Best Recent Foreign News

• Championship-Level Theft: China's Gxnews.com.cn reported in December the arrest of a man in Yulin City, accused of stealing more than 2,000 items of underwear from women in his neighborhood, taken within the last year. He hid his stash above ceiling tiles in stairwells in his apartment building, but he drew attention when one of the ceiling spaces caved in from the weight of the garments, showering the stairs in an array of colorful lingerie. (Just within the last month, according to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, two other men, in Zhejiang and Hubei provinces, have been detained for similar crimes. In the latter case, the alleged thief was also wearing lingerie.) [South China Morning Post, 12-21-2014]

• British makeup artist Jordan James Parke, 23, told London's The Sun in December how he had fallen in love with the look of U.S. celebrity Kim Kardashian and thus had forced himself to spend the equivalent of about $150,000 on "more than 50" cosmetic procedures to adopt her "pouty" look, including lip and cheek fillers, eyebrow tattoos and laser hair removal. "I love everything about Kim ... the most gorgeous woman ever," he said. "Her skin is perfect, her hair, everything about her" (except that, in The Sun report, only her parts above the neck were mentioned). [People Magazine, 12-18-2014]

• Artist Megumi Igarashi, 42, known as "no-good girl" in Japan, taunted officials with over-the-top pornography twice in 2014, first in July when she designed a kayak in the image of her genitals and then sought donations by sending contributors data on how to make a 3-D-printed model of her vagina. In her December arrest, according to a BBC News dispatch, she had complained of the contradictions in Japanese culture (also cited in previous News of the Weird stories) that allow glorified public displays of the penis as a symbol of fertility, but banish the vulva from public sight. [BBC News, 12-24-2014]

Comment by clicking here.