News of the Weird, June 2, 2013

[Chuck Shepherd]

WEIRDNUZ.M321 (News of the Weird, June 2, 2013)
by Chuck Shepherd       

Copyright 2013 by Chuck Shepherd.  All rights reserved.

Lead Story

* Low Fashion Meets Islam on Turkish TV:  Five self-proclaimed
devout, conservative Muslim women host the TV series "Building
Bridges" on channel A9, presenting the seemingly contradictory
case against both the female headscarf and Turkey's turn to
secularism.  A report on Slate.com in May noted that the five are
"mostly bottle blonds . . . [with] neon lipstick" wearing "brightly
colored satin pantsuits and T-shirts with designer brand names that
stretched over their chests."  "Building Bridges" in principle
supports interfaith dialogue, but guests (noted Slate) "often appear .
. . with their eyebrows arched in the manner of a serious person
certain he is the victim of a practical joke." [Slate.com, 5-2-2013]

Recurring Themes

* Creative Smuggling:  Abdullah Riyaz, 50, was arrested at the
Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, India, in April,
after he appeared to be uncomfortable sitting in the waiting area.
Officials found four "biscuits" of solid gold in his socks but
obviously thought there might be more, and after nature took its
course, found Riyaz to be one of those rare humans with the ability
to brag that he once excreted gold (eight more "biscuits").  [Khaleej
Times (Dubai), 4-19-2013]

* A report circulated in April that an apparently Orthodox Jewish
man (likely a "Kohen") had tied himself up, head to toe, in a plastic
bag while seated on an airline flight--likely because his teachings
told him that flying over a cemetery would yield "impurities." 
News of the Weird mentioned a similar report in 2001.  Airlines
have made accommodations in the past, even in the face of criticism
that a man in a plastic bag is a safety hazard.  (Exceptions to the
Kohen belief:  Accidental tears in the bag are excused, but pre-
punched air holes not; Kohenim unaware of the cemetery overflight
in advance do not need protection; and deceased family members
yield no impurities.)  [Daily Mail (London), 4-11-2013; Jewish
Press, 4-12-2013]

* Accountability:  The chairman of the National Showcaves Center
in a Welsh national park, aiming to halt a recent downturn in
tourism business, threatened in April to sue the UK National
Weather Service for its "all too [frequent] . . . gloom and doom
reports."  The NWS had called for snow and cold weather over
Easter weekend, but no snow fell, and the cold weather was
tempered by sun and blue skies.  (He also suggested "health"-type
warnings on forecasts, e.g., beware that weather reports might be
wrong.)  [Daily Mail (London), 4-17-2013]

* In New Haven, Conn., in March, police had trapped two car-theft
suspects in a multifamily building whose occupants were hiding
from the suspects, thus necessitating urgency in ending the siege.
Officers ordered a K-9 unit but were told it would be delayed.  In a
tactic departments occasionally employ, officers still threatened to
release the dogs immediately, and to make the threat credible,
available officers began barking.  The suspects quickly surrendered
rather than face the vicious canines.  [WFSB-TV (Hartford),
4-1-2013]

* Herbert and Catherine Schaible, members of the First Century
Gospel Church in Philadelphia and believers in faith-healing rather
than medical care, were convicted in 2011 in the bacterial-
pneumonia death of their 2-year-old son Kent.  As a condition of
probation, they promised medical care for their remaining eight
children, but in April 2013, their youngest son Brandon died after
severe diarrhea, again treated only by prayer, and they were
arrested--and the other children removed from the home.  The
medical examiner called Brandon's death a homicide, and the
couple also face 5-10 years in prison for violating probation.
[Philadelphia Daily News, 4-23-2013; Philadelphia Inquirer, 5-22-
2013]

* Detectives' New Best Friend (Facebook):  Christopher Robinson,
23, became just one of many recent suspects whose addiction to
Facebook did him in.  Robinson had never made a single child
support payment in the three years since a court order was issued in
Milwaukee, Wis., and the case had languished over how to prove
that he was hiding money.  Using other evidence for probable cause,
the prosecutor got a warrant to search Robinson's private Facebook
information and discovered a candid photograph of him, laughing
over a pile of cash. [ABC News, 3-23-2012]

* The annual Chinese "Tombsweeping" celebration has been
mentioned several times in News of the Weird, but has experienced
a resurgence since 2008 when the government reinstated it as an
official holiday.  The theory is that people bring valuable items
(such as jewelry) to ancestors' gravesites and bury them with the
body, which will upgrade the relative's afterlife.  Now, however,
practitioners seem convinced that paper images of items are
sufficient (and, of course, less expensive).  Many simply leave
signed (and generous!) checks for the dead, according to an April
New York Times dispatch, and others bury representations of
"mistresses" to accompany presumably-frisky corpses. [New York
Times, 4-5-2013]

Updates

* News of the Weird first learned of Kopi Luwak in 1993--coffee
beans sold as gourmet because they had been swallowed by certain
Asian civet cats and recovered from feces and washed.  Since then,
as Internet news of Kopi Luwak has spread, it is no longer obscure,
and in April, the environmental-activist website MongaBay.com
warned that, based on increased demand, civet "farms" had sprung
up in Indonesia and that civets were being caged to spend their
entire lives solely for access to their poop.  While none of the main
Kopi Luwak civet species is formally "endangered," activists
warned that populations are dwindling for, an activist said, "the
most ridiculous threat . . . to any wildlife I have seen yet."
[MongaBay.com (San Francisco), 4-16-2013]

* In one of the more prominent recent "that's my story, and I'm
sticking to it" cases, Vicky Pryce, 60, finally gave up in March and
admitted to a judge that her husband, not she, was driving their
speeding car in 2003.  She was married at the time to high-ranking
British government official Chris Huhne, whose license would have
been suspended had he been driving--and thus, she volunteered.
The couple's 10-year ruse had inspired two trials ending without
decision.  (Huhne "rewarded" Pryce for her loyalty in 2010 by
having an affair.  The couple are divorced and will be imprisoned
separately for perverting justice.)  [New York Times, 3-8-2013]

* "Recovered memory" was a popular psychotherapy diagnosis in
the 1980s, ultimately responsible for jail sentences for priests,
parents, and school officials after patients suddenly somehow
"remembered" long-suppressed bizarre and vicious (and some
"satanic") sex crimes that never actually happened.  Dr. Elizabeth
Loftus, of the University of California, Irvine, and other skeptics
have since proven that false memories can be created and are now
concentrating on fashioning them for beneficial purposes--to lose
weight, to stop smoking, to curb drinking.  An April report in Time
magazine noted that "up to 40 percent" of people could be
convinced that they had had bad experiences with a certain behavior
and that properly identified, those people could be taught to avoid it.
Said Dr. Loftus, "We do have a malleable memory."  [Time, 4-12-
2013]

* Briton James McCormick caused the deaths of hundreds of Iraqis
after convincing a Baghdad police official that his "electronic"
wands could detect bombs at 400 security checkpoints (in spite of
U.S. officials' many attempts to warn him that they were useless).
(In October 2009, for example, suicide bombers walked past two
wand-equipped checkpoints into a neighborhood and killed 155.)
McCormick, who sold 6,000 of the devices to Iraq and the country
of Georgia at prices of up to $40,000 each, was convicted of fraud
in April.  According to London prosecutors, he also claimed that his
wands were programmable to ferret out drugs and paper money and
to detect them from high above or up to a kilometer underground.
[BBC News, 4-23-2013]

* Catholic nun Megan Rice, 83, and two other peace activists were
convicted in May of breaking into the Y-12 National Security
Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., last year--and with "intent to harm
national security."  Sympathizers lauded the activists' motives and
asked whether national security was actually "harmed," but
somehow the intruders' stealth "attack" was treated less seriously. 
That is, three amateurs cut through numerous fences undetected,
then bypassed several sensors and alarms (either malfunctioning or
unmonitored) before being stopped by a lone guard.  (While Israel
currently frets over Iran's accumulation of up to 500 pounds of
highly-enriched uranium for building one bomb, Y-12 houses an
estimated 400 tons.) [Washington Post, 5-8-2013]

     Thanks This Week to the News of the Weird Board of
Editorial Advisors.
    
                  * * * * *  
http://www.WeirdUniverse.net, WeirdNews at earthlink dot net, and
P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679.