-- At age 20, Kyle Kandilian of Dearborn, Mich., has created a start-up business to fund his college expenses, but it involves a roomful (in the family home) of nearly 200,000 cockroaches. The environmental science major at University of Michigan-Dearborn breeds species ranging from the familiar household pests, which he sells on the cheap as food for other people's pets, to the more interesting, exotic Madagascar hissing roaches and rhino roaches, which can live for 10 to 15 years. (Kandilian told the Detroit Free Press in July that of the 4,000 cockroach species, only about a dozen are pests.) Why not choose a more conventional "pet"? Because "(m)ammals smell," he said. (Missing from the Free Press story: details on the likely interesting initial conversation between Kyle and his mother when he asked if he could have 200,000 cockroaches in the house.) [Detroit Free Press, 7-28-2013]

-- A 55-year-old woman in the Netherlands seemed to be experiencing orgasms emanating from her foot, she said, and Dr. Marcel Waldinger of Utrecht University (writing in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, online in June) produced a possible explanation. The applicable left foot nerve enters the spinal cord at about the same level as the vaginal nerve, Waldinger wrote, and the woman's recent foot injury might have caused the nerves to cross. The woman reported "five or six" orgasms per day that felt exactly like "regular" orgasms and, she said, were making her feel terribly guilty and embarrassed. After treatment with a nerve anesthetic, she reported being orgasm-free (in the foot, at least) for eight months. [CBS News via KHOU-TV (Houston), 7-1-2013]

-- The intersection of West Gateway Boulevard and North Congress Avenue in Boynton Beach, Fla. (pop. 60,000), is nine lanes wide, busy even at 11 p.m. on Sunday night, as it was at that time in July when a 2-year-old girl darted across, a combination of good fortune and sometimes-rare Florida driver alertness allowing her safe arrival on the other side without a scratch. "It's a miracle," said Harry Scott, who witnessed it. "I'm telling you the truth." Mom Kayla Campbell, 26, was charged with felony neglect, as she appeared "oblivious," said police, to the child's absence from home. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 7-9-2013]

-- An unnamed restaurateur from Nagoya, Japan, has filed a lawsuit against an affiliate of the country's largest organized crime syndicate, Yamaguchi-gumi, demanding a refund of "protection" money she had been paying for more than 12 years (in total, the equivalent of about $170,000). The affiliate, Kodo-kai, burned down a bar in 2010, killing people, in a similar protection arrangement that went bad, and the plaintiff said she, too, was threatened with arson when she decided to stop paying. According to an expert on Japanese "yakuza," a relative of one of the victims of the 2010 fire may also sue Kodo-kai. [Japan Today via Quartz, 7-18-2013]

-- In June, following his guilty plea in Corpus Christi, Texas, to possession of child pornography, Jose Salazar, 70, offered to perform public service to reduce the 12-year sentence a federal judge had handed him. Salazar said he "had a lot to offer society," according to an Associated Press story, and could be "useful" in mentoring children. [Associated Press via Beaumont Enterprise, 6-21-2013]

-- At Atherstone, England's, Twycross Zoo, a program is underway to try to teach quarter-ton giant tortoises to speed up. An extended outdoor pen had been built for Speedy (age 70), Tim, 40, and Shelly, 30, but that meant it took a longer time to round them up for bed at the end of the day. The Leicester Mercury reported in June that zoo officials were trying to use the lure of food to get the tortoises to significantly improve their way-under-1-mile-per-hour gait. [Leicester Mercury, 6-21-2013]

-- Actually, It Might Enhance the Experience: The British sex toy manufacturer Ann Summers issued a recall in June of a certain model of its popular Ultimate O Vibrator because of a problem with the electrical charger. The company said it was being cautious but that the risk of danger is low. [Daily Telegraph, 6-14-2013]

-- Tina Marie Garrison, 37, and her son Junior Lee Dillon, 18, of Preston, Minn., were charged in June with stealing almost $5,000 worth of gopher feet from the freezer of a gopher trapper in Granger, Minn., and selling them for the local offered bounty of $3 per pair. Garrison, Dillon, and the victimized trapper were friends, and it was not clear why the thinly populated gopher-foot market would not have deterred Garrison and Dillon. [Post-Bulletin (Rochester, Minn.), 6-18-2013]

-- Louann Giambattista, 55, a 33-year-veteran American Airlines flight attendant, filed a lawsuit against the company in July alleging that it had subjected her to baseless hassles because of co-workers' accusations that, argued her attorney, were wrongly "making her out to be a nut." One of the accusations was that she was "hiding rats in her underwear (and pantyhose) and sneaking them onto planes" based apparently on Giambattista's hobby of raising pets at home. The airline has allegedly subjected her to enhanced security measures for more than a year, allegedly causing her post-traumatic stress disorder and "debilitating anxiety." [New York Post, 7-7-2013]

-- The Best of the International Press: In July, the governor of Gorontalo province in Indonesia decreed that female secretaries should be replaced immediately with males. He was responding to a recent excessive spate of extramarital affairs by male bureaucrats with their female secretaries. ("[O]ld women who are no longer attractive" could also be hired, he said.) [Agence France-Presse via Fox News, 7-14-2013]

-- (1) Gerard Streator, 47, pleaded guilty in June in Waukesha, Wis., County Court to public lewdness and placed on probation after his arrest last year of going through the motions of intercourse with a discarded couch on a public street. An off-duty police officer thought initially that he had caught a couple, but on closer inspection, he realized Streator (who was aroused) was alone. (2) The day before, in Ostersund, Sweden, a 35-year-old man was arrested after a surveillance camera revealed him to be the one who repeatedly punctured Per Edstrom's bicycle's tires and who that evening was seen sitting on the bicycle pleasuring himself. [The Smoking Gun, 6-24-2013] [The Local (Stockholm), 6-23-2013]

-- (1) A 28-year-old man was accidentally killed in Shelby, N.C., in April. Police say he had trespassed on a salvage lot at 5 a.m. and was underneath a wrecked car trying to steal a catalytic converter when the jack slipped, and the car fell on him. (2) A 42-year-old man was shot and wounded while on his front porch in Antioch, Calif., on Friday morning, June 28. He was treated and released, but then walked out on his porch the next morning and was again shot, this time fatally. [Shelby Star, 4-1-2013] [San Francisco Chronicle, 6-29-2011]

A News of the Weird Classic

-- When Alcoa, Inc., prepared to build an aluminum smelting plant in Iceland in 2004, the government forced it to hire an expert to assure that none of the country's legendary "hidden people" lived underneath the property. The elf-like goblins provoke genuine apprehensiveness in many of the country's 300,000 natives (who are all, reputedly, related by blood). An Alcoa spokesman told Vanity Fair writer Michael Lewis (for an April 2009 report) that the inspection (which delayed construction for six months) was necessary: "[W]e couldn't be in the position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people." (Lewis offered several explanations for the country's spectacular financial implosion in 2008, including Icelanders' incomprehensible superiority complex, which convinced many lifelong fishermen that they were gifted investment bankers.) [Vanity Fair, April 2009]

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

The National Security Agency is a "supercomputing powerhouse," wrote ProPublica.org in July, with "machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second" -- but apparently it has no ability to bulk-search its own employees' official emails. Thus, ProPublica's Freedom of Information Act demand for a seemingly simple all-hands search was turned down in July with the NSA informing ProPublica that the best it could do would be to go one-by-one through the emails of each of the agency's 30,000 employees -- which would be prohibitively expensive. (ProPublica reported that companywide searches are "common" for large corporations, which must respond to judicial subpoenas and provide information for their own internal investigations.) [ProPublica, 7-23-2013]

-- To commemorate its 500th "deep brain stimulation" surgery in May, UCLA Medical Center live-Tweeted its operation on musician Brad Carter, 39, during which he was required to strum his guitar and sing so that surgeons would know where in his brain to plant the electrical stimulator that would relieve his Parkinson's disease symptoms. Carter had developed hand tremors in 2006, but the stimulator, once it is properly programed and the surgery healed, is expected to reduce his symptoms, restore some guitar-playing ability, and reduce his medication need. (And, yes, patients normally remain conscious during the surgery.) [Daily Mail (London), 5-24-2013]

-- Firefighters are not infrequently called on to extricate adventurous men from sex toys, but one "armor-plat(ed)" device, six inches in diameter, into which the 51-year-old German entrapped himself in July in Ibiza, Mallorca, was especially challenging, according to the Diario de Mallorca newspaper, and took two hours and a dose of anesthesia toward the end. The saw blade the emergency workers used wore out during the rescue and had to be replaced, along with two sets of batteries. The man was kept overnight at Can Misses hospital, but was otherwise OK. [The Local (Madrid), 7-5-2013]

-- Americans stage dog shows, and Middle-Easterners stage camel beauty contests, and in June, the annual German Holstein Show took over the city of Oldenburg, with the two-day event won by "Loh Nastygirl," topping bovine beauties from Germany, Luxembourg and Austria. The event is also a showcase for the cow hairdressers, who trim cows' leg and belly hair (to better display their veins). Said one dresser, "It is just like with us people -- primping helps." Groomed or not, cows with powerful legs, bulging udders and a strong bone structure are the favorites. [The Local (Berlin), 6-14-2013]

-- Fruit of any kind retails for outlandish prices in Japan, but some, such as Yubari cantaloupes, are so prestigious that they are often presented as gifts to friends or colleagues, and it was only mildly surprising that a pair of the melons sold in May for the equivalent of about $15,700 at auction at the Sapporo Central Wholesale Market. The melons appeared to be perfect specimens, with their T-shaped stalk still attached. The record melon-pair price, set in 2008, is about $24,500 measured at today's exchange rate. [Agence France-Presse via Global Post, 5-24-2013]

-- Still Unclear on the Concept: Briar MacLean, 13, of Calgary, Alberta, was reprimanded by school officials in May (and then also lost an appeal) after he stepped between two students because one, holding a knife, was bullying the other. The vice principal appeared to regard Briar's action as equal to that of the bully, telling Briar's mother later that the school does not "condone heroics," and that it was "beside the point" that Briar might well have prevented a slashing (which could have occurred if he had left the boys behind to go find a teacher). [National Post (Toronto), 5-31-2013]

-- Some crime-scene investigative techniques seem far-fetched, as News of the Weird has reported, but police use of "ear prints" might be approaching the mainstream. Britain convicted its first burglar based on an ear print in 1998, and in May 2013, investigators in Lyon, France, tied a 26-year-old man from the Republic of Georgia to a string of about 80 burglaries -- by taking prints from doors the man had leaned against while listening for activity inside the home. [Expatica.com (Amsterdam), 6-3-2013]

-- First-World Crises: It is not quite to the level of the $15,700 Japanese melons, but the behavior of women descending upon New York City stores in June for the annual "sale" on designer shoes is nonetheless a spectacle. The event makes the city's upscale commercial district look like "an insane asylum of very well-dressed women," reported The New York Times. The shoes' everyday prices require, wrote the Times, "the willful suspension of rational thinking." The average transaction at Barneys is $850, still far below, for example, a pair of wicker-basket-like sandals ($1,995 by Charlotte Olympia) or a certain Christian Louboutin pump ($1,595 -- $4,645 if in crocodile). Prices are so unhinged, according to the Times, that standards from the iconic "Sex and the City" designer Manolo Blahnik are now low-price leaders, holding at about $595. [New York Times, 6-19-2013]

-- Among the oldest classic stories in News of the Weird is the hapless burglar or bank robber who inadvertently incriminates himself at the scene of the crime. Recently, (1) Korey Harris, a defensive lineman for West Virginia University's football team, was arrested in July for a home invasion he allegedly committed while wearing his practice sweatpants emblazoned with his jersey number (96). (2) Police in Boston are confident that Zachary Tentoni is the man who robbed a woman in the yard of Harbor Middle School in June because, as he grabbed her purse and fled, he dropped two bags he was carrying. Among the contents: Tentoni's birth certificate and a letter from his mother. [Yahoo News, 7-22-2013] [Boston Globe, 6-25-2013]

-- Zero-Tolerance Alive and Well: Second-grader Josh Welch's two-day suspension in March was upheld on appeal in June by Park Elementary School officials of Anne Arundel County, Md., even though his offense was that he had nibbled a pastry into the shape of a gun, which he then waved around. Said Josh's attorney: "If this (school system) can't educate a 7-year-old without putting him out of school, how are they going to deal with 17-year-olds?" [Baltimore Sun, 6-10-2013]

-- It took a year and a half of legal wrangling over a technicality, but Marshall University was finally dropped in June as one of the defendants in Louis Helmburg III's lawsuit for his injuries when fellow party-goer Travis Hughes shot bottle rockets out of his posterior in 2011. Helmburg, some will recall, was so startled by Hughes' stunt that he fell off the rail-less deck at a fraternity party staged by Alpha Tau Omega of Marshall University. Hughes and the fraternity remain as defendants in the January 2012 lawsuit. [West Virginia Record (Charleston), 6-12-2013]

-- The Mexican economy has improved markedly since News of the Weird first mentioned the EcoAlberto theme park in the central state of Hidalgo in 2005, which offers an attraction simulating the rigors of border-jumping. In 2005, it was thought that many of the attendees were using the setup to improve their chances of sneaking into the U.S., but now park officials believe nearly all are being discouraged, with the improving economy (and stepped-up U.S. enforcement) helping. The ordeal is played out as a three-hour game, with "U.S. Border Patrol" agents using sirens, dogs and verbal threats, and chasing the players into the night. [PBS.org, 6-24-2013]

-- Final Chapter for America's Most Overconfident Murderer: Anthony Garcia, 25, was convicted in July for a 2004 murder he had apparently gotten away with. He had been subsequently arrested in 2008 for driving on a suspended license, and a cold-case Los Angeles detective, perusing arrest reports, noticed Garcia's unusual chest tattoo, which depicted a scene that reminded the detective of the crime scene in the cold-case murder, with Garcia (street name, "Chopper") having labeled himself as the shooter. Garcia, previously home free, was arrested in his cell and now faces life in prison. [ABC News via KERO-TV (Bakersfield, Calif.), 7-18-2013]

Thanks This Week to Annie Thames, Hallie Webb, Sam Scrutchins, Brenda Myers, and Lynne Adams, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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).