An unarmed man, suspected of no crime, who three years ago was shot 16 times by police while lying in his bed, told a Seattle Times reporter in March that he bears no ill will for the cops who shot him. Said Dustin Theoharis, now 32, "Sometimes (police) make mistakes." Theoharis was napping in a friend's house in Puyallup, Washington, when police arrived to arrest the friend's son, and when Theoharis reached for his ID, one officer imagined a gun, and the two officers opened fire, hitting Theoharis in the jaw, both upper arms, both lower arms, wrist, hand, shoulder, abdomen and both legs. He spent months in a hospital and skilled nursing facility and today is largely immobile and unable to work. (He "won" legal settlements totaling $5.5 million, but one-third went to lawyers, and much of the rest has paid medical bills.) [Seattle Times, 3-21-2015]

-- Update: According to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, it appears that some of the 2016 Summer Olympics aquatic events will take place among floating household trash and raw sewage in Guanabara Bay (although Mayor Eduardo Paes noted to the Associated Press in March that the events are scheduled for the "cleanest part" of the bay). To acquire the games, organizers had promised a massive cleanup, but now, with 500 days to go, Paes conceded that the goals will not be met and that, indeed, infrastructure improvements still have not halted the sewage flow into the bay. [Associated Press, 3-23-2015]

-- Despite the skepticism of a few tech writers, the Internet pornography super-site Pornhub insists that it is developing a wristband that stores energy (enough to power a cellphone) that can be generated by the "up and down" motion of masturbation. Pornhub announced in February that it will soon begin recruiting human testers for its Wankband. [Pornhub press release via New York Daily News, 2-28-2015]

-- According to the 17-year-old bicyclist who was broadsided by a motorist at rush hour in Sheffield, England, on March 6, a woman at first alighted from the car to help. However, upon seeing the extent of the cyclist's injuries, she apologized and walked away, telling the sprawled-out victim that her children were in the car and would be "scared" to see all that blood -- and so she would drive them on to school. (Witnesses provided a description of the vehicle, but the hit-and-run driver was still at large.) [Huffington Post UK, 3-12-2015]

-- Trying to stake out a position on the Paris murders of the staff of Charlie Hebdo magazine, Pope Francis in January told an audience during his Philippines tour that freedom of speech is important, but that there are limits. "If my good friend Dr. (Alberto) Gasbarri (who organized the pope's visit and was standing at his side) says a curse word against my mother," Francis said, "he can expect a punch." He then "threw" a mock "punch" toward Gasbarri. (The Vatican press office was later moved to clarify that violence in God's name can never be justified.) [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 1-15-2015]

Super-Protective Parenting: Standardized placement exams are typically far more determinative of student success in Asian countries than the United States, and in March in some testing centers in India's Bihar state, "traditional" rampant cheating became grotesque. Dozens of parents were seen climbing outside walls of one center (to pass answers and notes to the students), reminiscent of movie depictions of Santa Anna's army scaling the walls of the Alamo. The week-long secondary school exams, testing 1.4 million students, had early-on seen 400-plus students expelled, nine bags of cheat sheets confiscated, and at least seven parents arrested. However, officials admitted that their security forces were overmatched by parents desperate to assist their children. [BBC News, 3-19-2015]

Chicago's WGN-TV was forced to apologize in March for a misjudgment in booking its "Morning Show" after an unconventional "circus" performer, in a live-television publicity segment, took a power saw to a metal box affixed to her crotch. "Dancer" Shana Vaughan-Gabor, of the Cirque De La Femme, created a dazzling shower of sparks, provoking the male host to first demand that the camera cut away, but then admitting, "I've been waiting my whole life to meet a woman like this." In the follow-up segment, a group of children who had witnessed the scene used descriptions like "creepy" and "stinky," but Vaughan-Gabor later urged the station to "save the children from 'boring' (entertainment)." [Daily Mail (London), 3-18-2015]

In March, the Administrative Office of the Courts revealed a slight increase in federal litigation in 2014, but a much larger increase in prisoner lawsuits. Leading the upturn was Dale Maisano, 63, serving 15 years for aggravated assault, who last year alone filed 3,613 cases concerning his Florence, Arizona, facility. Counting previous prison stints, Maisano has filed 6,076 complaints against various officials and prison system health-care providers. (In a 2014 USA Today report, Maisano volunteered that he himself "could use some mental health help.") [Washington Post, 3-20-2015]

In March, the investment bank Credit Suisse Group AG agreed to pay $16.25 million to settle a client's charges that Credit Suisse gave faulty investment advice on two acquisitions by Freeport-McMoRan (one of the world's largest producers of copper and gold). Actually, according to a Wall Street Journal report, Freeport will receive only $10 million in cash. The remaining amount it agreed to accept, to make up for Credit Suisse's faulty advice, is $6.25 million worth of future investment advice. [Wall Street Journal, 3-17-2015]

Ion Productions of Cincinnati is eager to sell "the world's first commercially available hand-held flamethrower" -- the XM42, which could shoot 25-foot flames and costs between $700 and $800. Ion announced in March that it was seeking additional funding, touting the device's uses ("killing insects," "eliminating weeds between pavement cracks," "melting snow," "entertaining friends") and assuring potential buyers that portable flamethrowers are less regulated than handguns. (Only California and Maryland legislators, and a few city or county officials, appear to be on top of the issue of amateur flame-throwing.) [Washington Post, 3-22-2015]

Police in Grandville, Michigan, arrested David Slovinski, 51, following a pair of January incidents in which he approached employees of Meijer stores and showed them cellphone photos of his genitals. Slovinski, already a "sexually delinquent person" under the law, was on a GPS monitor during the incidents. He later told a police investigator that he knew what he was doing was wrong, but that showing his penis to people "cheers me up when I'm feeling down." [MLive.com (Grand Rapids), 3-19-2015]

Recurring Theme: Perpetrators on the run frequently, unintentionally reveal their whereabouts by their need to show off on social media, but Christopher Wallace has reached legendary show-off status. Being sought in connection with a January burglary, he went to his home in Fairfield, Maine -- and posted on the Snapchat site that that's where he was. Police arrived and, during their canvass, noticed a brand-new Snapchat post from Wallace -- mischievously writing that police were in his home right then, searching for him, but that he was cunningly hiding in a cabinet. Police opened the cabinet and arrested him. [Associated Press via Morning Sentinel (Waterville, Maine), 3-24-2015]

In mid-April (2010), senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi issued a warning that then-recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and elsewhere were caused by women's loose sex and immodest dress. Immediately, Australian Jennifer McCreight began campaigning worldwide, urging women to dress provocatively on April 26, to create "boobquake" to test the cleric's theory, and at least 90,000 women pledged to reveal scandalous cleavage on that date. On April 26, a Richter-scale 6.5 quake did in fact hit just south of Taiwan. (Tempering the ayatollah's "victory," a Purdue University seismologist observed that a 6.5 quake was not uncommon for that region). [Courier-Mail (Brisbane)-AFP, 4-17-10; Indianapolis Star, 4-28-10]

Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks, Robert Coleridge, Bruce Leiserowitz, Kathryn Wood, and Crystal Hipkins, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Researchers are now preparing a study seeking to confirm that dog slobber, by itself (and not just the psychological advantages of playing with and petting a dog), might provide human health benefits (such as relief from asthma, allergies and inflammation). Specialists from the University of Arizona and University of California San Diego point to existing evidence of the comparative healthiness of dog-owning families and suspect that canine saliva, like yogurt, may have unusual probiotic value. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 3-17-2015]

-- India Justice: Since News of the Weird last visited the judicial backlog in India (2013), the problem has worsened. The open caseload grew to 31,367,915 by the end of that year -- a quantity that, if all of the country's judges, working around the clock, each resolved 100 cases an hour, it would still take 35 years to clear. Bloomberg Business Week reported in January that lawyers needlessly fatten the backlog with multiple filings, mainly to jack up their fees (and thus encouraging "extortion threats," in place of "law," as the preferred method of resolving disputes). [Bloomberg Business Week, 1-8-2015]

-- Death-penalty opponents have long sought a clear-cut case in which an obviously innocent person was wrongfully executed, and unsurprisingly, the great state of Texas appears about to provide that, in Cameron Todd Willingham (convicted in 1992 and executed in 2004). Since his trial, the arson evidence "proving" murder has been thoroughly discredited, and recently an ex-cellmate's 1996 letter surfaced -- demanding that his own prosecutor comply with the sentence-reduction he was promised if he claimed that Willingham had "confessed" to him (and in fact the cellmate's sentence was substantially reduced after he wrote the letter, though the cellmate later appeared grievously remorseful). Prosecutor John Jackson is facing a state investigation for not disclosing the sentencing promise before trial. [Washington Post, 3-9-2015]

-- Elf Justice: Public policymaking in the United States is often gridlocked by recalcitrant ideologues, but at least administrators are not constrained by elves, as in Iceland. After seven years of controversy, the country's Road Administration recently approved a new pathway near Reykjavik that had been delayed by a troublesome, 70-ton boulder in the right-of-way -- which could not be dislodged because it is believed to be a "church" for the country's legendary "hidden people." The elves' leading spokeswoman, Ragnhildur Jonsdottir, finally declared, to officials' relief, that the elves had accepted the boulder's relocation (to the side of the road), having "been preparing for this for a long time, moving their energy to the new location." [mbl.is (Reykjavik), 3-18-2015]

-- Four weeks ago, News of the Weird noted that a United Nations representative opposed a suggestion to open certain meetings to the public, fearing that it would only invite spectators in the gallery to throw "mayonnaise" at the delegates. However, two months earlier (and unknown to News of the Weird), the Belgian prime minister, defending his country's austerity measures, had faced a group of protesters who had rained upon him french fries topped with mayonnaise. [Daily Mail (London), 12-22-2014]

-- Three months ago, News of the Weird highlighted a London man's agreement to pay the equivalent of $500 for surgery on a nondescript office-aquarium goldfish, to relieve its constipation. Subsequently, however, veterinarians in Scotland (charging the equivalent of $750) performed cancer surgery on two goldfish, and in September 2014, in Melbourne, Australia, a goldfish received "brain surgery" (for the apparent bargain of $200). [Newser.com, 3-20-2015, 9-16-2014]

-- Japan may have its cat restaurants (where loaner felines lounge during meals) and even its penguin bar in Ikebukuro, and London (as reported here a month ago) an experimental owl cafe (with specially domesticated birds perched on diners' shoulders), but not to be outdone, an entrepreneur in Seoul, South Korea, guesses that his Thanks to Nature Cafe will be a big hit -- with sheep wandering through the dining room. (After all, according to the lunar calendar, 2015 is the Chinese zodiac Year of the Sheep.) Owner Lee Kwang-ho said his novel business model has attracted visitors from Macedonia, Saudi Arabia and New Zealand, among other countries. [The Independent (London), 2-6-2015]

-- Home Unimprovement: Recent cases to add to the classic "Don't DIY" Files: (1) Fred Horne of Columbus, Ohio, burned down his house in February trying to smoke the bedbugs out of his couch. Only that one piece of furniture caught fire, but carrying it out of the house, Horne got stuck in a doorway, and the blaze spread. (2) Near Darwin, Australia, in February, an unnamed woman living in an RV came face-to-face with a snake and decided to encourage the serpent to leave -- by lighting a fire beneath the RV's floor. The vehicle was destroyed but, said the police superintendent, "we don't know what happened to the snake." [WBNS-TV (Columbus), 2-4-2015] [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 2-25-2015]

-- Supporting the Troops: Federal law prohibits foreclosures and repossessions (unless by court order) against active-duty military members, but Americans would hardly know that from observing creditors. A 2012 Government Accountability Office report found at least 15,000 violations by U.S. financial institutions, small and large, including J.P. Morgan Chase (violations News of the Weird reported in 2011). In February, auto lender Santander Consumer USA agreed to pay $9.35 million to settle charges that it illegally seized cars of 760 service members (some while deployed in war zones) over the last five years. [New York Times, 2-26-2015]

-- Smash-Mouth Competition: Dentist Leopold Weinstein, 63, was arrested in February in Camarillo, California, and charged with suspicion of setting fire to three competing dental offices (one for the fourth time). One victim said the arsonist even drilled holes in the roof and poured in gasoline to accelerate the blaze. (Later in February, in Hua Hin, Thailand, a 36-year-old woman was arrested for scattering screws on a busy street in order to increase business for her husband's tire shop.) [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 2-2-2015] [Khaosod English (Bangkok), 2-25-2015]

-- Artists Working in the Medium of Silicone: Padge-Victoria Windslowe, a "Gothic hip-hop" performer known as "Black Madam" who carried out buttocks-enhancement procedures on the side ("thousands," she bragged) using industrial-grade silicone (and Krazy Glue to seal the injection site), was convicted in Philadelphia in March of the third-degree murder of one "patient" whose silicone leaked to her lungs. During the trial, Windslowe told the jury she had been called the "Michelangelo of buttocks injections" -- though the reigning overachiever still appears to be Ron Oneal Morris, some of whose patients achieved higher booty-circumference numbers. (Morris is awaiting trial in Miami on manslaughter charges.) [Associated Press via Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, N.J.), 3-9-2015]

(1) Devin Gesell, 17, and two underage accomplices are the most recent burglars to make off with a deceased person's ashes, believing they had swiped cocaine. Disappointment resulted from the very first taste, and the cremains were immediately tossed from the getaway car. (St. Peters, Missouri, March). (2) A 35-year-old woman became the most recent to get stuck climbing down a chimney, but she wasn't a would-be burglar. She was trying to enter the house of a former boyfriend (and father of her three children), who had forbidden her presence in the home. (Also, she was naked, perhaps to assist her descent.) (Woodcrest, California, January) [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 3-6-2015] [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 1-3-2015]

Too-Swift Justice: It is not unheard of for someone to commit a crime and then immediately surrender, usually for safety or the comfort of a jail cell. However, Gerard Cellette Jr., 44, tried to be even more helpful. Knowing that he would soon be arrested (and probably convicted) for running a $53 million Ponzi scheme in the Minneapolis area, he walked into a county judge's chambers in December (2009) and offered to begin serving time. The judge explained patiently that Cellette would have to wait until he was arrested and charges were filed and a plea recorded -- which would all take time. (He was disappointed but 12 months later was sentenced to eight years in prison.) [Star Tribune, 12-9-2009, 12-13-2010]

Thanks This Week to Alan Magid, Mark Hiester, Mel Birge, Gary Goldberg, and Tracy Westen, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Even dangerous felons sometimes serve short sentences, but Benito Vasquez-Hernandez, 58 -- guilty of nothing -- has been locked up for nearly 900 days (as of early March) as a "material witness" in a Washington County, Oregon, murder case. The prosecutor is convinced that Vasquez-Hernandez saw his own son, Eloy, murder a woman in 2012, and the case is on hold until the victim's body is found. The judge has given Vasquez-Hernandez two opportunities to leave, both impractical (pay a $500,000 bond or give a video deposition, but he speaks no English, is illiterate in Spanish and, said his lawyer, might be mentally incompetent). (Consolation: Material witnesses in Oregon earn $7.50 a day.) [The Oregonian, 3-12-2015]

-- The trendy St. Pauli neighborhood in historic Hamburg, Germany, suffers its share of uncouth revelers who wander out from nightclubs seeking restroom facilities but too often choose walls of storefronts and private homes, reported London's The Guardian in a March dispatch. The solution, according to the civic group IG St. Pauli: paint jobs with an "intensely hydrophobic" product known as Ultra-Ever Dry," which somewhat propels liquid aimed at it right back toward the source by creating an air barrier on the surface. In other words, said an IG St. Pauli official, it's "pee back" time, and shoes and trouser legs should expect splashes. [The Guardian, 3-4-2015]

-- We have "139 frogs, toads, lizards, turtles," Ms. Thayer Cuter told Seattle's MyNorthwest.com in March, touting her Edmonds, Washington, amphibian rescue shop, especially the heroic job done recently on Rocky, the Texas toad who came with stones in his tummy. "He had to have a lot of enemas (but) Rocky is rock-free now" and, after passing all the pebbles, is finally able to eat. Added Cuter, turtles are underrated pets, "very social" and love massages and "cuddl(ing)." [MyNorthwest.com, 3-11-2015]

-- The Job of the Researcher: Cockroaches can be bold explorers or shy and withdrawn, according to recent work by researchers at Belgium's Universite Libre de Bruxelles, who caught a bunch of them, affixed radio tags and studied their movements. "Explorers" are necessary for locating food sources, although, obviously, they are also most likely to find Roach Motels; "shy, cautious" roaches are necessary for survival and group stability, and a mixture of the types ensures cockroaches' legendary survivability. A Mother Nature News commentator wrote, hopefully, that understanding roaches' personalities might make us "less quick" to "grab a shoe." [Mother Nature News, 2-6-2015]

-- Ranson IB Middle School in Charlotte, North Carolina, has a strict dress code (requiring, for example, only "hunter green" outerwear). Thus, on Jan. 27, when parent Chanda Spates dispatched her three kids in improperly hued coats, Ranson officials confiscated the "contraband" clothing, leaving the three (along with 20 other sartorial miscreants) to make their way home after classes with no outerwear at all -- though the temperature that afternoon was in the 30s. (Following parental outrage, the administrators apologized.) [Fox News, 2-1-2015]

-- A female teacher working for the Arizona Department of Corrections was brutally assaulted in prison by a sexual predator and has sued the department, but in February the state attorney general's office, contesting the lawsuit, told the judge, basically, that the teacher understood all along that she could get attacked in prison. She was administering inmates a GED exam, but that day had no guard support, not even one to hear her screams, and was given an emergency radio tuned to an unmonitored frequency. Nonetheless, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Weisbard essentially shrugged: "The risk of harm, including assault, always exist(s) at a prison like Eyman." [The Arizona Republic, 2-4-2015]

Clueless in Florida's Panhandle: (1) Debra Mason, 58, was arrested for theft of a pickup truck in Destin, Florida, in January -- and according to police, Mason said she knew it was stolen property but "didn't think it was 'that' stolen." (2) Ten miles away in Mary Esther, Florida, in February, Robert Pursley, 54, was arrested for DUI and was asked about items in his truck. According to the police report, Pursley insisted that everything was his -- "except for anything illegal." A baggie of cocaine was in the truck's center console. [Daily News of Northwest Florida, 1-24-2015, 2-25-2015]

-- Americans Abroad: (1) American sisters Lindsey, 22, and Leslie Adams, 20, were convicted, fined and deported by Cambodia's Siem Reap Court in February after taking several nude photos of each other at the Preah Khan temple, apparently for their social media "friends." The Angkor Archaeological Park, where the temple is located, is reportedly the world's largest religious monument. (2) Two other American women were arrested in March for carving 8-inch initials into a wall at Rome's ancient Colosseum and then snapping selfies for their friends. [Phnom Penh Post, 2-9-2015] [CNN, 3-9-2015]

-- Recurring Theme: Among the most recent lives ruined by badly botched prosecutions: (1) Joseph Sledge, now 70, was released from prison in North Carolina in January after wrongly serving 36 years for a double murder; hair samples (revealing another man's DNA), long thought to be lost, were discovered in a court clerk's storage room. (2) Kirk Odom, 52, served 22 years after his wrongful Washington, D.C., conviction for rape and robbery; a court in February awarded him $9.2 million in compensation, but on the other hand, after several prison rapes, he had contracted HIV. (Odom is one of several D.C. men convicted of rape or murder based on erroneous analysis by an "elite" FBI hair-analysis unit.) [Los Angeles Times, 1-23-2015] [Washington Post, 2-28-2015]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Tyler Lankford, 21, attempting a robbery of Minerva's Bakery in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, in January, committed (according to police) the rookie mistake of laying his gun on the counter so he could pick up the money with both hands. The clerk grabbed the gun, and Lankford fled but was arrested in March. (2) There are expert counterfeiters, and then there is Cass Alder, 22, convicted by a court in Canada's Prince Edward Island of trying to pass $100 bills that had been printed on napkins but affixed by Alder onto thicker paper. [KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 3-4-2015] [The Guardian (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island), 2-25-2015]

"America's Game" Is Gaming the Government: The U.S. Treasury recently took in more than $40 billion by auctioning off part of the wireless spectrum, but one buyer -- the Dish satellite-TV provider -- got a discount worth $3.25 billion by convincing the Federal Communications Commission that it is a "very small business" (despite its market value of $34 billion). Using awe-inspiring loophole-management, Dish created a separate company in partnership with a small Alaskan Natives' group, which theoretically "managed" the company -- though the Alaskans' hands were tied by an earlier Dish-friendly contract. Thus, Dish got the benefits of being "very small" while retaining control -- a "mockery" (said one commissioner) of the FCC's simple-minded attempt to help small businesses. [New York Times, 2-25-2015]

Recent Personal Appearances: Swansea, Wales, January (Jesus in fur in a Yorkshire terrier's ear); Crowthorne, England, January (Jesus as bird poop on a car); West Kilbride, England, December (Jesus on a stone in a garden); Pocono Summit, Pennsylvania, November (Jesus on a serving of chicken breast); Polk City, Iowa, November (Mary on a tree trunk); Memphis, Tennessee, September (Jesus on a tree trunk); Fresno, California, October (Jesus in a plume of smoke in a house fire); Ecorse, Michigan, September (Jesus on a pierogi); Liberty, Texas, September (Jesus on a downed tree); Jackson County, Mississippi, May (Jesus in a rusted air-conditioner unit). Swansea: [Metro.co.uk (London), 1-19-2015] Crowthorne: [Metro.co.uk, 2-2-2015] West Kilbride: [BT.com (London), 1-2-2015] Pocono Summit: [WNEP-TV (Scranton), 11-14-2014] Polk City: [KCCI-TV (Des Moines), 11-14-2014] Memphis: [WMC-TV (Memphis), 9-24-2014] Fresno: [KSEE-TV (Fresno), 10-29-2014] Ecorse: [WXYZ-TV (Detroit), 9-7-2014] Liberty: [KHOU-TV (Houston), 9-16-2014] Jackson County: [WLOX-TV (Biloxi), 5-30-2014]

Supervisors at the Department for Work and Pensions in Carlisle, England, issued a directive in March (2010) to short-handed staff on how to ease their telephone workload during the busy mid-day period. Workers were told to pick up the ringing phone, recite a message while mimicking an answering machine ("Due to the high volume of inquiries we are currently experiencing, we are unable to take your call. Please call back later.") and immediately hang up. [News & Star (Carlisle), 3-9-2010]

Thanks This Week to Todd Ludwig and Anthony Yeznach, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.