-- The Food and Drug Administration proposed recently to limit the quantity of tiny "mites" that could occupy imported cheese, even though living, crawling mites are a feature desired by aficionados. ("Cheese is absolutely alive!" proclaimed microbiologist Rachel Dutton, who runs the "cheese laboratory" at Harvard University.) In fact, cheese is home to various molds, bacteria and yeasts, which give it flavor, and sellers routinely use blowers to expel excessive critters, but the FDA now wants to limit them to 6 bugs per square inch. However, according to a May report on NPR, lovers of some cheeses, especially the French Mimolette, object, asserting both an indifference to the sight of mites creeping around -- and a fear of taste-loss (since the mites burrow into the hunk, aerating it and

extending the flavor). [NPR, 5-11-2013]

-- Energy West, the natural gas supplier in Great Falls, Mont., had tried recently to raise awareness of leaks by distributing scratch-and-sniff cards to residents, demonstrating gas's distinctive, rotten-egg smell. In May, workers cast aside several cartons of leftover cards, which were hauled off and disposed of by crushing -- which released the scent and produced a massive blanket of odor over downtown Great Falls, resulting in a flurry of panicked calls to firefighters about gas leaks. [Great Falls Tribune, 5-8-2013]

-- Well, Of Course! (1) The Ypsilanti, Mich., City Council voted in May on a resolution that would have required the members always to vote either "yes" or "no" (to thus reduce the recent, annoying number of "abstain" votes). The resolution to ban abstaining failed because three of the seven members abstained. (2) Doctors told a

newspaper in Stockholm in April that at least one of Sweden's premier modeling agencies, looking for recruits, had been caught passing out business cards adjacent to the country's largest eating-disorder clinic, forcing the clinic to change its rules on patients taking outside walks. [Associated Press via WHTM-TV

(Harrisburg, Pa.), 5-23-2013] [The Local (Stockholm), 4-18-2013]

-- The United Nations Conference on Disarmament, a multilateral forum on arms control agreements, was chaired beginning May 27th (until June 23rd) by Iran, which, for that time, at least, had the awkward job of overseeing resolutions on nuclear non-proliferation, which the country is widely thought to be ignoring. [Fox News, 5-13-2013]

-- Unclear on the Concept: (1) Ruben Pavon was identified by surveillance video in Derry, N.H., in April snatching a grill from the front porch of a thrift store. Pavon explained to police that the store's name, "Finders Keepers," indicated to him that the objects were free for the taking and admitted that he had previously taken items from the porch. (2) In May, Los Angeles police bought back

1,200 guns in one of the periodic U.S. buy-back programs, but they declined to accept the pipe bomb a man said he wanted to sell. "This is not a pipe-bomb buyback," said Chief Charlie Beck. "Pipe bombs are illegal ... " The man was promptly arrested. [WMUR-TV (Manchester, N.H.), 5-1-2013] [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles, 5-6-2013]

-- Too Much Information: John Casey, 51, was caught by security staff at an Asda supermarket in Washington, England last October after allegedly stealing a slab of beef. He was convicted in May even after offering the compelling explanation that he had concealed the beef underneath other purchases not to avoid paying for it, but only because the sight of the raw meat gave him "flashbacks" to his dead grandmother, who had passed away of a blood clot when Casey was a child. [Sunderland Echo, 5-23-2013]

-- Keith Judd filed a lawsuit in Iowa in May, in essence to invalidate the 2012 election by having President Obama officially declared a Kenyan and not an American. Judd filed the papers from a federal penitentiary in Texas, where he is serving 17 years for threatening a woman he believed to be a "clone" of the singer Stevie Nicks, because Nicks (or the clone) had tried to sabotage his home improvement company. (Bonus Fact: In the 2012 Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia, Judd, a write-in candidate, defeated President Obama in nine counties and lost the state by only 33,000 votes.) [Des Moines Register, 5-23-2013]

-- Edward Kramer, co-founder of the annual Atlanta fantasy-character convention Dragon*Con, was arrested in 2000 for allegedly having sex with underage boys, but has yet to stand trial in Georgia because he has engineered a never-ending set of legal delays -- if not because of his version of Orthodox Judaism that limits his diet and activities, then it his allegedly poor health. ("As soon as he puts on an orange jumpsuit," said prosecutor Danny Porter, "he becomes an invalid," requiring a wheelchair and oxygen tank.) In 2011, after managing to get "house arrest," he violated it by being caught with an underage boy. Lately, according to a May Atlanta Journal-Constitution report, he files an average of three demands per day from his Gwinnett County, Ga., lockup, each requiring painstaking review before being rejected. Kramer still owns about one-third of Dragon*Con, whose current officials are mortified that they cannot expel a man they consider a child molester. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5-28-2013]

-- In May, the Florida House of Representatives adjourned for the year without assessing themselves even a nominal increase in health insurance premiums for their own taxpayer-funded deluxe coverage, which will remain at $8.34 per month for individuals ($30 for families). Several days earlier, the House had voted to reject several billion dollars in federal grants for extending health insurance

coverage to about a million more poor people in the state's

Medicaid program. The House premiums are even lower than those of state senators and rank-and-file state employees, and lower than the premiums of Medicaid recipients who have the ability to pay. [Tampa Bay Times, 5-13-2013]

Apparently running out of space on his body (which is two-thirds tattooed), Brazilian Rodrigo Fernando dos Santos has moved on to his eyeballs. According to the body-modification website BME.com, eyeball-tattooing is safe if done correctly, which involves the artist injecting the ink precisely between the conjunctiva and the sclera layers --with the main risk, of course, that the client can go blind. In April, Sao Paulo tattoo artist Rafael Leao Dias, who said he had studied eyeball work for two years, successfully turned dos Santos's eyes into pools of dark ink. "I cried ink for two days," he told a local blogger. BME.com said eyeball tattoos have been reported for nearly 2,000 years. [Huffington Post, 4-17-2013]

-- Paul Gardener and Chad Leakey were arrested in Tempe, Ariz., in May and charged with a spree of car burglaries. According to police, the men were trying various cars' doors, looking for any that were unlocked, when they inadvertently opened the back door of an unmarked police car. The men had apparently not noticed (until too

late) that two uniformed officers were sitting in the front seat and had also failed to notice that cage wiring separated the back seat from the front seat. [AzFamily.com (Phoenix), 5-14-2013]

-- Timothy Adams, 24, was charged with home invasion in May in Gardner, Mass., but only after resident Michael Salame slammed him into the floor. Salame is 70 years old, has had eight heart stents, and is forced to wear special coverings on his arms at night because of nerve damage -- yet Adams apparently went down easily and at one point offered Salame "thousands of dollars" to let him up before police arrived. [WBZ-TV (Boston), 5-

9-2013]

-- Dogs Gone Wild: (1) Oscar, a Lawrence, Mass., K-9, accidentally fired a gun into an occupied home during a police chase in March. He had pawed the trigger while digging into snow where a fleeing suspect had tossed his gun. (No one was injured.) (2) In March, a dog left inside an otherwise unattended, engine-running car accidentally kicked it into gear and pinned an unidentified pedestrian, knocking him unconscious. He was taken to a hospital in York, Pa., and revived. (3) Gregory Lanier, 35, driving his dog in a truck in Sebring, Fla., in February, was shot in the leg when the dog stepped on a .380 caliber pistol. He was not seriously hurt. [WFXT-TV (Boston), 3-3-2013] [York Daily Record, 3-29-2013] [Highlands Today (Sebring), 2-25-2013]

Thanks This Week to Dave Ryan, David Rubin, Rebekah

Kogelschatz, Dave Abdoo, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Low Fashion Meets Islam on Turkish TV: Five self-proclaimed devout, conservative Muslim women host the TV series "Building Bridges" on channel A9, presenting the seemingly contradictory case against both the female headscarf and Turkey's turn to secularism. A report on Slate.com in May noted that the five are "mostly bottle blonds ... (with) neon lipstick" wearing "brightly colored satin pantsuits and T-shirts with designer brand names that stretched over their chests." "Building Bridges" in principle supports interfaith dialogue, but guests (noted Slate) "often appear ... with their eyebrows arched in the manner of a serious person certain he is the victim of a practical joke." [Slate.com, 5-2-2013]

-- Creative Smuggling: Abdullah Riyaz, 50, was arrested at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, India, in April after he appeared to be uncomfortable sitting in the waiting area. Officials found four "biscuits" of solid gold in his socks but obviously thought there might be more, and after nature took its course, found Riyaz to be one of those rare humans with the ability to brag that he once excreted gold (eight more "biscuits"). [Khaleej Times (Dubai), 4-19-2013]

-- A report circulated in April that an apparently Orthodox Jewish man (likely a "Kohen") had tied himself up, head to toe, in a plastic bag while seated on an airline flight -- likely because his teachings told him that flying over a cemetery would yield "impurities." News of the Weird mentioned a similar report in 2001. Airlines have made accommodations in the past, even in the face of criticism that a man in a plastic bag is a safety hazard. (Exceptions to the Kohen belief: Accidental tears in the bag are excused, but pre-punched air holes not; Kohenim unaware of the cemetery overflight in advance do not need protection; and deceased family members yield no impurities.) [Daily Mail (London), 4-11-2013; Jewish Press, 4-12-2013]

-- Accountability: The chairman of the National Showcaves Center in a Welsh national park, aiming to halt a recent downturn in tourism business, threatened in April to sue the U.K. National Weather Service for its "all too (frequent) ... gloom and doom reports." The NWS had called for snow and cold weather over Easter weekend, but no snow fell, and the cold weather was tempered by sun and blue skies. (He also suggested adding "health"-type warnings to forecasts, e.g., beware that weather reports might be wrong.) [Daily Mail (London), 4-17-2013]

-- In New Haven, Conn., in March, police had trapped two car-theft suspects in a multifamily building whose occupants were hiding from the suspects, thus necessitating urgency in ending the siege. Officers ordered a K-9 unit but were told it would be delayed. In a tactic departments occasionally employ, officers still threatened to release the dogs immediately, and to make the threat credible, available officers began barking. The suspects quickly surrendered rather than face the vicious canines. [WFSB-TV (Hartford), 4-1-2013]

-- Herbert and Catherine Schaible, members of the First Century Gospel Church in Philadelphia and believers in faith-healing rather than medical care, were convicted in 2011 in the bacterial-pneumonia death of their 2-year-old son, Kent. As a condition of probation, they promised medical care for their remaining eight children, but in April 2013, their youngest son, Brandon, died after severe diarrhea and pneumonia, again treated only by prayer, and they were arrested -- and the other children removed from the home. The medical examiner called Brandon's death a homicide, and the couple also face five to 10 years in prison for violating probation. [Philadelphia Daily News, 4-23-2013; Philadelphia Inquirer, 5-22-2013]

-- Detectives' New Best Friend (Facebook): Christopher Robinson, 23, became just one of many recent suspects whose addiction to Facebook did him in. Robinson had never made a single child support payment in the three years since a court order was issued in Milwaukee, Wis., and the case had languished over how to prove that he was hiding money. Using other evidence for probable cause, the prosecutor got a warrant to search Robinson's private Facebook information and discovered a candid photograph of him, laughing over a pile of cash. [ABC News, 3-23-2012]

-- The annual Chinese "tomb sweeping" celebration has been mentioned several times in News of the Weird, but has experienced a resurgence since 2008 when the government reinstated it as an official holiday. The theory is that people bring valuable items (such as jewelry) to ancestors' gravesites and bury them with the body, which will upgrade the relative's afterlife. Now, however, practitioners seem convinced that paper images of items are sufficient (and, of course, less expensive). Many simply leave signed (and generous!) checks for the dead, according to an April New York Times dispatch, and others bury representations of "mistresses" to accompany presumably frisky corpses. [New York Times, 4-5-2013]

-- News of the Weird first learned of kopi luwak in 1993 -- coffee beans sold as gourmet because they had been swallowed by certain Asian civet cats and recovered from feces and washed. Since then, as Internet news of kopi luwak has spread, it has become no longer obscure, and in April, the environmental-activist website MongaBay.com warned that, based on increased demand, civet "farms" had sprung up in Indonesia and that civets were being caged for their entire lives solely for access to their poop. While none of the main kopi luwak civet species is formally "endangered," activists warned that populations are dwindling for, said one, "the most ridiculous threat ... to any wildlife I have seen yet." [MongaBay.com (San Francisco), 4-16-2013]

-- In one of the more prominent recent "that's my story, and I'm sticking to it" cases, Vicky Pryce, 60, finally gave up in March and admitted to a judge that her husband, not she, was driving their speeding car in 2003. She was married at the time to high-ranking British government official Chris Huhne, whose license would have been suspended had he been driving -- and thus, she volunteered. The couple's 10-year ruse had inspired two trials ending without decision. (Huhne "rewarded" Pryce for her loyalty in 2010 by having an affair. The couple are divorced and will be imprisoned separately for perverting justice.) [New York Times, 3-8-2013]

-- "Recovered memory" was a popular psychotherapy diagnosis in the 1980s, ultimately responsible for jail sentences for priests, parents and school officials after patients suddenly somehow "remembered" long-suppressed bizarre and vicious (and sometimes "satanic") sex crimes that never actually happened. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, of the University of California, Irvine, and other skeptics have since proven that false memories can be created and are now concentrating on fashioning them for beneficial purposes -- to lose weight, to stop smoking, to curb drinking. An April report in Time magazine noted that "up to 40 percent" of people could be convinced that they had had bad experiences with a certain behavior and that, properly identified, those people could be taught to avoid it. Said Dr. Loftus, "We do have a malleable memory." [Time, 4-12-2013]

-- Briton James McCormick caused the deaths of hundreds of Iraqis after convincing a Baghdad police official that his "electronic" wands could detect bombs at 400 security checkpoints (in spite of U.S. officials' many warnings that they were useless). (In October 2009, for example, suicide bombers walked past two wand-equipped checkpoints into a neighborhood and killed 155.) McCormick, who sold 6,000 of the devices to Iraq and the country of Georgia at prices of up to $40,000 each, was convicted of fraud in April. According to London prosecutors, he also claimed that his wands were programmable to ferret out drugs and paper money and to detect them from high above or up to a kilometer underground. [BBC News, 4-23-2013]

-- Catholic nun Megan Rice, 83, and two other peace activists were convicted in May of breaking into the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., last year -- with "intent to harm national security." Sympathizers lauded the activists' motives and asked whether national security was actually "harmed," but somehow the intruders' stealth "attack" was treated seriously. That is, three amateurs cut through numerous fences undetected, then bypassed several sensors and alarms (either malfunctioning or unmonitored) before being stopped by a lone guard. (While Israel currently frets over Iran's accumulation of up to 500 pounds of highly enriched uranium for building one bomb, Y-12 houses an estimated 400 tons.) [Washington Post, 5-8-2013]

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

The Department of Agriculture reported recently that in four of America's largest cities -- New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Denver -- nearly one home out of 100 keeps chickens either for a fresh egg supply or as pets, giving rise to chicken services such as Backyard Poultry magazine, MyPetChicken.com and Julie Baker's Pampered Poultry store. Among the most popular products are strap-on cloth diapers for the occasions when owners bring their darlings indoors, i.e., cuddle their "lap chickens." Also popular are "saddles" for roosters, to spare hens mating injuries -- owing to roosters' brutal horniness, sometimes costing hens most or all of their back feathers from a single encounter. [NPR, 5-1-2013]

-- "Consider all the ways we're taxed," wrote Maryland's community Gazette in April -- when we're born, die, earn income, spend it, own property, sell it, attend entertainment venues, operate vehicles and pass wealth along after death, among others. Maryland has now added a tax on rain. To reduce stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay, the Environmental Protection Agency assessed the state $14.8 billion, which the state will collect starting in July by taxing "impervious surfaces" -- any land area in its 10 largest counties that cannot directly absorb rainwater, such as roofs, driveways, patios and sidewalks. [Gazette.net (Gaithersburg, Md.), 4-5-2013]

-- The Washington Post reported in April that the federal government is due to spend $890,000 this year to safeguard ... nothing. The amount is the total fees for maintaining more than 13,000 short-term bank accounts the government owns but which have no money in them and never again will. Closing the accounts is easier said than done, according to the watchdog Citizens Against Government Waste, because the accounts each housed separate government grants, and Congress has required that, before the accounts are closed, the grants must be formally audited -- something bureaucrats are rarely motivated to do, at least within the 180 days set by law (though there is no penalty for missing the deadline). [Washington Post, 4-24-2013]

-- It's good to be the county administrator of Alameda County, Calif. (on San Francisco Bay, south of Oakland). The San Francisco Chronicle revealed in March that somehow, Susan Muranishi negotiated a contract that pays her $301,000 a year, plus "equity pay" of $24,000 a year so that she makes at least 10 percent more than the next highest paid official, plus "longevity" pay of $54,000 a year, plus a car allowance -- and that she will be paid that total amount per year as her pension for life (in addition to a private pension of $46,000 a year that the county purchased for her). [San Francisco Chronicle, 3-25-2013]

-- The Way Washington Works: (1) Congress established a National Helium Reserve in 1925 in the era of "zeppelin" balloons, but most consider it no longer useful (most, that is, ranging from President Reagan to the Democratic congressman who in 1996 called it one program that, if we cannot undo it, "we cannot undo anything"). The House of Representatives recently voted 394-1 to continue funding it because of "fears" of a shortage that might affect MRI machines and, of course, party balloons. (2) In rare (these days) bipartisan action, congressional military "experts" of both parties are about to force the Army to continue building Abrams tanks -- when the Army said it doesn't want them and can't use them. The tank manufacturers, of course, have convinced Congress that it needs the contracts, no matter what the Army says (according to an April Associated Press analysis). [Washington Post, 4-26-2013] [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 4-29-2013]

-- The Jewish Museum in Berlin is currently staging what has become popularly known as the "Jew in the Box" exhibit to teach visitors about Judaism -- simply featuring one knowledgeable Jewish person who sits in a chair in a glass box for two hours a day and answers questions from the curious. Both supporters ("We Germans have many insecurities when it comes to Jews") and critics ("Why don't they give him a banana and a glass of water (and) turn up the heat?") are plentiful. [Daily Mail (London), 3-29-2013]

-- The weather in Hong Kong on April 25 wreaked havoc on American artist Paul McCarthy's outdoor, 50-foot-tall piece of "inflatable art" in the West Kowloon Cultural District. "Complex Pile" (a model of an arrangement of excrement) got punctured, which mostly pleased McCarthy's critics since his recent work, reported the South China Morning Post, has often centered around bodily functions. [South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 4-26-2013]

-- News of the Weird has reported several times on the astonishing control that inmates have at certain prisons in Latin American countries, with drug cartel leaders often enjoying lives nearly as pleasurable as their lives on the outside. However, according to an April federal indictment, similar problems have plagued the City Detention Center in Baltimore, where members of the "Black Guerrilla Family" operated with impunity. Between 2010 and 2012, corruption was such that 13 female guards have now been charged, including four women who bore the children of the gang's imprisoned leader, Tavon White. Cellphones, drugs and Grey Goose vodka were among the smuggled-in contraband, and the indictment charges that murders were ordered from inside. (Baltimore City Paper had reported 14 stories in 2009 and 2010 on the gang-related corruption at the center, but apparently state and federal officials had failed to be alarmed.) [DailyBeast.com, 4-26-2013; Washington Post, 5-6-2013]

-- Frequent Flyers: (1) Chicago police have arrested Ms. Shermain Miles, 51, at least 396 times since 1978, under 83 different aliases, for crimes ranging from theft (92 times) to prostitution and robbery. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, she is a virtuoso at playing "the system" to delay her proceedings and avoid jail time. (2) Alvin Cote, 59, passed away in February of poor health in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, following a "career" of 843 public-intoxication arrests. [Chicago Sun-Times, 4-20-2013] [Star Phoenix (Saskatoon), 2-13-2013]

-- Somewhat Backwards DUI: Danielle Parker was hospitalized and awaiting DUI charges after a crash near Gaston, N.C., in March, even though she had been in the passenger seat of the car. She had handled the wheel momentarily because Brittany Reinhardt, 19, in the driver's seat, was busy texting. (Reinhardt, apparently sober, was charged with "aiding and abetting" a DUI.) [Gaston Gazette, 3-29-2013]

The biggest news out of Newtown, Conn., recently -- not involving the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School -- came when local environmental officials announced on April 29 that they were investigating the finding of "200 to 300 one-gallon plastic jugs" filled with urine in a home "in a state of disrepair." No charges were filed against the homeowner, but officials sought to assure neighbors and users of the property that no health hazard was present. (The average person, reported the Connecticut Post, produces about six cups of urine a day.) [Danbury News Times, 4-30-2013]

Mr. Datta Phuge perhaps overly personifies India's national obsession with the beauty of gold. For special occasions, he outfits his "knuckles, neck and wrists" with golden "signet rings, chunky bracelets and a medallion," wrote BBC News in April after Phuge had also purchased a crinkly gold tailored shirt made for him for about $250,000. The 7-pound shirt (from Rankar Jewellers in the city of Pune) has a velvet lining to keep it from irritating his skin, and he must, of course, always travel with a bodyguard. [BBC News, 4-14-2013]

(1) Stan Worby, 39, made headlines internationally in February when, dressed as Batman, he hauled fugitive Daniel Frayne, 27, into a Bradford, England, police station. It turns out he was just helping his friend Daniel turn himself in (on an outstanding arrest warrant). In a separate incident in April, the two "friends" were arrested together and charged with burglarizing a garage in Bradford. (2) In a confessional in the April GQ magazine, the sportswriter Buzz Bissinger (creator of TV's "Friday Night Lights") admitted that his later-in-life fame had enabled a narcissism that caused him to impulsively buy 81 leather jackets in a three-year period, plus 75 pairs of boots, 41 pairs of leather pants, 32 pairs of upscale jeans, 10 evening jackets and 115 pairs of leather gloves, among other extravagances and aberrations. [Daily Telegraph (London), 4-16-2013] [GQ, April 2013]

Thanks This Week to Hal Dunham, Thomas Wyman, David Henshaw, and Thomas Goodey, 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).