LEAD STORY -- Suspicions Confirmed

Schools' standardized tests are often criticized as harmfully rigid, and in the latest version of the Texas Education Agency's STAAR test, poet Sara Holbrook said she flubbed the "correct" answer for "author motivation" -- in two of her own poems that were on the test. Writing in Huffington Post in January, a disheartened Holbrook lamented, "Kids' futures and the evaluations of their teachers will be based on their ability to guess the so-called correct answer to (poorly) made-up questions." [Huffington Post, 1-5-2017]

-- In December, James Leslie Kelly, 52, and with a 37-conviction rap sheet dating to 1985, filed a federal lawsuit in Florida claiming that his latest brush with the law was Verizon's fault and not his. Kelly was convicted of stealing the identity of another James Kelly and taking more than $300 in Verizon services. He bases his case on the Verizon sales representative's having spent "an hour and a half" with him -- surely enough time, he says, to have figured out that he was not the James Kelly he was pretending to be. He seeks $72 million. [WFTV (Orlando), 1-2-2016]

-- In Hong Kong in December, Mr. Lam Chung-kan, 37, pleaded guilty to stealing a bottle of a co-worker's breast milk at work and drinking it -- but only to help with "stress" in his job as a computer technician. Undermining the health-improvement explanation was a photo Lam sent the woman, showing himself in an aroused state. [South China Morning Post, 12-21-2016]

London's The Guardian reported in January that "dozens" of people have been charged or jailed recently for "defaming" the new Myanmar government, which has been headed (in a prime-minister-like role) since April by Aung San Suu Kyi, who was elected after her release from house detention following two decades of persecution for criticizing the longtime military regime. For her struggle for free speech, Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Said the wife of the latest arrestee, Myo Yan Naung Thein, on trial for "criminal defamation" of Suu Kyi's regime, "This is not insulting -- this is just criticizing, with facts. This is freedom of speech." [The Guardian, 1-9-2017]

High Finance: Sometime in 2006, a photographer on assignment roamed a Chipotle restaurant in Denver, snapping photos of customers. Leah Caldwell was one person photographed, but says she refused to sign the photographer's "release" -- and was surprised, nevertheless, to see a photo of herself in a Chipotle promotion in 2014 and again in 2015 (and on her table in the photo were "alcoholic beverages" she denied ever ordering). In January, Caldwell said the misuse of her image is Chipotle's fault for ignoring her non-"release," and thus that she is entitled to all of the profits Chipotle earned between 2006 and 2015: $2.237 billion. [KMGH (Denver), 1-5-2017]

In December, Ashlynd Howell, age 6, of Little Rock, Arkansas, deftly mashed her sleeping mother's thumbprint onto her phone to unlock the Amazon app and order $250 worth of Pokemon toys. Mom later noticed 13 email confirmations and asked Ashlynd if something was amiss. According to the Wall Street Journal report, Ashlynd said, "No, Mommy, I was shopping." [Wall Street Journal, 12-23-2016]

-- The British think tank High Pay Centre reported in January that the average CEO among the U.K.'s top 100 companies (in the Financial Times Stock Exchange index) earns the equivalent of around $1,600 an hour -- meaning that a 12-hour-a-day boss will earn, by mid-day Jan. 4, as much money as the typical worker at his firm will earn the entire year. (Around the same time, the anti-poverty organization Oxfam reported, to an astonished press, that eight men -- six Americans, headed by Bill Gates -- have the same total "net worth" as the 3.6 billion people who comprise the poorest half of the planet.) [The Guardian, 1-3-2017] [New York Times, 1-16-2017]

-- An organization that tracks "high net worth" investors (Spectrem Group of Lake Forest, Illinois) reported recently that, of Americans worth $25 million or more, only about two-thirds donate $10,000 or more yearly to charity. And then there is Charles Feeney, 85, of New York City, who in December made his final gift to charity ($7 million to Cornell University), completing his pledge to give away almost everything he had -- $8 billion. (He left his wife and himself $2 million to live on, in their rental apartment in San Francisco.) A January New York Times profile noted that nothing is "named" for Feeney, that the gifts were mostly anonymous, and that Feeney assiduously cultivated his low profile. [Harper's Index (February 2017)] [New York Times, 1-6-2017]

-- A "disturbingly large" (according to one report) number of smartphone apps are available devoted to calculating how much the user has "earned" per day and per year during restroom breaks answering nature's calls while at work. Australia's News Limited's rough calculation estimated $1,227 for someone making $55,000 a year, but results might vary since there are so many apps: Poop Salary, ToiletPay, Log-Log, Paid 2 Poo, Pricy Poop, Poop Break and perhaps others. [News.com.au via New York Post, 12-9-2016]

"Every major event in my life has been about insects," Aaron Rodriques, 26, told The New York Times in December, home in New York City during a winter break from his doctoral research at Purdue University on the "sweet tergal secretions" of German cockroaches, and on his way to buy a supply of crickets and hornworms. ("Hornworms," he said, have an "amazing defense" where they "eat tobacco for the nicotine, which they exhale as a gas to scare away predators.") "When I'm feeling stressed out," Rodriques said, he might take one out to "calm me down." He met his first girlfriend when she was attracted to his pet giant African millipede (as long as a human forearm), but admits that "for the vast majority" of time in school, "I was alone." [New York Times, 12-29-2016]

Two years ago, News of the Weird updated previous entries by noting that China's Ministry of Culture had cracked down on the centuries-old tradition of festively over-the-top funerals (ceremonies to assure the family that the deceased did not die "faceless") -- by arresting the song-and-dance people (including strippers and pole-dancers) peddling their services to mourners. Even though that ban has been working, nostalgic Chinese can still see great funeral pole-dancing -- in Taiwan -- according to a January report on the death of Chiayi county official Tung Hsiang, featuring 50 "scantily clad" entertainers. (Pole-dancing, itself, is still big in China, where the national pole-dancing team recently performed its annual outdoor show, wearing shorts and halter tops, in the country's northernmost village, Beiji -- where the temperature was minus 33 Celsius.) [Shanghaiist, 1-5-20-17] [Shanghaiist, 12-21-2016]

(1) Woodstock, Vermont, police arrested a 28-year-old man for bank robbery in January, with a key piece of evidence coming to their attention when a disapproving Vermonter noted a paper coffee cup not in its proper recycling bin. The cup held the robber's holdup note and DNA. (2) A 46-year-old man was arrested in December after an evening at the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and charged with leaving a server a non-monetary "tip" -- of a Valium pill. [Valley News (Lebanon, N.H.), 1-12-2017] [Morning Call (Allentown), 12-30-2016]

College basketball player Shanteona Keys makes free throws at a 78 percent rate for her career, but on Feb. 16 (2013), she weakly shanked one of those 15-foot shots, causing it to thud to the floor about 8 feet short of the rim -- the worst collegiate free-throw attempt of all time, according to several sports reporters who viewed the video. Keys explained to Deadspin.com that she always brings the ball close to her face when she shoots, "and my fingernail got caught on my nose, so I couldn't follow through correctly." Her Georgia College (Milledgeville) team lost to rival Columbus State 70-60. [Deadspin.com, 2-20-2013]

In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals finally pulled the plug on Orange County, California, social workers who had been arguing in court for 16 years that they were not guilty of lying under oath because, after all, they did not understand that lying under oath in court is wrong. The social workers had been sued for improperly removing children from homes and defended their actions by inventing "witnesses" to submit made-up testimony. Their lawyers had been arguing that the social workers' "due process" rights were violated in the lawsuit because in no previous case on record did a judge ever have occasion to explicitly spell out that creating fictional witness statements is not permitted. [OC Weekly, 1-6-2017]

Former elementary school teacher Maria Caya, who was allowed to resign quietly in 2013 from her Janesville, Wisconsin, school after arriving drunk on a student field trip, actually made money on the incident. In November 2016, the city agreed to pay a $75,000 settlement -- because the police had revealed her blood-alcohol level to the press in 2013 (allegedly, "private" medical information). The lawsuit against the police made no mention of Caya's having been drunk or passed out, but only that she had "become ill." [Fox News, 10-26-2016]

(1) John Bubar, 50, was arrested in Parsonsfield, Maine, in November after repeatedly lifting his son's mobile home with his front-end loader and dropping it. The father and son had been quarreling over rent payments and debris in the yard, and the father only eased up after realizing that his grandson was still inside the home. (2) Update: The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reversed itself in December and allowed Mary Thorn of Lakeland to keep her 6-foot-long pet alligator ("Rambo") at home with her despite a regulation requiring that a gator that size needs a more spacious roaming area. Thorn and Rambo have been together for over a decade. [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 12-12-2016] [WFTV (Orlando), 12-21-2016]

"I'm (as) tired of hearing the word 'creep' as any black person or gay person is of hearing certain words," wrote Lucas Werner, 37, on his Facebook page in December after he was banned from a Starbucks in Spokane, Washington, for writing a polite dating request to a teenaged barista. Managers thought Werner was harassing the female, who is at least the age of consent, but Werner charged illegal "age discrimination" and made a "science" claim that "age gap love" makes healthier babies. [NWCN News (Seattle), 12-30-2016]

-- Taylor Trupiano grudgingly paid his $128 "traffic" fine in December, issued by a Roseville, Michigan, officer who caught his car warming up unattended -- in his own driveway. Police routinely issue such tickets (five to 10 each winter, based on a town ordinance) to send drivers like Trupiano a message that unattended cars are ripe for theft, which burdens Roseville's police department. (A police spokesman said the driverless warmups are illegal even for locked cars.) [WXYZ-TV (Detroit), 1-9-2017]

-- Awwwwwww! (1) Jasper Fiorenza, 24, was arrested in St. Petersburg, Florida, in November and charged with breaking into a home in the middle of the night. The female resident said she awoke to see Fiorenza and screamed, but that the man nonetheless delayed his getaway in order to pet the woman's cat lounging on her bed. (2) In December, Durham, Ontario, police officer Beth Richardson was set for a disciplinary hearing ("discreditable conduct") because, earlier in 2016, after being called to intervene at a drug user's home, she had noticed the resident's cat "cowering" in a corner and had taken her to a veterinarian, but without asking the owner's permission. [Tampa Bay Times, 12-1-2016] [CTV News (Toronto), 12-2-2016]

David Martinez, 25, was shot in the stomach during a brawl in New York City in December. He had inadvertently initiated the chaos when, trying to park in Manhattan's East Village just after Saturday midnight, he moved an orange traffic cone that had obviously been placed to reserve the parking space. He apparently failed to realize that the parking spot was in front of the clubhouse of Hells Angels, whose members happened to take notice. [New York Daily News, 12-12-2016]

An unnamed pregnant woman convinced a reporter from Jacksonville, Florida, station WFOX-TV in December that the "positive" urine tests she was advertising on Craigslist were accurate and that she was putting herself through school by supplying them (making about $200 a day). The seller claimed that "many" pregnant women market their urine for tests -- even though the main use of the test seems to be "negotiation" with boyfriends or husbands. [WFOX-TV, 12-16-2016]

"You Have the Right to (Any Ol') Attorney": While poor, often uneducated murder defendants in some states receive marginal, part-time legal representation by lawyers at the bottom of their profession (usually unable to keep their murder clients off of death row), Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of three murders in the 2013 attack and facing a possible death sentence, once again will be represented for free by a team at the top of the profession -- headed by the chief of the New York federal public defender's office. Tsarnaev was previously represented by a team topped by the chief of the Boston federal public defender's office. [Boston Herald, 1-3-2017]

(1) Matthew Bergstedt, 27, was charged with breaking into a house in Raleigh, North Carolina, in December, though he failed to anticipate that the resident was inside, stacking firewood (which he used to bloody Bergstedt's face for his mugshot). (2) On Dec. 5 in New York City, a so-far-unidentified man made five separate attempts to rob banks in midtown Manhattan over a three-hour span, but all tellers refused his demands, and he slinked away each time. (Police said a man matching his description had successfully robbed a bank four days earlier.) [WNCN-TV (Raleigh), 12-27- 2016] [NBC-TV (New York), 12-6-2016]

The Return of Anger Relief: (1) What was billed as the United Kingdom's first "Rage Cage" opened in Nottingham, England, in December, allowing patrons to vent with crowbars, baseball bats and hammers to smash crockery, electronics and glassware -- at prices ranging from about $15 to about $40. (2) In October, a bookstore in Cairo, Egypt, set aside a small, soundproof room where patrons could go scream at the top of their lungs for 10 minutes about whatever stresses them. The store owner pointed to an academic study demonstrating screaming's "positive effect" on the brain. (The prototype store is still Donna Alexander's Anger Room in downtown Dallas, thriving since 2011, offering a variety of bludgeoning weapons, and especially active this election season, with target mannequins gussied up to be "Trump" and "Clinton.") [TalkRadio.co.uk, 12-5-2016] [CNN, 10-27-2016] [New York Times, 11-26-2016]

(1) Two weeks after a Pakistani International Airlines crash killed all 47 on board, some employees of the company figured they needed to dispel the bad karma (for their own safety) and thus sacrificed a black goat on the tarmac at Islamabad airport next to an ATR-42 aircraft (the same model that crashed). (2) Badminton player Mads Pieler Kolding, in a January match in India's Premier Badminton League, returned a volley at a world's record for a shuttlecock -- 265 mph. [NPR, 12-19-2016] [Deadspin.com, 1-12-2017]

Suspicions Confirmed: In January (2013), the National Hockey League labor dispute ended, and players returned to work, but as if on cue, some owners resumed their suspect claims that high player salaries were killing them financially. However, the Phoenix Business Journal reported in December 2012 that the NHL Phoenix Coyotes' bookkeeping methodology allowed them to turn a profit for the season only if the lockout had continued and wiped out all the games. In other words, based on the team's bookkeeping, the only way for the Coyotes to make money was to never play. [Phoenix Business Journal, 12-26-2012]

The salary the Golden State Warriors pay to basketball whiz Stephen Curry may be a bargain at $12 million a year, but the economics is weirder about the prices Curry's fans pay on the street for one of his used mouthguards retrieved from the arena floor after a game. One used, sticky, saliva-encased teeth-protector went for $3,190 at one August auction, and SCP Auctions of California is predicting $25,000 for another, expelled during the NBA championship series last June. ESPN Magazine reported "at least" 35 Twitter accounts dedicated to Curry's mouthguard. [ESPN Magazine, 10-31-2016]

In parts of Panama, some men still fight for access to women with the ferocity of rutting male elks. The indigenous Ngabe people mostly keep to themselves in rural areas but have surfaced in towns like Volcan, near the Costa Rican border, where in December a reporter witnessed two men fist-fighting to bloody exhaustion on the street in a typical "Mi Lucha" ("my struggle"), with the loser's wife following the winner home. As the custom loses its cachet, only about a third of the time does the wife now comply, according to the website Narratively. (Bonus: It's an often-easy "divorce" for the Ngabe -- for a fed-up wife to taunt her husband into a losing fight, or for a fed-up husband to pick a fight and take a dive.) [Narrative.ly, 12-30-2016]

-- Over a six-year period (the latest measured), drug companies and pharmacies legally distributed 780 million pain pills in West Virginia -- averaging to 433 for every man, woman and child. Though rules require dispensers to investigate "suspicious" overprescribing, little was done, according to a recent Drug Enforcement Administration report obtained by the Gazette-Mail of Charleston -- even though half of the pills were supplied by the nation's "big three" drugmakers (whose CEOs' compensation is enriched enormously by pain pill production). Worse, year-by-year the strengths of the pills prescribed increase as users' tolerance demands. (West Virginia residents disproportionately suffer from unemployment, coal mining-related disabilities and poor health.) [Gazette-Mail, 12-17-2016]

-- University of Kentucky professor Buck Ryan disclosed in December that he had been punished recently (loss of travel funds and a "prestigious" award) by his dean for singing the Beach Boys classic "California Girls" for a lesson comparing American and Chinese cultures -- because of the song's "language of a sexual nature." The school's "coordinator" on sexual harassment issues made the ruling, apparently absent student complaints, for Ryan's lyric change of "Well, East Coast girls are hip" to "Well, Shanghai girls are hip." [Lexington Herald-Leader, 12-17-2016]

-- Because the 2015 San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack that killed 14 and seriously wounded 22 was a "workplace" injury (in that the shooters fired only at fellow employees), any health insurance the victims had was superseded exclusively by coverage under the state's "workers' compensation" system -- a system largely designed for typical job injuries, such as back pain and slip-and-falls. Thus, for example, one San Bernardino victim with "hundreds of pieces of shrapnel" still in her body even after multiple surgeries and in constant pain, must nevertheless constantly argue her level of care with a bureaucrat pressured by budgetary issues and forced to massage sets of one-size-fits-all guidelines. [New York Times, 12-2-2016]

(1) The Las Vegas Sun reported in December that Nevada slot- and video-machine gamblers left almost $12 million on the floor during 2012 (i.e., winning tickets that remain uncashed for six months, thus reverting to the state), running the five-year total to nearly $35 million. (2) The pre-game injury report for college football's Dec. 31 Citrus Bowl included two University of Louisville linebackers, Henry Famurewa and James Hearns, who were out of action against Louisiana State because of "gunshot wounds." [Las Vegas Sun, 12-26-2016] [Sports Illustrated, 12-31-2016]

Latest in Vending Machines: (1) Passengers awaiting trains in 35 stations in France now find kiosks dispensing short stories to pass the time. A wide range of selections (even poetry!), in suggested reading-time lengths of one, three and five minutes, can be printed out for free. (2) The only U.S. vending machine for champagne is now operational in the 23rd-floor lobby of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Las Vegas. Moet and Chandon bubbly can be purchased with $20 tokens sold at the front desk. [Daily Mail (London), 10-4-2016] [Las Vegas Review Journal, 12-28-2016]

Recent Awkward Apps: (1) The Kerastase Hair Coach (a "smart" hairbrush with Wi-Fi, monitoring brush strokes "on three axes" to manage "frizziness, dryness, split ends and breakage"); (2) The still-in-prototype "Kissenger" (with a "meat-colored" rubbery dock for a smartphone that the user can kiss and have the sensation transmitted to a lover's receiving dock over the internet); (3) The Ozmo smart cup (to "effortlessly" "empower you with a platform for better hydration choices" in your water and coffee consumption -- with software for other drinks coming soon!) (Bonus: Old-school users can also just drink out of it.); (4) The Prophix toothbrush (with a video camera so you catch areas your brushing might have missed); (5) Spartan boxer briefs (stylishly protecting men's goods from Wi-Fi and cellphone radiation). [The Register (London), 1-4-2017] [Boing Boing, 12-30-2016] [Boing Boing, 1-6-2017]

In December the European Union's 28 nations reached what members called a historic agreement to thwart terrorists: a ban on private citizens' possessing semi-automatic weapons -- but exempted terrorists' firearm of choice, the Kalishikov assault weapon. (Finland vetoed inclusion of the AK-47 because of concerns about training its reservists.) [Reuters, 12-28-2016]

A December post on the Marietta, Georgia, police department's Facebook page chided a shoplifter still at large who had left his ID and fingerprints (and inadvertently posed for security cameras). The police, noting "how easy" the man had made their job, "begged" him to give them some sort of challenge: "Please at least try to hide." Suspect Dale Tice was soon in custody. [Gwinnett Daily Post, 12-28-2016]

In January, tireless convicted fraudster Kevin Trudeau, who pitched magical remedies for countless ailments on late-night TV for almost 20 years (dodging investigations and lawsuits until the feds caught up with him in 2014) was turned down in what some legal experts believe might be his final judicial appeal. Still, he never gives up. From his cell at a federal prison in Alabama, he continued to solicit funding for appeals via his Facebook fans, promising donors that they could "double" their money. Also, he said he would soon share "two secrets" that would allow donors to "vibrate frequencies ... to create the life (they) want." [Chicago Tribune, 1-3-2017]

(1) Steve Crow of Point Loma, California, near San Diego International Airport, told a reporter he had given up -- since no relief had come from the 20,068 complaints he made during 2016 about airport noise. (2) A six-point deer head-butted the owner of a fur company in Willmar, Minnesota, in November and broke into the building where thousands of recently harvested deer hides were being dried (and largely wrecked the place). The owner was slightly injured, and the vengeful buck escaped. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 1-1-2017] [Forum News Service, 11-18-2016]

Leaders of the ice-fishing community, aiming for official Olympics recognition as a sport, have begun the process by asking the World Anti-Doping Agency to randomly test its "athletes" for performance-enhancing drugs, according to a February (2013) New York Times report. (The chairman of the U.S. Freshwater Fishing Association said, "We do not test for beer" because "everyone would fail.") Ice-fishing is a lonely, frigid endeavor rarely employing strength but mostly guile and strategy, as competitors who discover advantageous spots must surreptitiously upload their hauls lest competitors rush over to drill their own holes. [New York Times, 2-24-2013]