November is tax-publicizing season in Finland, where, starkly unlike America, the government releases all individuals' tax records to help build public support for the country's vast welfare state. Thus, reported Foreign Policy magazine, Finnish society gets a "yearly dose of schadenfreude" ... "opening the door for a media frenzy of gossip, boasting and fingerpointing" about "fair share" and who's more worthy. A few, however, proudly pay high Finnish taxes as a "badge of patriotism," rejecting common tax shelters. "We've received a lot of help from society," said one homegrown (and wealthy) entrepreneur, "and now it is our turn to pay back." [Foreign Policy, 11-5-2014]

-- Steve Soifer, CEO of an international support group for people with "shy bladders," excoriated DirecTV in November for its series of commercials featuring Rob Lowe, whose "awkward" character in one ad stands at a urinal and says, "Fact: I can't go with other people in the room." Soifer says the ad ridicules a serious problem -- and compared it to "making fun" of a man missing an arm or leg. [Associated Press via New York Daily News, 11-4-2014]

-- The Power of One Sensitive Soul: (1) Lt. Col. Sherwood Baker was turned away from Adams High School in Rochester, Michigan, in September by a guard who said a school official sent word that Baker was not allowed in to discuss his daughter's class schedule until he changed to civilian clothes -- because "a student" might be offended by his military uniform. (The Rochester school superintendent later apologized.) (2) The British Embassy in Washington, D.C., apologized twice in August, first a tongue-in-cheek "apology" for England's War of 1812 attack on the White House and then for making that "apology" in the first place -- because of a backlash on Twitter from Americans complaining the jokey "apology" was "offensive." [Daily Mail (London), 9-11-2014] [Sky News (London), 8-25-2014]

-- David Van Vleet asked for certain supposedly public records in Tacoma, Washington, and was forced into federal court when the city turned him down. Van Vleet wanted data from the city licenses of strip club employees (dancers' stage and real names, date of birth, etc.) so that he could pray for them individually, by name, to make his appeals more effective. (In October, Judge Ronald Leighton denied Van Vleet a temporary restraining order against the city.) [KING-TV (Seattle), 10-23-2014]

-- The Washington, D.C., restaurant Second State recently added an accessory to its bar menu -- "hand-cut rock," i.e., "artisanal" ice, for $1 extra (but free in premium drinks). The local supplier Favourite Ice assures that its frozen water contains no calcium to cloud it and, with a heavy-duty band-saw blade, "hand-cuts" 200-to-300-pound blocks into the cubes that ultimately wind up in the glass. A Favourite Ice founder said his frozen water resists drink-weakening longer than ordinary cubes do. [NPR, 10-21-2014]

Daniela Liverani, 24, of Edinburgh, Scotland, and British singer Katie Melua recently survived inadvertent, grotesque ordeals hosting, respectively, a three-inch leech and a spider. The leech had found its way into Liverani's nose during an Asian backpacking trip and had poked part-way out several times (though Liverani had assumed it was a nosebleed clot and "sniffed (it) back up"). When she finally saw a doctor in October, she said, the leech played peek-a-boo for a half-hour until the doctor grabbed it with tweezers. Melua's tiny spider apparently lived in her ear for a week, creating a constant "rustling" noise until her doctor vacuumed it out. She guessed that it came in through old earbud headphones on an airline flight. (Her spokesperson said the singer had no hard feelings and had released the spider into her garden.) [Daily Record (London), 10-12-2014] [The Guardian (London), 11-2-2014]

-- The law finally caught up, partially, to squatter Darrell Beatty in September, as he was charged with grand larceny for forging a deed to a home owned by Jennifer Merin, 70, in Laurelton, New York. However, he bailed out of jail on Oct. 22 and immediately returned to the house. In fact, Beatty's two sons had remained "at home" even while Beatty was locked up. The home has been in Merin's family since 1930. "Mind-boggling," she said. [New York Daily News, 11-4-2014]

-- The Law Works in Strange Ways: (1) The Gothamist news site reported in October that bicyclist John Roemer, who was rear-ended by a driver in Brooklyn in May (and whose intensive-care bill was paid by the driver's insurance company), is now being sued by the driver in small claims court for $2,000 damage to her car. (2) In November, a civil court in Lindau, Germany, ordered Rory Gray to pay Dr. Daniel Ubani for calling Ubani "an animal" (for having injected Gray's father with 10 times a drug's safe dose in 2008, which led to his death). The court found the epithet unwarranted and ordered Gray to help pay Ubani's legal expenses. [The Gothamist, 10-16-2014] [BBC News, 11-7-2014]

-- The owner of the world's largest corn maze (63 acres), at Cool Patch Pumpkins in Dixon, California, told Sacramento's KOVR-TV in October that "several" times this season, visitors have called 911 to come get them out of the maze. Said owner Matt Cooley, "When it's dark, all you see is corn." (Also, two months earlier, an emergency crew in Braintree, England, was forced to use special equipment to find and rescue an elderly woman who had fallen while inside the 10-acre Blake House Craft Centre maze.) [KOVR-TV, 10-30-2014] [Essex Chronicle, 8-20-2014]

-- Cliches Come to Life: (1) In a $460,000 police-brutality settlement with the city of Birmingham, Alabama, in October, plaintiff Anthony Warren will receive $1,000, with the rest going to his lawyers. (The un-angelic Anthony is serving 20 years for running over an officer during a high-speed car chase in 2008; he took a beating once officers caught him.) (2) Condemned California inmate Steven Homick, 74, finally took his last breath on Nov. 5 -- more than 29 years after committing the two murders that put him on death row. However, Homick died of natural causes (the 65th condemned California man to go that way in the last 35 years). [Reuters, 10-22-2014] [Associated Press via KPIX-TV (San Francisco), 11-5-2014]

(1) "Dwarf Stripper Gets Bride Pregnant on Her (Bachelorette) Night" (an October report from the LasCincoDelDia website in Spain after the husband was surprised that "his" wedding-night consummation resulted in a baby born with dwarfism). (2) "Man's 'Drugs Test Trick' Foiled by Pregnancy" (a November report from Egypt's Al-Yawm al-Sabi website on a male bus driver who tried to game a drug test by using his wife's urine, only to inadvertently discover that he would soon become a father). [Daily Telegraph (London), 10-13-2014] [BBC News, 11-4-2014]

Employees of the Marshalls department store in Longmont, Colorado, said they had been hearing noises but were unable to locate the source for several days until finally, on Nov. 10, they summoned firefighters, who tore out an interior wall and freed a weak, injured Paul Felyk, 35, who had been trapped between that wall and an exterior wall after falling through the roof. A scrawled note near him was three days old. Burglary charges were filed against Felyk, who has a substantial rap sheet. [KDVR-TV (Denver), 11-14-2014]

The desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula are fine-grained and smooth -- unable to be used in manufacturing or, especially, the concrete industry, which is crucial to the massive upscale developments in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and other countries. Nor does desert sand work for beach restoration in the United States and other areas -- because it blows away so easily. The resultant "sand crisis," with various countries bidding against Middle Easterners for the Earth's sea sand (described in a November New York Times essay), sounds much more severe than the first time News of the Weird mentioned (in 2007) how relatively easy it is, contrary to cliche, to sell sand to Arabs. [New York Times, 11-4-2014]

Thanks This Week to Elaine Weiss, Peter Burkholder, Gary Goldberg, Charles Hamilton, Jim Weber, and Russell Bell, 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.)

In October, another premier world sports event reached its climax, with one team left standing, rewarded for months of grueling practices, to the cheers of adoring, frenzied fans. The "world series" of professional team computer games was settled on a stage in a packed, 40,000-seat stadium in Seoul before three gigantic TV screens and an Internet audience of millions. The powerhouse Samsung White team out-moused and -keyboarded the Chinese champions at "League of Legends" (which 27 million gamers worldwide play every day), using its fantasy characters to destroy opponents' bases. The winning team took home $1 million of corporate money, but future earnings should escalate when idolized world-class players unionize and swing merchandising endorsement deals. [New York Times, 10-19-2014; Playboy, November 2014]

-- Carnell Alexander at one point owed about $60,000 in child support for a kid he did not father (according to a DNA test) and knew nothing about, but despite "successfully" challenging the claim 20 years ago, he still owes about $30,000. The mother who accused him long ago admitted lying (in that naming a "father" was necessary to get welfare benefits), and while a judge thus wiped out Alexander's debt to her, the state of Michigan nonetheless still demands that Alexander repay benefits it had paid to the mother. [WXYZ-TV (Detroit), 10-27-2014]

-- America's largest pornography website, PornHub.com, decided recently to erect a public billboard prominently encouraging the use of its service, first selecting as its location the New York City neighborhood formerly the smut epicenter of the city, Times Square. However, that area is now respectably tourist-friendly, and the billboard had to be relocated -- to Los Angeles' West Hollywood, near the headquarters of PornHub's parent, MindGeek. The sign features a person's two thumbs and fingers forming a rough version of a heart, beside the message (inspired by a Beatles song), "All You Need Is Hand." [LA Weekly, 10-31-2014]

(1) Literature professor Thomas Docherty was back at work in October following his nine-month suspension from the University of Warwick for "inappropriate sighing" during meetings with a senior colleague, along with "making ironic comments" and "negative body language." (2) In October, Andrew Davies, 51, was ordered by magistrates in High Wycombe, England, not to lie down in public places anymore (unless genuinely stricken by emergency). Previously, he had a habit of making bogus "999" (911) calls to get attention, and when police confiscated his phone, he began compensating by lying in roads until compassionate passersby called for ambulances. [Daily Telegraph, 10-24-2014] [Daily Mirror, 10-30-2014]

More than 6 million students have downloaded the new iPhone app PhotoMath to solve Algebra I and Algebra II problems by pointing the phone's camera at a printed equation. The answer, and the explanation, quickly appear on a screen, as a teaching tool -- or for the students to show "their" work if PhotoMath is used on exam questions. The Croatia-based developer told the Quartz website in October that it is working on upgrades for higher-level math equations (though no relief is in sight for those chronically pesky "word problems"). Meanwhile, the debate has been triggered over whether PhotoMath is a dynamic technological advance in education -- or a cheating-enabler. [Quartz, 10-31-2014; CultofMac.com, 11-7-2014]

-- Neighbors in the Mandarin neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, complained to the city recently about a resident who scattered hundreds of mothballs -- over 400 now, at least -- around her front yard, even driving over them in her car to crush them open and extend their noxious odor. The National Pesticide Information Center warned that the mothballs were hazards to plants, wildlife, water and air, but the female resident (unnamed in a report by First Coast News) said she was forced into the tactic in order to prevent neighborhood dogs from defecating in her yard. [First Coast News (Jacksonville), 10-27-2014]

-- Celebrity Musicals: In September in Hamburg, Germany, "Charles Manson: Summer of Hate -- The Musical," opened at the Thalia Theater, covering the influences and failed musical career of the man convicted in the notorious 1969 Sharon Tate murders. And "I Am Stephon Marbury," a musical featuring the former star NBA basketball player, ran for 11 nights in September in Beijing, where the popular Marbury has led the Beijing Ducks to national basketball championships the last two seasons. Marbury has a role onstage in what is described as a parable about pursuing one's dreams. [Los Angeles Times, 10-1-2014; New York Times, 8-28-2014]

-- The most challenging toys this holiday season might be the series of furry human innards from the U.S. firm I Heart Guts -- not just the soft and cuddly pancreas, brain and prostate, but especially the rectum. Each part is packaged with a cheekily written educational description explaining its importance (the rectum being "the butt of many jokes" yet with "a serious role" in waste disposal as the "fecal loading dock"), and each sells for about $20. [Yahoo News, 11-6-2014]

(1) Richard Shear, 28, was arrested in Muskegon County, Michigan, in October after an apparent violent episode with his mother and girlfriend. Shear had allegedly threatened the two, slashed an SUV tire, and tried to burn down their home with gasoline and a lit candle -- but when it was time to flee the premises, hopped on his moped, ensuring his flight from police would be a short one. (2) A woman (described only as "robust") in Darmstadt, Germany, fled with the equivalent of about $125 from a pharmacy in October and is still at large. According to the police report, she swiped money from two cash registers by twice lifting her shirt and squirting breast milk at a clerk as a diversion. [WXMI-TV (Grand Rapids, Mich.), 10-27-2014] [The Local (Berlin), 10-28-2014]

The Washington, D.C., school system last year declared Avery Gagliano, 13, a habitual truant whose parents somehow require special training to ensure her attendance. The eighth-grader was a straight-A student at Alice Deal Middle School, but also a piano prodigy selected for prestigious world exhibitions -- which caused her to exceed the maximum 10 "unexcused" absences that trigger the assignment of a truancy officer and a series of relentless threats against the parents (which ultimately provoked them to withdraw Avery and this season to home-school her). (In October, following a Washington Post account, D.C.'s governing council honored Avery in a public ceremony, and the D.C. schools chancellor overnight began begging the Gaglianos to bring Avery and her suddenly "excused" absences back to school.) [Washington Post, 9-8-2014, 10-7-2014]

(1) Sean Johnson, 19, was arrested in Brooksville, Florida, in October at the Wal-Mart after he was spotted at about 3 p.m. taking a toy stuffed horse into the bedding department and masturbating with it. (2) Paul Mountain, 38, pleaded guilty to burglary in Darwen, England, in October -- accused by a homeowner whose shed was vandalized. Among the damaged items was a teddy bear streaked with semen. Mountain told officers that he was coming down off of an amphetamine high and felt an "overwhelming need for sexual relief." [WFLA-TV (Tampa), 10-14-2014] [Lancashire Telegraph, 10-11-2014]

-- Daniel Rice, 21, on the lam from jailers in Muscatine, Iowa, found himself in nearby Rock Island, Illinois, according to his 911 call to emergency personnel there. Rice had made his way to the Loud Thunder Forest Preserve, where he thought he could safely hole up, but reported that he was being chased by a pack of wild coyotes and begged for help. [WQAD-TV (Davenport, Iowa), 10-24-2014]

-- Jamie Brown, 29, stole a fish tank from a hardware store in Leeds, England, in August (thus violating a previous hardware-store stayaway order) and made a run for it, but had to be rescued by police and emergency personnel after he stopped to urinate in a bush -- and, inadvertently, directly onto a wasps' nest. Police said he later spent six very unpleasant hours at Leeds General Infirmary. [Daily Mirror (London), 8-12-2014]

Thanks This Week to Robert Zimmer and Cindy Hildebrand, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Amanda Collins, 28, took "beauty pageant mom" to the next level (down) earlier this year when she entered her daughter Luna in Britain's UK Princess and Prince International -- based entirely on Luna's ultrasound scan at age 20 weeks. Said Collins, "As soon as I saw her image on the screen ... I knew she was a stunner." Contest officials had accepted the scan application, and six weeks after birth, Luna was named runner-up in the Princess and Prince, and on top of that, four weeks later, runner-up in Miss Dreams UK. "All she has to do," said Collins, "is lie in my arms and smile as I stroll down the catwalk." [Daily Mail (London), 10-26-2014]

-- In September, at the annual 10-day Phuket Vegetarian Festival in Thailand (ostensibly promoting abstinence from eating meat), dozens of men pierced and sliced their mouths, cheeks and arms in religious devotion in a spectacle which, though blood-drenched, was supposedly free of pain (and subsequent scars) because the fanatics were in God-imposed trances. The display supposedly brings "good health, peace of mind and spiritual cleansing," and includes walking on hot coals and climbing blade-embedded ladders (both barefoot, of course), all to the accompaniment of fireworks and the ear-shattering pounding of drums. [Huffington Post UK, 9-29-2014]

-- Brad Culpepper played defensive tackle for nine NFL seasons and, not surprisingly, applied for disability when he retired, since his medical folder listed 14 MRIs, head and knee trauma and neurological and vision problems -- which resulted in doctors declaring him "89 percent" disabled and the Fairmont Premier insurance company giving him a $175,000 settlement. Fairmont sued recently to get its money back, claiming that Culpepper is, and was, "exquisitely fit," as evidenced by a September 2013 Tampa Bay Times feature on his gym workouts, and in his having earned a martial-arts Black Belt, and in his participation for 14 days in the grueling TV series "Survivor: Blood vs. Water" in 2013. [Tampa Bay Times, 9-17-2014, 9-19-2013]

-- Angry taxpayers and retail customers sometimes protest their debt by paying the bill with containers of coins (especially pennies), but what if a company did that to a customer? A court had ruled that Adriana's Insurance Services in Rancho Cucamonga, California, had unjustifiably ejected (and assaulted) 74-year-old Andres Carrasco from its office when he complained about a canceled policy, and ordered Adriana's to pay him about $21,000. Consequently, in August, the still-irritated company dropped off at least 16 buckets full of coins at the customer's lawyer's office. [Los Angeles Times, 8-6-2014]

-- Several News of the Weird stories mentioned Body Dysmorphic Disorder sufferers who sought the ultimate treatment: amputation of healthy body parts on irrationally aesthetic grounds, led by castration-desiring men. Now, 15-year-old Danielle Bradshaw of Tameside, England, also wants a useful leg amputated -- but not irrationally. Her "developmental dysplasia" caused the amputation of her useless right leg, but the resultant stress on the left one has weakened it, and besides, having taken up competitive running, she wants Oscar Pistorius-style blades instead of her current prosthesis, which slows her down. However, no hospital has yet agreed to perform the surgery, considering the leg's continued functionality and Bradshaw's young age. [Daily Mail (London), 9-18-2014]

-- (1) News of the Weird's stuck-in-chimney stories usually involve burglaries gone wrong, but when Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa, 30, was rescued by firefighters in a Thousand Oaks, California, chimney in October, it appeared only that she was unwantedly trying to visit an ex-boyfriend. (The police report diplomatically had her intent as "unclear.") (2) In August, John Lind, 34, became the most recent frustrated admirer so infatuated with a co-worker that he was moved to ejaculate multiple times on her desk and into her coffee cup. He said he wanted her to "notice" him. [KTLA-TV (Los Angeles), 10-19- 2014] [WCCO-TV (Minneapolis), 9-3-2014]

-- The most recent "segregated sidewalks" dispute in a community with a large, strict Orthodox Jewish population occurred in September in the English town of Stamford Hill, when Haredi Jews, trying to remove temptations, placed sidewalk signs (for an upcoming parade) reading, in English and Hebrew, "Women should please walk along this side of the road only" (since sect members are forbidden even to brush against people of the opposite sex except for close relatives). The Hackney council ordered the signs removed because befuddled, sometimes outraged, non-Haredis complained. [London Evening Standard, 9-19-2014]

Florida is well-known not just for its "stand your ground" defense to the use of deadly force, but to the pro-gun interpretation given it by some judges and juries. On the other extreme, however, the legislature has enacted an unusually severe penalty for any "aggravated assault" that includes gunfire -- a "mandatory minimum" of 20 years in prison. Lee Wollard, now 59, faces a 2028 release date because he fired a warning shot into the wall of his home in 2006 to scare off his 16-year-old daughter's boyfriend, who was threatening the girl. Judge Donald Jacobsen said in court that he disagreed with his own sentence, but that his oath required him to impose it. (In a similar 2012 News of the Weird Florida domestic violence "warning shot" case, Marissa Alexander, 31, remains in prison with a release date of 2032.) [CBS News, 10-5-2014]

-- Though Americans seem sensitive to the issue of government's use of "science" in policy-making, some agencies in Iceland believe it irrelevant (as News of the Weird mentioned in a 2009 item in which Alcoa was required to prove it was protecting Iceland's underground "hidden people" before it was permitted to build a smelting plant). In September 2014, the municipal government of Fljotsdalsherad accepted its own official "truth" commission's findings that the legendary Icelandic sea monster Lagarfljotsormur actually exists. (The monster, about 100 yards long, has been seen slithering as recently as 2012. Government critics accused the council of pandering for tourism business.)

-- In the most recent incident in which a driver actually ran over himself, a man in Aurora, Colorado, suffered life-threatening injuries on October 26 when, as he backed out of his driveway, his front driver's side tire ran over his head. He had jumped out the door to avoid a lit cigarette that had fallen into his jacket, and as he fell, he landed underneath the driver's door as the van continued slowly in reverse.

-- News of the Weird first mentioned the breakthrough treatment of "fecal transplants" in 2000 (to remedy the brutal diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile infections) -- in which large-intestine bacteria of a healthier relative is delivered to the patient's gut -- so that healthy bacteria kill off the germs causing the diarrhea. However, the procedure is awkward and inconvenient and requires a colonoscopy to deliver. Recently, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital tried an alternative: placing healthy transplant poop into 30 large, stomach-acid-resistant capsules, to be ingested by mouth over two days. The regimen worked remarkably well for 14 of 20 patients, and for four of the remaining six on a second try. [NPR, 10-11-2014]

-- Sisters Martine and Louise Fokkens, 71, have finally retired as prostitutes in Amsterdam after 50-year careers. ("Fokkens" is their "stage" name, supposedly translated as "old whores" in Dutch.) Louise has not worked since 2010 because of arthritis, but appeared with Martine in a 2012 documentary and in October 2014 reminisced for the Jewish news agency JTA. The industry changed, anyway, Louise said. Amsterdam's "working girls" are now all foreign and young, and the clients are tourists instead of locals. Back then, she said, "Our life in the business (was) a source of pride." [JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) (New York), 10-8-2014]

(1) Ashley Tull, 30, was arrested in Selbyville, Delaware, in October after her 4-year-old daughter showed up at Hickory Tree Child Care Center with more than 200 baggies of heroin in her backpack, innocently sharing them with classmates. (2) Chula Vista, California, police officers in August rescued a woman and her adult daughter, who had screamed to 911 that they were trapped in the mother's bedroom, unable to leave because her house cat had turned bad and was "guarding" the door. (Officers repeatedly called "Cuppy" by name, softly, until he finally walked away.) [WCAU-TV (Philadelphia), 10-7-2014] [KGTV (San Diego), 8-12-2014]

Thanks This Week to Donovan Weimar, Shannon Russ, Steven Lobejko, Jim Peterson, David Walker and Perry Levin, and the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisers.