Ran'dell Busch, 27, was in serious condition after being shot on July 26 near the corner of 18th Street and Emmet Street in Omaha, Nebraska. He was also shot in 2014 around the intersection of 18th and Emmet, and in 2012 was shot in a scuffle after running from the corner of 18th and Emmet. [WOWT-TV (Omaha), 7-30-2015]

-- Failed European Business Models: (1) Grande Hotel San Calogero, the planned centerpiece of a Sicilian tourist renaissance, is still nowhere close to opening -- 61 years after construction began. It took 30 years to build, but then developers fought for 10 years over its management, and only later was a serious drainage deficiency discovered (repair of which Rome's news site The Local reported in July remains unfunded). (2) Construction of the ultra-modern Don Quixote airport (in Ciudad Real, Spain, about an hour from Madrid) was finished in 2006, but the $1 billion facility never opened, and in July, was sold to a Chinese investor for the equivalent of $11,000. (Bonus: Fictional character Don Quixote was, himself, noted for delusions of grandeur.) [The Local (Rome), 7-16-2015] [Quartz (qz.com), 7-21-2015]

-- Unclear on the Concept: Overlooked by the roundup of "state fair" foods listed in News of the Weird two weeks ago was the debut in June, at California's San Diego County Fair, of the deep-fried Slim-Fast bar. A 200-calorie "diet bar" is breaded in pancake batter, fried, dusted with powdered sugar and drizzled with chocolate. [Huffington Post, 6-8-2015]

-- A woman in a suburb of Beijing filed a lawsuit against the China Dragon Garden graveyard recently over her shock to find that not only was her own name affixed to a headstone in gold lettering but about half of the 600 plots were eerily marked for prominent (and still living) people to move into. It was a marketing plan, according to cemetery workers, to convince customers of the upscale neighbors (such as basketball star Yao Ming) waiting for them in the afterlife. (China's aging population, and Beijing's land scarcity, have driven up prices, intensifying competition and corrupt practices, according to a Los Angeles Times dispatch.) [Los Angeles Times, 7-23-2015]

Texas' highest criminal appeals court agreed on July 17, hours before Clifton Williams was to be executed, to a postponement until they could consider the significance of perhaps-faulty higher math presented to his jury in 2006. Prosecutors had claimed at his trial that the likelihood of another black man having Williams' DNA profile was 1 in 43 sextillion (43 followed by 21 zeros, or 43 billion trillion). Texas officials have recently recalculated the FBI-developed database and concluded that it was somewhat more likely that a second black man had Williams' profile -- 1 in only 40 billion trillion. [Associated Press via WLS-TV (Chicago), 7-17-2015]

(1) Jason Patterson, upset that New Zealand's health care administration has rejected paying for gastric bypass surgery, announced in July that he will protest publicly by going on a hunger strike. "The first two to three days (will be) really hard," he told Channel 3 News. (2) Local officials in China's Xinjiang region informed Muslim shopkeepers and restaurateurs in May that they will henceforth be required to sell alcohol and cigarettes (even though Islam forbids their consumption). An official told Radio Free Asia that the government aims to weaken religion. [TV3News (Auckland), 7-6-2015] [Washington Post, 5-5-2015]

Some owners may be petting their cats all wrong, cautioned recent research in issues of the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science by scientists from University of Lincoln in England and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For example, felines seem to prefer face-caressing, especially between the eyes and ears, and are especially aroused, negatively, by tail-petting, especially at the base. Cats appear to be pickier about how their owners pet them than strangers, according to a Washington Post review of one article. The Wisconsin research revealed that cats better appreciate (or are annoyed less by) music written especially for their pitch (an octave higher) and tempo (mimicking purring) than traditional classical music. [Washington Post, 6-30-2015] [Sci-news.com, 3-15-2015]

-- Careless Governing: (1) Maine enacted legislation in July to make immigrant asylum-seekers eligible for the state's General Assistance fund -- contrary to Gov. Paul LePage's aggressive promise to veto the bill. The governor had misunderstood state law and believed legislation would be regarded as vetoed if he merely failed to sign it for 10 days. LePage appeared stunned on the 11th day, according to press reports, that he had had the veto law backward and that asylum-seekers are now eligible for benefits. (2) News reports from Georgetown, Texas, politely did not identify the councilman by name, but Mayor Pro Tem Rachael Jonrow confirmed that the man neglected to turn off his mobile microphone during a May meeting as he excused himself for a restroom break. Jonrow said she stoically ignored the men's room sounds on the PA system -- until the noise from a toilet's flushing seemed to release the councilmembers' pent-up laughter. [Maine Beacon (Portland), 7-7-2015] [Fox News, 5-5-2015]

-- Epic Clumsiness: (1) A guest at the upscale W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had to be rescued by firefighters in July when he fell off of one machine in the hotel's exercise room and got his head caught in the one next to it. Rescuers arrived with torches and saws, but managed to pull and push and manipulate the man's head free (though he had "significant" injuries). (2) A 27-year-old man, entertaining friends at his home in Colmar, France, on the country's National Day on July 14, suffered serious injuries when he fell from his third-floor balcony -- while, said his friends, leaning over to spit on police officers below. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 7-22-2015] [The Local (Paris), 7-17-2015]

Michael Crawford, 68, was arrested when he arrived in Phoenix in July expecting, according to the sheriff's office, to have sex with a horse. Crawford had allegedly posted an online ad seeking horse owners who would allow him access for brief flings. In arranging the meeting with the undercover deputy, Crawford had volunteered that he would be bringing five shirts with him for the horse to urinate on, as memories of the trip. [AzFamily.com (Phoenix), 7-12-2015]

Irresistible Self-Promotion: Jason Stange, 44, who became a fugitive last year by walking away from a Spokane, Washington, halfway house while on probation for bank robbery, was re-arrested in July in Olympia, Washington, after featuring himself in an extensive newspaper pictorial about a local movie he was starring in. Stange could have chosen a more veiled stage name, but (since it was a horror movie) billed himself merely as "Jason Strange" -- making detection easier for U.S. Marshals. [News Tribune (Tacoma), 7-21-2015]

Earlier, even Norway's world's-friendliest prison system had refused to honor the educational rehabilitation demands of Anders Behring Breivik, the mass-murderer of 71 (mostly children) at a camp in 2011. Breivik had been sentenced to 21 years in prison -- the country's maximum, or less than four months per victim -- but he was subsequently turned down when he sought to register, behind bars, as a political science student at Oslo University. However, in July, prison officials relented and will allow the enrollment -- although he will still be subject to his prison restrictions against Internet and email use. [BBC News, 7-17-2015]

In a 2009 traffic accident, retired Montgomery County, Maryland, county judge Edwin Collier and his wife, both in their 80s, were severely injured by driver Rene Fernandez, 45, who pleaded guilty to DUI-caused injury (in 2010). Judge Collier had met Fernandez earlier, in 1998, when Fernandez appeared in his courtroom to answer for his three DUI-related arrests in the previous three-month period -- but Judge Collier let him off with probation instead of a more meaningful punishment that might have had greater effect on his future DUI behavior. (Update: The 2010 judge gave Fernandez 18 months.) [Washington Post, 4-10-2010, 4-14-2010]

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

Among the health and fitness apps for computers and smartphones are sex-tracking programs to document the variety of acts and positions, degrees of frenzy and lengths of sessions (via an on-bed motion detector) -- and menstrual trackers aimed at males (to help judge their partner's fertility but also her predicted friskiness and likelihood of orgasm). Several have chart- and graph-making potential for data (noise level, average thrust frequency, duration, etc.), and of course, the highlight of many of the apps is their ability to create a "score" to rank performance -- even encouraging comparisons across a range of populations and geography. (Sociologist Deborah Lupton's app research was summarized in the July Harper's Magazine.) [Harper's, July 2015]

(1) Scientists from Australia's James Cook University told reporters in June that they had spotted an aggressive fish that can walk on land making its way toward the country from Papua New Guinea. The native freshwater "climbing perch" can live out of water for days and has survived short saltwater treks from PNG toward Australia's Queensland. (2) In July, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department posted a warning photo of a so-far-rare Texas Redhead -- an 8-inch-long centipede with gangly white legs tipped with venom-delivering fangs and which eats lizards and toads. [Business Insider Australia, 6-3-2015] [Washington Post, 7-6-2015]

-- Reuters reported in early July that a big loser in the nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers was (since all negotiators have gone home to sell the deal) the brothel industry of Vienna, Austria, which hosted that final round. With so many (male, mostly) diplomats in town for two stressful months, business had been robust -- especially compared to the previous round in notoriously expensive Lausanne, Switzerland. [Reuters, 7-5-2015]

-- The Undernews From Wimbledon: The All England Club, host of tennis's most hallowed tournament, is, formally, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, at which presumably Britain's 11,900 croquet "regulars" aspire to play -- although their British Open Championship is actually held at the nearby Surbiton Croquet Club, which this year hosted 50 competitors from four continents, according to a July New York Times dispatch. The leading U.S. player -- Ben Rothman of Oakland, California, the "croquet pro" at Mission Hills Country Club near Palm Springs -- is the reputed "world's leader" in prize money ($4,500). [New York Times, 7-6-2015]

Maryland state Delegate Ariana Kelly was charged with trespassing and indecent exposure in June after she arrived at her ex-husband's home to drop off their kids and learned that his girlfriend was inside. According to police, she started banging on the door and ringing the bell repeatedly and, aware that her husband had a camera trained on the doorway, she faced it, exposed her breasts and shook them, one in each hand, toward the lens. Eventually, she dared an officer to arrest her. (The Washington Post reported that Kelly is a member of a legislative task force studying maternal mental health issues.) [Washington Post, 7-14-2015]

-- An 87-year-old man, taking his license renewal driving test in Deerfield, Illinois, in June, accidentally crashed into the driver's license office (based on brake/accelerator confusion). Neither he nor the examiner was injured. [Chicago Tribune, 6-11-2015]

-- An 83-year-old man, driving around Cape Coral, Florida, in May, suffered a fatal heart attack at the wheel, and the uncontrolled car came to rest in shrubbery ringing the Florida Heart Associates building. [Fort Myers News-Press, 5-11-2015]

-- Wrong Place, Wrong Time: (1) A court in Lincoln, Nebraska, which had already sent Paul Boye to prison for at least 10 years for shooting his girlfriend, ordered him in June to cover her resulting medical bills. The woman had taken a .22-caliber bullet, which left a scar cutting right through her tattoo reading "Happiness Is A Warm Gun." (2) A task force of Benton, Arkansas, police and U.S. Marshals tracked down Tieren Watson, 26, in June after he had spent several days on the lam as a suspect in a shooting. When arrested, he was wearing a T-shirt reading "You Can Run, But You Can't Hide." [Lincoln Journal Star, 6-13-2015] [The Smoking Gun, 6-18-2015]

Mine worker Joshua Clay claimed in a lawsuit that a foreman had twice taunted him for complaining about conditions -- by restraining him and spray-painting his testicles white. Clay filed against Kielty Mine in Mingo County, West Virginia, in July, alleging that the company had forced him to work on the dirty side of a coal-dust conversion machine -- a practice forbidden by federal regulations -- and that when he complained, he was subjected to off-the-books discipline. [Courthouse News, 7-16-2015]

A KPHO-TV news story in Phoenix featured a local doctor advising expectant mothers against "tweaking" the result of home pregnancy tests. Some women, apparently, had discovered the magic of "Photoshopping" the pink reading on the home test's strip -- to take a faint pink line (not a certified pregnancy) to make it bold (pregnant!). Although the doctor warns of the general hazard of "false positives," the 415-word news story does not explain how Photoshopping a not-positive reading into a positive one improves the likelihood of conception. [KPHO-TV, 7-7-2015]

(1) Josefina Tometich, 64, was arrested in Fort Myers, Florida, in June, charged with shooting out the back window of Christopher Richey's pickup. Richey had fetched a "perfect-looking" mango from the street in front of Tometich's house, but Tometich insisted it was hers since it had earlier fallen from her tree. (An attorney consulted by WBBH-TV said wind-blown mangoes landing on public property is a legal "gray area.") (2) In one of the most successful redresses of grievance in history, the Venezuelan government gave Marleny Olivo a new apartment in April. Only days before, as President Nicolas Maduro toured her neighborhood in Aragua state, she had hurled a mango at him with her phone number on it, hitting him just below the ear. The new president (a "man of the people") called her, listened to her story, and ordered a housing upgrade. [WBBH-TV, 6-30-2015] [BBC News, 4-25-2015]

Awkward: (1) A 26-year-old carpenter, trying to break open an ATM at an ICICI Bank in Delhi, India, at 2:30 a.m. on July 8, accidentally locked himself in the tiny space behind it (used to service the machine safely) and phoned police to come rescue him. (2) A carjacker in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 16 commandeered a car from a woman at gunpoint and climbed in. However, according to the woman, she is short and he was very tall, and after fumbling a bit trying to adjust the seat, he gave up (having driven only a few feet) and ran off. [The Times of India, 7-9-2015] [Nebraska Radio Network (Omaha), 7-16-2015]

As News of the Weird has noted, some observant Jews are magnificently creative in devising workarounds to ancient ritual restraints. For instance, the KosherSwitch theoretically allows Jews to defeat the restriction on engaging electricity during Shabbat. By employing a laser circuit that periodically malfunctions, or delays, in connecting a switch to a power flow, it permits the user technically to not be the direct cause of the electricity. (The KosherSwitch is currently the subject of a crowd- funding project sponsored by the device's patent holder.) Less ingenious, as News of the Weird noted in 2010, is the Yom Kippur workaround for "fasting" coffee addicts: caffeine suppositories. [Tablet Magazine, 7-6-2015]

Time magazine reported in August (2010) that among the entries in "Detroit Hair Wars" (showcasing pieces by 34 stylists) were The Hummer (stylist: "Little Willie"), in which a mass of extensions is shaped to resemble the vehicle, including four large, rolled "tires" -- with metallic hubcaps and front grid added; and Beautiful Butterfly (stylist: Niecy Hayes), featuring extensions thinned, teased and stretched so that four angelic "wings" arise from the model's head. Both stylings appear to be at least 2 feet long, dwarfing the models' heads. [Time, 8-2-2010]

Thanks This Week to Judith Cherry and Gerald Sacks, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The whimsical premise of the iconic movie "Groundhog Day" (that someone can wake up every day believing it is the previous day) has largely come to life for a patient of a British psychologist writing recently in the journal Neurocase. Dr. Gerald Burgess' patient, following anesthesia and root-canal treatment, was left with a memory span of only about 90 minutes and awakens each day believing it is the day he is to report for the same root canal. He has been examined by numerous specialists, including neurologists who found no ostensible damage to the usual brain areas associated with amnesia. The patient is able to manage his day only by using an electronic diary with prompts. [University of Leicester press release, 7-14-2015]

Apparently, "uncooperative" child dental patients (even toddlers) can be totally restrained on a straitjacket-like "papoose board" without parental hand-holding, even during tooth-pulling, as long as the parent has signed a "consent form" (that does specifically mention the frightening practice). A recent case arose in Carrollton, Georgia, but a Georgia Board of Dentistry spokesperson told Atlanta's WSB-TV that such restraints are permitted (though should have been accompanied by an explicit warning of potential physical or psychological harm). The father of the "screaming" girl said he was initially barred from the exam room and was led to believe, when he signed the consent form, that he was merely authorizing anesthesia. [Georgia Newsday, 7-2-2015]

(1) A shortage of teachers led Howard S. Billings high school in Chateauguay (in the French-sensitive province of Quebec, Canada) to announce that 11th-grade French classes would this year be conducted using only the Rosetta Stone computer program. (2) Among the new rules proposed by California's Occupational Safety and Health Standards agency in May was one to require actors in pornographic movies (whose male actors OSHS has already ordered to wear condoms) to wear goggles -- lest bodily fluids splash into their eyes during scenes. (Further, all equipment and surfaces of sets must be decontaminated after each scene and at day's end.) [CTV News (Montreal), 2-24-2015] [Washington Post, 5-29-2015]

(1) The mayor of Whitesboro, New York, defending to a Village Voice reporter in July the 19th-century-based town seal that features a white settler appearing to push down an American Indian man, denied any racism and said the image is "actually" a typical "friendly wrestling (match) that took place back in those days." (According to Whitesboro's website, the Native American supposedly uttered, after the "match," "UGH. You good fellow too much.") (2) In April, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to stop relocating whistleblowing employees to "offices" that were abandoned jail cells. The bureau had insisted that the transfers were not punishment for reporting agency misconduct -- even though one of the "offices" had no desk, computer or phone and required the employee to walk past prisoners' cells to get to work. [Village Voice, 7-7-2015] [Washington Post, 4-3-2015]

-- Lindsey Perkins pleaded guilty in June in Newport, Vermont, for an incident in which she joy-rode on the roof of a station wagon with her 5-year-old son while a 20-year-old man drove at 50 to 55 mph on the state's scenic Route 14 near Coventry. [Associated Press via WCAX-TV (Burlington), 6-22-2015]

-- In February, the Office of Residential Life at Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut), intending to tout its dedication to inclusiveness and the creation of a "safe space" for minority students, posted a notice on its website inviting applications from the "LBTTQQFAGPBDSM" communities. The probable translation: the lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, flexual, asexual, (vulgar word), polyamorous, bondage/discipline and sadism/masochism communities. [The Week, 2-25-2015]

-- Cosbying 2.0: A court in Castrop-Rauxel, Germany, fined a 23-year-old man in July after he admitted that, one evening last year, he put "four or five drops" of a sedative into his girlfriend's tea without her knowledge -- so that she would doze off for the evening and not bother him while he played video games. She had come home after a hard day at work, expecting peace and quiet, but began complaining about the boyfriend's machine-gun-fire game. [The Local (Berlin), 7-8-2015]

-- The Washington Post's running tally counts more than 400 people shot to death in the United States by law enforcement already this year with five months to go, but 2014 figures from Norway reveal that officers there shot at people only twice all year. Proportionally (64 times as many people live in the U.S.), American police would still have fired only 128 rounds last year if they showed Norway's restraint. (Bonus fact: Norway's cops missed their targets both times.) [Washington Post, 7-8-2015]

Pharmaceutical companies justify huge drug price markups on the ground that the research to develop the drug was, itself, hugely expensive. In February, a Canadian company, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, decided to raise the price of two heart-saving drugs (Nitropress, Isuprel) by 212 percent and 525 percent, respectively, even though it had conducted no research on the drugs. That was because, reported The Wall Street Journal, all Valeant did was buy the rights to the already-approved drugs from another company (which, of course, had thought the drugs -- research and all -- had been fairly priced at the lower amounts). Said a Valeant spokesperson, "Our duty is to our shareholders and to maximize the value" of our products (even, apparently, if it owned the product for less than a day before jacking up the price as much as five-fold). [Wall Street Journal, 4-26-2015]

At a charity event in Philadelphia in July, in the course of attempting to set a Guinness Book record for pogo-stick workouts, Jack Sexty, 25, bounced 88,047 straight times (over a 10-hour, 20-minute session) -- to add to his several previous Guinness records. Sexty, who said he was physically uncomfortable at times during the 10-hour ordeal, suggested that he may have "inadvertently" set yet another pogo record -- as maybe the only person ever to answer a "number two" call of nature while pogoing. He explained that a guy had offered to hold a pot underneath him as he jumped and did his business -- but Sexty confessed, "I couldn't be very accurate (aiming for the pot)." [Bristol Post (Bristol, England), 7-4-2015]

But A Successful Parent: Scott Birk, 31, was arrested in New Berlin, Wisconsin, in July, thanks to a big boost the police got from his 6-year-old daughter. A Wal-mart security guard noticed, on video, someone breaking into a jewelry case and pocketing earrings, and approached Birk as a suspect, in time to overhear the girl tell her dad "several times" to stop breaking into jewelry cases. Officers running an ID check found no driver's license and asked how he had gotten to the store, and he said they walked. But Daddy, she said, we came in our car, and she cheerfully pointed it out to police. A search turned up more items stuffed in Birk's shorts, and he was charged with theft and violating a previous bail condition. [WISN-TV (Milwaukee), 7-3-2015]

Summer is state-fair season, i.e., the time of sugar- and fried-fat-based comfort snacks that rarely appear anywhere except at state fairs. Recent samplings: caviar-covered Twinkie (Minnesota), mac-and-cheese cupcake (Minnesota), deep-fried Oreo burger (Florida), deep-fried gummy bears (Ohio), deep-fried beer (Texas) -- and old favorites such as chicken-fried bacon (Texas), spaghetti ice cream (Indiana), Krispy Kreme chicken sandwich (California) and the hot-beef sundae (Indiana, Iowa). [Yahoo Food, 6-29-2015; GrubStreet.com, 6-24-2015]

Playboy magazine has long published an audio edition, and the Library of Congress produces a text edition in Braille. However, as a Houston Chronicle reporter learned in August (2010), a Texas organization (Taping for the Blind) goes one step further, with volunteer reader Suzi Hanks actually describing the photographs -- even the Playmates and other nudes. "I'd say if she has large breasts or small breasts, piercings or tattoos," said Hanks. "I'll describe her genitalia. I take my time describing the girls." "Hey, blind guys like pretty, naked girls, too!" [Houston Chronicle, 8-12-2010]

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