Pro-nationalism English Defence League activists seemed to be itching for a street brawl to break up a scheduled anti-nationalist demonstration in downtown Birmingham, England, on July 18, causing the city to mobilize more than 1,000 police -- when officials arrived at a solution. Police shepherded "hundreds" of rowdy EDL operatives into the popular Bar Risa pub at 11 a.m., confining them for three hours, until the anti-EDL rally had dissipated. (Given British habits, many EDLers decided to enjoy their confinement with a brew.) As a result, police reported only sporadic street scuffling. (Bar Risa, perturbed by police pressure to host alleged "fascists," donated its profits to the Midlands Air Ambulance service.) [Birmingham Mail, 7-18-2013, 7-23-2013]

-- For "beach season" in Qingdao, China, recently, middle-aged ladies returned to the shore of the Yellow Sea sporting their relatively revealing (though age-appropriate) bathing suits -- but wearing distinctive cloth hoods with tiny holes only for the eyes, nose and mouth. To many in China, dark skin still signals laborers and fair skin the indoor "leisure" class, according to a July report on the business website Quartz. [Quartz (qz.com), 7-5-2013]

-- In Shenzhen, China, one of the country's richest cities, services are being openly advertised by "wet nurses" to supply adults with breast milk, either directly from the source or after pumping (and purchased by either the infirm or just rich people overconcerned with nourishment). These milk "suppliers" can earn at least four times the average personal income, with healthy, attractive women earning even more, of course, according to a July Agence France-Presse dispatch. Comments on China's social media ranged from "It's just a business" to "People become perverts when they are too rich and tire of other forms of entertainment." [Agence France-Presse via Google News, 7-4-2013]

-- Because Zimbabwe is reputedly among the world's most corrupt countries, bribery is normal and makes the news only when innovators go above and beyond. The anti-poverty organization Transparency International reported in July that one hospital in Harare had recently been imposing a $5 charge on mothers each time they screamed during childbirth (in addition to the $50 delivery fee). Furthermore, it has long been rumored that hospitals in Zimbabwe (and other countries) may detain mothers and their children at the hospital if they cannot pay the fees. (Transparency International reported several days later, after finally obtaining a meeting with a government official, that the per-scream charge will be lifted.) [Washington Post, 7-11-2013]

-- Satan was thrust into the recent Texas legislature debate with pro-choicers shouting, "Hail, Satan!" at the right-to-life faction. However, whom Satan had endorsed was not clear. A British organization called UK Church of Satan appeared to criticize the pro-choicers (according to Twitter comments) while the New York-based Church of Satan (founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey) insists on a woman's right to choose, said its High Priest Peter Gilmore -- although he acknowledged that shouting "Hail, Satan" to anti-abortion activists was "ludicrous and meaningless." [CNN, 7-9-2013]

-- Megachurch bishop Ira V. Hilliard told his Sugarland, Texas, congregation (New Light Christian Center) in June that one of his two private aircraft -- a helicopter valued at about $1 million -- needs new blades, but rather than pay it himself, he asked parishioners to each find it in their hearts to send him $52 "favor seeds" for the blades. (His ministry also owns a $2 million Hawker jet and a $3 million hangar.) To sweeten the deal, he virtually promised that a donor's gift would be met by a "breakthrough favor" from God in the form of a car repair or their very own "dream" car either 52 days or 52 weeks later (according to a church letter described by the Christian Post). [Christian Post via Houston Press, 6-25-2013]

-- Sharon Jobson thought her major grieving was over at the two-year mark after her son had been killed driving into a CN Rail train at a crossing that had not then been updated with safety features. (John Jobson, 22, was speeding and failed to stop, perhaps because of a partially obscured warning sign and a nonstandard train horn.) The government subsequently ordered upgrades, and Sharon decided not to sue, but CN Rail had no such reluctance and filed in July for $500,000 against John's estate to cover damage to its tracks and the subsequent customer slowdown caused by the collision. (At press time, with grief forced upon her once again, Sharon was re-evaluating litigation.) [Toronto Sun, 7-10-2013]

-- Inexplicable: (1) In May, a 24-year-old man accidentally shot a teenage boy in the leg with a high-caliber gun at a home in Santa Fe, Texas, in front of the boy's mother, whose first reaction was to look up "gunshot" on WebMD -- and then not to take her son to Mainland Medical Center until seven hours later. Deborah Tagle was charged, along with the shooter, for injury to a child. (2) Carole Longhorn, 66, struck a metal object in her garden in Norfolk, England, in June, and, though it looked like a projectile-bomb, she said she decided to take it inside and wash it off in the sink before calling police (who later detonated the World War II-era munition in a controlled explosion). (Said her husband later: "You can imagine what I said to her.") [KHOU-TV, 5-10-2013] [BBC News, 6-7-2013]

-- In May (before Edward Snowden began releasing his previously classified document cache), the American Civil Liberties Union released its own attempts to learn some of the same information from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. Two of the documents, totaling 69 pages, were completely "redacted" -- solid black boxes covering the entirety of every page except for page numbers and document title. [TheVerge.com, 5-13-2013]

-- A June performance-art street demonstration in Glastonbury, England, got out of hand when a spectator took offense at one of the characters, who was dressed as a giant penis to promote a show by the troupe Nomadic Academy of Fools. The bystander grabbed the penis' costume, but the penis' colleague, Joanne Tremarco, who was dressed as a giant vagina, went to his defense, trying to calm the bystander until police arrived. [Western Morning News (Plymouth), 6-21-2013]

(1) Police in York, Pa., arrested both Karen Harrelson, 48, and Gregory Stambaugh, 57, in May because they could not figure out which one started the couple's knife fight -- over which contestant (Candice or Kree) deserved to win this year's "American Idol." They had apparently stabbed each other with the same knife. (2) Dewayne Eddy, 54, was charged in Yuba County, Calif., in May with beating his adult daughter with folding lawn chairs and a can of beans after discovering that a bolt was missing in the chicken coop in his yard. [Associated Press via KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 5-23-2013] [Appeal-Democrat (Marysville, Calif.), 5-22-2013]

Ronald Rock, 31, was arrested in Malone, N.Y., in May after surveillance video convinced police that he was the man at a Sears store who told a female stranger that he loved her shoes and wanted to buy a pair for his mother -- and asked if she would take one off to show him. Rock then appeared to stuff the shoe down his pants and masturbate vigorously. (Malone is within 25 miles of the small town of Massena, which was the site of the man caught on video stuffing the Hannaford's pepperoni down his pants for the same purpose -- reported in News of the Weird seven weeks ago.) [Watertown Daily Times, 5-24-2013]

The New Waterboarding: In April (2009), the district attorney in Vilas County, Wis., announced that he was seeking volunteers for a forensic test to help his case against Douglas Plude, 42, who (was) scheduled to stand trial soon for the second time in the death of his wife. The volunteers must be female, about 5 feet 8 inches and 140 pounds, and will have to stick their heads into a toilet bowl and flush. Plude is charged with drowning his wife in a commode, but his version (which the prosecutor will try to show is improbable) is that his wife committed suicide by flushing herself. [USA Today-AP, 4-12-09]

Thanks This Week to Bill Thomas, Andy Gilbert, and Michelle Jensen, 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).

Although Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the alleged 9/11 mastermind) was waterboarded 183 times among several extreme interrogation techniques, he and his CIA captors eventually reached a moderated state. In 2003, though still housed in a "black site" in Romania, "KSM" asked permission to design a household vacuum cleaner, and the highest echelons of the agency co-operated, according to a former senior CIA analyst, speaking to the Associated Press in July. In reality, when a detainee exhausts his intelligence value, the agency's main mission is to keep him "sane," in case he is later put on trial, and the vacuum cleaner project was thought likely to engage KSM, who, 15 years before the murders of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, had earned a mechanical engineering degree from North Carolina A&T State University. [Associated Press, 7-11-2013]

-- The gourmet lollipop company Lollyphile announced its latest flavor in June: Breast Milk Lollipops (four for $10). Owner Jason Darling said it "slowly dawned on" him that his friends were "producing milk so delicious it could turn a screaming, furious child into a docile, contented one. I knew I had to capture that flavor." [Lollyphile press release, 6-4-2013]

-- Marketing Challenges: (1) The Rocket Fizz Soda Pop and Candy Shop franchisers, already with a lineup of sometimes-unappreciated flavors such as buffalo chicken wing soda, briefly experimented in June with "ranch dressing" soda, a mistaken adventure that co-founder Rob Powells jokingly blamed on his business partner. (2) Brewmaster John Maier of Rogue Ales in Newport, Ore., pointed out that "wild yeasts" have been used in beer for centuries and thus (according to a June report on FoodBeast.com) his company's Beard Beer (from yeast of beards, including at one time, his own) should be regarded as a traditional brew. [Huffington Post, 6-14-2013] [Food Beast, 6-5-2013]

-- Carnivorous Vegetation: It was a special occasion in Surrey, England, in June as a rare plant prepared to bloom. The 3-foot-tall Puya chilensis, native to Chile, features neon-bright greenish-yellow flowers with blooms large enough to yield drinkable nectar, but its most startling distinction is its ability to nourish itself by trapping small animals in its razor-sharp spines, leaving them to decay. (At Britain's Wisley Garden, it is fed with ordinary fertilizer rather than animals.) [The Independent (London), 6-17-2013]

-- Too Much Information: During a June debate in a House Rules Committee hearing on abortion legislation, U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas, himself an obstetrician/gynecologist, criticized a proposal to outlaw abortion at the 20-week limit (where a fetus is said to begin to feel pain), insisting on an earlier ban, at 15 or 16 weeks. "Watch a sonogram of a 15-week-old baby," said Burgess, "and they have movements that are purposeful. ... If they're a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs." Thus, "If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?" [RawStory.com, 6-17-2013]

-- Physicians at Kwong Wah Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, publishing in the Hong Kong Medical Journal recently, described a 66-year-old man seeking relief from a swelling in his abdomen (after having had a sparse history with doctors). They concluded that the man was basically a woman and that the cause of the swelling was an ovarian cyst. The patient had both Turner syndrome, which causes women to lack some female features, and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which boosts male hormones. (While females have two X chromosomes, and males an X and a Y, Turner syndrome patients have one X and no Y.) [South China Morning Post, 6-4-2013]

-- Alarming Headlines: (1) "Koala Chlamydia: The STD Threatening an Australian Icon" (BBC News). (2) "Super-Sized Crabs and Oysters With Herpes" (Field & Stream). (3) "Far-Right Extremists Chased Through London by Women Dressed as Badgers" (International Business Times, reporting June rallies of two British nationalist parties and their opposition occurring at the same time and place as a better-attended demonstration against the government's cull on badgers). [BBC News, 4-24-2013] [Field & Stream, 4-10-2013] [International Business Times, 6-1-2013]

-- Horse Bullies: In June, Barbour County, W.Va., firefighters, called to a farm in Belington, rescued the horse "Rowdy," whose entire body was somehow trapped inside an industrial-sized tire. Rowdy's owner said she believes Rowdy had an altercation with some of the other horses. [The Inter-Mountain (Elkins, W.Va.), 6-19-2013]

A staff report by Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce released in June and using data from Wisconsin (because of the state's comprehensive record-keeping) found that taxpayers wind up paying out at least $75 million a year in "safety net" assistance to the state's Wal-Mart workers (food stamps, Medicaid, school lunches, earned-income tax credits, etc.) allegedly because the company's wages and benefits are so meager. The report, an update on 2004 numbers that were less than half those found this time around, estimated that Wal-Mart families accounted for more than 9,000 Wisconsin Medicaid enrollees. The $75 million, covering 75 stores, represents a low-end estimate with the high end about $130 million. [The Capital Times (Madison), 6-7-2013; Los Angeles Times, 6-7-2013]

Melanie Typaldos, 57, and her husband, Richard Loveman, 54, in Buda, Texas, are supposedly part of a growing trend of people keeping pet capybaras (giant, semi-aquatic guinea pigs that are the world's largest rodents, at more than 100 pounds). "Gary" sometimes lounges on the couple's marital bed and frolics in the above-ground pool the couple installed for him. Although Melanie and Richard keep other, more traditional, animals at their home (they told London's Daily Mail in June), Gary is, of course, the only one as large as a human but with the distinctive body and head of a rat. [Daily Mail, 6-21-2013]

(1) Apprentice Brooklyn, N.Y., tree-trimmer David Fleischer, 21 (and son of the company owner), had to be rescued by firefighters in July after he apparently violated the cardinal rule in the business by cutting lower branches first -- until he was stranded at the top of the tree. "He is a good boy," said "Izzy" Fleischer, "but he is learning." (2) Emergency crews in Fort Worth, Texas, responded to a Quik Trip gas station in June when an unidentified man got his finger caught in his car's gas cap after he poured in some additive. Rescuers had to use a hammer and screwdriver to break the plastic around the cap and finally freed the man's hand, unscathed, after a 20-minute struggle. [New York Post, 7-6-2013] [KRLD-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 6-18-2013]

"Breatharianism" Revisited: Kirby de Lanerolle of Sri Lanka appeared on National Geographic television in June to claim that he had lived without food for five years -- on nourishment only from the sun, wind and the "vibrations of God." But his story provoked the same skepticism faced by other breatharians -- that who can know if he cheated? In May, Ms. Naveena Shine, a breatharian in Seattle, attempted to head off that criticism by installing 24-hour cameras throughout her home for her upcoming four-to-six-month regimen consuming only air and sunlight. However, she called off her project after 47 allegedly pure days (and a 33-pound weight loss) because, she said, she was out of money and because people seemed no less skeptical that she was somehow cheating. (De Lanerolle, interrogated on the TV show, actually confessed to minor cheating but insisted that science's two-month maximum for surviving foodlessly is wrong.) [The Sun (London), 6-27-2013] [Seattle Times, 6-17-2013]

What is believed to be the world's only commercial lounge openly serving cocaine operates in La Paz, Bolivia, though the owners of "Route 36" have to change locations from time to time, depending on the moods of the bribed authorities. An August (2009) dispatch in London's The Guardian reported that a nearly pure gram costs the equivalent of about $14 ($22 for "premium"), served by waiters in an empty CD case, with straws, but bar drinks are also available. Route 36 is well-known to backpacking tourists. Recalled one waiter, "We had some Australians; they stayed here for four days. (T)he only time they left was to go to the ATM." [The Guardian, 8-19-09]

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

At a June hearing, a Philadelphia judge became so exasperated at defendant Robert Williams' seeming cluelessness about his need to keep his probation appointments that she ordered him to take "etiquette" classes before returning to court. Williams, a rap singer and budding music mogul still under court supervision on gun and drug charges from 2008, cavalierly defended his inability to find time for his probation officer by explaining that he was a busy man, working with seven "artists," with a demanding travel schedule, and uninhibitedly using social media (creating posts that, allegedly, led to threats against the probation officer). (Williams, of course, was accompanied to court by a several-man entourage.) [Philadelphia Inquirer, 6-30-2013]

-- An atheist "church" in Lake Charles, La., run by lapsed Pentecostal Jerry DeWitt, conducts periodic services with many of the trappings expected by the pious -- except for the need to believe in a supreme being. Such "churches" (reported The New York Times and Washington Post in coincidental stories the same day in June) can help soothe the "biological" needs for survival and avoidance of loneliness by congregational rituals (such as celebrating a sabbath) and in helping find meaning "in something other than (oneself)." For example, atheist Sigfried Gold praised a "rigorous prayer routine" (beseeching a "vivid goddess he created") in overcoming his weight problem. [New York Times, 6-24-2013; Washington Post, 6-24-2013]

-- War Endangers War Relics: In June, fighting in the Syrian civil war spread to its west, threatening archaeological digs and already recovered artifacts near the ancient city of Hamoukar -- which is the site of history's earliest known urban warfare (about 5,500 years ago). [LiveScience.com, 6-24-2013]

-- The business website Quartz reported in June that a popular consumer item in North Korea's perhaps-improving economy is the refrigerator, made in China and increasingly available as a reward to stellar performers among civil servants and other elites. The appliances, however, cannot reliably store food because the country's electric grid is so frequently offline and are mostly just status symbols. One item Quartz says often gets displayed in the refrigerator: books. [Qz.com, 6-18-2013]

-- Robert Dugan, 47, a full-time patrolman for the Delaware County (Pa.) Park Police, was charged in June with illegally impersonating a police officer. According to authorities in Brookhaven, Pa., Dugan had accosted a woman double-parked outside her home to pressure her into moving the car, but she refused. Dugan allegedly claimed he was an Upland Borough police officer (with authority to write parking citations and make arrests, which he did not actually have). [Delaware County Daily Times, 6-2-2013]

Shower rooms in health clubs are slippery enough, but Marc Moskowitz, 66, cited the one at the Bally Total Fitness gym on E. 55th St. in New York City as especially dangerous, according to his recent lawsuit to recover expenses for a broken shoulder suffered in a fall. Moskowitz claimed that so much gay male sex was occurring in the shower and locker-room area (unsupervised by Bally) that he had probably slipped on semen. [New York Daily News, 6-19-2013]

-- Lame: (1) Rodger Kelly was arrested in St. George, Utah, in June for rape of a female neighbor, but he told police that he committed the act only to "save" her, since he had discovered her "cold" and unconscious. He had violated her body only "to try and get her temperature up," according to the police report. (2) The low-price air carrier GoAir of New Delhi announced in June that in the future it would hire only females for the cabin crew -- because they weigh less than men (and expects eventually to save the equivalent of $4 million annually in fuel based on average weights). [Salt Lake Tribune, 6-10-2013] [The Times of India, 6-28-2013]

-- In May, former schoolteacher Kathleen Cawthorne, 33, of Rustburg, Va., successfully negotiated a reduction in her 11-year sentence for having sex with an underage student. Cawthorne's punishment was set at only four months in prison when she presented the judge with a clinical diagnosis of "hypersexuality," supposedly showing that she had little ability to control her desire to seduce the boy. [New York Daily News, 5-24-2013]

Floridians Standing Their Ground: In May, a jury in Tampa decided that Ralph Wald, 70, was not guilty of murdering a 32-year-old man he had shot in the back three times. He said he had caught the man having sex with his wife (successfully claiming that he thought the man was a dangerous intruder in his home). However, Marissa Alexander, 34, of Jacksonville, was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison for "aggravated assault" for merely firing a warning shot during an altercation with her estranged husband. The man, Rico Gray, is a serial domestic abuser and admitted that he was threatening Alexander that night and that she never actually pointed her gun directly at him. However, the judge denied Alexander use of the "stand your ground" defense because she had declined to simply walk away from Gray. [Tampa Bay Times, 5-30-2013] [Miami Herald, 5-28-2012]

(1) According to Chicago police, Gerardo Perez, 50, broke away while on a tour in May of the Chicago Animal Care and Control Facility because he had been struck with a sexual attraction. He was discovered minutes later on his hands and knees beside a pit bull, "appearing to have just had sex with the animal," according to a report on WMAQ-TV. (2) Shaun Orris, 41, was charged with disorderly conduct in Waukesha, Wis., in June after raising a ruckus outside the Montecito Ristorante Lounge, harassing passersby by loudly expressing his "constitutional right" to have sex with goats. [WMAQ-TV (Chicago), 6-3-2013] [WaukeshaNow.com, 6-17-2013]

Not Well-Thought-Out: (1) A 64-year-old man was arrested in Geelong, Australia (near Melbourne) in June after carjacking a 22-year-old woman's vehicle. He was still on-scene when police arrived, as it took him time to load his walker into the car, along with several bags he had nearby when he decided to commandeer the vehicle. (2) A well-dressed, 5-foot-10 man bailed out of an attempted robbery in May of a New York City Bank of America when, after handing a teller his holdup note, the woman panicked, began screaming "Oh my God!" and ran to the other side of the bank, diving under a counter. According to a witness, the robber stood in silence for a few seconds before fleeing. [Geelong Advertiser, 6-24-2013] [New York Post, 5-18-2013]

When last we checked on Wesley Warren Jr., 49, of Las Vegas, he was delaying his inevitable surgery to repair his permanently inflamed, 140-pound scrotum ("scrotal lymphedema"). He said at the time that he was enjoying the many television and radio appearances discussing his plight and that he feared becoming a nobody again after the surgery. He has now had the 13-hour operation, done pro bono by Dr. Joel Gelman of University of California, Irvine, and will soon be walking without hindrance, but his latest dissatisfaction, he told a British TV show in June (reported by The Sun), is that the surgery left him with a penis about 1 inch long. [The Sun, 6-21-2013]

Lonely Japanese men (and a few women) with rich imaginations have created a thriving subculture ("otaku") in which they have all-consuming relationships with figurines that are based on popular anime characters. "The less extreme," reported a New York Times writer in July, obsessively collect the dolls. The hardcore otaku "actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a (teenage character) is his girlfriend," and takes her out in public on romantic dates. "She has really changed my life," said "Nisan," 37, referring to his gal, Nemutan. (The otaku dolls are not to be confused with the life-size, anatomically correct dolls that other lonely men use for sex.) One forlorn "2-D" (so named for preferring relationships with two-dimensionals) said he would like to marry a real, 3-D woman, "(b)ut look at me. How can someone who carries this (doll) around get married?" [New York Times Magazine, 7-26-09]