More and more churches ("hundreds," according to a June Christianity Today report) offer hesitant parishioners a "money-back guarantee" if they tithe 10 percent (or more) of their income for 90 days -- but then feel that God blesses them insufficiently in return. The South Carolina megachurch NewSpring instituted such a program in the 1990s and claims that, of 7,000 recent pledgers, "fewer than 20" expressed dissatisfaction with the Lord. Advocates cite the Bible's Book of Malachi, quoting God himself (according to Christianity Today): "Test me in this." "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse" and "see if I will not pour out so much blessing" that "there will not be room enough to store it." [Christianity Today, 6-28-2016]

A leading Chinese orthopedic surgeon continues to believe that "full-body" transplants are the next big thing in medicine, despite worldwide skepticism about both the science and the ethics. The plan for Dr. Ren Xiaoping of Harbin Medical University calls for removing both heads (the deceased donor's and the live recipient's), connecting the blood vessels, stabilizing the new neck, and "bath(ing)" spinal-cord nerve endings chemically so they will connect. (Critics say it is impossible to "connect" spinal-cord nerves.) According to a June New York Times dispatch, doctors regularly denounce China's ethical laxities (though Chinese officials term such denunciations "envy" at China's achievements). [New York Times, 6-11-2016]

-- (1) In June, District Attorney Jerry Jones in Monroe, Louisiana, dropped drug and gun charges against college football players Cam Robinson and Hootie Jones (who play for University of Alabama but are from Monroe) --declaring that the "main reason" for his decision is that "I refuse to ruin the lives of two young men who have spent their adolescence and teenage years working and sweating, while we were all in the air conditioning." (2) A Philadelphia "casting" agency solicited "extras" to show up at polling stations on the April 26 Pennsylvania primary day for candidate Kevin Boyle, who was running against state Sen. John Sabatina -- offering $120 each (plus lunch and an open bar). Since most polling-site "electioneering" is illegal, the probable job was merely to give voters the impression that Boyle was very popular. (Sabatina narrowly won.) [Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 6-22- 2016] [Gawker.com, 4-27-2016]

-- In January, a Chicago Tribune investigation revealed only 124 of the roughly 12,000 Chicago cops were responsible for the misconduct complaints that resulted in settlements (since 2009)-- with one officer, for example, identified in seven. (A June Chicago Reporter study claimed the city paid out $263 million total on misconduct litigation during 2012-2015.) [Chicago Tribune, 1-29- 2016][Chicago Reporter, 6-22-2016]

(1) Insurance agent John Wright filed a lawsuit in Will County, Illinois, in June over teenagers playing "ding dong ditch," in which kids ring a doorbell but run away before the resident answers. The lawsuit claims that bell-ringer Brennan Papp, 14, caused Wright "severe emotional distress, anxiety, and weight loss," resulting in at least $30,000 of lost income. (2) The ex-boyfriend of Nina Zgurskaya filed a lawsuit in Siberia after she broke up with him for his reluctance to "pop the question" after a two-year courtship. The man, not named in a dispatch from Moscow, demanded compensation for his dating expenses. The trial court ruled against him, but he is appealing. [Patch.com (Joliet, Illinois), 6-24-2016] [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-3-2016]

A team of researchers is following about 30 tabbies, calicos, and others, recording their moves and sounds, to somehow learn whether housecats have dialects in their meows and alter other patterns of stress and intonation when they "speak" to other cats or to humans. In explaining the project, linguist Robert Eklund (of Sweden's Linkoping University) personally sounded out "a pretty wide range of meows to illustrate his points," wrote a New York magazine interviewer in April. Eklund is already an expert on feline purring (at Purring.org) -- although from a distance, as he admits to being allergic to cats. [New York, 4-27-2016]

-- Quixotic Malaysian designer Moto Guo made a splash at Milan's fashion week in June when he sent model after model to the runway with facial blotches that suggested they had zits or skin conditions. One reporter was apparently convinced, concluding, "Each man and woman on the runway looked miserable." [Daily Mail (London), 6-20-2016]

-- Out of Control: (1) Nelson Hidalgo, 47, was arrested in New York City in June and charged with criminal negligence and other crimes for parking his van near Citi Field during a Mets game and drawing players' complaints when he ramped up the van's 80-speaker sound system. "I know it's illegal, but it's the weekend," said Hidalgo. "I usually (just) get a ticket." (2) Trina Hibberd of Mission Beach, Australia, finally showed concern about the python living inside her walls that she has known about for 15 years but (perhaps "Australian-ly") had chosen to ignore. In June, it wandered out -- a 15-foot-long, 90-pound Scrub Python she calls "Monty." "All hell broke loose," a neighbor said later, as snake-handlers took Monty to a more appropriate habitat. [AM New York, 6-20-2016] [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 6-21-2016]

Brigham Young University professor Jason Hansen apologized in May after coaxing a student (for extra credit) to drink a small vial of his urine in class. The physiology session was on kidney function, and Hansen thought the stunt would call attention to urine's unique properties. He confessed later that the "urine" was just food coloring with vinegar added; that he had used the stunt in previous classes; and that he usually admits the ruse at the next class session. Nonetheless, Hansen's department chair suggested he retire the concept. [KSTU-TV (Provo), 5-31-2016]

A Woman at the Top of Her Game: In Nashville, Tennessee, in June, sex worker Jonisia Morris, 25, was charged with robbing her client by (according to the police report) removing the man's wallet from his trousers while he received oral sex seated in his car, extracting his debit card, and returning the wallet to his pocket -- without his noticing. [WZTV (Nashville), 6-16-2016]

Recidivist Jesse Johnson, 20, was charged again in June (for suspicion of disturbing the peace) after he had crawled underneath a woman's car at an Aldi store's parking lot in Lincoln, Nebraska, waited for her to return, and then, as she was stepping into the car, reaching out to fondle her ankle. It was Johnson's third such charge this year, and he initially tried to deny the actual touch, instead claiming that he was underneath the car "simply for the visual." Johnson acknowledged to the judge that he needs help and that he had been in counseling but had run out of money. (At press time, the status of the latest incident was still pending.) [Journal Star (Lincoln), 6-23- 2016]

(1) Australian lawyer William Ray was killed on May 22 when he was thrown from his all-terrain "quad bike" in rural Victoria state and pinned underneath. Ray had come to prominence by representing Honda as the company balked at mandatory installation of anti-roll bars on quad bikes. (2) A 48-year-old employee at North Central Bronx Hospital in New York City died of a heart attack at work on June 7, under circumstances (according to police) indicating that he was viewing a pornographic video at the moment of his death. [The Age (Melbourne), 5-23-2016] [New York Daily News, 6-8-2016]

When the assistant manager arrived early on June 26 (2012) to open up the Rent-A-Center in Brockton, Massachusetts, he encountered a man on the ground with his head stuck underneath the heavy metal loading-bay door (obviously as the result of a failed burglary attempt during the night). "Hang tight!" the manager consoled the trapped man. "The police are on their way." Manuel Fernandes, 53, was arrested. [The Enterprise (Brockton), 6-26-2012]

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]