Google filed a U.S. Patent Office application on April 28 for a vision-improvement device in liquid form that, once inserted (i.e., injected directly into the eyeball!), solidifies into not only a lens replacement for the eye but an instrument that carries its own storage, radio and wireless power supply. The idea, according to inventor Andrew Jason Conrad, is to better focus light onto the retina. (The patent process does not assure that the device will ever come to fruition, but it might indicate that Google's parent, Alphabet, is concerned that other inventors might be doing similar work.) [Forbes.com, 4-28-2016]

-- Before new parents ruin their baby daughter's chances of future success by giving her "weak" names (such as Polly), they should consult one of several services that recommend more powerful ones (such as Elizabeth). A New York City woman offers personalized naming research for fees starting at several hundred dollars, but a Swiss agency whose primary work is helping to name product brands now offers parents suggestions on their offspring's "brand" (for corporate-like fees beginning at around $29,000). (Parents in South Korea and India traditionally seek baby-naming recommendations from priests, who review religious text, culture and astrology -- in exchange for modest offerings.) [Bloomberg.com, 4-19-2016]

-- Entrepreneur.com reported in April the surprising success of "Ship Your Enemies Glitter," in which, for about $10, the startup sends an envelope full of glitter that, when opened, scatters, irritating (or enraging) the recipient. The concept was an overnight sensation, but quickly petered out and was seemingly worthless -- until a prescient businessman offered $85,000 for its two assets: (1) a valuable list of customers who might buy similar pranks (such as a cupcake that's really horse manure) and (2) an opportunity at additional waves of customers newly discovering the original glitter product. The $85,000 purchaser now reports sales "in the high six figures." [Entrepreneur.com, 4-20-2016]

-- Peter Jensen of Athol, Idaho, filed a lawsuit against the state transportation department in April after his driving privileges were revoked because his car had no license plate. For the inconvenience, he believes he deserves $5.6 million in damages (gold and silver only, please) because, for example, there is nothing about "license plates" in the Ten Commandments. [KREM-TV (Spokane, Wash.), 4-22-2016]

-- Simple As That: (1) Bingham County (Idaho) Sheriff Craig Rowland told reporters in March that the state legislature had no reason to improve the statewide administration of "rape kit" evidence because the majority of local rape accusations are, he is certain, consensual sex. (2) Scout Hodge, 20, angry at his mother, was charged with arson in Austin, Texas, in January for setting fire to her rug. He told police he did it as a "political" statement (unexplained) and to prove he isn't a "loser." [Associated Press via OregonLive.com, 3-15-2016] [KEYE-TV (Austin), 1-16-2016]

-- Modern Problems: (1) Sophia Sanchez, 27, was charged with intentionally crashing her car into her boyfriend's vehicle in April in Riverside, Illinois. According to police, the couple had been arguing the night before, and Sanchez said she felt she had to disable his car so that he would talk to her. (2) William Timothy Thomas, 25, was arrested for vandalizing a home in Largo, Florida, in April. He told police he needed to go "destroy" stuff because he "listened to too much music and masturbated too much." (Bonus: Three first names! Special police surveillance warranted!) [WLS-TV (Chicago), 4-27-2016] [WFLA.com, 4-12-2016]

(1) As China's real-estate construction boom fades, tempers have flared, and according to a local government officer in Hebei province, two companies' officials angling for a contract wildly dueled each other in their bulldozers in an incident captured on video. The losing driver was seen running from his toppled machine. (2) Italy's top appeals court ruled in April that a homeless man stealing cheese and sausage from a grocery story in Genoa, and who received a six-month jail term for it, was actually not guilty of criminal behavior at all. The court set him free using a traditional Italian legal principle that no one is required to do the impossible -- which, the court surmised, would be to allow himself to starve. [Sky News (London), 4-18-2016] [New York Times, 5-4-2016]

Motorist Rebecca Musarra was stopped for speeding in October 2015 by state troopers in New Jersey, and dutifully handed over her license, insurance and registration, but declined to answer the troopers' "do you know why we stopped you" questions. Annoyed at her silence, troopers Matthew Stazzone and Demetric Gosa threatened several times, with increasing aggressiveness (according to dashboard video obtained by NJ Advance Media), to arrest Musarra for "obstruction." Musarra pointed out that -- as nearly every American knows -- she has the right to remain silent. The troopers nonetheless arrested her (then recited, of course, her "right to remain silent"). After nearly two hours back at the station, a supervisor offered a weak apology and released her. Musarra, an attorney, unsurprisingly has filed a federal lawsuit. [NJ.com, 5-5- 2016]

The species Acanthonus armatus first showed up in waters near Vancouver, British Columbia, 10 years ago, generating ichthyological excitement -- in that it is widely known as the assfish. The Royal BC Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, put one on display in January with its bulbous head and flabby skin resembling a "glorified tadpole," said a museum curator, who declined to guess at the origin of the assfish name (bypassing a chance to link it to the fish's large mouth and tiny brain). [National Post, 1-14-2016]

(1) The British broadcast censor Ofcom declined to punish a January edition of "The Jeremy Kyle Show" on which a guest used a "well-known swear word" -- because the speaker has a Scottish accent and, Ofcom said, probably no more than two or three people thus comprehended what he was saying. (2) The body of Peter ("Petey Crack") Martinez, 28, who had a long rap sheet, washed up on a beach in Brooklyn, New York, on May 2 -- with his feet encased (up to his shins) in a bucket of hardened cement. It was the first time veteran New York detectives could ever recall seeing actual "cement shoes" (though they have, of course, been icons of true crime stories for decades). [BBC News, 3-21-2016] [New York Times, 5-5-2016]

-- New York City police rounded up 39 people on April 26 suspected as part of a massive credit-card-scamming operation targeted at customers of high-end retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue -- and whose members are affiliated with the rap-music group Pop Out Boyz, which makes reference to the scams in its songs. (One number, "For a Scammer," features the lyric, "you see it, you want it, you have it," while another voice repeatedly brags, "I'm cracking cards cause I'm a scammer." A New York Post report describes "cracking cards" as a scheme paying a bank customer a fee to accept a phony deposit into his account to be later withdrawn -- but the scammer removes much more money than the phony deposit.) [New York Post, 4-26-2016]

-- Ricardo Ruiz, 26, was arrested in March on complaints from women that he had groped them at parks in Davie and Cooper City, Florida, but the case got easier afterward when police were tipped to a YouTube video that they believe is of Ruiz, addressing the camera while driving a car and extolling his groping habit. "Man, today was a good ... day, touching ass," he says. "If you don't touch ass, you're crazy. That's all I got to say." [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 3-31-2016]

Louis Helmburg III filed a lawsuit in Huntington, West Virginia, in February (2012) against the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and its member Travis Hughes for injuries Helmburg suffered in May 2011 when he fell off a deck at the fraternity house. The reason he gave for falling was that he had been startled, and toppled backward off the rail-less deck, after Hughes attempted to fire a bottle rocket "out of his anus" -- and the rocket, instead, exploded in place. (The lawsuit did not refer to Hughes' injuries.) [Courthouse News service, 2-2-2012]

The eye-catching Vietnamese model and Playboy (Venezuela edition) Playmate Angie Vu complained to the New York Daily News in April that her five-plus months in jail in Brooklyn have been "torture" and "cruel" because of her lack of access to beauty care. Vu is fighting extradition to France for taking her 9-year-old daughter in violation of the father's custody claim and is locked up until a federal judge rules. Among her complaints: "turning pale" in the "harsh light"; lack of "Guerlain's moisturizer"; inability to look at herself for months (because glass mirrors are prohibited); and "worrying" about being hit on by "lesbians" (thus causing "wrinkles"). At least, she told the reporter, she has found God in jail and passes time reading the Bible. [New York Daily News, 4-26-2016]

-- Chef Mahbub Chowdhury pleaded guilty in April to food and hygiene violations in Swindon (England) Magistrates Court after inspectors found "brown fingerprints" in the kitchen at his Yeahya Flavour of Asia carry-out restaurant. Chowdhury was candid about his "cultural" habit of bypassing toilet paper and using his hand to clean himself. The plastic bottle with the fingerprints, Chowdbury said, contained water that he normally used instead of the toilet paper, and his lawyer argued that since the bottle was never actually lab-tested, the brown spots could have been "spices." [Metro News (London), 4-13-2016]

-- England's Brighton and Hove City Council, striving to be progressive, issued a directive to parents of new school students (kids as young as age 4) calling on them to mark the gender identity they prefer -- and notes that any child who identifies as other than male or female should leave the space blank and consult with officials individually. (Critics, according to The Sun, expressed that school should be for "developing" such identities without the necessity of declaring them so early in life.) [The Sun, 4-19-2016]

-- "Zero tolerance" claimed another victim, in Charlotte, North Carolina, in April, when Jaden Malone, 12, came to his bullied friend's aid, was knocked down himself and repeatedly punched in the head by the bully, and pushed the boy off of him to avoid further damage -- but was himself suspended for three days by his charter school Invest Collegiate. A school official pointed out that the bully got five days, and besides, the policy against "all" physical violence is very clear. (After having Jaden treated for a concussion, his mother promptly withdrew him from the school.) [WJZY-TV (Charlotte), 4-20-2016]

-- Ms. Madi Barney, 20, courageously publicly reported her own rape accusation recently in Provo, Utah, and as a result has been disciplined as a student at Brigham Young University for allegedly violating the school's "honor code." (She is barred from withdrawing from courses or re-registering.) Whether the sex was consensual must be investigated by Provo police, but BYU officials said they had heard enough to charge Barney with the no-no of premarital sex. (Critics decried the advantage BYU thus gives rapists of BYU females -- since the women face the additional fear of university reprisals irrespective of the criminal case.) [Washington Post, 4-20-2016]

-- Idaho's law protecting fundamentalist faith healers regained prominence recently in the case of Mariah Walton, 20, who was born with a routinely repairable heart defect but who received only prayer and herbs because of her parents' religious rejection of doctors. Walton's now-irreversible damage leaves her frail and dependent on portable oxygen, and she will likely need lung and heart transplants to survive. Idaho and five other states immunize parents from criminal prosecution if they reject medical care on the ground of religious teachings. [The Guardian (London), 4-13-2016]

-- Latest From Evangelicals: (1) Christian political activist David Barton told his "WallBuilders" radio audience recently that Disney's anthropomorphic characters (e.g., Bambi) are simply gateways to kids' learning Babylonian pagan worship. (2) Brooklyn, New York, "prophet" Yakim Manasseh Jordan told followers recently that he has arranged with God to bring people back from the dead if they -- cheerfully -- offer a "miracle favor cloud" of gifts as low as $1,000. (3) James David Manning, chief pastor of the Atlah Worldwide Missionary Church in Harlem, in a recent online sermon, stepped up his usual anti-gay rhetoric, warning "sodomites" that God would soon send flames "coming out of your butthole." (A gay and transgender support group is fundraising to buy Atlah's building and set up a shelter.) [Salon.com, 4-12-2016] [The Daily Beast, 3-20-2016] [NBC News, 4-14-2016]

-- The Tap Inn bar in Billings, Montana, released April 11 surveillance video of the armed robbery staged by two men and a woman (still on the lam), showing two liplocked customers at the bar, lost in affectionate embrace during the entire crime, seemingly oblivious of danger. The robbers, perhaps impressed by the couple's passion, ignored them -- even while emptying the cash register just a few feet away. [Associated Press via Washington Post, 4-14-2016]

-- Andru Jolstad, 26, was arrested on April 16 and charged with using a pry bar to break into the cash boxes of four machines at Zap's Arcade in Mesa, Arizona. Following citizen tips, a cop arrived to find Jolstad on his knees alongside one machine with his arm still inside. His total take from the spree was $18, and he'll likely be sent back to prison from an earlier charge. [KNXV-TV (Phoenix), 4-21-2016]

(1) Transportation Security Administration announced on April 27 that its screeners had confiscated 73 guns from passengers' carry-ons -- in just the previous seven days! (Sixty-eight were loaded, and 27 had a round in the chamber.) (2) Federal regulators were deliberating in April whether to stop Minnesota's Ideal Conceal from rolling out its two-shot, .380 caliber handgun disguised as a smartphone. Several police chiefs, and two U.S. senators, have expressed alarm. (3) Jeffrey Grubbs, 45, was charged with two felonies in March following a school's 4-H Club carpentry project at which he (lacking a hammer) pounded a thumbtack into wood with the butt of his loaded handgun. (He subsequently realized the danger and removed the bullets.) [United Press International, 4-27-2016] [PublicSource via New Pittsburgh Courier, 4-24-2016] [Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau), 3-24-2016]

California's forests host major marijuana-growing operations (legal and illegal), and though the product has its virtues, cannabis farming creates massive problems -- guzzling water (23 liters per day per plant -- state drought or not) and needing the protection of a dangerous rodenticide. A state wildlife official told NBC News in April that the cannabis sites "use massive amounts of fertilizers, divert natural run-off waters, create toxic run-off waste and byproducts, remove large amounts of vegetation and trees, ... create ... unstable soils and kill or displace wildlife." [NBC News, 4-22-2016]

(1) Police in the Augusta, Georgia, suburb of Hephzibah arrested a meth-addled Ray Roye for battery and family violence against his wife in March. Roye was yelling about custody of their child, but his wife informed police they don't have a child. (2) Johnnie Hurt, 38, was arrested after reportedly eating mulch from a motel's landscaping in London, Kentucky, in April while missing a court-ordered drug test. When police arrived, Hurt was found in his wildly trashed a motel room. [WJBF-TV (Augusta), 4-6-2016] [Herald-Leader (Lexington), 4-14-2016]

Each year, the town of Chumbivilcas, Peru, celebrates the new year with what to Americans might seem "Festivus"-based (from the Seinfeld TV show), but is actually drawn from Incan tradition. For "Takanakuy," during background singing and dancing, all townspeople with grudges from the previous 12 months (men, women, children) settle them with often-bloody fistfights so that they start the new year clean. Said one villager to a Reuters reporter in December (2011), "Everything is solved here, and afterward we are all friends." [Reuters via CBS News, 12-14-2011]

One notably hypersuccessful YouTube channel (700,000 subscribers) features Mr. Lauri Vuohensilta of Finland pulverizing various objects (such as a bowling ball) in a 100-ton hydraulic press. (Said Vuohensilta, "I think it's built into every person -- the need to destroy something.") That channel is free of charge, but other entrepreneurs have created 24-hour pay-per-month websites and apps offering similarly specialized programming, e.g., "Zombie Go Boom" (actors taking chain saws to things; $5 a month), "Hungry Monk Yoga" (posing in orange robes while teaching martial arts; $15 a month), and "Lather Fantasies" (clothed people "excessively shampooing each other's hair"; $20 a month). (An April Wall Street Journal report noted that the "lather" channel "sounds kinkier than it actually is.") [Washington Post, 4-19-2016] [Wall Street Journal, 4-13-2016]

(Recent examples of traditional weird news themes repeated over "News of the Weird's" 28 years, along with updates on a few of our favorite characters.)

-- Restaurants in Tokyo continue their vigilance for unique, attention-demanding animal themes to attract diners. Eateries showcasing tableside cats, rabbits, owls, hawks and even snakes have tried their hands, with the latest being Harry, offering food and drink -- and 20 to 30 teacup-size hedgehogs for diners to fondle while awaiting meal service. The equivalent of $9 brings an hour of cuddling rights. [Reuters via The Guardian (London), 4-7-2016]

-- Fine Points of the Law: In some states, as News of the Weird has reported, visitors with the barest "right" to occupy property (e.g., invited in for one night but never left) cannot be evicted except by court order, which might take weeks to obtain. In April, owners in Flint, Michigan, and Nampa, Idaho, were outraged that nothing could be done quickly to remove squatters from their vacated houses. (The Nampa squatter produced a "lease" that, though fraudulent, was enough to send the sheriff away.) [WJRT-TV (Flint), 4-6-2016] [KIVI-TV (Boise), 4-11-2016]

-- The two most recent instances of suspects who claimed that the drugs or paraphernalia found in their genitals during police searches were not theirs (but were only being stored there for other people) were Tiffany Flores, 23, arrested in Fellsmere, Florida, on April 5 with a crack pipe in her vagina, and Deondre Lumpkin, 23, arrested in Largo, Florida, on March 22 with crack cocaine "concealed beneath his genitals" (though he did admit owning the marijuana found in his car). [The Smoking Gun, 4-6-2016] [The Smoking Gun, 3-26-2016]

-- Smooth Getaway: The December burglary of the Halifax bank in Sale, England, drew attention even though the hour was just after midnight -- because Jamie Keegan and Marc Shelton (both age 33) had tried to haul away an ATM, but it fell out the back of their van, producing calamitous noise (and sparks in the road). (Also, the ATM had an "out of order" sign on it, raising still another question about the efficacy of the crime.) In February the Minshull Street Crown Court sentenced the pair to 40 months each in prison. (Bonus: In court, Shelton helpfully corrected the legal record by reminding officials that the pair's crime was actually "burglary" and not, as written, "robbery.") [Manchester Evening News, 2-2-2016]

-- The most recent suspect to have the bright idea to try biting off his fingertips (to avoid identification) was Kirk Kelly, wanted in Tampa for violating probation and picked up by police in February in Akron, Ohio. While being detained in Akron, he had begun to chew the skin off his fingers. Even if he had succeeded, he was easily identified as Kirk Kelly because of his body tattoos ("Port Tampa" and "813" -- Tampa's area code). [WFTS-TV (Tampa), 2-26-1016]

-- More DIY Masters: (1) Randy Velthuizen had lived in the house in Everson, Washington, for 20 years, but in April he accidentally set it afire while attempting to kill weeds with a blowtorch. It was an uninsured total loss. Mused Velthuizen, "It just made downsizing a hell of a lot easier." (2) In January, four units in an apartment house in midtown Detroit were accidentally burned out by a tenant attempting to kill a bedbug that had bitten him. He had tried to light it up, but by the time the flames were extinguished, he was badly burned, his and three adjacent units were uninhabitable, and two dozen others had suffered water damage. [Bellingham Herald, 4-4-2016] [Detroit Free Press, 1-8-2016]

-- Sex 'n' Veggies: Emergency surgeons at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Costa Rica removed an 18-inch-long "yuca" (cassava root) from the posterior of a 55-year-old man in April after one of the two condoms encasing it ruptured inside him. A photograph in San Juan's Diario Extra showed that the yuca had been carved into a phallic shape. Apparently, the man avoided what could have been catastrophic internal injury. [Costa Rica Star, 4-6-2016]

-- Funeral directors who mix up bodies (either accidentally or, in some cases, fraudulently) are not uncommon, but Thomas Clock III of Clock Funeral Home at White Lake (Whiteside, Michigan) was charged with a bit more in April. Not only did Clock allegedly fail to bury the ashes of the late Helen Anthony in December (interring an empty box instead), but when the family asked for a specific burial date, Clock allegedly told them that no workers were available and that the family would have to dig the cemetery plot themselves -- for which Clock helpfully advised using a "post hole digger." (And they did.) [MLive.com, 4-7-2016]

-- Two News of the Weird All-Time Favorites: (1) Obsessive litigant Jonathan Lee Riches asked a federal court in Billings, Montana, in April to somehow issue a well-meaning "restraining" order against Donald Trump -- to force Trump out of the presidential race on the ground that he fears assassination. Riches wrote that he loves and adores Trump but suggested as a candidate John McCain (who is "less fiery"). (2) Mr. "Beezow Doo-doo Zopittybop-bop- bop," 34, was arrested in January for assaulting an Evergreen State College (Olympia, Washington) police officer. Mr. Zoppitybop-bop-bop (originally, Jeffrey Wilschke) had made News of the Weird several years back with arrests under his new name in Wisconsin and Iowa. [KPAX-TV (Missoula), 4-13-2016] [The Olympian), 2-1-2016]

-- In April, the Sacramento Bee revealed (from freedom of information requests) that University of California, Davis, officials had spent at least $175,000 in scarce state higher-education funds merely to attempt to scrub the Internet of references to the notorious 2011 incident in which a campus police officer deliberately pepper-sprayed the faces of restrained, helpless protesters. The public relations venture was part of a campaign by the school's chancellor, Linda Katehi, to rehabilitate her image after cutbacks to academic programs. (Other critics ridicule as futile almost any attempt -- ever -- to scrub news from the Internet.) [Sacramento Bee, 4-13-2016]

-- What is believed to be the longest-running armed standoff in U.S. history came to a quiet conclusion on Jan. 6 in Trinidad, Texas, when John Joe Gray outlasted the district attorney -- never having left his 47-acre ranch in the past 15 years. In 1999, Gray, carrying a pistol but without a permit, resisted arrest and bit a state trooper, retreating to his property, refusing to leave for court. The sheriff, explaining why his deputies declined to go after him, once said, "Joe Gray has been in prison out there himself (for 14 years)." (Actually, the charges were dismissed in December 2014, but when the district attorney left office, he failed to notify Gray or the deputies.) [WFAA-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth, 1-8-2016]

Newspapers in Sweden reported in January (2012) that two of the country's most heinous murderers apparently fell in love with each other at their psychiatric institution and, following a 26-day Internet-chat "courtship," had decided to marry. Mr. Isakin Jonsson ("the Skara Cannibal") was convicted of killing, decapitating and eating his girlfriend, and Michelle Gustafsson ("the Vampire Woman") was convicted of killing a father of four and drinking his blood. Said the love-struck Jonsson (certainly accurately), to the newspaper Expressen, "I have never met anyone like (Michelle)." The pair will almost certainly remain locked up forever, but Gustafsson wrote that she hopes they will be released, to live together and "have dogs and pursue our hobbies, piercing and tattoos." [The Local (Stockholm), 1-30-2012]