Weird National Briefs - 03/17/10 From the Associated Press No more office odors DETROIT - Change is in the air for Detroit city workers. City employees will be urged not to wear perfume, cologne or aftershave as a result of a settlement in a federal lawsuit. Officials plan to place warning placards in three city buildings. The signs will warn workers to avoid "wearing scented products, including ... colognes, aftershave lotions, perfumes, deodorants, body/face lotions ... (and) the use of scented candles, perfume samples from magazines, spray or solid air fresheners." The employee handbook and Americans with Disabilities Act training also will bear warnings. The Detroit News reports the move stems from a $100,000 settlement in a federal lawsuit filed in 2008 by a city employee who said a colleague's perfume made it challenging for her to do her job. TME - The Talking Heads are starring in the film version, to be called "Stop Making Scents." When a body meets a body... GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - A corpse research plan in Grand Junction is being rewritten after neighbors complained. A professor at Mesa State College had proposed the college develop the nation's first high-altitude "body farm." A body farm is a forensic research site where people who have donated their corpses are left to rot. Forensics researchers then study decomposition of the bodies to assist in police investigations. The college was preparing a plot of land within several hundred feet of some homes. Neighbors complained, and Mesa State President Tim Foster told The (Grand Junction) Daily Sentinel that the body farm won't go there. College officials say they will look for a more remote site for the body farm. TME - The proposal for the free-range body farm was even less popular. Be, like, counted or whatever GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - Authorities say the strange odor seeping into a western Colorado Census Bureau office came from more than 1,000 marijuana plants growing next door. Grand Junction census workers say the smell was coming through the vents. Police got a search warrant Tuesday and found the plants next door in the same building. Police say the building owner told them he was growing the plants for medical marijuana patients. Officers found state registration cards for medical marijuana users and are reviewing them. No one's been arrested. State law permits medical marijuana use but federal law does not. Last month, federal agents found 224 pot plants in the home of a suburban Denver man who said he was a medical marijuana provider. He's been charged with possession. TME - The population of Denver was listed as "eleventy bajillion," while Boulder's was "Doritos." Crime doesn't pay - much THERMAL, California - They say crime doesn't pay. For one robber in California, it did - but not much. Authorities in Riverside County say a woman with a gun robbed 11 customers at a market and got away with $6. A Sheriff's Department statement says the woman was armed with a semi-automatic pistol when she went to La Chicanita Market in the town of Thermal on Tuesday afternoon, according to The Press-Enterprise newspaper. Deputy Herlinda Valenzuela says the woman confronted 10 customers in the store and also demanded money from one person who was entering the market. She then fled in an old car. Nobody was hurt. TME - Why not just rob the dollar store and dodge the crushing disappointment? Ninja knitting WEST CAPE MAY, N.J. - Someone is spinning quite a yarn over one New Jersey shore town. Dubbed "The Midnight Knitter" by West Cape May residents, someone is covering tree branches and lamp poles with little sweaters under cover of darkness. Mayor Pam Kaithern says police are looking into the guerrilla crocheting, which technically is against the law because it is being done on public property without permission. The mayor and many residents admit they're enthralled by the rainbow of colors that has popped up. Resident Susan Longacre takes a walk each morning in Wilbraham Park, where several tree branches and light poles have gotten the treatment. She thinks it's great. Even those who are not thrilled admit the yarn is better than spray-painted graffiti. TME - This story had us in stitches. Way to needle the Man. Knitting pun.