Saudi Arabia's very first sex accessory shop (in the holy city of Mecca) should be opening soon, according to news reports -- operated by a Moroccan Muslim, backed by the German adult mega-retailer Beate Uhse, and supposedly fully compliant with Islamic law. Owner Abdelaziz Aouragh told Agence France-Presse he would stock 18 different Islam-appropriate toys for married couples, along with oils and fragrances that he said would enhance the marital experience. (He did not actually describe the toys, but ruled out U.S. mainstays such as inflatable dolls and vibrators.) One such "halal" sex shop opened in Turkey in 2013, and Aouragh's financial partner runs a similar enterprise online. [International Business Times (New York), 4-20-2015]

-- The February gun-and-baby-carrying workshop in Johnston, Iowa, was so successful that instructor Melody Lauer and CrossRoads Shooting Sports owner Tom Hudson plan more. Lauer insisted that she does not necessarily encourage a baby-holding mother to arm herself, but if she chooses to, safety would of course require that she be familiar with the tricky procedure of drawing, aiming and firing even though she might be "wearing" a baby in a sling in front of her body. Hudson, noting the fast-growing market of gun sales to women, said scheduling the workshop "was a no-brainer." [Yahoo News, 3-4-2015]

-- What is believed to be America's only hard-nosed "gang" composed only of gay and transgendered African-Americans hopes to have its story told soon by filmmakers -- who emphasize the group's transition from fighters to entrepreneurs working to establish their own clothing line, according to a March report on advocate.com. The gang, originally organized for protection ("We gonna get our respect one way or another," said one), hails from the violent Washington, D.C., Trinidad neighborhood, yet some of the 200 members (in their teens or early 20s) insist on stilettos, lipstick and mascara (while carrying knives, brass knuckles and mace). [Advocate.com, 3-9-2015]

-- Pioneering British facial surgeon Ninian Peckitt, 63, facing a Medical Practitioners Tribunal in Manchester in April, was accused by a witness of "repeatedly" having punched one patient in the face during a procedure in order to straighten a fracture. Dr. Peckitt acknowledged having used his hands to "manipulate" bones in the patient's face, calling it a routine surgery-avoiding procedure sometimes required for extensive injuries. [Daily Mail (London), 4-8-2015]

-- Suspicions Confirmed: Two airport screeners at Denver International collaborated in an ongoing ploy in which one, a male, signaled to a female colleague that he had spotted an attractive male passenger in line that he might like to grope. The female would then suddenly notice an "anomaly" in the screening and ask that passenger to stand aside so the male agent could "inspect" him further -- by genital and posterior fondling (over his clothing). The two agents were fired in February after a Transportation Security Administration investigator, having been alerted to the scheme, observed it in action. [KCNC-TV (Denver), 4-13-2015]

From Recent Florida Crime Reports: (1) Mohammed Almarri, 21, was arrested on multiple charges in Tampa on April 12 after illegally entering a neighbor's apartment in a high-rise and forcing the owner onto the balcony. For reasons undisclosed in the police report, Almarri then allegedly microwaved the man's wallet in his oven. (2) Joseph Williams, 35 (and with several pending warrants), was arrested on April 5 in Fort Pierce, Florida, after entering the emergency room at Lawnwood Regional Medical Center and Heart Institute, demanding an enema and refusing to leave until he got one. [Bay News 9 (St. Petersburg, 4-12-2015] [TCPalm.com (Stuart, Fla.), 4-14-2015]

-- In the face of jokes about proliferating airline charges, the British economy line easyJet added another fee recently. If easyJet, on its own, cancels a flight, it charges a fee of 10 British pounds (about $15) to notify third parties. The airline said that even though its own decision created the issue, it must nonetheless cover its costs to provide cancellation notices to passengers who miss connections or who need to provide verification to collect on private travel-interruption insurance. [Daily Mail (London), 4-21-2015]

-- Is This a Great Country or What? Counting only the pool of bonus money (not regular salaries), employees of New York securities industries in 2014 earned roughly twice as much as the total income paid to all employees in the United States who worked full time at the federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour). (The statistic, from a report by the Institute for Policy Studies and reinforced by a University of Michigan professor using figures from the New York State Comptroller and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was featured in a March New York Times analysis.) [New York Times, 3-13-2015]

In April, a court in Munich, Germany, ordered a dentist (identified only as "K") to pay the equivalent of about $21,000 to patient "Alex S" for pulling all of his teeth (19) over four weeks of treatments -- as the remedy for his schizophrenia and erectile dysfunction. The dentist had testified that Alex had too much bone inflammation for ordinary fillings. K made his own claim for the equivalent of about $54,000 for the damage to his professional reputation that the trial had caused, but the court rejected it. [The Local (Berlin) via Daily Mail (London), 4-17-2015]

(1) Austin Hatfield, 18, reported to an emergency room in April after being bitten on the lip by a venomous cottonmouth viper in Wimauma, Florida. According to a fish and wildlife commission spokesman, Hatfield had been keeping the recently caught snake in an ordinary pillowcase on his bed, and when it got out, Hatfield (ungracefully) recaptured it. (The bite was not fatal.) (2) According to witnesses questioned by the Jacksonville, Florida, Sheriff's Office (on the scene after shots had been reported at Murphy's Express Gas station in March), one customer had fired at another, hitting him in the foot, because he felt that the customer was staring at him while he pumped gas. [Tampa Tribune, 4-21-2015] [WJAX-TV, 3-31-2015]

Nikko Jenkins, convicted of murder in a 2013 spree and trying to avoid a scheduled sentencing hearing, recently self-mutilated (for the second time), which he told a judge in Omaha, Nebraska, was evidence of his mental disorder that should render him ineligible for death row. Jenkins told the judge that a "serpent god" had ordered him to carve the "number of the beast" into his forehead, but apparently because Jenkins was looking into a mirror as he carved, his forehead display more resembled an upside-down 999 (or a lowercase ddd) than it did 666. [Omaha World-Herald, 4-17-2015]

(1) Tidiest Animal: In a February science journal report, a University of Regensburg (Germany) professor noted that ants seem particularly orderly -- with "toilet" facilities arranged in far corners of the nests. The researcher speculated that ants keep feces on hand in order to mine nutrients. (2) Least Competent Beaver: A local logger telephoned the Agder Natural History museum in Kristiansand, Norway, in April to report that he had encountered a beaver crushed to death because it was unable to judge which way the tree it was gnawing would fall. (Usually, beavers have an uncanny ability to avoid the tree, but some stragglers still populate their gene pool.) [Los Angeles Times, 2-18-2015] [The Local (Oslo), 4-16-2015]

Enterprising reporters get stories by earning the confidence of their sources, which Simon Eroro of the Post-Courier (Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea) obviously did. At a banquet in November (2011), the News Corp. (Rupert Murdoch's empire) awarded Eroro its "Scoop of the Year" honor for reporting on militant tribal fighters of the Free West Papua movement -- and all Eroro had to do to earn the scoop was undergo a ritual circumcision, with bamboo sticks, to prove his trustworthiness. (Some of the rebels still wear penis gourds whose size varies with the status of the wearer.) [Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 11-7-2011]

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

It seemed like a good idea when the town of Celoron, New York, agreed in 2009 to pay for a bronze statue honoring the village's only celebrity. Lucille Ball had spent her childhood years there, and even today, everyone "Loves Lucy." The result was apparently a monstrosity, described in news reports as "frightening" and unrecognizable by anyone who has ever watched Lucy's TV shows or movies. The original sculptor first suggested a fee of $8,000 to $10,000 to make a better one, but after Mayor Scott Schrecengost started a fundraising campaign, the sculptor offered to make another one for free. [CNN, 4-7-2015]

-- Tough Love: A Catholic priest (unnamed in news reports) in Taranto, Italy, was removed recently after reports that, while attempting to minister to an unemployed laborer, he arranged for online role-playing in which the man was Judas and the priest dispatched him to gay orgies to be punished (for betraying Jesus) by members of the Vatican security force. [Daily Mail (London), 4-8-2015]

-- Paulo Silva, 51, facing bestiality charges in April in Framingham (Massachusetts) District Court, insisted that the charges be reduced to only attempted larceny. Yes, he was caught fondling the male purebred pit bull, but he had no sexual motivation, his lawyer explained. Actually, he said a friend of Silva's owned a female pit bull and Silva had asked the male's owner if the two dogs could mate, but when the owner declined, Silva said he was simply trying to collect the sperm himself. Judge Jennifer Stark was unmoved and set the case for trial. [Metrowest Daily News (Framingham), 4-10-2015]

In additional fallout from the budget cuts and personnel reductions at the IRS, the supervisory revenue official for the Dallas region disclosed in April that his office had so few collectors that it would pursue only scofflaws who owe the government at least $1 million. "I have to say," the supervisor told a reporter, "nobody's ever going to knock on (the) door" of anyone who owes from $100,000 to $999,999. [Washington Post, 4-8-2015]

At Australia's sixth annual National Disability Summit in Melbourne in March, all of the speakers except one were able-bodied. That person, in a wheelchair, had to be lifted up to the stage because there was no ramp. Furthermore, disabled activists in attendance told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the "disabled" section's table was at the back of the room, the food tables were elevated to accommodate standers, and one accessible toilet was being used as storage space. [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 3-26-2015]

-- German high school student Simon Schrader, 17, preparing for the all-important "Abitur" advanced-level tests to identify top-performing students, filed a formal request in April, under North Rhine-Westphalia state's generous freedom of information law, for an advance copy of the test. "I just wanted to see what they would say," he said. (He filed a little late, in that the state's deadline for responding came after most of the testing.) [The Guardian (London), 4-9-2015]

-- Raising Our Most Delicate Generation: In preparation for the National Union of Students Women's Conference in Solihull, England, in March some attendees requested that clapping for any of the speakers be discouraged, but that approval from the audience be expressed by "jazz hands" -- open hands, palm directed to the stage, and the fingers extended wildly. Using "jazz hands" would show compassion for attendees who have anxiety and other disorders, and for speakers who might be distracted by the din of approval. [BBC News, 3-24-2015]

Venezuelan women's well-known obsession with bodily beauty usually focuses on face, breasts and buttocks, and model Aleira Avendano has certainly had those surgeries. However, Avendano's signature feature is her 20-inch waist, which she says has been maintained by wearing an absurdly tight corset for 23 hours a day for the past six years. "I wash myself and rest for an hour, and then I put it on again. At first, it was terrible, then I got used to it, and (it) became a necessity." [Medical Daily, 3-30-2015]

California Law: A jury in Atascadero, California, having already convicted Mark Andrews, 51, of murder, concluded in March that he was legally sane at the time he shot his neighbor to death even though he claimed she was a vampire and that he himself had been, for 20 years, a werewolf. (A month later, a judge in San Francisco acquitted Santino Aviles, 41, of robbery and other felony charges after he claimed that the apartment he broke into was a spaceship that would take him to safety before the imminent explosion of the Earth. His lawyer called his condition a "meth-fueled psychosis," and he was convicted only of misdemeanors.) [KEYT-TV (Santa Barbara), 3-10-2015] [KPIX-TV (San Francisco, 4-9-2015]

(1) No charges were filed in the April incident in Lee County, Georgia, even though a 74-year-old woman was shot by her son-in-law. Deputies accepted the explanation that Larry McElroy shot at an armadillo with his 9mm handgun, killing it, but that the bullet ricocheted, traveled about 100 yards, first off of a fence and then through the woman's mobile home, hitting her in the back. She was not seriously hurt. (2) Robert Abercrombie became the most recent practitioner of DIY tooth extraction when he yanked out a front tooth of his 8-year-old son, Jason, by tying the tooth to his Camaro and driving away. Jason was perfectly cool with the stunt, which was captured on video and posted on the Internet. "It came out!" Jason is seen shouting joyously (and bloodily) into the camera. [WALB-TV (Albany, Ga.), 3-14-2015] [WTVT (Tampa), 4-1-2015]

Too Much Information: The most recent fatwa, announced in April by the Directorate of Religious Affairs in Turkey, declared that "toilet paper" is now acceptable for pious Muslims. The directorate had previously decreed that only water could be used for such cleaning (or, if none was available, the left hand). (Toilet etiquette, called "Qadaa al-Haajah," which obviously predates the invention of the actual "toilet," requires entrance by the left foot, exit by the right, a post-ablution prayer and, most challengingly, "no reading.") [Jerusalem Post, 4-9-2015]

Adding to the list of stories that once were captivatingly weird, but have since occurred with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (1) Desperate thieves steal what's handy, and after a botched attempt on April 8 to steal a truck, the perp grabbed the only item he could take with him as he fled. The owner told the Des Moines, Iowa, police it was a bag of to-be-discarded dog feces. (2) The first joyous "fertility" festival you heard about, where giant penis-float parades and candy souvenir phalluses are treasured by giddy children, was perhaps in Japan. Actually, several Asian nations have had their own, as News of the Weird has tried to keep up with, such as Jeju park in South Korea. Now, Taiwan is capitalizing, with the more subdued, under- construction "Romantic Boulevard" park with gardens featuring statues of copulation (animal and human) and a giant stone phallus that children seem tickled to be photographed riding on. [Des Moines Register, 4-9-2015] [Metro (London), 1-26-2015]

In June (2010), the roller coaster at the Funtown Splashdown in Saco, Maine, unexpectedly came to a halt, stranding riders for all of 15 minutes. A reportedly "furious" Eric and Tiffany Dillingham said later that their 8-year-old daughter was so frightened that she had to be taken to a hospital and had nightmares constantly since then, and a lawsuit was a possibility. (Since the purpose of a roller coaster ride is to induce fright, it was not known whether "hospital visit" and "fury" would also have ensued if the ride had been working perfectly.) [WGME-TV (Portland), 6-24-2010]

Thanks This Week to Steve Bellovin, Jim Weber, Bruce Alter, and John McGaw, 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, Bob McCabe, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Sandy Pearlman, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Peter Smagorinsky, Rob Snyder, Stephen Taylor, Bruce Townley, and Jerry Whittle).

In March, offensive lineman John Urschel of the Baltimore Ravens added to his curriculum vitae by co-authoring the latest of his several peer-reviewed academic articles -- "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians" in the Journal of Computational Mathematics. If Urschel can understand, and even advance, tangled, obtuse formulas (which use familiar numbers, e.g., 1, 2, 3, and Greek letters such as phi, lambda, and sigma -- lots of sigmas), why is he a football player, he asked himself on the Players Tribune website. "There's a rush you get when you go out on the field . . . and physically dominate the player across from you." He added, "I love hitting people." [Bloomberg Business, 3-20-2015]

-- The National Gallery of Australia hosted a special series of tours of "James Turrell: A Retrospective" in early April -- in which all guests were nude. The tours were staged by Australian artist Stuart Ringholt, who introduced the concept earlier at the Museum of Contemporary Art (and was nude, himself, for the Turrell show, though other gallery staff remained clothed). The post-tour cocktail reception was also in the nude. [ABC News, 3-26-2015]

-- The Australian "abstract expressionist" Aelita Andre began painting "professionally" at age 9 months, said her parents, and by 22 months had her own exhibit at Melbourne's Brunswick Street gallery, and by age 4, the paintbrush-armed toddler had enjoyed a $24,000 sale. She has now also distinguished herself as an "artist" of another type while explaining her approach. In April, the now-8-year-old told News.com.au, "I interpret my style of painting as a magic, abstract universe. It doesn't sit in one tiny sphere in all realism; it goes out and it explores the world." She acknowledged seeing things (e.g., "rabbits") that an 8-year-old might, but pointed out that she also sees "the cosmos." "I just feel free. I don't feel locked up in a tiny world." [News.com.au (Sydney), 4-7-2015]

-- In March, two men serving time for anti-gay murders became the first same-sex couple allowed to get married behind bars in Britain, at the Full Sutton Prison in East Yorkshire. The romance blossomed after the two men (Marc Goodwin, 31, serving life, and pedophile Mikhail Gallatinov, 40, who is eligible for release sooner) met at the prison library, and the wedding party included four relatives of the two killers. [Daily Telegraph, 3-29-2015]

-- In January, the principal of W.F. Burns Middle School in Valley, Alabama, sent home a letter to parents with her suggestions on how to train students in the event an active shooter breaks into the classroom. In order not to be "sitting ducks" for the intruder, each child was asked to be armed with an 8-ounce canned food item to toss at any potential spree-killer. The can is designed to give the student a "sense of empowerment" in the face of extreme danger, the principal told WHNT-TV of Huntsville, but acknowledged that "(T)his is a sensitive topic." [WHNT-TV, 1-12-2015]

Newly elected Alabama state Sen. Larry Stutts, in one of his first actions in office, introduced a bill to repeal "Rose's Law," a 1999 legislation that, had it been on the books the year before, might have saved the life of new mother Rose Church, whose doctor was OB/GYN Larry Stutts. Rose's Law gave new mothers a legal right to remain hospitalized for up to 96 hours after birth, depending on circumstances, but the new senator calls that right just another "Obamacare-style law" in which legislators in Montgomery intrude into doctors' decisions. (Stutts also proposed to repeal the requirement for written cautions to patients whose mammograms show unusual density.) Though her daughter survived, Rose died of a heart attack following two "doctor's decision" hospital releases, and her husband's wrongful-death lawsuit against Stutts and others reached a settlement in 2005. [Alabama Political Reporter, 3-28-2015]

-- A man in Mios, France, fired from his job several years ago, and who had been receiving unemployment benefits, suddenly found himself being dunned by the national labor agency when a tribunal finally ruled in the employer's favor and ordered the man's benefits paid back. The agency ordered the man's current employer to garnishee his paycheck of the equivalent of $160-$210 per week -- until, according to a March report on Paris's The Local, he hired a certain (unnamed) lawyer. The labor agency's new order requires the current employer, instead, to garnishee the pay by 1 centime (about a penny) a month for the next 26,126 years. [The Local (Paris), 3-30-2015]

-- Kimberly Kitchen, 45, was a successful estate lawyer in Huntington, Pennsylvania, with more than 30 clients for the BMZ Law firm (so successful in her 10-year career that she had just been promoted to partner and had served as president of the local bar association) with but one complication -- that in December she was finally revealed not to be a lawyer at all. Her diploma, bar exam results, and other documents were forgeries, according to the Pennsylvania attorney general's office, which filed charges in March. [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 3-27-2015]

Weird: Dan Kennedy of Salt Lake City was driving to work on March 31 when a large bag fell off of the truck in front of him, and, for traffic safety, he stopped to move it from the road -- and discovered it contained about 75 pounds' worth of U.S. currency (about $22,000) in a plastic bag marked with the name of the Brinks armored truck company. The bag remained sealed (any tear could have produced "leakage" weakening Brinks' claims on the loose money), and Kennedy dutifully contacted state troopers and handed it over. He sounded perplexed when Brinks immediately sent him a $5,000 gift check. "Why would I get anything for that?" "Almost anyone," he said, would have done what he did. [KSL-TV, 4-6-2015]

-- Police in Malegaon, India, seeking to reduce tensions between Muslims and Hindus over the theft and butchering of cattle (which the latter hold sacred), requested that local farmers send them "mugshots" of their cows, along with other biographical information, such as why the farmer has the cow in the first place, so they could build a database to improve bovine security. [Agence France-Presse via MSN.com, 4-1-2015]

-- Elizabeth Quinn Gallagher, 23, received free around-the-world plane travel in December just for having the correct name. Jordan Axani used to have a girlfriend of that name, and bought the couple world-travel tickets, but they broke up, and the tickets were not refundable. Axani decided in December to find a compatible "Elizabeth Gallagher" to use the ticket with him, and the 23-year-old Cole Harbor, Nova Scotia, student won out over 18 other "Elizabeth Gallaghers." The trip was "strictly platonic," he said, though he acknowledged that Gallagher's boyfriend did not seem pleased. [Associated Press via Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 12-17-2014]

(1) Wayne Clark, 52, collapsed and died in January of an apparent heart attack seconds after walking into the Aldi grocery store in Edgewood, Maryland, and announcing a robbery. At his home, police discovered evidence linking Clark to two earlier robberies. (2) Anthony Stokes, 17, died in March from car-crash injuries as he was fleeing Roswell, Georgia, police following a home invasion. Stokes drew national attention in 2013 when, in order to receive a heart transplant, he promised to turn around his until-then-criminal life. Soon after the surgery, though, he was posting thug selfies on Facebook, and in January 2015 had been jailed for possessing stolen property. [Baltimore Sun, 1-24-2015] [New York Daily News, 4-1-2015]

In Ogden, Utah, in October (2009), Adam Manning, 30, accompanied his pregnant girlfriend to the McKay-Dee Hospital emergency room as she was going into labor. According to witnesses, as a nurse attended to the woman, Manning began flirting with her, complimenting the nurse's looks and giving her neck rubs. When Manning then allegedly groped the nurse's breast, she called security, and Manning was arrested and taken to jail -- and of course missed the birth of his child (though it did give him time to think of what to tell his girlfriend). [Salt Lake Tribune, 10-10-2009]

Thanks This Week to Ken Lilly and Gerald Davidson, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.