"Military Intelligence": The head of U.S. Navy intelligence has for more than two years been prohibited from accessing classified information (as the Pentagon disclosed to The Washington Post in January). Vice Admiral Ted Branch came under investigation in 2013 in a corruption scandal involving a foreign defense contractor and various Navy personnel and might have been suspended from all duties -- except that, given the political gridlock in Washington, no consensus candidate has emerged. No charges have been filed against Branch, but before he enters any room at the Pentagon, classified material must be stowed away. [Washington Post, 1-28-2016]

-- New World Order: (1) Yet another woman gave birth to her own granddaughter in January. Tracey Thompson, 54, offered to be the surrogate mother for her fertility-challenged daughter, Kelley, and delivered a 6-pound, 11-ounce girl at The Medical Center in Plano, Texas. (2) After notable successes in the United States, Latin America claimed in December its first transgender pregnancy after Ecuadorean Fernando Machado announced he was expecting a child with his partner Diane Rodriguez. Fernando used to be "Maria"; Diane used to be "Luis"; and though both undergo hormone therapy, they have retained their birth organs. [KTVT (Dallas), 1-7-2016] [Associated Press via The Guardian (London), 12-24-2015]

-- Overexcited police departments occasionally feel the need to safeguard towns by zealous enforcement of anti-gambling laws. In November, police in Altamonte Springs, Florida, raided the Escondido Community Clubhouse, formally shutting down the retirement village's games of bingo, bunko, penny poker and -- most controversially -- the weekly sessions of the culturally venerated mahjong. Although none of the games is illegal under state law, advertising for-money games is, and the notices in the Heritage Florida Jewish News were such attention-getters that the pots for the games often grew to exceed the $10 legal maximum. (Given mahjong's sociological significance, news of the bust was even reported in Jerusalem's Times of Israel.) [Orlando Weekly, 11-23-2015]

-- Perspective: On the heels of a similar program in Richmond, California, Washington, D.C.'s D.C. Council authorized funding in January to pay stipends to notorious criminals if they stop committing crimes. Police would identify up to 50 residents likely to violently offend again in 2016 and offer them periodic cash payments plus special training and educational benefits -- as long as they stay out of trouble. Officials in Richmond (once overwhelmed by gun deaths) say their program, commenced almost 10 years ago, has produced a 76 percent drop in gun-related crime. [Washington Post, 2-7-2016]

-- Reports of the prominence of animal urine in various cultures' health regimens have surfaced periodically in News of the Weird, and in December, in Al Qunfudhah, Saudi Arabia, a shop selling camel urine (with a long history of alleged medicinal qualities) was closed by authorities after they found 70 camel-urine bottles actually filled with shopkeeper-urine. [Daily Mail, 12-22-2015]

-- About a decade ago, several fast-food restaurants (especially during evening shifts staffed by sometimes inadequately trained managers) were plagued by a prank phone-caller, posing as law enforcement requesting investigative help, asking managers to strip-search employees for "contraband" and to describe the searches in real time to the caller. (A suspect was arrested, and the calls stopped.) Managerial judgment was also on display at a Morro Bay, California, Burger King in January when a prank caller somehow convinced BK employees to begin shattering the store's windows because of a purported "gas leak." Several windows were smashed in, and an investigation of the call is ongoing. [KSBY-TV (Santa Barbara), 1-21-2016]

-- Awkward: In January, Israeli television journalist Eitam Lachover became the latest to be injured in a high-profile test of a "protective" vest when he volunteered to be stabbed on camera for a news segment. Vest company officials' faces turned quickly sour as the blade penetrated the vest (though the wound was described as "light"). [Jerusalem Post, 1-6-2016]

-- In January, 15-year-old Anthony Ruelas, trying to rescue a classmate gasping from an asthma attack, became the latest casualty in public schools' relentless insistence on "zero tolerance" of any deviation from rules. Gateway Middle School in Killeen, Texas, suspended Ruelas for two days for what others called his "heroic" assistance in gathering the girl in his arms and taking her to the nurse's office -- while the teacher, following "procedure," waited passively for a nurse to email instructions. (Ruelas had defied the teacher, declaring, "(F-word) that -- we ain't got time to wait for no email from the nurse.") The school district's superintendent later cited a federal law that he interpreted as justifying the procedure. [KCEN-TV (Waco-Killeen), 1-27-2016]

-- Age-Old Prank Fails: Will Lombardi, 19, was charged with arson in Northampton, Massachusetts, in January after he acknowledged that "probably" he was the one who left a flaming box of excrement on the front porch of the family with whose daughter he was feuding. The fire was supposed to alarm the victim, who would try to stomp it out, thus spreading the feces and soiling the stomper's shoes. In this case, however, the fire had spread a bit. (Bonus: Lombardi's box selection was a used mailer with Lombardi's name and address still readable.) [MassLive.com, 1-22-2016]

-- Least Competent Criminals: (1) In January, a 27-year-old man in North Pole, Alaska, became the most recent forced to flee a crime scene on foot because he had locked his keys inside the getaway car. He was identified by surveillance video outside the two businesses he burglarized, but he was still at large. (2) Also in January, David Boulet, in Tacoma, Washington, became the most recent to haplessly try to steal a police car. As officers chased him on an earlier charge, Boulet spotted a parked, marked squad car (with lights flashing), but apparently thought, in the night's darkness, that the car was momentarily unoccupied. He climbed in -- and landed on the lap of a Tacoma police sergeant in the front seat. [Associated Press via KINY Radio (Juneau), 1-21-2016] [KIRO-TV (Seattle), 1-20-2016]

-- Undignified Deaths: (1) A 47-year-old man in Saint-Marcel, Italy, fell to his death in January as he leaned over a balcony railing to shake crumbs off his tablecloth after breakfast. The tablecloth reportedly slipped from his hands, leading him to (unsuccessfully) reach for it. (2) A 58-year-old driver dressed except for pants was killed in January in Detroit when he was thrown from his car by a crash. A Michigan State Police spokesman reported that the man had been viewing pornography as he drove. [The Local (Rome), 1-20-2016] [WJBK-TV (Detroit), 1-26-2016]

News of the Weird's long-time super-creative serial litigant Jonathan Lee Riches filed yet another claim in January -- against the Tennessee couple identified as winners in the recent $1.6 billion Powerball lottery. John and Lisa Robinson, Riches says, "owe" him half their winnings because he says he sent their daughter (and his pen pal), Tiffany, $20 to buy Powerball tickets. Riches's lawsuit, written in longhand, claims that he and Tiffany were to be married and move to "a remote island full of milk and honey." Riches had been serving a federal prison term for parole violation, but his current situation was unreported (except that he now claims an alias, "Jihadi Schitz," and wrote from a Philadelphia mosque). It is expected that this lawsuit will suffer the same fate as his against, among others, George W. Bush, Britney Spears, Steve Jobs, Nostrodamus, Plato and the various Kardashians. [Forbes.com, 2-2-2016]

A judge in Nice, France, ruled in September (2011) that Article 215 of the French civil code (defining marriage as a "shared communal life") in fact requires that husband and wife have sex. A husband identified only as Jean-Louis B. had evidently lost interest years earlier, and his wife was granted a divorce. Apparently emboldened by her victory, she then filed a monetary claim against the husband for the value of his 21-year-long lack of service, and the judge awarded her 10,000 euros (then worth about $13,710 -- $653 a year). [Daily Telegraph (London), 9-5-2011]

Wired.com's most recent "Absurd Creature" feature shows a toad devouring a larva of a much-smaller beetle, but the "absurdity" is that the larva is in charge and that the toad will soon be beetle food. The larva's Darwinian advantage is that, inside the toad, it bites the hapless "predator" with its hooked jaws and then secretes enzymes to begin decomposing the toad's tissue (making it edible) -- and provoking it to vomit the still-alive larva. [Wired.com, 1-29-2016]

An 80-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman were ticketed in separate incidents in Canada the week of Jan. 18 when police spotted them driving cars completely caked in snow except for a small portion of the windshield. The man, from Brussels, Ontario, was driving a car resembling a "pile of snow on the road." The Halifax, Nova Scotia, woman's car was, a police statement said, "a snowbank with four wheels." [Globe and Mail, 1-21-2016] [Associated Press via WMUR-TV (Manchester, N.H.), 1-21-2016]

Fed up with the "pretense" of the art world, performer (and radio personality) Lisa Levy of Brooklyn, New York, sat on a toilet, naked and motionless, at the Christopher Stout Gallery in January to protest artists' "BS" by presenting herself in the "humblest" way she could imagine. Visitors were invited to sit on a facing toilet (clothed or not) and interact with her in any way except for touching. Levy told the Bushwick Daily website that too much "ego," "like a drug," "distorts your reality." [Bushwick Daily, 1-20-2016]

-- In January, the U.S. Department of Justice's inspector general recommended closing down a program of the department's Drug Enforcement Administration that paid employees of other federal agencies (Amtrak and the beloved Transportation Security Administration) for tips on suspicious passengers. (The program apparently ignored that federal employees have such a duty even without a bounty.) DEA was apparently interested in passengers traveling with large amounts of cash -- which DEA could potentially seize if it suspected the money came from illegal activity (and also, of course, then keep the money under federal forfeiture law). According to the inspector general, the tipping TSA agent was to be rewarded with a cut of any forfeited money. [USA Today, 1-7-2016]

-- Chiropractor William DeAngelo of Stratford, Connecticut, was charged with assault in January after an employee complained that she was ordered to lie down on a table and let DeAngelo apply electrical shocks to her back -- as punishment for being the office gossiper, spreading rumors about colleagues. DeAngelo said he was reacting to complaints from patients and staff, but seemed to suggest in a statement to police that he was only "re-educating" the woman on how to use the electrical stimulator in the office's practice (though she felt the need to report to a hospital afterward). [Connecticut Post, 1-29-2016]

Britain's North Yorkshire Police successfully applied to a judge in January for a "sexual risk order" against a man whose name was not disclosed publicly and whose alleged behavior was not revealed. Whoever he is and whatever he did, he is forbidden to enter into any sexual situation with anyone without providing at least 24 hours' notice to the police -- nor is he allowed to look at or possess any sexually oriented materials. According to the York Press, the order is temporary until May 19, at which time the magistrates may extend it. [York Press, 1-21-2016]

-- Christopher Lemek Jr. was arrested in Palmer, Massachusetts, in January and charged in a New Year's Eve hit-and-run accident that took a pedestrian's life. Lemek emerged as a suspect a few days after the collision when police, visiting his home, noticed freshly disturbed earth in his backyard. Eventually Lemek confessed to literally burying the evidence -- using a construction vehicle to crush his truck and an excavator to dig up his backyard and drop the truck into it. [The Republican (Springfield), 1-8-2016]

-- No Need for a Pre-Nup: The 20-year New York marriage of Gabriel Villa, now 90, and Cristina Carta Villa, now 59, apparently had its happy moments, but as Cristina found out when things went bad recently, Gabriel had attempted to protect himself shortly after the wedding -- by obtaining a Dominican Republic divorce and keeping it secret. Cristina found out only when she realized in a property accounting that her name was not on the deed to their Manhattan apartment. (She is challenging that divorce as improper even under Dominican law.) [New York Post, 1-24-2016]

Several Connecticut state troopers involved in a DUI checkpoint in September were apparently caught on video deliberating whether to make up charges against a (perhaps obnoxious) checkpoint monitor. Veteran protester Michael Picard, 27, posted the videos on his YouTube page in January, showing troopers (illegally) confiscating Picard's camera and suggesting among themselves various charges they could write up (at least some not warranted by evidence) to, as one trooper was heard imploring, "cover our asses." (The troopers returned the camera after deliberating, but seemed unaware that it had been running during the entire incident.) State police internal affairs officers are investigating. [Hartford Courant, 1-26-2016]

Private Parts: (1) A middle-aged woman reported to a firehouse in Padua, Italy, in January to ask for help opening a lock for which she had misplaced the key. It turned out that the lock was to the iron chastity belt she was wearing -- of her own free will, she said (because she had recently begun a romantic relationship that she wanted not to become too quickly sexual). (2) Firefighers in Osnabruck, Germany, told Berlin's The Local that in two separate incidents in December, men had come to their stations asking for help removing iron rings they had placed on their penises to help retain erections. (The Local, as a public service, quoted a prominent European sexual-aid manufacturer's recommendation to instead use silicone rings, which usually do not require professional removal.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 1-17-2016] [The Local (Berlin), 12-8-2015]

Few matters in life are weirder than the Scottish love of haggis (sheep's liver, heart, tongue and fat, blended with oats and seasonings, boiled inside a sheep's stomach to achieve its enticing gray color!), and in January, in honor of the Scottish poet-icon Robert Burns, prominent Peruvian chef Mitsuharu Tsumura joined Scotland's Paul Wedgwood to create haggis from, instead of sheep, guinea pig. Wedgwood said he was "proud" to raise haggis "to new gastronomic levels." [Daily Telegraph (London), 1-21-2016]

(1) Briton Jacqueline Patrick, 55, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December for the 2013 murder of her husband, accomplished by spiking his wine with anti-freeze. To cover her crime, she handed over a note the husband had supposedly written, requesting that if tragedy struck him, he wished not to be resuscitated, preferring to die with "dignerty" (sic). Suspicious, police asked Patrick to spell "dignity," which, of course, came out "dignerty." (2) Kristina Green, 19, and Gary Withers, 38, both already on probation, were arrested in Encinitas, California, in December after an Amazon.com driver reported them following his delivery truck and scooping up packages as soon as he dropped them off. Inside the pair's car, officers found numerous parcels and mail addressed to others plus a "To Do" list that read, "steal mail and shoplift." [Reuters, 11-23-2015] [San Diego Union- Tribune, 12-15-2015]

In October (2011), the super-enthusiastic winners of a Kingston, Ontario, radio station contest claimed their prize: the chance to don gloves and dig for free Buffalo Bills' football tickets (value $320), buried in buffalo manure in a wading pool. The show's host, Sarah Crosbie, reported the digging live (but, overcome by the smell, vomited on the air). More curious was a runner-up contestant, who continued to muck around for the second prize even though it was only tickets to a local zoo. [Yahoo Canada Sports, 10-21-2011]

Even though concealed-carry gun permit-holders in Texas can now "open carry," pistol-packing women concerned with fashion are not limited to traditional firearms in ordinary cowboy holsters. An online company, The Well Armed Woman, offers such carry options as stylish leggings, lace waistbands and an array of underarm and bra holsters (even an in-cup model, the "Marilyn") in leopard-print and pastel colors. However, a woman's body shape and size may be more important shopping considerations, according to the company's founder. "A 32A bust could not conceal a Glock 19 very well -- nor would a 42DD-or-larger (front) allow for effective cross-draw carry." [Star-Telegram (Fort Worth), 12-22-2016] [NPR, 1-28-2016]

In January, Robert Battle took the oath of office for his second term as a city councilman in East Chicago, Indiana -- administered at the county lockup, where he is being held without bail, charged with a cold-blooded murder during a drug deal. The crime made news in October (i.e., before election day), yet Battle still won his race. According to law, he cannot be forced out of office unless he is convicted or admits the crimes, and he had the right to vote for himself in the election (except that he failed to request an absentee ballot). [Chicago Tribune, 1-25-2016]

(1) The Albany, New York, company Vireo Health told reporters it would soon offer the world's first certified Kosher marijuana, announcing that the Orthodox Union of New York had authenticated it as having met Jewish dietary laws (e.g., grown with insect-free plants). (Other Kosher-validating officials complained that the approval should apply only to marijuana that is eaten, not smoked.) (2) Two habit-wearing nuns were scheduled to ask the Merced (California) City Council in January to decline its prerogative under state law to ban dispensing or cultivating medical marijuana. The nuns' order makes and sells salves and tonics for pain management, using a strain of cannabis containing only a trace of psychoactive material. [Haaretz (Tel Aviv), 1-7-2016] [San Francisco Chronicle, 1-4-2016]

-- Since the (naturally insulated) uterus can be a lonely space, Institut Marques of Barcelona, Spain, recently demonstrated a tampon-like "speaker" to carry soothing, specially selected, 54-decibel ("hushed tone") rhythms that supposedly improve fetal growth. In the Babypod's first "concert," the singer Soraya performs Christmas carols. (However, documented evidence for such a device was limited to success of in-vitro fertilization when music was wafted through during the first 48 hours of sperm-egg union.) [New York Times Live, 1-1-2016]

-- The Job of the Researcher: Taiwanese scientists recently announced the availability of their Infant Cries Translator (iPhone and Android app), which they say can, with 77 percent accuracy (92 percent for those under 2 weeks old), tell what a baby wants by its screeches and wailings. The National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin doctors first had to create a database of 200,000 crying sounds. [Reuters, 12-30-2016]

The Latest in Corruption News: (1) Italy's highest court freed a man in January because the bribe he offered a cop to avoid a DUI ticket was "too small" to be serious -- 100 euros (about $108). (2) Lawyers for John Bills (former Chicago city commissioner on trial for taking bribes on a traffic-camera contract) said Bills was obviously innocent because everyone knows that, in Chicago, only bribing the mayor (or at least an alderman) will get anything done. (3) A security guard in Nairobi, Kenya, despairingly told a New York Times reporter in November (detailing corruption so rampant that, for example, ballpoint pens were being sold to the government for $85 each) that "If (people)'re going to steal, please, just steal a little." [The Local (Rome), 1-21-2016] [Chicago Sun-Times, 1-13-2016] [New York Times, 11-5-2016]

-- A former lecturer for Spanish classes at the liberal arts Amherst College near Northampton, Massachusetts, sued the school in December after it failed to renew her contract -- leading the lecturer to charge that the Spanish department had tried to solicit student course enrollment by prostitution. Lecturer Dimaris Barrios-Beltran accused her supervisor, Victoria Maillo, of hiring only attractive "teaching assistants" and encouraging them to "date" Amherst students with the ulterior motive of signing them up for Spanish classes -- to boost the department's profile. (College officials said they could not corroborate the accusation, but a lawyer for Barrios-Beltran said Maillo is no longer employed at Amherst.) [Washington Post, 12-29-2016]

-- William Bendorf, 38, filed a lawsuit in December against the Funny Bone comedy club in Omaha, Nebraska, and comedian-hypnotist Doug Thompson after plunging off the stage and breaking his leg following Thompson's having hypnotized him during his act. Thompson claimed that he had "snapped" Bendorf out of the trance, but the lawsuit claims that Bendorf, instead of exiting via the stairs as Thompson instructed, wandered directly toward his stage-side table because he was still "under" Thompson's spell. [Omaha World-Herald, 12-28-2016]

-- A patient who had been blind for a decade (a condition thought to have been brought on by brain damage from an auto accident) suddenly "regained" her sight, according to a research report in the latest PsyCh Journal -- but only in one of the 10 identities (a teenage boy) populating her dissociative identity disorder. Doctors have since ruled out organic damage and (through EEG testing) "malingering" and are now coaxing her eyesight back by treating the disorder. [Washington Post, 11-24-2015]

Chutzpah! (1) Michael Leonard, 53, was charged in December with stealing a package that moments earlier had been dropped off by a courier. The delivery was to a Prince George's County, Maryland, police station, and Leonard, hanging around in the station (to register as a sex offender), walked out with the package when no one was looking. (However, a station surveillance camera caught his face.) (2) Sean Lyons, 23, wanted on an Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, arrest warrant since October as a drug dealer, was arrested in January -- at the police station, where officers recognized him when he came to give information as a victim of an unrelated hit-and-run accident. [Capital Gazette (Annapolis), 12-23-2015] [Philly.com, 1-21-2016]

(1) David Newman, a prominent emergency room doctor at New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital, was recently charged with two counts of sexual abuse, one involving drugging, groping and masturbating onto the unconscious body of a female patient. (2) Well-known restaurateur Dan Hoyt, 53, was arrested in January and charged with exposing (and "pleasuring") himself to two women, repeatedly, at a New York City subway station -- and to one he had blatantly asked, "Can I masturbate to you?" Hoyt is the owner-chef at Quintessence in the East Village and gained notoriety in 2005 when a subway passenger photographed him "in action" during a previous weak moment. [New York Times, 1-20-2016] [New York Post, 1-13-2016]

(1) Kopi Luwak (the gourmet coffee beans roasted only after having been flavored by a trip through the digestive tracts of Asian civet cats) has been a staple of weird news stories for a quarter century, but a New York startup (Afineur) will soon bring to market a synthetic process mimicking the flavoring effects of the civets' gut bacteria. (2) From time to time, when people worry excessively about their stations in life, entrepreneurs create "destruction rooms," where, for a fee, customers get some time with a sledgehammer or baseball bat and pound on junked furniture. The most recent, Tantrums LLC, of Houston, opened in January, charging $35 for 10 minutes. [Business Week, 7-21-2016] [KHOU-TV, 7-22-2016]

Toshihiko Mizuno, 55, was arrested in Tokyo in June (2011) after three girls, ages 9 and 10, reported that he had talked them into spitting for him so that he could record it on video, to assist with "research" he was doing on "saliva." Police later discovered 26 videotapes, featuring about 400 young girls spitting. According to local media sources, Mizuno has had the obsession for 17 years, successfully getting at least 500 girls to spit, among the estimated 4,000 he propositioned. [NDTV (New Delhi, India)-Agence France-Presse, 6-14-2011]