News of the Weird

Romanian gang members have apparently been apprehended after a series of robberies during March, April and May that resembled a scene from a recent "Fast and Furious" movie. The gang's vehicle approaches the rear of tractor-trailers traveling at highway speed, and gangsters climb onto the hood of their own vehicle, grab the 18-wheeler's rear door, open it using specialized tools, and steal inventory, apparently without knowledge of the driver. In one video released by police in Bucharest, the gang members, after peering inside the trailer, decided to take nothing and climbed back out.

Day off for anesthesia

Fern Cooper, 65, and 13 other cataract-surgery patients arrived at Ontario's Oakville Trafalgar Hospital on June 25 to learn that they would not receive anesthesia because the hospital had decided to schedule an "experimental day" to evaluate how unsedated patients responded. (The Ontario Health Insurance Plan had recently cut anesthesiologists' fees.) A topical numbing gel, plus doctors' reassurances were provided. But Cooper, in whom severe anxiety had previously been diagnosed, told the Toronto Star of the terror she felt when, fully awake, she watched the surgeon's scalpel approaching, then cutting, her eyeball.

Aww, Mom!

Alleged drug dealer Jesus "Pepe" Fuentes, 37, was arrested in Chicago in May after his mother botched a heroin pickup for him. According to officials, Fuentes, eager to catch a concert by the rapper Scarface, sent his mother to gather the 10-kilo drop. She collected the drugs, but was stopped by police when she failed to use a turn signal.

One-man meth lab

"Meth Lab Explodes in Man's Pants" was the headline on one newspaper's version of an April Associated Press dispatch from Okmulgee County, Okla. Police have warned that "one-pot" labs, "cooking" in a soda bottle, can be ready to go in about 40 minutes, but that the contents are many times more highly pressurized than, say, a fizzing soda bottle.

Grade adjustment

Catherine Venusto, 45, was arrested in July and charged with breaking into the computer system of the Northwestern Lehigh School District in Pennsylvania (where she formerly worked) and changing the records of her two children. Venusto allegedly switched a daughter's F grade to M (for medically excused) and one grade of her overachieving son from 98 to 99.

Hypnosis gone wrong

Officials organizing a show for high school girls in June in Sherbrooke, Quebec, signed up a 20-year-old apprentice hypnotist to perform. But by the end of his session, he had failed to bring all of the girls out of their spells, including one who was so far under that the apprentice had to summon his mentor from home (an hour's drive away) to help. The mentor, Richard Whitbread, rehypnotized her and then snapped her out of it with a stern voice, according to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News report. He noted that his protégé is a handsome young man, which might have unduly influenced the girls.

Safety in Britain

Critics often attack U.K. bureaucrats for being overly concerned with safety. In June, Royal Mail notified businesses on a street in Doncaster that it would no longer deliver to them on rainy days because the street was too slippery. (One postman had just suffered a broken shoulder when he slipped and fell.) And in May, the Somerset County Council ordered the removal of a yard sign advertising a public fundraiser on the grounds that someone might bump into it at night.

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