When officials in Richmond, California, learned in 2009 that 70 percent of the city's murders and firearms assaults were directly linked to 17 people, they decided on a bold program: to pay off those 17 to behave themselves. For a budget of about $1.2 million a year, the program offers individual coaching, health care coverage and several hundred dollars a month in stipends to former thugs who stick to their "life map" of personal goals and conflict-resolution training. According to an April report on National Public Radio's "This American Life," Richmond is no longer among the most dangerous towns in America, with the murder rate in fact having fallen from its all-time yearly high of 62 to 11 last year. [WBEZ Radio (Chicago) via News.com.au (Sydney, Australia), 4-30-2015]

-- One might believe that a 6th-grader, suspended for a whole year after school officials found a "marijuana" leaf in his backpack, might be immediately un-suspended if authorities (after three field tests) found the leaf was neither marijuana nor anything else illegal. Not, however, at Bedford Middle School in Roanoke, Virginia, whose officials said they had acted on gossip that students called the leaf "marijuana," and therefore under the state schools' "look-alike-drug" policy, the 6th-grader was just as guilty as if the leaf were real. Formerly a high-achiever student, he has, since last September, suffered panic attacks and is under the care of a pediatric psychiatrist, and his parents filed a federal lawsuit in February. [Roanoke Times, 3-14-2015]

-- Biologist Regine Gries of Canada's Simon Fraser University devotes every Saturday to letting about 5,000 bedbugs suck blood from her arm -- part of research by Gries and her biologist-husband Gerhard to develop a pheromone-based "trap" that can lure the bugs from infested habitats like bedding. (She estimates having been bitten 200,000 times since the research began, according to a May Wired magazine report.) Regine holds each mesh-topped jar of bugs against her arm for about 10 minutes each (which Gerhard cannot do because he is allergic) -- leading, of course, to hours of itchiness and swelling in the name of progress. [Wired, May 2015]

The three gentle grammar pedants (one an environmental lawyer calling himself "Agente Punto Final," i.e., "Agent Period") devoted to ridding Quito, Ecuador, of poorly written street graffiti, have been patrolling the capital since November 2014, identifying misplaced commas and other atrocities and making sneaky corrective raids with spray paint. Punto Final told The Washington Post in March that he acts out of "moral obligation" -- that "punctuation matters, commas matter, accents matter." As police take vandalism seriously in Quito, the three must act stealthily, in hoodies and ski masks, with one always standing lookout. [Washington Post, 3-6-2015]

-- Almost half of the DNA collected from a broad swath of the New York City subway system matched no known organism, and less than 1 percent was human. Weill Cornell Medical College researchers announced in February that they had identified much DNA by swabbing passenger car and station surfaces, finding abundant matches to beetles and flies (and even traces of inactive anthrax and bubonic plague) but that since so few organisms have been fully DNA-"sequenced," there was no cause for alarm. The lead researcher fondly compared the bacteria-teeming subway to a "rain forest," deserving "awe and wonder" that "there are all these species" that so far cause humans relatively little harm. [New York Times, 2-5-2015]

-- "I'm doing what God wants," Mike Holpin, 56, told British TV's Channel 5 in April. "In the Bible, God says go forth and multiply," said the unemployed former carny who claims to have fathered at least 40 children (now aged from 3 to 37) by 20 different women. Holpin has been married three times, and lives with his fiancee Diane and two kids in the Welsh town of Cwm. "I (will) never stop," Holpin said. "I'm as fertile as sin..." [Daily Telegraph, 4-1-2015]

(1) A 21-year-old man in Hefei, China, collapsed in May after 14 straight days of Internet gaming, yet when paramedics revived him, the man begged them to leave and put him back in front of the screen. (2) Then, two weeks later in Nanchang, China, a 24-year-old female gamer took only a minutes-long break at an Internet cafe‚ at 4 a.m., to head to a rest room and give birth -- returning with her blood-covered baby in her arms to resume her place at the mouse pad. (London's Daily Telegraph, reporting from Beijing in May, estimated that China has 24 million Internet "addicts.") [Anhui Business Review via Daily Telegraph (London), 5-4-2015] [People's Daily Online via Daily Mail (London), 5-15-2015]

-- It takes only four of the U.S. Supreme Court justices to accept a case for review, but it takes five to stay an execution. On January 23, the Court accepted the case challenging Oklahoma's death penalty chemicals, but the lead challenger, Charles Warner, lacking that fifth "stay" vote, had been executed eight days earlier (using the challenged chemicals), during the time the justices were deliberating. (The case, Warner vs. Gross, was immediately renamed Glossip V. Gross, but Richard Glossip himself was scheduled to die on January 28. Then, without explanation, at least one other justice supplied Glossip's missing fifth vote, and, with one day to spare, his execution was stayed until the challenge to the chemicals is resolved.) [New York Times, 1-26-2015]

-- Only 17 states have specific laws to protect against "revenge porn" (exposing ex-lovers' intimate images online as retaliation for a break-up), but a possible solution in the other states, reported CNN in April, is for the victim to file a "takedown" demand under the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which would subject the avenger to penalties for not removing the images. However, to prove copyright, the victim must file copies of the bawdy images with the U.S. Copyright Office, increasing the victim's trauma (though an office spokesman told CNN that only the copyright examiner would see them). [CNN Wire via WTKR-TV (Hampton Roads, Va.), 4-27-2015]

Drivers Hit With Their Own Cars Recently: (1) A 64-year-old woman was knocked down by her in-gear minivan in Lake Crystal, Minnesota, as she got out to retrieve something from her house (March). (2) A man in South Centre Township, Pennsylvania, was hospitalized after leaving his idling car to adjust something under the hood and apparently adjusted the wrong thing, sending the car thrusting forward (February). (3) Jamie Vandegraaf, 23, was slammed by his own car as he leaped from the driver's side (not far enough to clear the door, apparently) to avoid South Portland, Maine, police and U.S. Marshals pursuing him concerning the robbery of a Shaw's supermarket (April). [Associated Press via KARE-TV (Minneapolis), 3-13-2015] [WNEP-TV (Moosic, Pa.), 2-22-2015] [Bangor Daily News, 4-3-2015]

-- Mohamed Nafiu was arrested in Lagos, Nigeria, in April and charged with robbery after he and his pet baboon intercepted a pedestrian leaving a bank and frightened him into fleeing, leaving his money behind. Police said the versatile baboon had also previously snatched victims' valuables. [Information Nigeria (Lagos), 3-28-2015]

-- Police in eastern South Africa were searching in May for the three women who accosted a man in Kwazakhele Township, near Port Elizabeth, raped him in the back seat of a black BMW, collected his semen in a cooler, and sped away without him. Constable Mncedi Mbombo told the Sowetan Live website, "This is really confusing to us because we have never heard of such a thing before." [Sowetan Live (Johannesburg), 5-7-2015]

The Key Underwood Memorial Graveyard near Cherokee, Alabama, is reserved as hallowed ground for burial of genuine coon dogs, which must be judged authentic before their carcasses can be accepted, according to a December (2010) report in the Birmingham News. The Tennessee Valley Coon Hunters Association must attest to the dog's having had the ability "to tree a raccoon." (In March 2010, a funeral for one coon dog at Key Underwood drew 200 mourners.) [Birmingham News, 12-30-2010]

Thanks This Week to Mark Wojahn, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Among the requirements of "Visual Arts 104A" at the University of California, San Diego is that, for the final exam, students would make a presentation while nude, in a darkened room. Professor Ricardo Dominguez (who would also be nude for the finals) told KGTV in May that a nude "gesture" was indeed required (and disclosed to students in the first class) as a "performance of self," a "standard canvas for performance art and body art." After an inquiry by KGTV, the department chairman announced that nakedness would not be required for course credit -- even though professor Dominguez said in his 11 years teaching the course, no student had ever complained before. [KGTV (San Diego), 5-11-2015]

Sober Driver Pays: Sapearya Sao, then 25 and sober that night in 2013 in Portland, Oregon, was rammed by a drunk hit-and-run driver (Nathan Wisbeck), who later rammed another drunk driver -- but Sao finds himself defending the lawsuit by the two people injured in Wisbeck's second collision. Sao recently settled the lawsuit brought by that second drunk driver, but still faces a $9.8 million lawsuit brought by the estate of the second drunk driver's late passenger, which argues that if Sao had not pursued Wisbeck in an attempt to identify him, the second crash would not have occurred. (Of course, that crash also might not have occurred if the second driver -- 0.11 blood alcohol -- had been sober.) [The Oregonian, 5-12-2015]

-- British forensic scientist Dr. Brooke Magnanti, 39, has written two best-selling books and inspired a TV series based on her life, but she recently filed a lawsuit accusing her ex-boyfriend of libeling her -- by telling people that she was NOT formerly a prostitute. A major part of Magnanti's biography is how she paid for university studies through prostitution -- which has supposedly enhanced her marketability. [The Independent (London), 3-13-2015]

-- Murder "contracts" are ubiquitous in novels and movies, but an actual murder contract cannot be enforced in American courts. However, a recent "contract" case in Norway (according to the Norwegian newspaper Varden, as reported on Vice.com) came down hard on a hit man who got cold feet. The hit man, who stalled repeatedly, was finally sued by the payer, who won a jury verdict (later set aside) for the unrequited killing. Then, because the hit man had attempted to extort even more money from the payer (to find a substitute killer), the hit man was fined the equivalent of $1,200. [Vice.com, 1-15-2015]

About three-fourths of the 1,580 IRS workers found to have deliberately attempted to evade federal income tax during the last 10 years have nonetheless retained their jobs, according to a May report by the agency's inspector general. Some even received promotions and performance bonuses (although an internal rule, adopted last year, now forbids such bonuses to one adjudged to owe back taxes). [Associated Press via Yahoo.com, 5-6-2015]

The long-time swingers' club in Nashville, Tennessee (The Social Club), is seeking to relocate to the trendy Madison neighborhood -- but near two churches and an upscale private Christian school in a state that bars sex businesses within 1,000 feet of a church or school. The Social Club's preferred solution: re-open as the United Fellowship Center and attempt to hold services on Sunday mornings, converting, for example, its "dungeon room" into the "choir room." While courts are reluctant to examine religious doctrine, they often judge cases on "sincerity of belief." (Any shrieks of "Oh, God!" "Oh, God!" coming from the on-premises swing club are not expected to carry weight with the judges.) [The Tennessean via USA Today, 4-24-2015]

Lightly regulated investors' "hedge funds" (the province of wealthy people and large institutions) failed in 2014 (for the sixth straight year) to outearn ordinary stock index funds following the S&P 500. However, at hedge funds, underperformance seems unpunishable -- as the top 25 fund managers still collectively earned $11.62 billion in fees and salaries (an average of over $464 million each). The best-paid hedge fund manager earned $1.3 billion -- more than 48 times what the highest-paid major league baseball player earned. [New York Times, 5-5-2015]

Body cameras for police officers is yesterday's news. At the Sanmenxia canyon rapids in China's Henan province, the issue is body cameras for lifeguards. The all-female White Swan Women's Rafting Rescue Team has complained recently about swimmers deliberately throwing themselves into the water so they could scream for help -- in order to fondle the women when they arrived to save them. Attaching cameras to the women's helmets and legs is expected to deter perverts. [Daily Mail (China), 5-5-2015]

-- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: (1) A veterinarian at Brighton (U.K.) Pet Hospital, operating on Garry, age 2, a black-and-white cat with a tumor-like bulge in his abdomen, found instead (and removed) a large collection of shoelaces and hairbands that might soon have cost Garry his life. (2) Benno, the Belgian Malinois, of Mountain Home, Arkansas, has eaten a ridiculous series of items over his four years, but his latest meal, in April, was 23 live rounds of .308- caliber bullets (all swallowed after Benno had partially gnawed them). Among Benno's other delicacies: a bra, lawn mower air filter, TV remote, styrofoam peanuts, drywall, magnets, and an entire loaf of bread still in the wrapper. [The Argus (Hollingbury, England), 5-7-2015] [Baxter Bulletin (Mountain Home), 5-6-2015]

-- Least Competent Snake: Owner Aaron Rouse was feeding his python, Winston, a tasty rat in May, using barbecue tongs, when Winston got hold of the tongs and would not let go. Rouse, of Adelaide, Australia, decided not to engage in a tug-of-war, but when he returned (believing Winston would see no food value in the metal clamps), the tongs had been swallowed and were halfway through the snake's comically bloated body. After taking X-rays (that of course became Internet attractions), a veterinarian at Adelaide University removed the tongs by surgery. [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 5-14-2015]

(1) Daniel Palmer, 26, was arrested in Miami Beach in April only after he returned to the crime scene area to berate his victim, a New York tourist from whom he had snatched a "fake" necklace at gunpoint. Palmer initially got away, but was upset and returned to confront the tourist, who pointed out Palmer's car to an officer. (2) Ms. Joey Mudd, 34, of Largo was arrested in May, along with her husband, Chad, on charges that they routinely shared marijuana and even cocaine with their daughters, aged 13 and 14. Deputies said Ms. Mudd freely admitted that she used the drugs as incentives to get the girls to do their chores and do well in school. [WTVJ-TV (Miami), 4-30-2015] [Bay News 9 (St. Petersburg), 5-6-2015]

"Abstract impressionist" Mark Rothko has appeared in News of the Weird both for the extraordinary prices people pay to own his uncomplicated paintings and for their sometimes-indistinct differentiation from squiggles made by playful toddlers. Sotheby's auction house announced in May that his "Untitled, (Blue and Yellow)" had been sold for $46.5 million. The "Untitled" canvas consists of three unevenly edged rectangles -- a yellow on top of a blue, on top of a small yellow strip. The Sotheby's catalog described the piece (presumably, without irony) as one that shows "how truly miraculous a painting can be." [New York Times, 5-13-2015]

Last Words: (1) "Go ahead and shoot me," said Rodney Gilbert, 57, who was embroiled in a domestic tiff with his girlfriend, Kimberly Gustafson, in Ocala, Florida, in February (2011). According to police, Gustafson, after cocking the gun in front of witnesses, turned to walk away without firing until Gilbert pursued her, shouting his final words several more times. (2) "You're going to shoot? Right here," said now-deceased Roberto Corona, pointing to his chest. Corona was refusing to reveal the whereabouts of his sister in January (2011) to her husband, David Sanchez-Dominguez, who was pointing his handgun at Corona. [Orlando Sentinel, 2-18-2011] [Reno Gazette-Journal, 1-18-2011]

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

There's hardly a more "generic" song in America than "Happy Birthday to You," but to this day (until a judge renders a decision in a pending case), Warner/Chappel Music is still trying to make big dollars off of the 16-word ditty (15 original words plus a user-supplied 16th). Its original copyright should have expired, at the latest, in 1921, but amendments to the law and technicalities in interpretation (e.g., did the copyright cover all public uses or just piano arrangements?) bring Warner at least $2 million a year in fees. A federal judge in California is expected to rule soon on whether the song is in fact uncopyrightably "generic" -- 125 years after the Hill sisters (Mildred and Patty) composed it. [CBS News, 3-27-2015]

-- In April, WNBC-TV's investigative unit in New York City reported on a series of fetish parties in Manhattan reportedly organized by a licensed M.D., in which the consensual activities consisted of saline scrotal inflation, controlled near-asphyxiation and controlled arterial blood-letting (in which splatters are captured on a canvas as if made by a painter). An event organizer said the "Cirque de Plaisir" was more of a "performance art" display by a few body-modification aficionados than it was a fetish "party." Local governments were alarmed especially by the blood splatters' endangering onlookers and promised an investigation. [WNBC-TV, 4-29-2015]

-- Accused amateur serial tooth-puller Philip Hansen, 56, was convicted on two counts in May following a trial in Wellington (New Zealand) District Court. Several women had accused him, during 1988-2011, of holding their mouths open and wriggling teeth out with pliers (and in one case, a screwdriver), motivated by his attraction to "gummy women" as a prelude to sex. He apparently also lauded the "free" service he was providing, since real dentists, he said, would have charged the women. (Hansen allegedly told another woman, with full dentures, how "beautiful" she was -- as he was removing the plates, crushing them and flushing them down a toilet.) [Stuff.co.nz, 4-30-2015; Dominion Post via Stuff.co.nz, 5-6-2015]

-- "The ancient art of yoga is supposed to offer a path to inner peace," wrote the Wall Street Journal in February -- before launching into a report on how many yoga classes these days are so crowded that inner peace-seekers are more likely than ever either to seethe throughout their session -- or to openly confront floor-hoggers. Explained one coach, "People who are practicing yoga want Zen; they don't already have it." [Wall Street Journal, 2-16-2015]

-- Timely Information: (1) Joseph Forren, 21, with a .172 blood alcohol level, plowed into a pickup truck in April in Trumbull, Connecticut (though with no serious injuries). Police said Forren's cellphone on the seat still displayed a current text message, "Don't drink and drive ... Dad." (2) According to police records released in April, Mila Dago (now 24 and awaiting trial for DUI manslaughter) was trading sarcastic texts with her ex-boyfriend that night in August 2013 while barhopping (later, registering .178 blood alcohol), and as she ran a red light, smashed into a pickup truck, injuring herself badly and her friend in the passenger seat fatally. According to the police report, her last text to the ex- boyfriend (three minutes earlier) was "Driving drunk woo ... I'll be dead thanks to you." [Connecticut Post (Bridgeport), 4-27-2015] [Miami Herald, 4-30-2015]

-- Readers' Choice: (1) The Indian Journal of Dermatology announced in April that it was withdrawing a recent scientific paper by a dentist in Kerala state, "Development of a Guideline to Approach Plagiarism in Indian Scenarios," because parts of the article had been plagiarized from a student dissertation. (2) Low voter turnout in non-presidential election years is increasingly problematic in easily distracted Los Angeles, but the issue was specifically addressed by campaigners in the March 3 city council elections -- which, of course, only about 9 percent of registered voters cast ballots in. [NPR, 4-2-2015] [LA Weekly, 3-4-2015]

-- In New York City, someone can be fired for being "too nice." Doorman Ralph Body, 41, was dismissed from his job at an upscale New York City apartment building because he did too many favors for tenants, according to an April New York Post report. Body said he "gave his life" to the residents at the "27 on 27th" tower in Queens, but "upper management" thought such extra kindnesses violated building policy and ordered his dismissal despite a tenant petition. [New York Post, 4-5-2015]

-- When the chief auditor for Hartford, Connecticut, finally got around to checking the finances of the police shooting range recently, he found that the range supervisor had bought 485,000 bullets per year, but was using only 180,000 -- and had no paperwork on where the other bullets went. (In one instance, the supervisor acknowledged having bought 94,500 rounds of .45-caliber ammo two years after the department had stopped using .45s and switched to .40-caliber weapons -- but his story was that he needed .45-caliber bullets so he could trade them for .40s.) [Hartford Courant, 5-2-2015]

Millions of sports fans "draft" their own fantasy sports teams -- and even the bass-fishing tournament circuit has its fantasy league, where fans select anglers good at exploiting choice spots on the lakes. In March, Alaska Dispatch News reported that, for the fourth straight year, there would be an Iditarod Fantasy League, with a "salary cap" of "$27,000" to pick seven mushers with the best chances to push their dogs to victory, with all-stars going for around $6,000 and promising rookies selling for much less. [Alaska Dispatch News, 3-6-2015]

Alfred Guercio, 54, was arrested in Burnsville, Minnesota, in March after forcibly entering a neighbor's home and swiping a knife set that he had given the woman as a Christmas gift. He told the woman, and police, that he was taking the gift back, as he was upset that the woman was failing to appreciate it enough. [The Smoking Gun, 3-17-2015]

John Deere became the most recent company in America to claim that, though a buyer may have paid in full for a device, he may not actually "own" it. Deere claims that because its tractors run on sophisticated computer programs, the ostensible owner of the tractor cannot "tamper" with that software without Deere's permission -- even to repair a defect or to customize its operation. Already, traditional movie videos may come with restrictions on copying, but the Deere case, according to an April report on Wired.com, might extend the principle to machinery not traditionally subject to copyright law. [Wired.com, 4-21-2015]

The March arranged-marriage ceremony in Kanpur, India, was about to start when cousins of the bride (whose name is Lovely, daughter of Mohar Singh) commandeered center stage and demanded that groom Ram Baran answer the question, "What is 15 plus 6?" Baran answered, "17," and in short order, Lovely and her family began to drift out of the room, and the marriage was off. Eventually, according to a Times of India report, the families settled the fiasco amicably, with all gifts returned. [Times of India, 3-13-2015]

"You're not going to like this," warned NPR's Robert Krulwich, about to deliver a February (2011) story about visionary robotics developers James Auger and Jimmy Louizeau, who created a carnivorous clock, supposedly able to power itself for 12 days merely on the carcasses of 12 dead houseflies (which the clock traps with flypaper and then mechanically razors in two). The pair also showed a prototype of a coffee table that catches mice by luring them up the table legs with cheese into a hole in the center, where they are guillotined. Auger and Louizeau said their creations are just extensions of TV nature programs showing animals hunting in the wild, but Krulwich fretted about the dangers inherent in "giving robots a taste for (meat)." [NPR, 2-7-2011]

CLARIFICATION: The story two weeks ago about the anticipated "sex shop" in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, though reported by many reputable news sources, was in fact (a) about a year old and (b) apparently based on a faulty translation from Arabic, and no such shop can be said to be forthcoming. The "developer," Abdelaziz Aouragh, apparently disclosed only that he would be "willing" to open such a shop. [Times of Israel, 4-26-2015]

Thanks This Week to Kathryn Wood, Don Peck, Chuck Hamilton, Pete Randall, and Robert Zimmer, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.