In May, an apparently devout woman named Katy Vasquez of Winter Park, Florida, posted a sincerely written entry on Facebook (and told Huffington Post in an interview) that she had just seen a "sign from God" -- a cross -- as a smudge in her infant's soiled diaper. "I prayed to God for a sign that everything would be OK," she gushed to the reporter. "It might not be the prettiest sign, but he put it where he knew I'd see it." (Hence, News of the Weird retires the recurring theme begun in the 1980s with Jesus in a rust stain on an abandoned refrigerator.) [Huffington Post, 5-20-2016]

-- To their great surprise, Sophie Scafidi and friends, on an outing in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, in June, learned that a man spying on and photographing them through a camera lens hidden in a Gatorade bottle painted black was not violating any law. Although the lens was rigged to the man's phone, which contained beach photos, including some of children, police informed Scafidi that even surreptitious photography in sleazy circumstances, as long as done on public property, was legal -- and that the only law broken in the incident was by the person who snatched the "camera" to show police. [WBZ-TV (Boston), 6-7-2016]

-- A court in Canberra, Australia, found Wesley King not guilty of a 2014 burglary despite his DNA's having been found at the crime scene -- on underpants containing his fresh feces. Wrote Chief Justice Helen Murrell in June: There is a "reasonable possibility" that the burglar was someone else who was wearing unwashed underwear that had previously been worn by the accused. (Thus, she found King not guilty of all charges.) [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 6-15-2016]

-- In June, a federal appeals court revived Adrian King's lawsuit against the Huttonsville Correctional Center in West Virginia for emotional distress and invasion of privacy in forcing him into surgery to remove the marbles he had implanted in his penis before going behind bars in 2008. King did not allege that he misses the marbles but only that he had chosen body-modification and that the surgery was against his will, causing pain upon touch (or whenever it gets cold, or rains or snows). Prison officials initially ordered the surgery because it was unclear that the objects were not contraband. [Reuters, 6-7-2016]

-- Medical Daily, in a May review of recent cases, noted progress in dealing with Cotard's syndrome -- a disorder that leads patients to believe they have no blood or vital body parts -- or feeling as if they are dead (or may as well be). Studies show one in about 200 psychiatric patients exhibit the symptoms, and one doctor, describing a brain scan of his patient, said brain activity resembled that of a person in a coma or under anesthesia. Cotard's, also known as walking corpse syndrome, leads patients to thus avoid eating or bathing (asking themselves, why bother?). [Medical Daily, 5-25-2016]

-- Awwwww: The Sacramento (California) Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals put out a call for help in April after stray kittens were found dumped in a yard, with only two still alive but nearly blind with eye infections and needing animal blood for a serum that might save the eyes. The call was "answered" by the rescue dog Jemmie. After Jemmie's blood "donation" (not a transfusion, since the blood went only to make the serum), vets reported saving one eye of one of the kittens, earning Jemmie a "special" reward. (Said vet Sarah Varanini, "There's nothing in life (Jemmie) likes more than kittens.") [KOVR-TX (Sacramento), 4-6-2016]

-- Recurring Themes: Even though extraordinarily rare, two people recently reported foreign accent syndrome after their brain traumas apparently caused crossing of cranial "wires." (1) "J.C.," 50, was described in the journal Cortex as an energetic Italian who, after a brain injury, inexplicably speaks constantly in "emphatic, error-prone French." (2) Six months ago, Lisa Alamia of Rosenberg, Texas, awoke from surgery inexplicably speaking in a British accent (particularly confusing her family and friends since she previously spoke not so much "English" as "Texan"). Medical experts cited by CBS News reported that fewer than 100 people worldwide have ever been diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome. [Washington Post, 6-3-2016] [CBS News, 6-22-2016]

At the monthly pro wrestling show in Ringgold, Georgia, in June, Patricia Crowe, 59, apparently having had enough of "bad guy" Paul Lee, reportedly jumped into the ring to rescue "good guy" Iron Mann, whom Lee had "tied up" and been beating with a chair. First, she cut Mann loose with her knife and then pulled a loaded handgun on Lee (and was eventually arrested by sheriff's deputies). Crowe admitted that Lee's earlier "mean" banter with ringside patrons had unnerved her, especially when he told Crowe to sit her "toothless self back down." [NorthwestGeorgiaNews.com (Rome, Ga.), 6-8-2016]

(1) A former Malaysian legislator (Mr. S. Manikavasagam), who was charged in June with taking a bribe worth about US$7,300 from a contractor, claimed innocence -- that somehow a package of money was thrown into his car as he drove down a city street. (2) A woman in Goldsboro, North Carolina, acquired a freezer from her neighbor several months ago but said she hadn't looked inside until May, when she discovered parts of a dead body (and called authorities). She said the neighbor had discouraged her from opening the freezer because "a church" was using it as a "time capsule." [Straits Times (Singapore), 6-18-2016] [WNCN-TV (Raleigh, N.C.), 6-2-2016]

The Illinois secretary of state stopped mailing reminders about license-plate renewal deadlines in October because his office said the state could no longer afford the $450,000-a-month mailing cost (thus saving taxpayers $3.6 million so far). The Belleville (Illinois) News-Democrat and The Associated Press reported in June that the state has collected (not surprisingly!) $5.24 million more in the resultant "late fees" people had to pay on their license-plate renewals than it had collected the year before the reminders stopped. (A proposal for a 30-day grace period for expired plates failed in the just-concluded legislative session.) [Belleville News-Democrat, 6-23-2016]

University of Georgia student Benjamin Abele, 22, was finally subdued by four police officers on May 29 after he had run naked down an Athens street and leaped into the gooey, malodorous back end of a garbage truck, wallowing in the slimy liquid that pools under the gunk (hindering arrest), and then attempting to burrow further into the filthiness to somehow "escape." Two Taser shots had no effect, and he was identified as high on PCP. [Athens Banner-Herald, 6-3-2016]

(1) Voters in June in the village of Draguseni, Romania, elected Vasile Cepoi mayor -- no, not the Vasile Cepoi who lost, or the other Vasile Cepoi who lost. The winner was the incumbent mayor, Vasile Cepoi. (There was also a fourth candidate, who was not named Vasile Cepoi.) (2) In June, an "artificial intelligence" robot ("IR77") being taught to "avoid obstacles" while moving around the Promobot lab in Perm, Russia, apparently "learned" how to walk out the door undetected, causing a downtown traffic jam when its batteries died. Handlers modified the computer script, but IR77 "escaped" again several days later, and engineers said they may have to dismantle the program and start over. [New York Times, 6-14-2016] [RT.com (Moscow), 6-23-2016]

In testimony at an extortion trial in New York City in June (2012), Anthony Russo (alleged Colombo family associate) told prosecutors that a bloody mob war was narrowly averted recently. The Colombo family had learned that a new Staten Island pizza parlor (run by an alleged Bonanno family associate) was featuring pies that suspiciously resembled those of the top-rated, Colombo-promoted L and B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn, and thus, representatives of both families had to have one of those classic "sit-downs" at a neutral site to smooth things over. The sit-down took place, Russo said, at a Panera Bread cafe. [New York Daily News, 6-13-2012]

The Bunyadi opened in London in June for a three-month run as the world's newest nude-dining experience, and now has a reservation waiting list of 40,000 (since it only seats 42). Besides the nakedness, the Bunyadi creates "true liberation" (said its founder) by serving only food "from nature," cooked over fire (no electricity). Waiters are nude, as well, except for minimal concessions to seated diners addressing standing servers. Tokyo's Amrita nude eatery, opening in July, is a bit more playful, with best-body male waiters and an optional floor show -- and no "overweight" patrons allowed. Both restaurants provide some sort of derriere-cover for sitting, and require diners to check their cellphones at the door. [The Guardian (London), 6-7-2016] [Mashable.com, 6-10-2016]

Milwaukee's WITI-TV, in an on-the-scene report from Loretta, Wisconsin (in the state's northwest backwoods), in May, described the town's baffling fascination with "Wood Tick Racing," held annually, provided someone finds enough wood ticks to place in a circle so that townspeople can wager on which one hops out first. The "races" began 37 years ago, and this year "Howard" was declared the winner. (According to the organizers, at the end of the day, all contestants, except Howard, were to be smashed with a mallet.) [WITI-TV, 5-30-2016]

The Department of Veterans Affairs revealed in May that, between 2007 and last year, nearly 25,000 vets examined for traumatic brain injury at 40 VA facilities were not seen by medical personnel qualified to render the diagnosis -- which may account for the result that, according to veterans' activists, very few of them were ever referred for treatment. (TBI, of course, is the "signature wound" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) [WVEC-TV (Norfolk), 5-26-2016]

Basking in its "record high" in venture-capital funding, the Chinese Jiedaibao website put its business model into practice recently: facilitating offers of "jumbo" personal loans (two to five times the normal limit) to female students who submit nude photos. The student agrees that if the loan is not repaid on time (at exorbitant interest rates), the lender can release the photos online. (The business has been heavily criticized, but the company's headquarters said the privately negotiated contracts are beyond its control.) [The Guardian (London), 6-15-2016]

-- For the last 17 months, Stan Larkin, of Ypsilanti, Michigan, has gone about his business (even playing pickup basketball) without a functional heart in his body -- carrying around in a backpack the "organ" that pumps his blood. Larkin, 25, was born with a dangerous heart arrhythmia, and was kept alive for a while with a defibrillator and then by hooking him up to a washing- machine-sized heart pump, leaving him barely mobile -- but then came the miraculous SynCardia Freedom Total Artificial Heart, weighing 13 pounds and improving Larkin's quality of life as he endured the almost-interminable wait for a heart transplant (which he finally received in May). (An average of 22 people a day die awaiting organ transplants in the U.S.) [Washington Post, 6-10-2016]

-- An ordinary green tree frog recently injured in a "lawn-mowing accident" in Australia's Outback was flown about 600 miles from Mount Isa to the Cairns Frog Hospital. CFH president Deborah Pergolotti spoke despairingly to Australian Broadcasting Corp. News in June about how society underregards the poor frogs when it comes to rescue and rehab -- suggesting that "there's almost a glass ceiling" between them and the cuter animals. [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 6-6-2016]

-- News You Can Use: When they were starting out, the band Guns N' Roses practiced and "lived" in a storage unit in Los Angeles, according to a book-review essay in the May 2016 Harper's magazine, and "became resourceful," wrote the essayist. Wrote bass player Duff McKagan in one of the books reviewed: "You could get dirt-cheap antibiotics -- intended for use in aquariums -- at pet stores. Turned out tetracycline wasn't just good for tail rot and gill disease. It also did great with syphilis." [Harper's, May 2016]

News updates from Kim Jong Un's North Korea: In March, a South Korean ecology organization reported that the traditional winter migration of vultures from China was, unusually, skipping over North Korea, headed directly for the South -- apparently because of the paucity of animal corpses (according to reports, a major food source for millions of North Koreans). And in June, the Global Nutrition Report (which criticized the U.S. and 13 other countries for alarming obesity rates) praised North Korea for its "progress" in having fewer adults with "body mass index" over 30). [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-25-2016] [New York Times, 6-13-2016]

-- The super-painful "Ilizarov procedure" enables petite women to make themselves taller. (A surgeon breaks bones in the shins or thighs, then adjusts special leg braces four times daily that pull the bones slightly apart, awaiting them to -- slowly -- grow back and fuse together, usually taking at least six months. As News of the Weird reported in 2002, a 5-foot-tall woman, aiming for 5-4, gushed about "a better job, a better boyfriend ... a better husband. It's a long-term investment." Now, India's "medical tourism" industry offers Ilizarovs cut-rate -- but (according to a May dispatch in The Guardian) unregulated and, so far, not yet even taught in India's medical schools. Leading practitioner Dr. Amar Sarin of Delhi (who claims "hundreds" of successes) admits there's a "madness" to patients' dissatisfactions with the way they look. [The Guardian (London), 5-8-2016]

-- Least Competent Criminals: (1) Damian Shaw, 43, was sentenced in England's Chester Crown Court in June after an April raid revealed he had established a "sophisticated" cannabis-growing operation (160 plants) in a building about 50 yards from the front door of the Cheshire Police headquarters. (2) Northern Ireland's Belfast Telegraph reported in April that a man was hospitalized after throwing bricks at the front windows of a PIPS office (Public Initiative for Prevention of Suicide and Self Harm). As has happened to a few others in News of the Weird's reporting, he was injured by brick-bounceback, off the shatterproof glass. [Winsford Guardian, 6-3-2016] [Belfast Telegraph, 4-13-2016]

-- No Longer Weird: Once again, this time around midnight in Redford Township, Michigan, in June, police surrounded a suspect's home and shut down the neighborhood for the next 11 hours, fired tear gas canisters through windows, and used a robot to scope out the inside -- and ultimately found that the house had been empty the whole time. (The domestic violence suspect is still at large.) [WDIV-TV (Detroit), 6-11-2016]

More people (all are males, as usual) who accidentally shot themselves recently: Age 37, Augusta, Kansas, while adjusting his "sock gun" at a high school graduation (May). Age 28, Panama City, Florida, a jail guard "preparing" for a job interview (May). An unidentified man in Union, South Carolina, who, emerging from a shower, sat on his gun (December). The sheriff of Des Moines County, Iowa, who shot his hand while cleaning his gun (Burlington, Iowa, December). A movie-goer adjusting in his seat in Salina, Kansas, shot himself during the feature (October) (three months after acquiring a no-test-required concealed-carry permit). Age 43, Miami, demonstrating to a relative how to clean a gun (December). A teenager, Overland, Missouri, trying to take a selfie holding a gun (June). (The last two people are no longer with us.) Augusta: [Wichita Eagle, 5-15-2016] Panama City: [Panama City News Herald, 5-9-2016] Union: [WYFF-TV (Greenville, S.C.), 12-29-2015] Burlington: [KCCI-TV (Des Moines), 12-17-2015] Salina: [Salina Journal, 10-17-2015] Miami: [WTVJ-TV (Miami), 12-23-2015] Overland: [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6-7-2016]

Collections of comically poor translations are legion, but the Beijing Municipal government, in sympathy with English-speaking restaurant-goers, published a helpful guidebook recently (2012) of what the restaurateurs were trying, though inartfully, to say. In an interview with the authors, NBC News learned the actual contents of "Hand Shredded A$$ Meat" (sic) (merely donkey meat) and other baffling dishes (all taken from actual menus), such as "Cowboy Leg," "Red-Burned Lion Head," "Blow-up Flatfish with No Result," and the very unhelpful "Strange Flavor Noodles" and "Tofu Made By Woman With Freckles." [MSNBC, 4-20-2012]

In May, the Norwegian Consumer Council staged a live, 32-hour TV broadcast marathon -- a word-for-word reading of the "terms of service" for internet applications Instagram, Spotify and more than two dozen others, totaling 900 pages and 250,000 words of legal restrictions and conditions that millions of users "voluntarily" agree to when they sign up (usually via a mouse click or finger swipe). A council official called such terms "bordering on the absurd," as consumers could not possibly understand everything they were legally binding themselves to. (The reading was another example of Norway's fascination with "slow TV" -- the success of other marathons, such as coverage of a world-record attempt at knitting yarn and five 24-hour days on a salmon-fishing boat, mentioned in News of the Weird in 2013.) [Wall Street Journal, 5-25-2016]

-- The Defense Department still uses 1980s-era 8-inch floppy disks on computer systems that handle part of America's "nuclear umbrella," including ballistic missiles. Also, according to a May report by the Government Accountability Office, systems using 1970s-era COBOL programing language are still used for key functions of the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service, among others (including Veterans Affairs, for tracking beneficiary claims). Agencies have reported recruiting retired employees to return to fix glitches in operating systems long since abandoned by Microsoft and others. [CNBC, 5-25-2016]

-- In April, police in Boise, Idaho, told KAWO Radio that they will not relax the year-old ban on dachshund "racing" that was a traditional family entertainment highlight at the annual "Arena-Wiena Extravaganza" -- because all dog-racing in Idaho is illegal. The station had argued that the law intended to target only greyhound racing; that an exception had been carved out for popular dogsled racing (reasoning: individual dogs were not racing each other); and that, in any event, the "race" course was only about 40 feet long -- but reported that the authorities were "dead serious" about the ban. [LoweringTheBar.net, 4-25-2016]

A watchdog agency monitoring charities revealed in May its choice for "worst" among those "helping" U.S. veterans: The National Vietnam Veterans Foundation raised more than $29 million from 2010 to 2014 -- but wound up donating about 2 cents of every dollar toward actual help. The other 98 cents went to administration and fund-raising. (Similarly troubling, according to the watchdog, is that the CEO of NVVF is a staff attorney at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.) [Fox News, 5-17-2016]

(1) A March video featured a black San Francisco State University woman angrily confronting a white student, accusing him of "cultural appropriation" because he was wearing his hair in dreadlocks. (2) A March fitness club ad pitch in Sawley, England, picturing an extraterrestrial with the caption, "And when they arrive, they'll take the fat ones first," was denounced by an anti-bullying organization as "offensive." (3) A May bus-stop ad for a San Francisco money lender ("10 percent down. Because you're too smart to rent") was derided for "ooz(ing) self-congratulatory privilege." [SF Weekly, 4-19-2016] [BBC News, 4-3-2016] [SFGate.com, 5-24-2016]

Gainesville, Florida, performance artist Tom Miller planned a public piece in a downtown plaza during May and June as homage to the music composer John Cage's celebrated "4'33" (which is four minutes and 33 seconds of purposeful silence by all musicians who "play" on the piece). Miller said his project would consist of local artists "installing" sculpture at 15-minute intervals for five days -- except that the "sculpture" would have to be imagined by observers, as (in the tradition of Cage) nothing otherwise perceptible would be there. [Gainesville Sun, 5-31-2016]

-- Tex-ass Justice! Convicted murderer Charles Flores was on Texas' death row for more than 16 years (until June 2 of this year) before the state's highest criminal appeals court finally ruled that the execution might not be justified if the most important evidence was provided by a witness whom the police had hypnotized. The trial judge, and the jury, had accepted that "hypnosis" could lead to "recovered" memory (a popular hypothesis in the 1980s and 1990s, but largely discredited today). There was no physical evidence against Flores, and the trial court was ordered to rethink the validity of hypnosis. [Fusion.net, 5-27-2016]

-- (Government) Crime Scenes: (1) The Massachusetts attorney general disclosed in May that state crime-lab chemist Sonja Farak (who was fired in 2013) worked "high" on drugs "every day" in the lab in Amherst, beginning around 2005. Among her preferred refreshments: meth, ketamine, ecstasy and LSD. (Farak worked at a different Massachusetts crime lab than Annie Dookhan, imprisoned in 2013 for improvising damaging lab results on at least 20,000 convicts.) (2) The U.S. Justice Department revealed in April that in the 20-year period ending about 2000, most FBI forensic unit examiners overstated hair sample "matches" in criminal trial testimony -- helping prosecutors 95 percent of the time. [Boston Globe, 5-3-2016] [Washington Post, 4-18-2016]

-- Robert Williams, 38, was arrested on June 1 in Calhan, Colorado, after challenging his daughter to a duel with handguns. Williams had pointed a gun at his daughter, then demanded that she grab one, too. The daughter's age was not reported, but police said she and Williams both got off shots (that missed). [KDVR-TV (Denver), 6-2-2016]

-- Erick "Pork Chop" Cox, 32, in an angry construction-site clash in DeBary, Florida, in June, used his front-end loader to dump two heaps of dirt onto his boss, Perry Byrd, 57, burying him up to his waist before co-workers intervened. Cox said Byrd had taken the first swing and that he had only accidentally engaged the loader when trying to turn it off, but Byrd claimed that Cox was laughing during the episode. Cox was arrested. [Orlando Sentinel, 6-2-2016]

Suspected drug possessor Darius Dabney finally confessed after a protracted confrontation with the judge in a Cincinnati courtroom in May -- a showdown initiated when the judge noticed an "overwhelming" smell of marijuana accompanying Dabney as he entered the room. Upon extensive questioning (according to a transcript provided by WXIX-TV), Dabney swore that he had no drugs -- though the penalty for lying would be immediate jailing, but producing the drugs voluntarily would result only in their being confiscated, without charges. One more chance, the exhausted, super-patient judge implored, just to be sure. Dabney then sheepishly pulled out a bag of marijuana. "Finally, you come clean," said the judge. "Are you sure (now)?" Dabney then pulled out another bag. "Oh, my lord," said the judge, who still kept his word and only found Dabney in contempt for "coming to court high." [WXIX-TV (Cincinnati), 5-12-2016]

In the most recent instance of a landlord ordering a resident to make his home safe for burglars, Kevin Sheehan of Abingdon, England, was told by his housing association in May that he would be evicted unless he removed his above-ground backyard fish pond (and relocated the 80 koi carp and goldfish). The landlord was concerned that if a trespasser jumped the property wall, he could not anticipate that he would land in the pond and might hurt himself. [BBC News, 5-26-2016]

News of the Weird Classic (June 2012)

Chinese media reported that (in 2012), at the Xiaogan Middle School in Hubei province, high school students studying for the all-important national college entrance exam worked through the evening while hooked up to intravenous drips of amino acids to fight fatigue. A director of the school's Office of Academic Affairs reasoned that before the IVs were hung, weary students complained of losing too much time running back and forth to the school's infirmary for energy injections. After the media reports, the public backlash was less against China's placing so much importance on the exams and more complaining that the government was subsidizing the cost of those injections. [South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 5-9-2012]