News of the Weird, Vol. 2

Another Stupid Criminal
We’ve all heard of Stupid Criminals, but 24-year-old Scott Snow of Danbury, Connecticut may take the cake.

Snow, who is facing drug charges, walked into the Danbury Police Station allegedly puffing on a marijuana cigar, and blew smoke through the opening in the bullet-proof glass partition at the front desk. When he was told there was no smoking allowed in the building, Snow stubbed out the cigar on the countertop. Officers recognized the familiar odor of the weed, and arrested Snow on the spot.

Police say that they found additional marijuana in Snow’s pants, and he was released after posting bond.

Mother’s Cremated Son Turns Up Alive
A mother in London, England cremated a body she thought was that of her dead son, only to find that he later turned up alive, police said.

Thomas Dennison, the 37-year old son of Gina Partington, was reported missing last month and a body was found in Rusholme, Manchester, three days later. Partington formally identified the body as that of her son and, following an inquest, the body was cremated on October 30.

However, police actually found Dennison living in Nottingham four days earlier.

The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to discover why police did not notify Partington of her son's discovery in the days before she attended the cremation.

Inquiries are continuing to formally establish the identity of the body, but police said they believe they know who he is, and next of kin have been informed.

Police said in a statement, "This set of circumstances is clearly distressing and urgent inquiries are ongoing to establish how this happened."

German Advent Calendar Depicts Serial Killer
A German advent calendar for children has become a hot seller in Berlin since word got out that it has a picture of a notorious serial killer on it.

The cartoon calendar depicts Fritz Haarmann, who murdered 24 young men and boys in the 1920’s, lurking under a tree with a hatchet next to the door for Dec. 1. Below his picture, a jolly Santa Claus hands out presents to children.

A local tourism office included the serial killer with 23 other celebrities, including philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and hard rock band The Scorpions.

Haarmann's depiction was featured in last year's advent calendar, but this year it is attracting wider attention because top-selling newspaper Bild questioned whether the use of the murderer in a children's calendar was in good taste.

"People are queuing up to buy the calendar now," said Hans Nolte, director of the city's tourism board. Nolte said he expected 20,000 copies of the calendar to sell out soon, as orders were pouring in from Berlin, Vienna and other parts of Austria. Proceeds from the sales are going towards a local children’s cancer charity.

"It's part of our history," Nolte said. He also added that the serial killer, who was beheaded in 1925, will not appear in next year's edition. Go figure.

Brother and Sister Vie Over Largest Turkey
Rich Portnoy roasted a 72-pound turkey to trounce his sister in their annual sibling rivalry over who can prepare the biggest Thanksgiving bird.

The Minnesota man cooked his huge turkey in his 36-inch-wide, chef’s oven on Thursday to top the biggest bird his sister had ever cooked by 25 pounds. His sister, Andra Portnoy, conceded defeat but said that her brother's large oven gave him an unfair advantage.

"It actually tastes pretty good!" Portnoy exclaimed, gloating after he pulled the turkey from the oven with the help of two other men, after 15 hours of roasting.

Big turkeys are a Thanksgiving tradition in the Portnoy family. Portnoy said his father cooked birds of 30 pounds or more years ago.

Last year, Portnoy’s sister cooked a 47-pounder to take the lead after her brother could only find a 37-pounder, even though he lives in the nation's top turkey-producing state, and she lives is Reston, Va.

This year, her brother got help from the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association, where he found an 85-pound breeding tom that, at 59 weeks old, was near the end of its useful life.

He purchased the turkey for $30, loaded the live bird into the back of the family's car and drove it to a processor, where it was made oven-ready at 72 pounds.

Portnoy and his wife, Charlene, invited 26 people to Thursday's Thanksgiving feast. They weren't sure the big old bird would be edible, so Portnoy also cooked a 19-pound "backup turkey" on the backyard grill.

Chinese Ant-Breeding Scheme Uncovered
Chinese officials have sought to head off fresh confrontation after thousands of investors protested to demand help getting money back from a get-rich-quick scheme raising ants to make an aphrodisiac tonic.

Several thousand irate investors from across Liaoning, a Chinese province striving to attract investment, demonstrated around provincial government offices in the capital, Shenyang, in the past few days.

Officials said they were working to defuse the complaints, avoiding the harsh words that authorities often use against protests.

"The provincial government has paid great attention to this situation, and will take appropriate measures within the framework of the law," Zhang Yunqiang, propaganda director of the Liaoning provincial government, said. "The besieging of the office has gradually eased."

But residents said that officials had set up checkpoints and taken other steps to keep a close eye on potential trouble.

The investors, many of whom are laid-off workers or farmers, put their savings into Shenyang's Yilishen Group for a scheme in which they bred ants to provide ingredients for a health tonic promising an aphrodisiac effect.

For every 10,000 yuan they paid the company as a "deposit", investors were promised a dividend of 3,250 yuan.

But since October, the group has delayed payment of the dividend twice, fuelling investor fears that it was on the brink of bankruptcy or that the government might have frozen its funds.

A third delay on Tuesday stoked anger among investors, Zhang said.

He said the government would "urge the Yilishen Group and the [ant] breeders to reasonably settle their dispute", but that Yilishen was a private company that had "full responsibility for its own profits and losses".

Yilishen has made no public statement.

Chinese media said that the ant-breeding scheme collected more than 10 billion yuan from hundreds of thousands of Liaoning residents. Some reports said that the ants were a useless ruse for an illegal fund-raising scam.

While Chinese authorities have so far taken relatively mild steps against the protests, they are also afraid of another flare-up.

One disgruntled investor said that breeders heading to Shenyang had been stopped. In the city itself, officials were checking on breeders.

A resident of the small city of Jinzhou said that anti-riot police were guarding against protests.