Rolling Stone reported on July 2 that prolific baby daddy and host of "The Masked Singer" Nick Cannon has recently insured his "most valuable assets" for $10 million. "You hear about, like, all these different celebrities insuring their legs ... so I was like, 'Hey, well, I got to insure my most valuable body part,'" Cannon said. Even better, the "Ball-to-Ball" policy was taken out with Dr. Squatch, a men's grooming company that invites users to find the "value of their balls." The father of 12 (with five different mamas) said he's "doubling down on ... my future kids." [Rolling Stone, 7/2/2024]

Recent Alarming Headline

A sinkhole 100 feet wide and 100 feet deep opened up on June 26, smack-dab in the middle of a soccer complex in Alton, Illinois, The Telegraph reported. The fields are built over an operating limestone mine; the field collapsed above the ceiling of the mine, which is 40 to 50 feet thick. Alton Parks and Recreation Director Michael Haynes said the fields were empty and no one was injured in the collapse, including miners. Along with the artificial turf, the hole sucked up benches and a light pole on the field. [Telegraph, 6/26/2024]

News That Sounds Like a Joke

-- On June 24 in a federal by-election in Toronto, Canada, candidate Felix-Antoine Hamel, 45, made history: He received zero votes. The CBC reported that Hamel was approached by a friend to add his name to the ballot, one of the longest in Canadian history, as part of a protest against Canada's electoral system. "Well, I am the true unity candidate," Hamel said. "Everyone agrees not to vote for me." Hamel couldn't even vote for himself, as he is from Montreal, not Toronto. "I'm one of the last people that would be expected to make Canadian history in any way," the musician said. [CBC, 6/27/2024]

-- Jillian Uygun, 22, of Seminole, Florida, just wanted a cuddle from her boyfriend on June 29, The Smoking Gun reported. But when he refused her, they argued about the "victim's disinterest," police said. The next morning, Uygun repeatedly tried to snuggle with the boyfriend -- then allegedly took it up a notch, grabbing his chest hair, scratching his face, biting him on the forehead and breaking his phone. She was arrested for domestic battery, and a judge ordered her to have no contact with her cuddle-resistant boyfriend. [Smoking Gun, 7/1/2024]

Ewwwww!

Residents of Pomfret, Connecticut, ended their day on a crappy note on June 25, WVIT-TV reported. That evening, a manure truck rolled over in an intersection, hitting another car and spilling its stinky load. "It was literally a waterfall of brown," said Ann Bedard, whose house lies at the intersection where the crash occurred. "It just flooded down our property." Workers cleaned up the several inches of manure; the truck also spilled fuel and hydraulic fluid, but the fire department declared no immediate safety threat and said the water was safe to use. [WVIT, 6/27/2024]

New World Order

A two-person crew from DroneUp, a commercial drone services company that is partnering with Walmart in Florida, was demonstrating the delivery service on June 26 in The Overlook at Lake Louisa in Lake County, Florida, when they heard a loud pop, ClickOrlando reported. They believed what they heard was a gunshot, so the crew and the drone high-tailed it back to Walmart, where deputies met them. The drone had a bullet hole in its payload area; officers returned to the neighborhood, where they discovered 72-year-old Dennis Winn. Winn told them he had been working on his swimming pool pump when the drone flew over; he shot it with a 9mm handgun because he suspected drones had been surveilling him in the past. As he was arrested, he shouted to a neighbor that he was being taken into custody for shooting a drone. Winn faces multiple charges; the drone sustained about $2,500 in damage. [ClickOrlando, 6/27/2024]

Crime Report

Outside the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Queens, New York, on June 30, surveillance video captured an SUV taxi driving up, parking and disgorging the driver around 5:30 a.m., the New York Post reported. The man was then seen removing a shoe and using it to batter statues of Mary and Joseph, which were unharmed, before turning his footwear on a child Jesus statue and decapitating it. The vandal returned to his car, shoe in hand, and drove away. Father Sean Suckiel said the statue, which "holds special meaning to many in our parish," had stood at the church for 42 years, and repairing it will cost $20,000. [NY Post, 7/1/2024]

Democracy in Action

The 8th House District in Eugene, Oregon, held a primary election in late June, with two contenders, Lisa Fragala and Doyle Canning, receiving the same number of votes (seven), the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported. Both are Democrats, but since there was no Republican candidate in the race, one of them could have claimed the Republican nomination -- theoretically. State law requires that a tie be broken by a roll of the dice or a coin toss, so the deputy election director, Luke Belant, prepared to flip the coin. Canning won the toss, but strangely, she is ineligible under the state's "sore-loser law"; because she lost the Democratic primary, she was unable to accept the nomination of any other party. Therefore, Fragala will be the only person on the ballot in November unless the Republican Party chooses a candidate. "The lesson here for any political party is to field a candidate," Canning said. [Oregon Capital Chronicle, 6/27/2024]

Compelling Explanation

Dontcha hate it when you throw your husband a party and he's just not grateful enough? Kinda makes you want to poison him -- or at least that's how 47-year-old Michelle Peters of Lebanon, Missouri, reacted, according to The Kansas City Star. On June 24, Peters was held for questioning by the Laclede County Sheriff's Office after her husband notified police that he became "afraid for his life" after noticing that the Mountain Dew in the garage fridge "tasted weird" and he started experiencing sore throat, vomiting and "coughing up brown/yellow thick mucus," authorities said. He looked at video footage from his garage and saw his wife take the soda bottle and a Roundup bottle into the house. Peters initially told officers that she mixed the liquids "to use as a weed killer that she saw on Pinterest," but eventually confessed, saying she "was mad ... because she had thrown him a 50th birthday and he was not appreciative," police said. She was charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. [KC Star, 6/26/2024]

But Was It Unhappy?

In the apparent first case of robotic suicide, an administrative officer robot at Gumi City Council in South Korea threw itself down a 6 1/2-foot-long flight of steps, France24 reported on June 26. Witnesses saw the robot, which could travel between floors on the elevator and had its own civil servant officer badge, "circling in one spot as if something was there" before the fall, but it wasn't clear what caused the mishap. "It was ... one of us," an official said. "It worked diligently." [France24, 6/26/2024]

Low Expectations

On July 29, Michael Patrick Fleming, 41, entered the Chase bank branch in Lady Lake, Florida, and handed the teller a withdrawal slip, The Smoking Gun reported. Fleming did not have an account at the bank and requested just 1 cent; he later told officers his plan was to get the penny, then "sit in the chair and wait for law enforcement." His goal was to be arrested -- and it worked. Fleming was charged with felony robbery and held on $5,000 bond. [The Smoking Gun, 7/3/2024]

Perhaps the stresses of HOA board membership just weigh heavily on some people. An unnamed 74-year-old woman in New Palestine, Indiana, is facing charges of criminal trespass, criminal mischief and public nudity after she was caught not once, but twice, defecating in broad daylight against the side of a neighbor's home, Fox59-TV reported. According to court documents, the homeowner was mowing his lawn on May 29 when he discovered a pile of human feces next to his air conditioning unit. His surveillance cameras had first caught the culprit on May 2, but after the second incident, he contacted police. The woman can clearly be seen in the video lowering her trousers and squatting to empty her bowels. She initially denied the act but admitted it once confronted with the evidence; she said she had nothing against the homeowner and simply had to go. She has stepped down from her position on the HOA board. [Fox59, 6/26/2024]

The Tech Revolution

At Crescent Regional Hospital near Dallas, Texas, patients are for the first time in the U.S. consulting with doctors via hologram, ABC News reported on June 26. The technology, designed by Dutch company Holoconnects, features a life-sized 3D image of the doctor in real time. Raji Kumar, the hospital's CEO, said the technology will reduce doctors' travel time between hospitals and clinics. "They can just hop into the studio to have the consult," she said. She hopes to expand the program to rural hospitals in the area. [ABC News, 6/26/2024]

The Continuing Crisis

Edward Kang, 20, is facing a long stretch without gaming after he allegedly assaulted a fellow online gamer on June 22, ABC News reported. Kang, who lives in New Jersey, flew from Newark to Jacksonville, Florida, on June 21, where he checked in to a hotel and purchased a hammer and flashlight at a hardware store. Late on June 22, he arrived at the victim's home in Fernandina Beach, entering the home through an unlocked door, "apparently to confront the victim," said Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper. When the victim got up from gaming to use the restroom, Kang allegedly attacked him with the hammer. The victim's stepfather heard the altercation and helped to wrestle Kang to the ground; officers said the victim sustained severe head wounds and they found "a significant amount of blood." Kang told deputies that the victim is a "bad person online." He was charged with attempted second-degree murder and armed burglary. [ABC News, 6/24/2024]

How Hot Is It?

It's so hot ... Abe Lincoln's legs are falling off. A 6-foot-tall wax replica of the sculpture of our 16th president inside the Lincoln Memorial is succumbing to the extreme temperatures in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post reported on June 24. The statue was placed on the campus of Garrison Elementary School in February with the idea of drawing attention to the Civil War and its aftermath. But as the heat dome settled over the capital, he started melting. "The idea was that the ambient temperature, unless it got to 140 degrees, wouldn't melt the sculpture," said artist Sandy Williams IV of Richmond, Virginia. But "even his poor legs are starting to come unglued," said Melissa Krull, 41, who lives nearby. Lincoln's head lolled so far backward that the nonprofit that commissioned the work removed it, with plans to restore it to its perch when temps moderated. [Washington Post, 6/24/2024]

Least Competent Criminal

Kelsey Lynn Schnetzler, 34, of Salisbury, Missouri, was charged with stealing thousands of dollars' worth of lottery tickets from her employer, Casey's General Store, KTVO-TV reported. Schnetzler's home-court MO may have been what got her nicked: Every evening during her shift, she told police, she would put a cup over the camera in the store and unlock the safe where the tickets were stored. Her burglaries took place between October 2023 and March 2024; the 36 lottery books she stole were valued at $24,000. She cashed winning tickets in at Casey's and other locations. She was charged with felony stealing. [KTVO, 6/20/2024]

Pay No Attention to the Body in the Backseat

On the morning of June 22, after Margot Lewis, 32, of North Liberty, Iowa, crashed her car in Olmsted County, Minnesota, police arrived at the scene, the Des Moines Register reported. There they discovered the dead body of 35-year-old Liara Tsai of Minneapolis in the back seat. Tsai was "wrapped in a bedsheet, a blanket, a futon-style mattress and a tarp," court documents said. Police said Tsai also had a "large wound on the right side of the neck around the carotid artery." The medical examiner determined that Tsai's injuries were not related to the motor vehicle accident. Lewis was arrested for interference with a dead body; her unconditional bond was set at $1 million. [Des Moines Register, 6/26/2024]

Ewwwwwwwww!

The CBC reported on June 18 that conditions at Her Majesty's Penitentiary in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, have deteriorated so drastically that inmates are literally sharing cells -- and more -- with rats. Inmate Devon Fitzpatrick told an interviewer that he woke up one morning to the feeling of something moving in the crotch of his pants; when he reached down, he found a rat had given birth there. "Stuff like that happens on a regular basis," he said of the Victorian-era facility. "They climb on the tables, they climb up the pipes and the wires. They're everywhere." He said he's been bitten about 20 times. Fitzpatrick also described other dehumanizing conditions at the prison; the government has said it's working with a company to build a new prison, but no improvements have been made in the meantime. [CBC, 6/18/2024]

Redneck Chronicles

At the Walmart in Eunice, Louisiana, police were called around 3:30 p.m. on June 22 about a group of women who were fighting, KADN-TV reported. They arrested Brionka Benjamin, 38, and her niece, Makatelynn Benjamin, 20, for simple battery, but Brionka got an additional charge: When the fight began, police discovered on surveillance video, she allegedly tossed her baby into a trash can near the entrance to the store so her hands would be free to slug another woman. She was charged with cruelty to juveniles; the baby was unharmed and released to relatives. [KADN, 6/24/2024]

It's Good To Have a Hobby (Horse)

Some 260 riders from 22 countries showed up to the 11th annual Finnish Hobby Horse Championships in Seinajoki, Finland, on June 15, AFP reported. We could stop right there, but why would we? Hobby horsing involves people riding stick horses through a series of jumps, intricate dressage moves and Western riding events. While hobby horsing is not recognized as an official sport in Finland, participants take it seriously. "We have faced so much bullying and judgment," rider Nara Arlin, 24, said. Even so, the sport "is growing every year," said Julia Mikkonen, chair of the Finnish hobby horse association. She notes the athleticism involved in some of the events: "If you jump over obstacles, your hip mobility has to be absolutely insane," she said. She estimates there are about 10,000 hobby horsers worldwide. [AFP, 6/26/2024]

Awesome!

Fans of 1960s kitschy TV show "Batman" will not be surprised to learn that trusty sidekick Robin (also known as Burt Ward) has received the President's Lifetime Achievement Award for rescuing more than 15,000 pets. WTOP-TV reported on June 26 that at the same ceremony, Ward and his wife received the United Nations Association of the United States of America Humanitarian Award for their work saving 45 different breeds of dogs. The former Boy Wonder said he and his wife "want to leave this planet better off than when we found it." (We must have missed the episode when Robin found Earth.) [WTOP, 6/26/2024]

Alexander Morris, 53, filed a lawsuit against Ascension Macomb-Oakland Hospital in Warren, Michigan, on June 10 over an incident that took place last year, NBC News reported. Morris, the lead singer of the Motown group the Four Tops, went to the hospital with "clear symptoms of cardiac distress" in April 2023. While there, Morris told nurses and security staff that he was concerned about stalkers and fans -- but they didn't believe that he was with the Four Tops and ordered a psychological examination, which delayed his treatment. He was physically restrained, he said, for at least 1 1/2 hours -- "a terrifying experience to be in the middle of a medical emergency," Morris said. The suit, which seeks $75,000 in damages, alleges negligence, racial discrimination, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Morris' ordeal finally ended when he showed a nurse a video of him performing at the Grammys. He was offered a $25 gift card to a Meijer grocery store as an apology, which he refused. "I never imagined I would become a victim of 'being sick while Black,'" Morris said. The hospital had no comment on the suit. [NBC News, 6/11/2024]

What Could Go Wrong?

Calling Agent 99! Samsung is channeling the 1960s TV series "Get Smart" with its newest tech release: the Shortcut Sneaker, with which one can make phone calls. Gizmodo reported that the phone is operated with discrete foot movements, recognized by motion sensors in the soles. Sadly, you're not likely to get your dogs into them anytime soon: The company is making just six pairs, available only to Samsung members in the Netherlands who enter to win by July 9. [Gizmodo, 6/13/2024]

Weird in the Wild

Scientists studying African elephants at Kenya's Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park have discovered that the pachyderms call to each other and respond to one another using individual names, the Associated Press reported on June 10. The names are expressed in low rumbles that can be heard over long distances -- by elephants. Many of the noises are low enough not to be heard by humans. When scientists played recordings to individual elephants, they responded energetically to those that contained their names. "Elephants are incredibly social, always talking and touching each other," said co-author George Wittemyer. "We just cracked open the door a bit to the elephant mind." [AP, 6/10/2024]

The Passing Parade

As part of the annual Italian Market Festival in Philadelphia, one contest involves competitors climbing a greased pole to claim bags of meat and cheese tied at the top, United Press International reported. This year, however, the dangling delectables were left hanging, and nearly a month later, they're still there. Festival organizers are trying to arrange for a crane to gather the leftovers, which visitors claim aren't stinky -- yet. With the oncoming heat dome across the United States, that might change. [UPI, 6/13/2024]

Just Couldn't Help Herself

Tara Bjork, a server at Charlotte, North Carolina's Restoration Hardware Rooftop Restaurant, knew she was overstepping the rules on May 27 when she posted a video to TikTok while at work. "I need you guys to see what just came in the door," she said to the camera before panning to a table where a man was sitting across from a blow-up doll. Canoe.com reported that Bjork observed him "feeding" grapes to the doll, but later it was revealed that the man had finished last in his fantasy football league and the restaurant visit was his punishment. Bjork was fired from the restaurant for making the post but said it "wasn't too much of a shock, thank goodness." [Canoe.com, 6/12/2024]

But Why?

State Rep. Jim Carroll of Bennington, Vermont, released two videos to local news outlets in June depicting his colleague, Rep. Mary Morrissey, pouring water into Carroll's tote bag as it hung on a hook in his office, NBC5-TV reported. The incidents took place in April. "I want to say how very, very sorry I am for my actions of pouring water in Jim Carroll's tote bag," Morrissey said. "Quite honestly, I don't know why I did it. I was not meaning to hurt him." Carroll decided to release the video, which he took, because he believed not doing so would draw even more attention to the events. Speaker of the House Jill Krowinski told Morrissey, who's been a member of the House since 1997, that she would not be eligible to serve on conference committees. [NBC5, 6/11/2024]

What's in a Name?

Here's a term you might not know: A "cryptic pregnancy" occurs when a woman is pregnant but doesn't realize it until labor begins. So it went with Tayvia Woodfork, 26, of Mississippi, who experienced stomach pains while dining at a Golden Corral restaurant in North Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 6. Fox News reported that Woodfork went to the restroom, where she delivered 6-pound Tamaar Kylon Corral Woodfork, a boy. Yes, that third name is a tribute to the restaurant. Golden Corral shared news of the birth on their Facebook page and even gifted the new mom a $200 gift card, among other items. [Fox News, 6/18/2024]

Terror in the Drive-thru

-- On June 11 in Seattle, Emma Lee, 23, got into hot water with a drive-thru customer at Taste of Heaven Espresso, where she works, Canoe.com reported. The customer was steamed about the price of his drinks, to which Lee responded, "You don't get to name your own price." After receiving his drinks, the customer allegedly got out of his car and threw them through the drive-thru window at the barista, then spit on her. But Lee fought back: She leaned out of the window and took a hammer to his windshield, putting a hole in the glass. "The argument that he didn't know or was scammed doesn't hold up," she said. "The prices are listed." Police were called, and Lee filed charges of misdemeanor assault and banned him from the store. [Canoe.com, 6/17/2024]

-- In Lakeland, Florida, on June 14, customers in a McDonald's drive-thru were unhappy with an incorrect order, ClickOrlando reported. They argued with employee Chassidy Gardner before starting to drive away -- that's when Gardner allegedly threw a drink at the car. Two of the customers exited the car, opened the drive-thru window and threw drinks at Gardner, who grabbed a handgun and walked outside, firing at least one shot at the vehicle as it left the parking lot. She was arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. [ClickOrlando, 6/17/2024]

The Continuing Crisis

Laurence Van Wassenhove worked for France-Telecom starting in 1993. France-Telecom, which was later bought by Orange, knew of her physical limitations caused by medical conditions, so they tailored a secretarial job to fit her skills, Oddity Central reported. In 2002, she asked to move to another region of France, and her request was approved -- but the new workplace was not adapted for her needs. However, instead of making the necessary changes, Orange continued to pay her full salary for 20 years, while she did ... nothing. A mediator was appointed in 2015 to resolve the situation, but nothing changed. "Being paid, at home, not working is not a privilege," she said. "It's very hard to bear." Van Wassenhove is suing Orange for "moral harassment and discrimination at work linked to her health condition." Her lawyers believe Orange was trying to coerce her into quitting. [Oddity Central, 6/17/2024]