Armed thieves in New Delhi, India, left a craftsman deep in debt after they made off with 500 pounds of wigs and raw hair worth more than $20,000 on July 27, according to the Associated Press. "People think wigs are cheap, but they cost a fortune to make," wig-maker Jahangir Hussain said. In fact, he had borrowed more than $17,000 to buy hair last month from South Indian wholesalers. India exports wigs and hair extensions to the tune of $300 million a year; much of the raw materials are collected at Hindu temples where people shave their heads as a religious sacrifice, a practice called tonsuring. [Associated Press, 8/2/2018]

The (Im)perfect Seatmate

Chicago cellist Jingjing Hu, a student at the DePaul University School of Music, found herself being escorted off an American Airlines flight on Aug. 2 after trying to return to Chicago from Miami with her instrument. Hu paid in advance for an extra seat for her cello, worth almost $30,000 and housed in a hard case, and had no trouble on her flight from Chicago to Miami, where she participated in a music festival. But on her return trip, after boarding the Boeing 737 and settling herself and her cello into their seats, a flight attendant approached her and told her she would have to leave the plane because the aircraft was too small for her instrument. Hu was booked on a flight the next day on a 767. American blamed the incident on a "miscommunication," according to WBBM TV, but Hu's husband, Jay Tang, said, "I don't think we did anything wrong here, and I think the way they handled it was humiliating." [WBBM TV, 8/4/2018]

Problem-Solver

The list of offenses was long when Franklyn Williams, 32, appeared in Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Common Pleas Court on July 31 to be sentenced for aggravated robbery, kidnapping, theft, misuse of credit cards and more -- including cutting off his ankle bracelet late last year and fleeing to Nebraska, where he claimed he was hit over the head and lost his memory. But it was his courtroom behavior that spurred Judge John Russo to call for an extreme measure: During the hearing, Williams would not stop talking, even interrupting his own lawyers repeatedly over about 30 minutes. Finally, Russo ordered deputies to tape the defendant's mouth shut, reported FOX 8 in Cleveland. Williams continued to talk until deputies applied more tape, and finally Russo sentenced him to 24 years in prison. [FOX 8, 7/31/2018]

So Many Questions

When an employee of Sarabeth's restaurant in New York City opened the walk-in freezer door on Aug. 5, a man jumped out, yelling, "Away from me, Satan!" and grabbed a knife from the kitchen, which he used to threaten restaurant staff. Carlton Henderson, 54, of Cave Creek, Arizona, struggled with workers but eventually fell unconscious and was transported to Mount Sinai St. Luke's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the New York Post reported. Authorities don't know (1) why and how he entered the freezer and (2) why he died, but they did determine he was charged last year with two 1988 cold-case murders in Boston. He had been released on bail the week before the freezer incident and was scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 14. [New York Post, 8/6/2018]

Ripe

West Valley City, Utah, has a malodorous mystery on its hands. The community stinks, and for the past year, officials have been fielding complaints about the smell, which city communications director Sam Johnson described as "a musty sewer smell ... that you can smell in certain parts of the city stronger," according to FOX 13. The city has now launched a campaign recruiting residents to help pinpoint the source of the odor: "If you smell something, say something." They're hoping more complaints will spur Salt Lake County and Utah's Department of Environmental Quality to investigate and take action. [FOX 13, 8/1/2018]

Bright Idea!

Zemarcuis Devon Scott, 18, of Texarkana, Arkansas, REALLY wanted to attend a rap concert in another state, so on July 4 he executed his plan to get there: Scott was seen by Texarkana Regional Airport security officers around 2:30 a.m. jumping a fence and trying to get into an American Eagle twin-engine jet parked there. When police arrived, Scott was inside the cockpit, sitting in the pilot's seat, the Texarkana Gazette reported. Scott, not a licensed pilot, told officers he thought there wasn't much more to flying a plane than pushing buttons and pulling levers. On July 31, he was charged with commercial burglary and attempted theft; he's been grounded at the Miller County jail. [Texarkana Gazette, 8/1/2018]

Nerd Alert

Who knew? Apparently the unofficial "uniform" for Bay Area techies and venture capital investors is a vest, so the Japanese company Uniqlo is cashing in with a vest vending machine at the San Francisco International Airport. The airport's public information officer, Doug Yakel, says the machine is no joke; it earns $10,000 a month on average. Do the math: At $49.90 apiece, the company is selling about 200 of its ultra-light down vests each month. "This is the first time we've had clothing available for sale from a vending machine, which we thought was very unique," Yakel told Business Insider. [Business Insider, 7/30/2018]

Least Competent Criminal

The Baltimore Sun reported that a driver's license examiner in Glen Burnie, Maryland, got a whiff of something illegal on Aug. 6 when she approached a car about to be used in a driving test. She called Maryland State Police, who found Reginald D. Wooding Jr., 22, of Baltimore waiting in his mother's car to take his test. But he never got the chance: Wooding was in possession of marijuana, a scale, more than $15,000 in suspected drug-related money and a 9mm Glock handgun with a loaded 30-round magazine. [Baltimore Sun, 8/7/2018]

Compelling Explanation

-- In Bluffton, South Carolina, 32-year-old Lauren Elizabeth Cutshaw informed police officers she was a former cheerleader, sorority girl, good student and National Honor Society member after they pulled her over at 1:45 a.m. on Aug. 4 for running a stop sign at 30 mph over the speed limit. According to The Island Packet, she also told officers she shouldn't be arrested because she's a "very clean, thoroughbred, white girl." She said she'd had only two glasses of wine, but then allowed, "I mean, I was celebrating my birthday." Police arrested her anyway and booked her into the Beaufort County Detention Center. [The Island Packet, 8/6/2018]

Questionable Judgment

Farah Hashi, 25, of Newport, Wales, is "mad about cars," so while he was visiting friends in Dubai, they arranged for him to drive a $350,000 Lamborghini Huracan. Hashi, who has one leg shorter than the other and typically drives a custom Vauxhall Corsa mobility car, took full advantage: He was caught on roadside cameras 33 times in less than four hours on Aug. 7 as he reached a top speed of 150 mph and racked up more than $47,000 in speeding fines. Farah's brother, Adnan Hashi, said the rental company went to Hashi's hotel room and seized his passport after the fines were issued, so Hashi is stuck in Dubai until the mess can be sorted out. "There is no way he has that money," Adnan told the BBC. "He is out of work at the minute and went to Dubai to visit friends." [BBC, 8/8/2018]

Suspicions Confirmed

Airport security at Berlin's Schonefeld Airport evacuated a terminal on Aug. 7 after spotting "suspicious content in a luggage piece" during a routine X-ray, according to CNN. The bag's unnamed owner was summoned, but he was reluctant to identify the mysterious items, calling them just "technical stuff." After an hourlong investigation involving the bomb squad, the 31-year-old traveler admitted to federal police that the items were sex toys, including a vibrator, he had brought along for his girlfriend. He was allowed to proceed with his trip, and the terminal reopened shortly afterward. [CNN, 8/7/2018]

Among the gazillion other products and services available from Amazon is the behemoth's facial recognition software, Rekognition, marketed as providing extremely accurate facial analysis. But when the American Civil Liberties Union gave it a go, the results were startling. Using Rekognition, the ACLU scanned photos of every current member of the U.S. House and Senate and came up with 28 matches to a mug shot database of people who had been arrested for crimes. The ACLU announced its findings July 26 and admitted it used Amazon's default settings, to which Amazon responded, "While 80 percent confidence is an acceptable threshold for photos of hot dogs, chairs, animals or other social media use cases," Amazon would advise customers to set the threshold at 95 percent or higher for law enforcement. The ACLU told NPR that the legislators who were falsely matched were men, women, Republicans and Democrats of all ages. However, the software did misidentify people of color at a higher rate. [NPR, 7/26/2018]

Weird Science

You thought you were old? You're just a twinkle in a nematode's eye. Russian scientists have revived two ancient, frozen roundworms, or nematodes, from samples collected in Siberian permafrost, The Siberian Times reported on July 26. The worms, which were found in cores taken from 30 meters and 3.5 meters deep, are believed to be female and 41,700 and 32,000 years old, respectively. After collecting the samples, scientists slowly thawed out the worms, which eventually started eating and moving. Scientists from the Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science in Moscow believe the nematodes have some adaptive mechanisms that may be of scientific importance. [The Siberian Times, 7/26/2018]

Florida. Need We Say More?

During a July 23 debate among mayoral candidates in Key West, Florida, Sloan Bashinsky, a perennial contender, took a minute to answer a call from God. "Hello? What? God?" Bashinsky said, speaking into his cellphone. According to FLKeys News, it wasn't the first time he's heard from a higher power: "I have said every time I ran, I ran because God told me to run," Bashinsky explained. "I think anyone who wants this job is insane." Bashinsky has a law degree from Vanderbilt University and was once among the island's homeless. He joins six other candidates on the ticket. [FLKeys News, 7/24/2018]

Sign of the Times

Just after midnight on July 22, a couple in Palo Alto, California, were awakened in their bedroom by a 17-year-old burglar with a garment obscuring his face. Instead of demanding money or jewelry, though, the intruder asked for their Wi-Fi password. According to the Sacramento Bee, the homeowner forced the teen out of the home and called police, who tracked him down a block away and arrested him for felony residential burglary. Police later determined it wasn't the teen's first attempt at connectivity. Less than an hour earlier that night, a prowler had summoned a woman from her home to ask for access to her Wi-Fi network also. She told him to go away, and he rode off on a bicycle -- which she realized the next day he had stolen from her backyard. She called police, who recovered the bike near where they had arrested the teen. [The Sacramento Bee, 7/25/2018]

Bright Ideas

-- Jeffrey Jacobs, 37, thought he had a great thing going. Last year, when a tree fell on his White Plains, New York, home, he told the owner of a tree service (and big hockey fan) that he was the owner of the NHL's Boston Bruins, reported The Hour. Impressed, the tree service owner sent a crew in the midst of a storm, then billed the actual club owner, 78-year-old Jeremy Jacobs, $5,100 for the service. Police in nearby Wilton, Connecticut, heard about the deception when they received a call in May from security officials at a company chaired by the Bruins' owner. The story sounded familiar: In November, Jacobs had been pulled over in Wilton, and he told officers he owned the Bruins in an effort to get out of the ticket. On July 20, Jacobs was pulled over for using his phone while driving in Poughkeepsie, New York, sent back to Wilton and charged with criminal impersonation. [The Hour, 7/24/2018]

-- Diamonds are SO 20th century. In Japan, Warp Space is offering newlyweds the chance to make their union universal with wedding plaques launched into space. According to United Press International, the startup company, founded by faculty members from the University of Tsukuba, will print a titanium plate with the names of the betrothed and put it, along with a few hundred other plaques, in one of a series of small cubes to be released into space from the International Space Station. Astronauts will memorialize the launching by taking photographs, which will then be sent to the newlyweds. The service costs $270. [UPI, 7/26/2018]

Awesome!

Painesville (Ohio) Municipal Court Judge Michael Cicconetti has a reputation for serving up unusual sentences, and he delivered again on July 24 when 18-year-old Bayley Toth appeared in his courtroom. Toth was convicted of two misdemeanor criminal mischief charges for toppling a portable toilet at Painesville Township Park in June, among other things. Cicconetti sentenced him to 120 days in jail, but suspended it in lieu of Toth shoveling ... manure at the Lake County Fair. "You act like an animal, you're going to take care of animals," Cicconetti told Toth. The News-Herald reported Toth will also have to perform 40 hours of community service and pay restitution for damage to the park. [The News-Herald, 7/30/2018]

Just Say No

Brody Tyler Young, 25, was arrested in a Nashville, Tennessee, McDonald's on July 23 after spending "all day" locked in the women's restroom, dancing naked, doing jumping jacks and hitting the wall. According to WFFA TV, when officers managed to enter the restroom, they found Young locked in a stall, smelling of "chemical fumes, as if he had been huffing." Young was taken into custody and charged with public intoxication and public indecency. [WFFA, 7/24/2018]

Ewwwww!

A weird in-air experience for passengers traveling from the Canary Islands in Spain to the Netherlands on May 29 ended tragically. The Transavia flight was forced to land in Faro, Portugal, after passengers began fainting and vomiting in reaction to the overpowering smell of another passenger, 58-year-old Russian rocker Andrey Suchilin. "It was like he hadn't washed himself for several weeks," Belgian passenger Piet van Haut said. CBS News reported that Suchilin had sought medical attention in Spain and was given antibiotics for an "ordinary beach infection." Taken to a hospital in Portugal, his condition deteriorated, and he was diagnosed with tissue necrosis. Doctors induced a coma and performed several surgeries, but his wife reported on his Facebook page that he died on June 25. The airline assured fellow passengers that "there has been no risk of infection." [CBS News, 6/28/2018]

Lucky!

Kyle McAleer, 20, a Chicago Cubs fan from Iowa, adopted a goofy "rally cap" idea from former Cubs player Starlin Castro a few years ago -- a plastic bucket. But no one's laughing now: As McAleer and his family watched a game from seats under Wrigley Field's manual scoreboard on July 24, a 6- to 8-inch metal pin fell out of the board and onto McAleer's head, where he had only moments earlier secured the bucket. Although he suffered a cut requiring five staples, McAleer is crediting the bucket for saving his life: "It might have fractured my skull. It definitely could have been fatal. I am extremely lucky," he told the Associated Press. Cubs spokesman Julian Green said the incident has been ruled an accident, not a structural issue, and the team has sent McAleer some swag, including a jersey. [Associated Press, 7/31/2018]

Infamous South Beach street artist Jonathan Crenshaw, 46, attracts a lot of attention in Miami among tourists, who watch him paint on a canvas -- using his feet. Crenshaw does not have arms and is homeless. Profiled in a local newspaper in 2011, Crenshaw told of a difficult childhood (he also claimed Gloria Estefan had given birth to 200 of his children). He landed in the headlines again after stabbing a Chicago man with a pair of scissors on July 10. According to the Miami Herald, Cesar Coronado, 22, told police he had approached Crenshaw to ask for directions, when Crenshaw jumped up and, using his feet, stabbed Coronado. Crenshaw's story is that as he lay on the pavement, Coronado punched him in the head -- so he stabbed him, tucked the scissors into his waistband and walked away. Police found Crenshaw, who has a lengthy arrest record, nearby and arrested him. [Miami Herald, 7/12/2018]

Bold Move

Faith Pugh of Memphis, Tennessee, had a date to remember on July 14 with Kelton Griffin. Her casual acquaintance from high school "just out of the blue texted me and asked me to go out," Pugh told WREG-TV. They took her car and stopped at a gas station, where Griffin asked Pugh to go inside and buy him a cigar. But while she was inside, "He drove off. I came outside and my car was gone," Pugh said. Shortly, Pugh received a text from her godsister, telling her Griffin had just asked her out on a date. He picked up the godsister in Pugh's car and headed to a drive-in movie. "He didn't even have any money," Pugh said. "She actually paid their way to get in the drive-in just so I could get my car back." Pugh alerted the police to the car's location, and they arrested Griffin for theft of property. "I hope he's in jail for a long time," Pugh said. [WREG-TV, 7/17/2018]

Mystery Solved

On Jan. 25, 71-year-old Alan J. Abrahamson of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, went for his regular pre-dawn walk to Starbucks. What happened on the way stumped police investigators until March, reported The Washington Post, and on July 13 they made their findings public. Images from a surveillance camera show Abrahamson walking out of his community at 5:35 a.m. and about a half-hour later, the sound of a gunshot is heard. Just before 7 a.m., a dog found Abrahamson's body, lying near a walking path. Police found no weapon, no signs of a struggle; he still had his wallet and phone. Investigators initially worked the case as a homicide, but as they dug deeper into the man's computer searches and purchases over the past nine years, a theory developed: Abrahamson had tied a gun to a weather balloon filled with helium, shot himself, and then the gun drifted away to parts unknown. A thin line of blood on Abrahamson's sweatshirt indicated to police that "something with the approximate width of a string passed through the blood on the outside of the shirt," the final report says. As for the balloon, investigators said it would likely have ascended to about 100,000 feet and exploded somewhere north of the Bahamas in the Atlantic Ocean. [The Washington Post, 7/15/2018]

Bright Idea

It's time once again for minor league baseball promotion fun and games! This time, however, the Montgomery (Alabama) Biscuits managed to tick off a whole generation of baseball fans. The Biscuits announced Millennial Night on July 21, featuring participation ribbons just for showing up, a napping area, selfie stations and lots of avocados, reported Fox News. While some Twitter users thought the promotion was insensitive, others were more philosophical. Dallas Godshall, 21, said, "More than targeting millennials, it's sort of targeting older generations who like to make fun of millennials." Pitcher Benton Ross weighed in: "If it's insensitive, maybe they should just have thicker skin." [Fox News, 7/20/2018]

Revenge, Texas-Style

The Austin American-Statesman reported that on June 17, RV park neighbors and longtime adversaries Ryan Felton Sauter, 39, and Keith Monroe got into a heated dispute about an undisclosed subject. Later that day, Monroe saw Sauter leaving Monroe's RV and asked him why he had gone in without permission, to which Sauter replied, "You'll see why." Going inside, Monroe soon spotted a 3-foot-long rattlesnake. "I freaked out," he said. He used a machete to kill the snake, which strangely was missing its rattles. Turns out Sauter had bitten off the snake's tail, with its signature warning sound. Sauter has been charged with deadly conduct and criminal trespass. [Austin American-Statesman, 6/29/2018]

People and Their Pets

Tina Ballard, 56, of Okeechobee County, Florida, was arrested in North Carolina by Linville Land Harbor police on July 16 after fleeing there to "hide (her pet) monkey so that state officials could not take that monkey from her," assistant state attorney Ashley Albright told WPBF News. Ballard's troubles began in May, when the spider monkey, Spanky, jumped out of a shopping cart in an Okeechobee Home Depot and grabbed a cashier's shirt, "leaving red marks on the cashier's shoulder and back." In June, Fox News reported, another Home Depot employee spotted Spanky in the parking lot, having escaped Ballard's truck and dragging a leash. Spanky was spooked by the store's sliding doors and bit the employee on the arm, grabbing her hair and running away. The employee gave chase and eventually caught Spanky, but not before suffering more bites and scratches. Spanky was in the car when Ballard was arrested and extradited back to Florida; the monkey will be placed in a primate sanctuary. [Fox News, 7/18/2018]

People Different From Us

A Russian man who has covered more than 90 percent of his body -- including his eyeballs -- with black-ink tattoos underwent surgery on July 14 at Jardines Hospital in Guadalajara, Mexico, to remove his penis, testicles and nipples because they spoiled his body art. Adam Curlykale, 32, of Kaliningrad, an albino, was diagnosed with cancer and started the tattooing process 12 years ago to cover scars left behind from the disease. "I always knew that I was different from the rest of society," Curlykale told The Daily Mail. "My favorite color, for example, has always been gray, in different tones, and that's why my current skin color is graphite." He plans to finish the process by inking his remaining un-tattooed skin. [Daily Mail, 7/19/2018]

Mistaken Identity

A man in Tameside, Manchester, England, is trying to figure out who painted "Pay your bill, you b