Felonious Irony 

Curses, Foiled Again
Police investigating a theft at a coin laundry in Great Falls, Mont., captured suspect Curtis Dear, 28, after following his footprints in the snow to a nearby residence. They found Dear with a backpack containing hundreds of quarters and shoes that matched the prints. (Associated Press)

• Police who found Jailin Turner, 19, yelling and banging on an apartment window in Iowa City, Iowa, said the woman told them she'd locked herself out. After firefighters broke down the door so she could regain entry, officers found pot plants and drug paraphernalia inside. They charged Turner with possession. (Iowa City Press-Citizen)

Felonious Irony
State police arrested Gregory Bolongnese, 22, at the bus station in Plattsburgh, N.Y., after they found marijuana, cocaine and LSD hidden inside a stuffed lion doll wearing a D.A.R.E. T-shirt. D.A.R.E. is short for the anti-drug program Drug Abuse Resistance Education. (Associated Press)

We Feel Your Pain
Law school students at Harvard, Columbia and Georgetown universities demanded that their schools postpone final exams because they were traumatized by grand jury decisions in Ferguson, Mo., and New York not to indict white police officers who killed black men. Students said the decisions and subsequent outrage kept them awake, distracted them and made them question the integrity of the legal system they are preparing to enter. What's more, taking part in local protests limited their study time. All three schools announced that students who felt that recent events would impair their exam performance could petition to have their exams rescheduled. Reacting to the schools' responses, George Mason University School of Law professor David Bernstein said that Columbia had "chosen to infantilize" the students, and Harvard Law School graduate Elie Mystal blogged that "a lawyer has to be able to function in the face of injustice." (Bloomberg Businessweek)

• Fathers-to-be have the opportunity to experience the pain of childbirth at Aima maternity hospital in China's Shandong province. After several new moms complained that they got little sympathy from their partners, the hospital began offering free sessions where participants have pads attached above the abdomens that give pain-inducing electric shocks for up to five minutes as a nurse gradually raises the intensity from 1 to 10, causing the men to writhe in agony. "It felt like my heart and lungs were being ripped apart," said Song Siling, who lasted only until level 7. Insisting that the simulations could never match the torment of actual childbirth, nurse Lou Dezhu did note, "If men can experience this pain, then they'll be more loving and caring to their wives." About 100 men volunteered for the sessions. Most are expectant fathers, but some are thrill seekers who sign up for "taster sessions." (Reuters)

Name Games
North Korea ordered people with the same name as leader Kim Jong Un to change their names and banned its use for newborns. There were similar name bans on Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, as part of propaganda attempts to build cults of personality around them. (Reuters)

• Narcissistic parents are putting pressure on their children by giving them unusual names, according to Dutch researchers. The team from Amsterdam University found a clear link between parents' own sense of superiority and the extent to which they "overvalue" their children. One of the most obvious ways to make children "stand out from the crowd," the researchers reported, was by giving them a "unique, uncommon first name." (Britain's The Express)

Everyone's a Critic
Police arrested Lachon Welcher, 28, on drug charges in Dubuque, Iowa, after a witness called to report the woman was hitting a television with a can of beans. (Dubuque Telegraph Herald)

Shiftless Generation
Two boys, 15 and 17, tried to steal a car at gunpoint but failed, according to Houston authorities, because they "had issues operating the vehicle." It had a manual transmission. The suspects demanded that the driver tell them how to operate the vehicle, but after he provided a few instructions, they ordered him to get out and tried but failed to make their getaway. (Associated Press)

Too Hot to Handle
The U.S. Air Force is repainting dark-green fuel trucks servicing its problem-plagued F-35 aircraft because they absorb too much heat. The Joint Strike Fighter can't fly on warm fuel, officials acknowledged. Painting the trucks white, at a cost of $3,900 per truck, makes them reflect more heat. As a result, however, when the aircraft are deployed to forward positions, the white tankers full of highly flammable fuel that accompany them could make easy targets. "The long-term fix," Chief Master Sgt. Ralph Resch said, "is to have parking shades for the refuelers." (Washington's The Daily Caller)

Reasonable Explanation
Police who charged Zachary Torrance, 18, with robbing four Alabama Subway sandwich shops said he told them he was mad that the "Jared Diet" hadn't worked for him, so he wanted his money back. The weight-loss plan he referred to is named for Jared Fogle, who went from 425 pounds to 180 pounds in two years by eating two low-fat Subway sandwiches a day. (Birmingham's WVTM-TV)

When Guns Are Outlawed
Nathan Rolf Channing, 27, was arrested for pointing a banana at two sheriff's deputies in Mesa County, Colo., who believed it was a gun. One of the deputies started to pull his own gun when Channing yelled, "It's a banana!" He explained he thought it would be a "funny joke" to post on YouTube, but the deputies didn't see any cameras in the vicinity. At that point, Channing admitted this was a "trial run of the joke." Channing, a resident of Fruitvale, was charged with felony menacing. (Denver's KDVR-TV)

• Marvin Tramaine Hill II, 27, admitted attacking his pregnant wife with a McChicken sandwich after police arrested him at their home in Des Moines, Iowa. Police said Hill's wife had mayonnaise on her shirt and face when they arrived, prompting Hill's arrest for simple domestic assault. (The Huffington Post)

Shady Deal
When the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System opened in February on roughly 5 square miles of federal desert near the California-Nevada border, its operators forecast it would produce enough electricity to power 140,000 homes. So far, however, the $2.2 billion plant is producing about half its expected output because the sun isn't shining as much as expected. "Factors such as clouds, jet contrails and weather have had a greater impact on the plant than the owners anticipated," the California Energy Commission said. (Associated Press)

Compiled from mainstream news sources by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.