (Another Bueller-like touch was Dengel's tattoo reading, in Latin, "By the Power of Truth, I, while living, have Conquered the Universe.") [Philadelphia Daily News, 3-14-2013; Huffington Post, 3-19-2013]

Transportation Security Administration rules protect passengers against previously employed terrorist strategies, such as shoe bombs, but as Congressional testimony has noted over the past several years, the perimeter security at airports is shockingly weak.

"For all the money and attention that in-airport screening gets," wrote Slate.com in February, "the back doors to airports are, comparatively, wide open -- and people go through them all the time." Perimeter breaches in recent years astonished officials at major airports in Charlotte, N.C.; Philadelphia; Atlanta; and New York City (mentioned in News of the Weird last year, recounting how a dripping-wet jetskiier who broke down next to JFK airport climbed the perimeter fence and made his way past its brand-new "detection" system, and was inside the Delta terminal before he was finally noticed). [Slate.com, 2-20-2013]

Most Gullible Pervert

In March, Stephen Thresh, 47, voluntarily handed in his computer at a police station and confessed to possessing hundreds of (illegal) images of women having sex with animals, including a snake, a tiger and an elephant. Thresh said he had earlier downloaded a message of unknown origin notifying him that "law enforcement authorities have been informed," and he thought they would go easier on him if he turned himself in. (Police denied knowledge of the message.) Thresh insisted that possessing such images was not a problem that needed addressing. [Daily Mirror (London), 3-11-2013]

Update

The Associated Press reported in March that a Philippines man was crucified for the 27th time during the annual Good Friday festivities in San Pedro Cutud. Sign painter Ruben Enaje, 52, once again endured several minutes pierced by the sterilized, 6-inch nails driven into his palms and feet to atone for yet another year's passing in which he had so seriously sinned. Enaje was joined by several other sufferers (as News of the Weird mentioned, by as many as 16 one year and, in 2005, by wayward police officers from a local force who used the crucifixion as proof that they could be safely reinstated). The country's Catholic Bishops Conference, of course, said the crucifixions are "not the desire of Jesus Christ." [Associated Press via Las Vegas Sun, 3-29-2013]

Readers' Choice

In March, the makers of Lululemon black Luon yoga pants issued a recall, expressing concern that they had been made with an unacceptable level of sheerness. However, a company official initially told customers that "the only way you can actually test" for the too-sheer pants would be for a customer to bend over before a store associate. (The company changed the policy a few days later, and the product manager resigned.) [Reuters via Chicago Tribune, 4-4-2013]

Thanks This Week to Laura Billington, Steven Bird, John McGaw and Sandy Pearlman, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.