Recently, in Dubai (the largest city in the United Arab Emirates), Dubai Civil Defense started using water jetpacks that lift firefighters off the ground to hover in advantageous positions as they work the hoses. Also, using jet skis, rescuers can avoid traffic altogether by using the city's rivers to arrive at fires (and, if close enough to a waterway, can pump water without hydrants). Even more spectacularly, as early as this summer, Dubai will authorize already tested one-person, "Jetsons"-type drones for ordinary travel in the city. The Ehang 184 model flies about 30 minutes on an electrical charge, carrying up to 220 pounds at about 60 mph. [Business Insider, 1-23-2017] [New York Times, 2-15-2017]

-- Convicted murderer Philip Smith (a veteran criminal serving life for killing the father of a boy Smith had been sexually abusing) escaped from prison in New Zealand with the help of a disguise that included a toupee for his bald head -- before being caught. Prison officials confiscated the toupee, but Smith said a shiny head behind bars made him feel "belittled, degraded and humiliated" and sued for the right to keep the toupee. (In March, in a rare case in which a litigant succeeds as his own lawyer, Smith prevailed in Auckland's High Court.) [BBC News, 3-16-2017]

-- In March, star soccer goalkeepr Bruno Fernandes de Souza signed a two-year contract to play for Brazil's Boa Esporte club while he awaits the outcome of his appealed conviction for the 2010 murder of his girlfriend. (He had also fed her body to his dogs.) He had been sentenced to 22 years in prison, but was released by a judge after seven, based on the judge's exasperation at the years-long delays in appeals in Brazil's sluggish legal system. [The Guardian (London), 3-13-2017]

The Cleveland (Ohio) Street Department still had not (at press time) identified the man, but somehow he, dressed as a road worker, had wandered stealthily along Franklin Boulevard during March and removed more than 20 standard "35 mph" speed limit signs -- replacing all with official-looking "25 mph" signs that he presumably financed himself. Residents along those two miles of Franklin have long complained, but the city kept rejecting pleas for a lowered limit. [WEWS-TV (Cleveland), 3-23-2017]

-- The Apenheul primate park in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, is engaged in a four-year experiment, offering female orangutans an iPad loaded with photos of male orangutans now housed at zoos around the world, with the females able to express interest or disinterest (similar to swiping right or left on the human dating app Tinder). Researchers admit results have been mixed, that some males have to be returned home, and once, a female handed the iPad with a potential suitor showing, merely crushed the tablet. (Apps are not quite to the point of offering animals the ability to digitally smell each other.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 2-1-2017]

-- Peacocks are "well known" (so they say) to flash their erect, sometimes-6-foot-high rack of colorful tail feathers to attract mating opportunities. However, as researchers in Texas recently found, the display might not be important. Body cameras placed on peahens at eye level (to learn how they check out strutting males) revealed that the females gazed mostly at the lowest level of feathers (as if attracted only to certain colors rather than the awesomeness of the towering flourish). [Austin American-Statesman, 3-20-2017]

(1) In March, jurors in Norfolk, Virginia, found Allen Cochran, 49, not guilty of attempted shoplifting, but he was nowhere to be seen when the verdict was announced. Apparently predicting doom (since he had also been charged with fleeing court during a previous case), he once again skipped out. The jury then re-retired to the jury room, found him guilty on the earlier count and sentenced him to the five-year maximum. (Because of time already served, he could have walked away legally if he hadn't walked away illegally.) (2) In March, Ghanian soccer player Mohammed Anas earned a "man of the match" award (after his two goals led the Free State Stars to a 2-2 draw), but botched the acceptance speech by thanking both his wife and his girlfriend. Reportedly, Anas "stumbled for a second" until he could correct himself. "I'm so sorry," he attempted to clarify. "My wife! I love you so much from my heart." [Virginian-Pilot, 3-6-2017] [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-18-2017]

It turns out that Layne Hardin's sperm is worth only $1,900 -- and not the $870,000 a jury had awarded him after finding that former girlfriend Tobie Devall had, without Hardin's permission, obtained a vial of it without authorization and inseminated herself to produce her son, now age 6. Initially Hardin tried to gain partial custody of the boy, but Devall continually rebuffed him, provoking the lawsuit (which also named the sperm bank Texas Andrology a defendant) and the challenge in Houston's First Court of Appeal. [Houston Chronicle, 1-25-2017]

An astonished woman unnamed in news reports called police in Coleshill, England, in February to report that a car exactly like her silver Ford Kuga was parked at Melbicks garden center -- with the very same license plate as hers. Police figured out that a silver Ford Kuga had been stolen nearby in 2016, and to disguise that it was stolen, the thief had looked for an identical, not-stolen Ford Kuga and then replicated its license plate, allowing the thief to drive the stolen car without suspicion. [Birmingham Mail, 2-5-2017]

(1) Thieves once again attempted a fruitless smash-and-grab of an ATM at Mike and Reggie's Beverages in Maple Heights, Ohio, in March -- despite the owner's having left the ATM's door wide open with a sign reading "ATM emptied nightly." Police are investigating. (2) Boca Raton, Florida, jeweler "Bobby" Yampolsky said he was suspicious that the "customer" who asked to examine diamonds worth $6 million carried no tools of the examination trade. After the lady made several obvious attempts to distract Yampolsky, he ended the charade by locking her in his vault and calling the police, who arrested her after discovering she had a package of fake diamonds in her purse that she likely intended to switch. [WJW-TV (Cleveland), 3-23-2017] [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 3-31-2017]

At what was billed as part of a cancer fundraising event at the AvantGarden in Houston in February, performance artist Michael Clemmons and a partner, working as the act Sonic Rabbit Hole, had the elegant idea that one give the other an enema on stage, but there was a "spraying" accident. Viewers were led to believe the procedure was authentic, but the artists swore later that the sprayed contents were just a protein shake. "What I did is not all that (extreme)," protested Clemmons. "I don't understand why I'm getting the attention for this." [KPRC-TV (Houston), 2-20-2017]

Two convicted murderers imprisoned in Nepal married each other in February, though it will be at least 14 years before they can consummate. Dilli Koirala, 33 (serving 20 years for killing his wife), and Mimkosha Bista, 30 (with another four years to go for killing her husband), will be allowed to meet (just to talk) twice a month until Koirala's term ends. (A lawyer involved in the case said the marriage, though odd, was perhaps the last chance either would have to meet a suitable match.) [Republica (Kathmandu), 2-24-2017]

"(Supermodels) is the one exception (to U.S. immigration law) that we all scratch our heads about," said a Brookings Institution policy analyst in May (2013). Foreign-born sports stars and entertainers are fast-tracked with American work permits under one system, but supermodels were excluded from that and must thus compete (successfully, it turns out) with physicists and nuclear engineers to earn visas among the slots available only to "skilled workers with college degrees." As such, around 250 beauties are admitted every year. (The most recent attempt to get supermodels their own visa category was championed in 2005 and 2007 by then-U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York.) [Bloomberg Business Week, 5-23-2013]

China's public-park restrooms have for years suffered toilet-paper theft by local residents who raid dispensers for their own homes (a cultural habit, wrote Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, expressing taxpayer feelings of "owning" public facilities), but the government recently fought back with technology. At Beijing's popular Temple of Heaven park, dispensers now have facial-recognition scanners beside the six toilets, with pre-cut paper (about 24 inches long) issued only to users who pose for a picture. (Just one slug of paper can be dispensed to the same face in a 9-minute period, catastrophic for the diarrhea-stricken and requiring calling an attendant to override the machine.) [South China Morning Post, 3-2-2017; BBC News, 3-20-2017]

-- The church-state "wall" leaks badly in Spindale, North Carolina, according to former members of the Word of Faith Fellowship (reported in February by the Associated Press). Two state prosecutors (one a relative of the church's founder), in nearby Burke and Rutherford counties, allegedly coached Fellowship members and leaders how to neutralize government investigations into church "abuse" -- coaching that would violate state law and attorney ethical standards. Fellowship officials have been accused of beating "misbehaving" congregants, including children, in order to repel their demons. (Among the Fellowship's edicts revealed in the AP report: All dating, marriages and procreation subject to approval; no wedding-night intimacy beyond a "godly" cheek kiss; subsequent marital sex limited to 30 minutes, no foreplay, lights off, missionary position.) [Associated Press via Winston-Salem Journal, 3-6-2017]

-- Babies born on the Indonesian island of Bali are still today treated regally under an obscure Hindu tradition, according to a February New York Times report, and must not be allowed to touch the earth for 105 days (in some areas, 210). (Carrying the infant in a bucket and setting that on the ground is apparently acceptable.) Each birth is actually a re-birth, they say, with ancestors returning as their own descendants. (Accidentally touching the ground does not condemn the baby, but may leave questions about negative influences.) [New York Times, 2-19-2017]

-- Catholic priest Juan Carlos Martinez, 40, apologized shortly after realizing, as he said, he had gone "too far" in celebrating March's Carnival in a town in the Galicia area of Spain -- that he acted inappropriately in dressing as Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, reclining on a red satin sheet on a parade float carrying men dressed as classic Playboy "Bunnies." Despite apparent public support for Father Martinez, his Archbishop asked him to attend a "spiritual retreat" to reflect on his behavior. [The Local (Barcelona), 3-10-2017]

-- In March, vibrator customers were awarded up to $10,000 each in their class-action "invasion of privacy" lawsuit against the company Standard Innovation, whose We-Vibe model's smartphone app collected intimate data (vibrator temperature and motor intensity) that could be associated with particular customers -- and which were easily hackable, and controllable, by anyone nearby with a Bluetooth connection. The Illinois federal court limited the award to $199 for anyone who bought the vibrator but did not activate the app. [The Guardian (London), 3-14-2017]

-- The company British Condoms is now accepting pre-orders for the iCon Smart Condom, with an app that can track, among other data, a man's "thrust velocity," calories expended "per session," and skin temperature, as well as do tests for chlamydia and syphilis. Projected price is about $75, but the tech news site CNet reported in March that no money will be collected until the product is ready to ship. [CNet News, 3-2-2017]

The U.S. House of Representatives, demonstrating particular concern for military veterans, enhanced vets' civil rights in March by removing a source of delay in gun purchases. A 2007 law had required all federal agencies to enter any mentally-ill clients into the National Instant Criminal Background Check database for gun purchases, but the new bill exempts veterans (including, per VA estimates, 19,000 schizophrenics and 15,000 with "severe" post-traumatic stress syndrome). (An average of a dozen veterans a day in recent times have committed suicide with guns.) [Huffington Post, 3-16-2017]

Police and prosecutors in Williamsburg, Virginia, are absolutely certain that Oswaldo Martinez raped and killed a teenage girl in 2005, but, though he was quickly arrested, they have -- 12 years later -- not even put him on trial. Martinez, then 33, is still apparently, genuinely (i.e., not faking) deaf, illiterate and almost mute, and besides that, the undocumented Salvadoran immigrant has such limited intelligence that test after test has shown him incapable of understanding his legal rights, and therefore "incompetent" to stand trial. (Police made multiple "slam dunk" findings of Martinez's DNA on the victim's body and also linked Martinez via a store camera to the very bottle of juice left at the crime scene.) [Washington Post, 3-13-2017]

On the morning of March 20 in Winter Park, Florida, Charles Howard, standing outside his home being interviewed live by a WFTV reporter, denied he had committed a crime in a widely reported series of voicemail messages to a U.S. Congressman, containing threats to "wrap a rope around your neck and hang you from a lamp post." He boasted that "proof" of his having done nothing wrong was that if he had, he would have already been arrested. "Three minutes later," according to the reporter, agents drove up and arrested Howard. [WFTV (Orlando), 3-20-2017]

-- Hey, How About a Little "Remorse": (1) Royce Atkins, 23, told the judge in Northampton County (Pennsylvania) in March that he was so sorry he did not stop his car in 2015 and help that 9-year-old boy he had just hit and killed. However, Atkins had earlier been jailhouse-recorded viciously trash-talking the boy's family for "reacting like they're the victims. What about my family? My family is the victim, too." (Atkins got a four-year sentence.) (2) In February, in a Wayne County (Michigan) court during sentencing for a DUI driver who had killed a man and severely injured his fiancee, Judge Qiana Lillard kicked the driver's mother out of the courtroom for laughing at the victim's sister who was tearfully addressing the judge. (Lillard sentenced the mother to 93 days for contempt, but later reduced it to one day). [Lehigh Valley Live, 3-32017] [CBS News, 2-28-2017]

Among the facts revealed in the ongoing criminal proceedings against U.S. Navy officials and defense contractor Leonard ("Fat Leonard") Francis, who is charged with arranging kickbacks: In 2007, Francis staged a party for the officials at the Shangri-La Hotel in the Philippines during which (according to an indictment unsealed in March) "historical memorabilia related to General Douglas MacArthur were used by the participants in sexual acts." [Washington Post, 3-14-2017]

(1) A 23-year-old Albuquerque woman performed cartwheels instead of a standard field sobriety test at a DUI stop in February, but she did poorly and was charged anyway. On the other hand, student Blayk Puckett, stopped by University of Central Arkansas police, helped shield himself from a DUI by juggling for the officer. (2) Oreos fans sampling the limited-edition Peeps Oreos in February expressed alarm that not only their tongues and saliva turned pink, but also their stools (and leaving a pink ring in the bowl). A gastroenterologist told Live Science it was nothing to worry about. [Albuquerque Journal, 2-21-2017] [KTHV-TV (Little Rock), 3-7- 2017] [Live Science, 3-6-2017]

Yasuomi Hirai, 26, was arrested in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, in June (2013) after being identified in news reports as the man who had crawled "dozens of meters" in an underground gutter solely to gain access to a particular sidewalk grate near Konan Women's University -- so that he could look up at skirt-wearers passing over the grate. After one pedestrian, noting the pair of eyes below, summoned a police officer, Hirai scurried down the gutter and escaped, but since he had been detained several months earlier on a similar complaint, police soon arrested him. [Japan Daily Press, 6-13-2013] [Kotaku.com, 6-21-2013]

A highlight of the recent upmarket surge in Brooklyn, N.Y., as a residential and retail favorite, was the asking price for an ordinary parking space in the garage at 845 Union Street in the Park Slope neighborhood: $300,000 (also carrying a $240-a-month condominium fee and $50 monthly taxes). That's similar to the price of actual one-bedroom apartments in less ritzy Brooklyn neighborhoods like Gravesend (a few miles away). [DNAInfo, 3-6-2017]

Saginaw, Michigan, defense lawyer Ed Czuprynski had beaten a felony DUI arrest in December, but was sentenced to probation on a lesser charge in the incident, and among his restrictions was a prohibition on drinking alcohol -- which Czuprynski acknowledged in March that he has since violated at least twice. However, at that hearing (which could have meant jail time for the violations), Czuprynski used the opportunity to beg the judge to remove the restriction altogether, arguing that he can't be "effective" as a lawyer unless he is able to have a drink now and then. (At press time, the judge was still undecided.) [MLive.com, 3-10-2017]

Residents in southern Humboldt County, California, will vote in May on a proposed property tax increase to fund a community hospital in Garberville to serve a web of small towns in the scenic, sparsely populated region, and thanks to a county judge's March ruling, the issue will be explained more colorfully. Opponent Scotty McClure was initially rebuffed by the registrar when he tried to distribute, as taxpayer-funded "special elections material," contempt for "Measure W" by including the phrase "(insert fart smell here)" in the description. The registrar decried the damage to election "integrity" by such "vulgarity," but Judge Timothy Cissna said state law gives him jurisdiction only over "false" or "misleading" electioneering language. [North Coast Journal (Eureka, Calif.), 3-7-2017]

-- News of the Weird has written several times (as technology progressed) about Matt McMullen's "RealDoll" franchise -- the San Marcos, California, engineer's richly detailed flexible silicone mannequins that currently sell for $5,500 and up (more with premium custom features). Even before the recent success of the very humanish, artificially intelligent (AI) android "hosts" on TV's "Westworld," McMullen revealed that his first AI doll, "Harmony," will soon be available with a choice of 12 "personalities," including "intellectualism" and "wit," to mimic an emotional bond to add to the sexual. A recent University of London conference previewed a near future when fake women routinely provide uncomplicated relationships for lonely (or disturbed) men. (Recently, in Barcelona, Spain, a brothel opened offering four "realdolls" "disinfected after each customer" -- though still recommending condoms.) [Forbes, 2-28-2017]

-- Scientists at Columbia University and the New York Genome Center announced that they have digitally stored (and retrieved) a movie, an entire computer operating system and a $50 gift card on a single drop of DNA. In theory, wrote the researchers in the journal Science, they might store, on one gram of DNA, 215 "petabytes" (i.e., 215 million gigabytes -- enough to run, say, 10 million HD movies) and could reduce all the data housed in the Library of Congress to a small cube of crystals. [Wall Street Journal, 3-3-2017]

-- An office in the New York City government, suspicious of a $5,000 payment to two men in the 2008 City Council election of Staten Island's Debi Rose, opened an investigation, which at $300 an hour for the "special prosecutor," has now cost the city $520,000, with his final bill still to come. Despite scant "evidence" and multiple opportunities to back off, the prosecutor relentlessly conducted months-long grand jury proceedings, fought several court appeals, had one 23-count indictment almost immediately crushed by judges, and enticed state and federal investigators to (fruitlessly) take on the Staten Island case. In March, the city's Office of Court Administration finally shrugged and closed the case. [New York Times, 3-8-2017]

A chain reaction of fireworks in Tultepec, Mexico, in December had made the San Pablito pyro marketplace a scorched ruin, with more than three dozen dead and scores injured, leaving the town to grieve and, in March, to solemnly honor the victims -- with even more fireworks. Tultepec is the center of Mexico's fireworks industry, with 30,000 people dependent on explosives for a living. Wrote The Guardian, "Gunpowder" is in "their blood." [The Guardian (London), 3-10-2017]

(1) "Bentley" the cat went missing in Marina Del Rey, California, on Feb. 26 and as of press time had not been located -- despite a posted reward of $20,000. (A "wanted" photo is online, if you're interested.) (2) British snack food manufacturer Walkers advertised in February for a part-time professional chip taster, at the equivalent of $10.55 an hour. (3) An Australian state administrative tribunal awarded a $90,000 settlement after a cold-calling telemarketer sold a farm couple 2,000 ink cartridges (for their one printer) by repeated pitches. [Fox News, 3-8-2017] [Leicester Mercury, 2-23-2017] [The Age (Melbourne), 3-9-2017]

American chef Dan Barber staged a temporary "pop-up" restaurant in London in March at which he and other renowned chefs prepared the fanciest meals they could imagine using only food scraps donated from local eateries. A primary purpose was to chastise First World eaters (especially Americans) for wasting food, not only in the kitchen and on the plate, but to satisfy our craving for meat (for example, requiring diversion of 80 percent of the world's corn and soy just to feed edible animals). Among Barber's March "WastED" dishes were a char-grilled meatless beetburger and pork braised in leftover fruit solids. [TreeHugger.com, 3-3-2017]

(1) Smoking Kills: A 78-year-old man in Easton, Pennsylvania, died in February from injuries caused when he lit his cigarette but accidentally set afire his hooded sweatshirt. (2) Pornography Kills: A Mexico City man fell to his death recently in the city's San Antonio neighborhood when he climbed up to turn off a highway video sign on the Periferico Sur highway that was showing a pornographic clip apparently placed by a hacker. [NJ.com, 2-28-2017] [Metro News (London), 3-6-2017]

Oops! An officer in Harrington, Delaware, approaching an illegally parked driver at Liberty Plaza Shopping Center in March, had suspicions aroused when she gave him a name other than "Keyonna Waters" (which was the name on the employee name tag she was wearing). Properly ID'ed, she was arrested for driving with a suspended license. [WMDT-TV (Salisbury, Md.), 3-6-2017]

(1) In his third try of the year in January, Li Longlong of China surpassed his own Guinness Book record by climbing 36 stairs while headstanding (beating his previous 34). (Among the Guinness regulations: no touching walls and no pausing more than five seconds per step.) (2) The online live-stream of the extremely pregnant giraffe "April" (at New York's Animal Adventure Park) has created such a frenzy, and exposed the tiny attention spans of viewers, that, as of March 3, they had spent a cumulative 1,036 years just watching. (Erin Dietrich of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 39 weeks pregnant herself, mocked the lunacy by livestreaming her own belly while wearing a giraffe mask.) (By press time, Erin had delivered; April, not.) [Huffington Post, 3-10-2017] [BBC News, 3-3-2017]

Maryland state troopers stopped when they caught sight of a drummer working out all alone on the side of traffic-packed Interstate 695 near Windsor Mill Road in Baltimore on May 21 (2013), at about 10:30 a.m. As the troopers later reported, the man had run out of gas and, rather than just sit around in his car, had set up his full drum kit on the shoulder and practiced while he awaited assistance. After a utility truck arrived, with gasoline, the drummer packed up and went on his way. [Baltimore Sun, 5-21-2013]