Gregory Reddick, 54, and his employer, SJQ Sightseeing Tours, filed a lawsuit in June against New York City for "harass(ing)" them and hampering their ability to rip off tourists, specifically, interfering with their "right" to sell tickets for $200 or more for trips on the Staten Island Ferry -- which is actually free to ride. Reddick was wearing an (unauthorized) "Authorized Ticket Agent" jacket when arrested, and according to a New York Post account, believes he operates legally because he misunderstands a technicality in a 2013 court case. Prosecutors, who described the waterfront tourist-exploitation scene as "the wild west," found Reddick with seven dates of birth, five aliases and six Social Security numbers. [gothamist.com, 6-5-2015]

-- Doctors at a hospital in Dongyang, China, removed 420 kidney stones from a single patient in June (a "Mr. He"). One of the surgeons told reporters that a soy-heavy diet of tofu was probably to blame. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most stones removed from one kidney during surgery (in India in 2009 in a three-hour operation) is (this is not a misprint) 172,155. [Qianjiang Evening Post via BBC News, 6-8-2015]

-- In May, the Museum of Modern Arts in Krakow, Poland, began showing a video of naked men and women entering a room and playing a game of tag -- then revealing that that particular room was actually a building in a Holocaust gas-chamber facility in Auschwitz. The idea, apparently, was to bring three affected nations (Poland, Germany and Israel) together, and among the sponsors of the exhibit was the Israeli embassy in Warsaw, despite criticism that the work was somewhat "repulsive and offensive." (A similar project opened in Tartu, Estonia, in February, but was closed almost immediately after objections from Jewish-advocacy organizations.) [Jerusalem Online, 6-5-2015]

-- U.S. students may be clever, but they apparently badly trail Chinese students in the genius of cheating on exams (and especially on the use of cheat-enabling technology). The government's newest anti-fraud weapon, employed recently in the city of Luoyang during the crucial university-determining tests, is a six-propeller drone that can hover above a cavernous exam hall, trying to pinpoint the locations inside in which designated ace test-takers are radio-transmitting correct answers to their clients, whose tiny earbuds are worn deep in ear canals. Cheating students also use beverage-bottle cameras, ordinary-appearing eyeglasses that can scan and transmit images, and fingerprint film (to fool fingerprint scanners that otherwise would root out test-taking "ringers"). [Quartz, 6-2-2015]

-- France's daily La Provence reported in May that at least one enterprising drug dealer in Marseilles had begun distributing "loyalty cards" to its best customers, offering a 10-euro discount on future sales after that customer's card was full (all 10 squares stamped from previous sales). Said one buyer, "I thought I was hallucinating. I thought I was at a pizzeria or something." The card also expressed thanks for the patronage and reminded the customer of operating hours (11 a.m. to midnight). [The Local (Paris), 5-21-2015]

-- Rehab Will Be Difficult: Laquanda Newby, 25, was charged with three counts of child abuse on June 7 at the county courthouse in Richmond, Virginia, after police spotted her car with two children locked inside on a day in which the temperature reached the 90s. Newby had parked at the courthouse that day in order to attend her hearing on charges that on May 26, she had locked her kids in a hot car while she was out on errands. [WTVR-TV (Richmond), 6-8-2015]

Two students at Florida's Valencia College filed a federal lawsuit in May against the school and three instructors for forcing them to undergo "transvaginal probes" as part of their sonography (ultrasound) curriculum. According to the lawsuit, the school insisted that students learn the probing on each other because, as an instructor said, "Experience is the best teacher." The plaintiffs also charged that some instructors and a student leader (dubbed the "TransVag Queen") made inappropriate, sexualized comments about bodies during the demonstrations. Though the school defended the practice initially, it ordered the live probes halted about a week after the lawsuit was filed and announced lessons would in the future be conducted on simulators. [CNN, 5-19-2015; Orlando Sentinel, 5-26-2015]

-- Luis Cruz, 46, sought pre-trial release in Springfield, Massachusetts, in June -- even though he had been charged with heroin distribution and even though his rap sheet, counting his record in Florida, was 52 pages long. His court-appointed lawyer, Anna Levine, was not deterred, arguing that bail was not necessary to assure that her client would appear for trial because none of the 52 pages, she said, contained an arrest for failure to appear. Said Levine, earnestly, "It's a 52-page record for showing up." [The Republican (Springfield), 6-10-2015]

-- "(J)ust one of those spur-of-the-moment crazy things," explained John Paul Jones Jr., in May after he had intentionally driven his pickup truck through his living room in Senoia, Georgia. He told a reporter that he had been on the phone with his wife and gotten angry, and "one thing led to another." Fortunately, Jones is a contractor, and has been out of work for a while and thus figures he can keep busy fixing his mess. The house "needed some work," he said, "needed air conditioning." Jones said the truck fared well, with just a few scratches. [WGCL-TV (Atlanta), 5-17-2015]

Teachers Just Wanna Have Fun: Some parents of Encinal High School students, in Alameda, California, demanded an investigation in June after learning from a counselor at an after-school program that students had been "assigned" the extra-credit project of rummaging through their parents' bedrooms looking for sex toys (and bringing in a "selfie" holding one). Administrators told parents that the "assignment" was not a requirement of the course but could not ascertain how many students actually presented show-and-tells to the class. [KPIX-TV (San Francisco), 6-3-2015]

Cirilo Castillo Jr., 45, was arrested in February in Edinburg, Texas, but a charge was not filed until June, apparently because prosecutors were awaiting Castillo's recovery from a broken leg. He had been found in a barn after trying to have sex with a horse -- three years after having been convicted of a similar crime (and warned, at that time, to stay away from the Edinburg farm). The broken leg happened, prosecutors said, because in the February incident, the horse kicked him. [MySanAntonio.com, 6-10-2015]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Nashville, Tennessee, police arrested Mashara Mefford in June and charged her with breaking into one of their marked cruisers. She was discovered by an officer after she had locked herself inside and could not figure out how the locks worked. (2) Dene Temple and Stephen Fidler pleaded guilty and were sentenced in June for burglarizing the Sichuan Garden Chinese restaurant in Brighton, England. Police, called to the restaurant, caught the men attempting to hide inside the walk-in freezer. There was "no doubt," said a supervising officer, that the men would have frozen to death if not for being spotted by police. [WTVF-TV (Nashville), 6-17-2015] [Crawley News (Queensway, England), 6-19-2015]

Blow Against the Empire: Bank of America (BA) had the tables turned in June (2011) after the company wrongfully harassed an alleged mortgage scofflaw in Naples, Florida. BA had attempted to foreclose on homeowners Warren and Maureen Nyerges even though the couple had bought their house with cash -- paid directly to BA. It took BA a year and a half to understand its mistake -- that is, until the Nyergeses sued and won a judgment for expenses of $2,534, which BA contemptuously ignored. The Nyerges obtained a seizure order, and two sheriff's deputies, with a moving truck, arrived at the local BA branch on June 3 (2011) to load $2,534 worth of furniture and computers from the bank's offices and lobby. After an hour on the phone with higher-ups, the local BA manager wrote a check for $2,534. [Naples Daily News, 6-3-2011]

Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks, Kathryn Wood, and William Parker, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Researchers studying the human-brain-eating Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea reported in a June journal article that they have identified the specific "prion" resistance gene that appears to offer complete protection against mad cow disease and perhaps other neurodegenerative conditions such as dementias and Parkinson's. The tribe customarily dined on relatives' brains at funerals (although has abandoned the practice) and consequently suffered a major 1950s epidemic that wiped out 2 percent of the tribe annually. According to the lead researcher, survivors, with the specific resistance gene, demonstrated "a striking example of Darwinian evolution in humans." [Reuters, 6-10-2015]

-- Spouses often disagree politically and vote accordingly, but occasionally one runs for office against the other -- as is the case in Bremerton, Washington, where incumbent Councilmember Roy Runyon is being challenged by his wife, Kim Faulkner. Both were mum as to reasons and in fact filed their registration papers together at the same time in May. Said Runyon: "We're different people. She might have a different approach." [Kitsap Sun (Kitsap, Wash.), 5-14-2015]

-- India's media reported in April yet another birth defect in which the surviving baby is treated as a representation of Hindu holiness. A four-armed, four-legged child (medical explanation: remains of an underdeveloped conjoined twin) is worshipped as the reincarnation of the multi-limbed Lord Ganesha, and pilgrims journey from all over India to the birthplace, Dumri-Isri in Jharkhand state. (In a nod to modernity, one witness told a reporter that initially he had thought a photograph of the child was "Photoshopped," but now has seen the baby with his own eyes.) [OneIndia.com (Bangalore), 4-23-2015]

-- The law of turkey-baster insemination took a turn in Virginia in April when mother Joyce Bruce was unable to keep sperm-provider Robert Boardwine out of her son's life. Bruce relied on a state statute that seemed to allow her sole parenthood if the pregnancy was based on assisted-reproduction medical technology. However, the Court of Appeals of Virginia declared that a "kitchen implement" is not "medical technology" and, considering Boardwine's genuine interest in fatherhood, ruled that he was entitled to joint custody and visitation rights. [CNN, 4-21-2015]

-- Another "Human Right": In April, London's Daily Mail spotted Anna Broom of Gillingham declaring that despite her various disorders that keep her from working, she nonetheless imagines a first-class wedding with champagne, horse-drawn carriage and Mexico honeymoon -- all at government expense -- because that would be her "human right." She told a reporter that a small ceremony at a government office would not boost her confidence, but that her "dream" wedding would be just the thing to get her back on a job search. [Daily Mail, 4-16-2015]

-- The most recent exposition of people who tattoo their eyeballs, at the International Tattoo Festival in Caracas, in February, featured the phenomenon's founder, Mr. Luna Cobra, who said it all started when he tried to create "bright blue" eyes, as in the 1984 film "Dune." (Pigment is injected, permanently, so that it rests under the eye's thin top layer, the conjunctiva.) Asked what the process feels like, devotee Kylie Garth told BBC News, "It was mentally intense," resembling an eye poke, pressure and "a bit of sand" -- but "no pain." Mr. Cobra urged young people to get their jobs before trying eye tats, since "you're going to look frightening forever to the majority of people you encounter." [Washington Post, 2-4-2015]

-- Once again, in May, lawyers went to court trying to persuade a judge that some rights under the U.S. Constitution be extended to intelligent apes (here, chimpanzees, as "autonomous and self-determining beings" at least as perceptive as, for example, severely mentally ill people, who retain rights while institutionalized). Lawyers are once again asking for a writ of habeas corpus (now available only to humans) to take Hercules and Leo out of a lab and into a sanctuary. (Adding to the discussion, in the week after the court hearing, a Harvard professor and colleagues, writing in the journal Current Anthropology, hypothesized that chimps could cook foods if given the chance. Tests revealed that they resist raw food when they are able to place it into a device that made it taste better -- which in theory makes them more intelligent than children who eat cookie dough.) [Associated Press via Toronto Star, 5-27-2015] [New York Times, 6-3-2015]

-- Baffling Perversion: Some men are compelled to express unrequited love for women by ejaculating onto them or into their beverages. The Minnesota legislature is working to upgrade its law (since a recent defendant, John Robert Lind, was acquitted of adulterating his co-worker's coffee on the ground that current law requires actually touching the victim). However, Lind (who admitted a total of six climaxes against the co-worker) is an amateur compared to Tetsuya Fukuda, 40, who was finally apprehended in April, at which time he admitted "more than 100" semen attacks on women on trains near Kinshicho, Japan, dating back to 2011. He told police, "I get excited when in close contact with a woman on a crowded train." [St. Paul Pioneer-Press, 3-11-2015] [Asahi Shimbun via Gawker.com, 4-10-2015]

-- News of the Weird has remarked on modern, over-the-top versions of the centuries-old tradition in China of making funerals entertaining, to attract mourners and thereby signify that the deceased did not die "faceless." In the recent past, festive song-and-dance acts were hired, and soon, in the competition for attendees, some families took to hiring strippers to perform -- even "obscene" acts, "severely pollut(ing)" the culture, according to a critic. In April, the Ministry of Culture, previously somewhat tolerant because of sensitivity for the families, formally denounced the practice and began detaining the traveling performers. [Wall Street Journal, 4-23-2015]

-- Backyard firing ranges are legal in Florida (as News of the Weird reported last year), and in March a Florida House committee voted to keep it that way, shooting down legislation to outlaw them even in urban and residential areas. (Firing on private property is legal except if shooting over a public right-of-way or an occupied dwelling, and "negligent" gunfire, though illegal, is only a misdemeanor.) In 2014, one Florida legislator, originally from Alaska, said even in that liberty-conscious state, residents in urban Anchorage do not have rights that Floridians have. [BayNews9.com (St. Petersburg), 3-25-2015]

-- Convicted "satanic cult" day care operators Dan and Fran Keller were finally unconvicted by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in May -- 23 years after being found guilty based in part on toddlers' fantastical testimony (encouraged by counselors) telling impossible tales of molestation. Still, however, the judges could not bring themselves to rule the Kellers "not guilty," thus preserving children's narratives of the Kellers videotaping orgies, serving blood-laced Kool-Aid, kidnapping them to Mexico and more -- yet somehow releasing them, unscarred, each day to parents at pickup time in Austin. (The Kellers spent 22 years behind bars.) [American-Statesman (Austin), 5-20-2015]

-- The South Pacific islanders on the Vanuatu island of Tanna believe that 2016 will be the year that the man they inexplicably worship as a god -- Britain's Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh -- will finally visit them. One highly regarded islander told a London Daily Telegraph correspondent in New Zealand that the cult is starved for a visit, since Philip's only contact since the 1940s has been via gifts (one, the most treasured, an autographed photo). Legendary Vanuatuan "Chief Jack" was convinced that Philip was a descendant of island royalty. [Daily Telegraph, 4-25-2015]

Biologists Studying Rare Species Have to Be Fast: Researchers learned from reports in early 2010 of a new monkey species in Myanmar, with a nose so recessed that it habitually collects rainfall and constantly sneezes. However, according to an October (2010) National Geographic dispatch, by the time scientists arrived to investigate, natives had eaten the monkey. (The sneezing alerts hunters.) Similarly, researchers studying a rare species of Vietnamese lizard learned of a sighting in November (2010), and a two-man team from La Sierra University in Riverside, California, rushed to Ba Ria-Vung Tau province. However, on arrival they found the lizards being routinely served in several restaurants' lunch buffets. [National Geographic, 10-27-2010] [CNN, 11-10-2010]

Thanks This Week to Nathaniel Oxford, Sam Scrutchins, Nate Tracy, and Kathryn Wood, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Apartment buyers in ridiculously expensive Hong Kong are now eagerly paying up to the equivalent of $500,000 (U.S.) for units not much bigger than a U.S. parking space (and typically physically self-measured by the applicant's wing-span). An agent told The Wall Street Journal in June that, for example, standard furniture does not fit the units and that having guests over requires sitting on the window sill. (The Journal pointed out that a typical such "mosquito" apartment unit in Hong Kong is 180 square feet, way smaller than the 304 of a basketball court's "lane" subject to a "3-second" violation.) A government lottery for subsidized units rewards barely one of every 100 applicants. [Wall Street Journal, 6-3-2015]

In May, Texas health officials shut down the flea market sales of sonogram DVDs at Leticia Trujillo's stall at San Antonio's Traders Village. Though the nature of the equipment was not described in news reports, sonograms can be produced only under a doctor's prescription and by licensed personnel, but pregnant flea market customers underwent a procedure ("just like a doctor's office," said Trujillo) that yielded a 12-minute DVD image, along with photos, for $35 -- that Trujillo subsequently defended as for "entertainment" purposes only and for those without health insurance. [San Antonio Express-News, 5-22-2015]

According to Nathan Hoffman's lawsuit, he was prepped for eye surgery that day in May 2014 when the clinic employee handed him a small-lettered liability-limitation form to sign. He was told that the surgery at the LASIK Vision Institute in Lake Oswego, Oregon, could not proceed without a signature, and despite hazy vision, he reluctantly relented, but things went badly. The form limits lawsuit damages to a money-back $2,500, but Hoffman demands at least $7,500 (to cover the so-far two additional surgeries elsewhere to correct LVI's alleged errors). [The Oregonian, 5-15-2015]

Some jihadists who have traveled to Syria to join ISIS have complained recently (according to a Radio Free Europe dispatch) that they cannot secure work as "martyrs" because of discrimination by incumbent fighters. One "pro-ISIS" cleric, speaking for Chechens, said they "are so fed up with the long waiting lists in Syria" that they head to Iraq, where the lists are shorter. Said one, Saudis controlling suicide rosters in the Syrian theater "won't let anyone in." Their "relatives go to the front of the line using (their connections)." [News.com.au (Sydney), 5-22-2015]

-- In April, Judge Marc Kelly in Orange County, California, defied a 25-year-minimum statutory sentence for punishing the sexual abuse of a 3-year-old girl by Kevin Rojano -- cutting the term to 10 years because the man did not "intend to harm" the girl (except that he became "inexplicably" "aroused" when she walked into his garage). "There was no violence or callous disregard for (her) well-being," the judge said. [City News Service via Orange County Register, 4-4-2015]

-- The child-abuse sentence of a sports club official in Buenos Aires was reduced in 2014 to little more than three years, it was recently revealed, because, said the judges, the 6-year-old boy had earlier been sexually molested by his father and had already made a "precocious (sexual) choice" ("apparently a reference to homosexuality," according to a May Associated Press dispatch). [Associated Press via New York Times, 5-19-2015]

-- America (sometimes called a land of "second chances") gave stockbroker Jerry Cicolani Jr., 69 such chances, before he pleaded guilty in May to selling unregistered securities -- setting up his first overt punishment despite a history of 60-some client complaints made to his then-employer, Merrill Lynch, between 1991 and 2010. The stockbrokers' self-regulating arm (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) has finally revoked his license, but issued a statement acknowledging that it needed to improve its monitoring. [New York Times, 5-19-2015]

-- Awkward: Corey Huddleston, 52, apparently having taken a fancy to a teenage girl in Dickson, Tennessee, in May, knocked on her family's front door, according to police, then pushed his way in, asked for cigarettes and beer, "touched himself" inappropriately, asked about the girl, and then reluctantly departed. However, he merely went to a back window of a darkened bedroom, climbed inside, and fondled a sleeping figure in bed, whom he likely assumed was the girl -- but it was the girl's father, who later confessed that he called the police only after resisting the impulse to kill Huddleston. (Police said Huddleston's rap sheet shows more than 100 charges.) [WKRN-TV (Nashville), 5-13-2015]

Among caterpillars' natural defenses against being devoured by birds is their ability to contort themselves into odd shapes for disguise -- perhaps most ingeniously (according to researchers writing in the current Animal Behaviour journal) as bird droppings. The authors created artificial dough-based squiggles that were either straight (resembling the caterpillar) or bent (to resemble poop), and found that birds zeroed in on the straight ones about three times as often. [Science, 5-22-2015]

Notwithstanding the suggestion in movies, stealing a 200-pound floor model safe is a very low-return crime, as the February arrest of three pals in Kingsport, Tennessee, illustrated. After struggling to load the safe into a car's trunk (accidentally shattering the back window), they drove to one's apartment, but police were called when neighbors saw the safe being dragged across a parking lot in the middle of the night. (During the trip, it fell onto one perp's foot.) Police, following gouge marks, visited the apartment and spotted the safe, as yet unopened, in the middle of the kitchen. (Police: Why do you gentlemen have a safe? Perp: We found it in an alley.) Police opened it. It was empty. [Kingsport Times-News, 2-2-2015]

It started in 2008, when one of Tampa Bay's two nastiest radio "shock jocks," Todd Schnitt, sued the other, Bubba the Love Sponge Clem, for defamation. With depositions underway in 2013, according to reporting by the Tampa Bay Times, Schnitt's lawyer, Philip Campbell, unwinding in a bar, was hit on by a perky young paralegal who (unknown to him) worked for Bubba's lawyer's firm. After several drinks, she exaggerated inebriation, angling for Campbell to drive her home. According to charges by the Florida Bar Association, the paralegal's boss called a Tampa cop to trail Campbell -- who, sure enough, witnessed the car weaving, and thus arrested Campbell for DUI. (Bonus: Campbell's work-packed briefcase went missing in the traffic stop.) Bubba himself was not implicated, and the disciplinary charges against the lawyers, pending in June 2015, are creating suspense about which of them might take the fall. [Tampa Bay Times, 5-20-2015]

Kenya's The Standard reported the May proclamation by prominent Nairobi lawyer Felix Kiprono that he had fallen in love (long distance) with Malia Obama (who is, famously, part-Kenyan) and is prepared to offer President Obama 50 cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats in exchange for her hand. "If my request is granted," he said, he would not "resort to the cliche of popping champagne" but rather would "surprise (Malia) with mursik, the traditional Kalenjin sour milk," and affix the "sacred plant," sinendet, queen-like, around her head. [The Standard, 5-25-2015]

The Redneck Chronicles: (1) Timothy Walker, 48, was hospitalized in Burlington, North Carolina, in February (2011) after he fell off of the top of an SUV while holding down two mattresses for the driver, who apparently rounded a curve too fast. (2) Three people were hospitalized in Bellevue, Washington, in January (2011) when their van exploded as the ignition was re-engaged. They were carrying two gallons of gasoline in an open container and had been feeding the carburetor directly, through an opening in the engine housing (between the seats), as the van was in motion. (No explanation was reported.) [WXII-TV (Winston-Salem, 2-18-2011] [Bellevue Reporter, 1-20-2011]

Thanks This Week to Jim Weber and Steve Dunn, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.