NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Government in action

The public works department in San Francisco gets, on average, 65 daily calls with complaints about feces on the sidewalk. Public works director Mohammed Nuru and the city's mayor, London Breed, put their heads together and came up with a solution: the Poop Patrol. In mid-September, five public works employees with a steam cleaner will begin scouring poop "hot spots," such as the Civic Center, Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods, during the afternoons to clean up what nature has left behind. (Another team also cleans overnight.) Officials told the San Francisco Chronicle that the waste comes from dogs and people, and the mayor recently allotted about $1 million for new public restrooms. "I just want the city to be clean," Mayor Breed said.

Trial underway

As his trial got underway on Aug. 22, Chinese University of Hong Kong associate professor Khaw Kim-sun pleaded not guilty to a breathtaking murder plot. Prosecutors say that in 2015, Khaw filled a yoga ball with carbon monoxide, then left it in the trunk of his wife's car, where it slowly leaked the noxious gas and killed his wife and their 16-year-old daughter. The BBC reported that Khaw was angry because his wife wouldn't divorce him so that he could be with a student with whom he was having an affair. When colleagues caught Khaw filling the ball, he said he was going to use it to kill rabbits, but in his statement to police, he said the gas was to kill rats in his home.

An edible weapon

Jeffrey Tomerlin, 45, was charged with assault on Aug. 19 after he hurled a soft, fluffy, edible weapon at his ex-girlfriend. When Tomerlin saw his ex in a car with her new boyfriend, he walked up to her window and threw a biscuit at her face. He also charged the car, banging on it and saying he would kill them, reported WKRN, earning additional charges of public intoxication and vandalism.