(1) Up-and-coming Sicilian mobster Domenico Palazzotto, 28, was outed in August by Italy's L'Espresso magazine as the owner of an ineffectively pseudonymous Facebook page showing off his muscled, bare-chested body and perhaps recruiting members. One fan asked, "Do I need to send a (resume)?" "Yes, brother," came the reply. "We need to consider your criminal record. We do not take people with clean records." Palazzotto operates out of Palermo and listed among his "likes" the singer Kenny Loggins. (2) Similarly young, body-obsessed Egyptian jihadist/gym member Islam Yaken, according to his postings on Facebook-type social media sites, is a law school graduate fluent in English, French and Arabic, allowing him to describe the particular viciousness that he and his brothers and sisters will wreak upon infidels. [Daily Telegraph (London), 8-3-2014] [Daily Telegraph (London), 8-6-2014]

-- A jury's murder conviction, and the 15-to-life sentence it carried, against Daniel Floyd in Brooklyn, New York, for a 2008 killing went for naught in July when the Brooklyn Supreme Court ordered a retrial (with witnesses forced to testify all over again). The sole reason the court cited was a decision by the trial judge on the first day -- to seat the potential jury pool and not Floyd's mother, who, because she was temporarily left standing that first day, argued successfully that her son's right to a "public" trial had been violated. [New York Post, 7-28-2014]

-- I (Heart) Strangers: Two age-30ish men knocked on the door of a Sebastian, Texas, woman at 12:30 a.m. on Aug. 3, asking for water and if they could please come inside to charge their cellphone -- and the woman apparently cheerfully invited them in, later offering them use of her backyard shed to grab some sleep. She did not learn until a short time later, when a law enforcement manhunt widened into her neighborhood, that they were wanted for murdering a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Officers arrested the pair inside the shed. [KRGV-TV (Weslaco, Texas), 8-5-2014]

-- A team of researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington announced recently that they had developed a prototype of a wind turbine that might deliver electricity in tiny bursts to devices like smartphones -- since it is about half the size of a grain of rice. (Tiny solar backpacks already exist.) [National Geographic, 6-19-2014]

(1) The ubiquitous "sexting" phenomenon continues to flourish. A Washington state agency suspended the license of anesthesiologist Arthur Zilberstein in June after finding that he had exchanged sexually explicit text messages -- during surgeries. (2) One of the emerging occupational skills for Emergency Medical Technicians, according to first responders interviewed in a June Wall Street Journal feature, is merely holding up blankets at accident scenes -- to block onlookers from their apparently uncontrollable urge to take gruesome photos to send to their friends. [KIRO-TV (Seattle), 6-9-2014] [Wall Street Journal, 6-24-2014]

(1) A 40-year-old man's throat was fatally slashed in August in Laurel, Montana, in a fight with an acquaintance over which military service -- Army or Marines -- is better. (News reports failed to identify the "winning" branch.) (2) A 37-year-old man survived, but with multiple bullet wounds, in New York City in August after a 1 a.m. dispute during the making of a rap music video. (The dispute was over who, exactly, would be the "star.") (3) Roger Harris, 63, and Bryan Bandes, 42, brawled in August on the 7th tee at the Springdale Golf Course near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, while arguing the rule for playing a ball in a rain puddle. Harris apparently 3-wooded Bandes in the head; Bandes landed punches causing a swollen jaw, a fat lip and a scratched eye. [Billings Gazette, 8-4-2014] [New York Daily News, 8-2-2014] [KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 8-7-2014]

In Multnomah County, Oregon, in July, a Romanian princess pleaded guilty to cockfighting. Irina Walker, 61, was born in Switzerland where her father, King Michael I, lived after abdicating the throne. She came to Oregon in 1983, where, in a second marriage in 2007, she fell in with former deputy sheriff John Walker, who had moved on to the gambling and cockfighting business, and, according to a USA Today report, she was assisting him. [USA Today, 7-16- 2014]

(1) Chung-Ang University in South Korea announced in April that its traditional-sport Department of Sport Science would begin accepting -- as legitimate "student athletes" -- video gamers. (2) Also in April, Berlin's Lutheran Georgen Parochial cemetery inaugurated a 4,300-square-foot area of its grounds as reserved exclusively for lesbians -- for women who, said a spokesman, "want to be buried among other lesbians." [AsiaOne (Singapore), 4-3-2014] [Associated Press, 4-1-2014]

-- Japan is noted (as News of the Weird has reported in 1997 and 2008) for several traditional fertility festivals and theme parks at which explicit, oversized male genitalia are revered by joyous visitors, including children. In July, on the other hand, police quickly arrested the artist Megumi Igarashi after she scanned her vulva and then distributed the data online to allow others to create 3-D printed reproductions. That effort was the most conspicuous of several attempts she has made as an artist/designer to call attention, she said, to the underrepresentation of female genitals in Japanese society compared to males'. [TheWeek.co.uk, 7-15-2014]

-- Who Knew? Researchers from England's University of Lincoln revealed in July that red-footed tortoises are not only "inquisitive" but make decisions in their brain's "medial cortex" region, associated with "complex cognitive behavior" (because they have no "hippocampus," which is a typical decision-making area). The tortoises thus pecked-out (and learned) touch-screen decisions (for rewards of strawberries), and in fact, said researcher Anna Wilkinson, learned as quickly as rats and pigeons and faster, actually, than dogs. [LiveScience.com, 8-1-2014]

(1) In July, officials at the Djanogly City Academy in Nottingham, England, broke up an attempt by five students (aged 11 to 14) attending a daytime-locked-down school to escape by tunneling under a security fence. They had discovered the boys' metal cutlery hidden at the scene. (A World War II tunneling escape from a Nazi prison was partially successful and became the story for the 1963 movie "The Great Escape" starring Steve McQueen.) (2) In a deadly ending reminiscent of scenes in several crime movies, a 22-year-old man fleeing police in Brooklyn, New York, in June crashed his car at a high speed into the back of a flatbed truck and was decapitated as the body of the car (but not the part above the dashboard) continued on under the truck. [BBC News, 7-7-2014] [New York Daily News, 6-25-2014]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) A 40-year-old man (not named by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) was arrested in that city on July 31 after a several-hour, epically inept, crime spree. Attempting to rob a restaurant, he was turned down by employees and customers, then turned down by two potential carjack victims (the first of whom added insult by pulling out her cellphone camera and shooting video), before giving up just as police arrived. (His only take was the $15 he had swiped from the restaurant's tip jar.) (2) Joshua Pawlak, 27, entered a total of four businesses in Woodbridge, New Jersey, on July 27 and similarly met resistance and/or indifference to his money demands -- and came away from the four with only $2, also from a tip jar. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 8-1-2014] [NJ.com (Newark), 8- 6-2014]

Ironies: (1) An airborne banner being towed by an airplane came loose in Fremont, California, in July and floated down, landing on a house, frightening the residents. The sign advertised GEICO insurance. (2) A 10-foot-tall pine tree in Los Angeles's Griffith Park, dedicated in 2004 with a plaque to the late musician George Harrison, was recently destroyed by an infestation, and another will be planted in its place, according to a city councilman. The infestation was by beetles. [KNTV (San Francisco), 7-23-2014] [CBS News, 7-22-2014]

Thanks This Week to Kyle Payton, Gerald Sacks, Ron Weir, Mel Birge, Robin Daley, and Kathryn Wood, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

(1) The May 28 US Airways flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia had to be diverted to Kansas City after a passenger's service dog did what dogs do, in the aisle, twice (an hour apart). One passenger used the terms "lingering smell," "dry heaving" and "throwing up" in describing the situation. (2) On a recent (perhaps July) Delta flight from Beijing to Detroit, a Chinese couple apparently nonchalantly laid down paper on their toddler's seat and encouraged him to address his bowels' needs despite numerous pleas from nearby passengers to take him to the restroom. According to Chinese news reports, social media sites erupted in criticism of the family for its embarrassing behavior. [KCTV (Kansas City), 5-30-2014] [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7-28-2014]

-- Steve Grossman, Massachusetts' state treasurer, who is running for governor, performed heroically at a candidate forum in March. The Boston Globe reported that Grossman "fervently answered questions on everything from transgender rights (to) sex education (and) issues facing (the) aging members of the (gay/transgender) community" while simultaneously passing a kidney stone (which most victims rate as "level 10" pain -- the highest on the medical scale, described by some as comparable to childbirth). [Boston Globe, 3-26-2014]

-- Steve Wiles gathered only 28 percent of the vote in his North Carolina state senate race in May after revelations that he -- lately an opponent of gay rights -- was until about four years ago a gay male who worked as the female impersonator "Mona Sinclair" at a gay nightclub in Winston-Salem. As recently as April, however (three weeks before a newspaper's revelation), Wiles was categorically denying that he used to be Mona Sinclair. "That's not me," he said. "That's him," said a man who worked with him at the club. Said the club's then-co-owner: "I have no ax to grind against him. I just think he's a liar." [Winston-Salem Journal, 5-3-2014]

-- The Alaskan government is scrambling to fulfill its obligation to welcome native communities' votes on a state tax resolution in August. That means paying translators (at up to $50 a hour) to set out the measure for communities using the languages Yup'ik, Inupiak, Siberian Yupik, Koyukon Athabascan and Gwich'in Athabascan. (The tax measure must also be available on audio -- for those communities that rely on the "oral tradition.") For example, the yes-or-no tax question in Yup'ik is "Una-qaa alerquun ciuniurumanrilli?" [Washington Times, 7-29-2014] -- Tough Love: Missouri state Sen. Rob Schaaf (who is a medical doctor) was credited in a July New York Times report with leading the resistance to the state's establishment of a database of controlled-substance prescriptions. (Sen. Schaaf champions "patient privacy" over curbing the wanton overuse of pain medications, even though the other 49 states have such databases.) In an earlier debate, Dr. Schaaf suggested drug abuse is self- regulating: "If (drug abusers) overdose and kill themselves, it just removes them from the gene pool." [New York Times, 7-20-2014]

Tom Lakin is challenging State Farm in a St. Clair County, Illinois, courtroom, claiming that the sexual abuse he was convicted of was "unintentional" and that therefore his homeowners' insurance ought to have covered any claims by the victim. (State Farm, and other insurers, generally pay out for "negligent" events.) He said he had no idea that serving minors alcohol and drugs and encouraging them to have sex with each other would lead to their later sexual exploitation by other adults. [Madison-St. Clair Record, 6-19-2014]

(1) Has to Be Tied Down: A man was hospitalized in Shreveport, Louisiana, in June after being carried away by a wind gust as he held onto a mattress in the back of a pickup truck on Interstate 49. He suffered road burn and fractures. (2) Jenna Ketcham, 25, was arrested in Sebastian, Florida, in July after exacting a bit of revenge against an ex-boyfriend, whom she encountered squiring another woman in his pickup truck. According to police, Ketcham hit the man in the face and the genitals, and emptied his "dip spit" cup on him. [KSLA-TV (Shreveport), 7-3-2014] [TCPalm.com (Stuart, Fla.), 7-29-2014]

-- Among the foods "you wouldn't even eat if trapped on a desert island" in a May London Daily Mirror feature: canned cheeseburger (Germany), canned whole chicken (Sweet Sue brand of USA), canned peanut butter and jelly sandwich (Mark One Foods of USA), canned bacon (Hungary), Squeez Bacon (in a plastic jar like ketchup, from Vilhelm Lilleflask of Sweden), whole peeled lamb tongues (New Zealand) and Elephant Dung Beer (from excreted coffee beans by Japan's Sankt Gallen). Also mentioned: Casu Marzu (cheese containing live maggots that the food's few fans swear make its taste irresistible -- and which News of the Weird reported in 2000). [Daily Mirror, 5-29-2014]

-- Update: The first "pheromone party" is said to have been staged in New York City in 2010, but the concept was revived recently in London, with men and women bringing three-each used, unwashed, un-fragranced T-shirts in plastic bags as the price of admission (along with the equivalent of $25). Guests sniff the coded bags one after another until genes kick in and signal the sniffer that a certain shirt belongs to Mr. or Ms. Right. At that point, the sniffer projects a cellphone selfie on the wall, and whoever brought that shirt sees the sniffer, at which time things return to normal, i.e., deciding if the sniffer is sufficiently good-looking. [Agence France-Presse via AsiaOne.com (Singapore), 7-24-2014]

-- The Italian news agency ANSA reported in July that Italy's San Vittore prison in Milan is scheduling regular "happy hour" socials for its female inmates -- catered, with alcohol, and with "external" guests welcomed, to the displeasure of the prison guards' union. The deputy director of the prison service was quoted by ANSA as approving the events, leading union representatives to complain to the ministry of Justice. [TheLocal.it (Rome), 7-24-2014]

(1) The Clay County (Florida) Sheriff's Office twice this year arrested the wrong Ashley Chiasson -- in January (for grand theft) and in May (writing bad checks) -- despite three years, five inches, 20 pounds and distinctive middle names separating them (Ashley Odessa, the suspect, vs. Ashley Nicole, the innocent victim). ("Odessa" spent five weeks in jail before deputies admitted their mistake.) (2) James Jordan Sr. died in Brooklyn, New York, in 2006, but NYPD officers have barged into his family's home 12 times since then -- four in 2014 alone -- seeking him on various charges. His widow, Karen Jordan, even taped his death certificate to the front door, but that failed to deter the officers, one of whom shouted during a recent raid that they "know" Jordan is hiding inside somewhere. Karen recently filed a lawsuit against NYPD for the raids, which include "turning out drawers, looking in closets, harassing my children." [St. Augustine Record, 6-12-2014] [New York Post, 5-6-2014]

(1) Among the important news learned from the July indictment of Raymond Black, 61, in Brentwood, New Hampshire, for sex crimes involving girls aged 11 and 13: The going rate for a man who wants preteen girls to kick him in the genitals is as much as $100, which is the amount Black allegedly offered them for various sexual favors. (2) Everything was completely consensual, Ms. B.J. Geardello, 53, assured officers in Ohio County, West Virginia, who caught her taking a stroll along U.S. Highway 40 at 9:30 a.m. on July 29 -- she in purple nightgown leading her nude boyfriend, 56, by a leash, on all fours, hooded, with his ankles bound. Prosecutors were unsure whether to file charges. [Eagle Tribune (North Andover, Mass.), 7-19-2014] [KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 7-30-2014]

In November (2009), a Chicago judge ruled that former firefighter Jeffrey Boyle is entitled to his $50,000 annual pension even though he had pleaded guilty to eight counts of arson (and allegedly confessed to 12 more). Boyle is known locally as "Matches" Boyle to distinguish him from his brother, James "Quarters" Boyle, who was sentenced to federal prison for bribery involving the theft of millions of dollars in state toll gate coins. Judge LeRoy Martin Jr. concluded that Matches' arsons were unrelated to his firefighting. [Chicago Tribune, 11-11-09]

Thanks This Week to Russell Bell and David Walker, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Jeff Mizanskey, 61, is a poster child for one well- known criticism of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws -- that nonviolent marijuana users (and small-time sellers) may wind up doing decades of hard time and in fact more time than some sociopathic offenders serve for heinous offenses. Mizanskey is 20 years into a life sentence with no possibility of parole for several violations of Missouri's "prior and persistent drug offender" law, and his only chance for freedom is a clemency plea now under consideration by Gov. Jay Nixon (and still opposed by Mizanskey's prosecutor). [KCTV, 5-29-2014]

-- Unconventional Food Prep: Leaked photographs taken by an undercover health and safety officer at China's Tongcheng Rice Noodle Factory in Dongguan city in June show workers in street clothes casually walking back and forth atop piles of vermicelli noodles about to be packaged for shipment to stores. Some workers were even seen lounging or sleeping on the mountains of noodles. (In 1992, News of the Weird noted that health officials in South Dennis, Massachusetts, had closed the Wing Wah Chinese restaurant for various violations, including the restaurant's habit of draining water from cabbage by putting it in cloth laundry bags, placing the bags between pieces of plywood in the parking lot and driving over them with a van.) [Ninemsn.com (Sydney), 6-12-2014] [Brewster Oracle, 8-21-92]

-- Unclear on the Concept: Werner Purkhart, who has been running a "silent disco" in Salzburg, Austria, for four years, was denied renewal of his business permit in July, supposedly because his parties were too loud. At a silent disco, each dancer wears headphones to hear radio-transmitted music; to those without headphones, the roomful of swaying, swinging dancers is eerily quiet. Salzburg Mayor Heinz Schaden said it was still too loud. "The noise ... is keeping (the neighbors) up." [The Local (Vienna), 7-17-2014]

-- "The Chinese fondness for napping in odd places is a well-documented phenomenon, one that's spawned a popular website and even a book," wrote The Wall Street Journal in a July dispatch. In a recent photo essay, a Getty Images photographer captured a series of shots of customers catching 40 winks in various furniture departments of IKEA stores, which officially does "not see it as a problem," according to a spokesman. Maybe "we can sell an extra mattress or two." [Wall Street Journal, 7-8-2014]

-- Five siblings in a rural Turkish family near the Syrian border were discovered by researchers in 2005 to be natural, fluid quadruped walkers (hands and feet to the ground, rear ends up), which was thought at the time possibly to mark the first known "turnaround" in human evolution. However, the siblings were re-characterized by recent PLOS One journal research as merely accommodating a musculo-skeletal imbalance in the brain. Other members of the family have normal gaits, and the five quadrupeds show additional developmental issues. [Washington Post, 7-17-2014]

-- Also, from the foreign press: (1) Moscow Times reported the arrest of "Tomas" in Moscow in March for allegedly stealing a mobile phone, noting that he was referred to adult court even though family members claim he is only 13. Officials decided he must be at least 16, based on medical examination -- especially "of his genitals." (2) Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News reported in May that a 62-year-old man on an Istanbul TV dating show said he was just "an honest person looking for a new wife" -- while also casually mentioning that he had served two prison terms, one for murdering one wife and the other for murdering a girlfriend. "Bad luck always found me," he said. "This time I'll leave it to God." [Moscow Times, 6-3-2014] [USA Today, 5-8-2014]

Inexplicable: (1) Alonzo Liverman, 29, was arrested in June in a Daytona Beach, Florida, police sting on prostitutes' johns. "I'm hungry," was the female officer's come-on. Responded Liverman, "I got a salad." Even though no salad was found on Liverman, police determined the banter constituted a sufficient offer for paid sex. (2) The robber of a Chase Bank in Tucson, Arizona, in March is still on the loose even though surveillance video has been widely distributed. An additional detail from the video: The man pulled the holdup while carrying a small dog in a basket. [The Smoking Gun, 6-11-2014] [Tucson News Now, 3-28-2014]

-- In the midst of the city of Detroit's water crackdown -- shutting off the spigots of residents delinquent on their bills -- the Council of Canadians has come to the rescue. First, the council pressed the United Nations to label Detroit's program a "human rights" violation (the denial of clean drinking water to the 3,000 homes per week being shut down). Said the council chair, "I've (only) seen this (oppression) in the poorest countries in the world." Second, the council arranged a convoy of "good Canadian, public, clean water" into Detroit in July to modestly help the estimated 79,000 homes in peril. [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 7-3-2014]

-- Ms. Ajanaffy Njewadda and her husband recently filed a lawsuit against New York City's transit authority (MTA) following her tumble down some stairs at a subway station (which caused a broken ankle, concussion and lingering trauma that has required psychiatric care). The MTA had placed a large ad for the serial-killer TV series "Dexter" on station stairs, positioned to be seen just as visitors left the subway. Ms. Njewadda said she was momentarily terrified by the ad and lost her balance. [New York Post, 6-25-2014]

-- Oh, Dear!: A man whose name was withheld ("D.B.") filed a lawsuit in April against medical clinics and physicians who performed his colonoscopy in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2013, based on what the patient learned from audio his smartphone recorded while he was unconscious. Though he originally intended to record only doctors' instructions, he was dismayed to know that they began "mocking" him the second he went under, making disparaging and untrue statements about his health, feigning disgust at his body ("Oh! Oscar Mike Goss!") (slang for "OMG" -- oh, my God), threatening to "fire a gun up his rectum," "diagnosing" him with syphilis or "tuberculosis in the penis," and threatening to (falsely) note hemorrhoids on his record -- all done amidst gales of laughter. [Fairfax Times, 5-13-2014; Courthouse News, 4-22-2014]

(1) In Turkey, some shepherds have outfitted their sheep-monitoring donkeys with solar panels and battery packs to illuminate nighttime isolated fields in emergencies. Thus, for instance, pregnant animals can be aided during field births and not have to return to the farms. (2) In an interview with Vice.com, the Swiss founder of Eurolactis touts donkey milk as the preferred substitute for cow milk -- since donkeys have only one stomach, as humans have. (Cows, goats and sheep have multiple stomachs to break down their complex milk, but that milk gives humans digestion problems.) On the other hand, as Vice.com pointed out, milk-drinkers, especially, must learn to ignore the A-word nickname for "donkey." [Mother Nature News, 7-22-2014] [Vice.com, 7-25-2014]

The most recent murder suspect to whine about his oppressive jail conditions appears to be Adam Landerman, 21, awaiting trial in the grisly 2013 murders of two people. In July, his patience apparently exhausted, he filed court papers in Joliet, Illinois, complaining that the jail's towels are too small, the jail offers no barber or beautician services or shaving cream, and the food is "monotonous and undiversified," among other inadequacies. [Joliet Patch, 7-15-2014]

At first, Rev. Fred Armfield's arrest for patronizing a prostitute in Greenwood, South Carolina, in January (2010) looked uncontroversial, with Armfield allegedly confessing that he had bargained Melinda "Truck Stop" Robinson down from $10 to $5 for oral sex. Several days later, however, Armfield formally disputed the arrest, calling himself a "descendant of the original Moro-Pithecus Disoch, Kenyapithecus and Afro Pithecus," a "living flesh-and-blood being" who, based on his (high) character and community standing, should not be prosecuted. Also, he said, any payment to Truck Stop with Federal Reserve Notes did not legally constitute a "purchase" since such notes are not lawful money. [Index-Journal (Greenwood), 1-29-10]

Thanks This Week to Perry Levin, Bruce Leiserowitz, Peter Swank, and Barclay Livker, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

(Read more weird news at www.WeirdUniverse.net; send items to WeirdNews@earthlink.net, and P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679.)