Weird news - Man drunk, takes a trip on an airport conveyor belt

Most people have seen the conveyor belt at airports, the belt located behind the counter where your luggage is placed after you drop it at the desk. The conveyor belt is also where the luggage is picked up after you have completed your flight and want to get on your way. However, most people have no idea about where the luggage placed on the conveyor belt goes, with the presumption that the luggage passes through security and X-ray scanners before it gets sorted to the relevant flight.
Secondly, most people who get drunk during the flight actually get drunk by drinking too much during the flight, with very few people actually reaching the airport drunk. Also, airlines have got far more strict in terms of what they allow and what they do not, so if somebody is already drunk when boarding, an airline may actually restrict the person from boarding. But very few people take a trip like this person did (link to article):

A drunk Norwegian tourist raised a security alarm at Rome's Fiumicino airport after he fell asleep on a baggage belt and travelled 160 feet before being spotted by an X-ray scanner. The 36-year-old arrived at the international terminal of Italy's busiest airport at the end of last month with a backpack and a can of beer in his hand. The Norwegian was due to check in for a flight to Oslo and when he found no one on duty at the airline desk he leapt across the counter and fell into a deep asleep on the baggage belt with his bag beside him, the Daily Mail reported.

Weird news - Man kills his daughter because she did not smile at him

Sometimes it is difficult to write about something, something so weird that you cannot even imagine how somebody could do this. A parent is somebody who is supposed to protect their children, especially when the child is unable to protect themselves. In nature, the protective nature of parents is incredible, and they say that the biggest danger is standing between a mother bear and its children, since that would make you a threat to the young bears and the bear would act to remove all such dangers. In the case of humans, children need the support of their parents for many many years, till the time that they are in their late tears, and parents put in a lot of effort to ensure that their children get a better future.
In this case, a father felt that he was not able to make a bonding with his daughter, maybe due to the fact that she was living with her grandparents for some time; and given that he had an anger and attitude bad enough that he killed her for something that was not so important, it could be that his behavior towards her was never loving; but killing your own daughter could not be forgiven (link to article):

The man threw his daughter against a wall and then stomped on her because she never smiled at him, the prosecutor told the court. The girl died of fatal injuries in March 2010, 21 days before her third birthday. She was affected with pneumonia, which the court heard had been caused by the injury to her brain. The court heard the accused was not able to form a close bond with his daughter, and became "frustrated and angry" with what he thought was the spoilt behaviour of his child.

Weird news - Man bites and kills snakes in revenge after snake bit him

In areas that have forests or green land nearby and the temperature is more tropical, there are snakes to be found. And given the increased presence of humans in such areas (and especially with activities such as agriculture where there is a lot of disturbance of the ground), there is bound to be more interaction between humans and snake. And when these snakes are poisonous, when the snake feels threatened by some activity of the human, snake bites happen, which in turn can be dangerous. These cause a large number of people to die by snake bite in such regions, especially when these regions can be away from medical facilities that can provide the anti-venom.
But there are far fewer cases of humans attacking the snake after the snake has bit, such as in this case where the farmer who was bit by the snake (a non-poisonous one) got angry and got after the snake, biting it to death (which is not at all a common reaction after being bit by a snake) (link to article):

A Nepalese farmer who was bitten by a venomous snake took revenge by sinking his teeth into the reptile and killing it, police said on Thursday. Mohamed Salmo Miya was farming near his village 200 kilometres (125 miles) southeast of Kathmandu when he encountered the deadly common cobra, district police chief Uma Prasad Chatrubedi told AFP. "A farmer in Bardanga village has killed a white cobra with his teeth out of anger," he said. "The snake bit him while he was working in his paddy field on Tuesday evening and the man chased it and killed it."

Weird news - Traveling long distances to get the perfect haircut

If you find a shop that seems to appeal to you, which provides you the right amount of service or the materials that you are buying (say a favorite brand), then it is possible that you would go some amount of extra distance to get to that shop. But at some point, when the distance becomes large, you would probably decide that the extra effort and time would not be worth it, and you would select some shop nearby. However, from time to time, you will find people who are willing to spend time and effort to go the extra distance just because they cannot bear to move away from whatever they are getting. Suppose that you had a favorite baker, and then the baker moved to another part of the town, you might just time your visits to that part of time such that you get your favorite supplies on a regular interval.

But what would you say when somebody is so much in love with the quality of haircut and the type of attention that you would travel hundreds of kilometers multiple times a year, just to get to a hair stylist who moved away from near your neighborhood (link to article):

A good haircut can be hard to find! A loyal British customer has clocked up a phenomenal 38624 kilometres, equivalent of the Earth's circumference, visiting the same hairdresser for the past 37 years. Susan Parker-Jones from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, travels 644 kilometres six times a year for a haircut, to a stylist she trusts with her locks. The guest house owner embarks upon her trip at least six times a year to get her hair-styled by Jo Sparks, who has been cutting her hair since 1975, the 'Daily Mail' reported. Parker-Jones has been making the journey for the past two decades since Sparks moved from Shrewsbury to Kettering in Northamptonshire.

Weird news - Man jumps into tiger enclosure in zoo, escapes with injuries

If you see programs about wildlife or see movies where wild animals are involved, you will understand the sheer power of these animals. They can be very dangerous, and their instincts are not the same as that of humans - which means that they can attack you for reasons that seem natural to them, but which may be dangerous to you. Which is why people are advised to be careful when they are near wild animals, and when they are in the zoo, there are enough protection measures to prevent people from getting close to these wild animals.
However, you cannot make everything fail safe, and there have been cases where people have climbed over protective measures and entered the cages of animals such as bears, tigers, lions, etc, and have been mauled, and sometimes have died. So, it is hard to understand the motives of this person who made an effort to jump into the enclosure from a monorail that moves over the zoo at tree height (link to article):

A man was mauled by a 400-pound tiger after leaping from a moving monorail train and plummeting over a protective fence at the Bronx Zoo, authorities said. The man was alone with the tiger for about 10 minutes Friday before he was rescued by zoo officials, who used a fire extinguisher to chase it away. He suffered bites and punctures on his arms, legs, shoulders and back and broke an arm and a leg. The tiger mauling happened at around 3 p.m. in the Wild Asia exhibit, where a train with open sides takes visitors over the Bronx River and through a forest, where they glide along the top edge of a fence past elephants, deer and a tiger enclosure.

The man was lucky to have escaped with whatever injuries he suffered.

Weird news - Man wins jury award for eating too much popcorn

You would keep on reading stories about how some of the ingredients in modern food can cause health problems, about how artificial additives to food can cause issues to the body depending upon the quantity that one is exposed to, and so on. Over a period of time, the food industry has invented a number of items that makes food look better, maybe even taste better and last for longer periods of time. From time to time, these inventions also end up causing problems to a section of consumers, and then there are the cases where people don't know that stuff that they can eat has the potential to cause them to fall ill.
Consider the case where popcorn has been treated with a chemical to make it more buttery and is found in microwave popcorn. People working in popcorn factories are exposed to such chemicals in high enough conditions that it can cause problems, but bet you did not know that. What could you further unease is that a person who ate this popcorn in high enough quantities was also affected and filed a case claiming impact to health and won millions in damages (link to article):

A Denver man has just won $7.2 million in damages from the makers and sellers of his favorite snack — microwave popcorn. Wayne Watson, 59, ate bags of the stuff every day for years, and developed a potentially fatal condition known as "popcorn lung." What is this odd-sounding ailment, and is the company that made the treat really to blame? It's relatively common in people who have been exposed to high levels of diacetyl, an artificial flavoring used to give popcorn a buttery taste. Workers in factories that make microwave popcorn are the ones who usually suffer from it. The Centers for Disease Control recommends that anyone subjected regularly to the chemical wear a respirator and get regular breathing tests. Hundreds of popcorn-factory workers have sued over diacetyl exposure — winning settlements as high as $34 million — but Watson was the first consumer to go to court.

Weird news - Man spent money received accidentally from bank

Suppose a person is living a middle class life, and then suddenly gets a large amount of money deposited into his account. The next steps depend on the amount of money. Some months back, there was a case where an ATM in Britain was loaded with 20 pounds bills rather than 10 pound bills, and a number of people benefited before the bank realized. However, the bank decided not to pursue cases with the people who had benefited, letting them take the extra money. But when the money involved is much higher, the bank will take decisive action.
So it was in this case where a man received a huge amount of money in his account, and over a period of time, withdrew the money before the bank realized. And before the bank could take back the money from him, he went on the run along with his girl-friend, with the bank getting him declared as an international fugitive, spending more than 2 months on the run before he was arrested in Hong Kong where he had run away from New Zealand. Now he is back on trial (link to article):

A New Zealand gas station owner turned international fugitive has been sentenced to four years and seven months in prison after stealing millions of dollars accidentally deposited into his bank account. Hui "Leo" Gao, dubbed the "accidental millionaire," sparked a global manhunt after fleeing New Zealand with his girlfriend Kara Hurring in April 2009. Gao had applied for overdraft financing for the gas station he co-owned with his mother in Rotorua, New Zealand, court documents said. The bank approved his application with a $100,000 limit, however while inputting the figure a bank employee made a clerical error and gave him access to 100 times the intended amount.

Weird news - Things that are found in people's stomach

Once in a while, you would read about strange stuff that is found in the stomach's of people. There are those performers who eat glass, there are others who chew chalk and paper, but what do you say to someone who eats their own hair, others who eat cutlery from wherever they have gone for a meal. Most people cannot even contemplate eating anything other than proper food, since their stomachs would revolt against eating something different. In addition, when people eat food that has gone a bit bad or similar, their stomach can go bad and they can fall sick.
Here is an article that talks about the various items that people have in their stomachs, and some of the would be surprising to you even when you would have read similar articles in the past (link to article):

The baby recently ate what her great grandmother and guardian, Freida Deweese, thought was "a piece of candy," and wound up in emergency surgery at Texas Children's Hospital. That's because the child hadn't eaten sweets — she had swallowed a Water Balz toy, which begins around the size of a marble and grows to up to 400 times its original size when placed in water. A felt-tipped pen 78 pieces of cutlery A 10-pound hairball An entire magnet set More than 400 coins A man's twin brother

Weird news - Hacking into a bank without any special skills

Banks routinely tout their extra high security, with most instances talking about bit length (256 and above) encryption keys. Given the nature of business that banks are involved in, ensuring that there is a high amount of security is also critical. Also, given today's fast paced world, there is a need for banks to ensure that they remain on all the time, with no delays. A downtime can cause problems to many customers of the bank, and can cause them to take their business to other banks along with penalties to the bank concerned, especially if their security measures are not as strong as they should be.
So what do you do when it seems that a person can stop a bank's operations or trigger a stoppage on the operations of the bank, such as in this case when a person called into a number that was tied to a back end service machine in the bank and entered some codes that caused the software to trigger an alarm and stoppage of services. The person was arrested by the police, but finally exonerated by the court after there was no malice detected in the 'hack' (link to article):

A Frenchman has been cleared of wrongdoing after a court accepted he accessed the Bank of France's internal telephone systems by accident. An unnamed 37-year-old Breton longed to avoid premium-rate calls while using Skype back in 2008, and set about hunting for a cheap-rate gateway number to the public networks. Judges sitting in a criminal court of Rennes, northwest France, dismissed the case against the man on Thursday, citing the prosecution team's failure to demonstrate any criminal intent in his actions.

Weird news - Debate about taxpayers paying for a sex change operation

This is the season where there is a lot of pressure to control costs, not to spend in ways that seems excessive and out of control. So when there are cases which show taxpayers money being spent on something that seems outrageous, there can be a lot of resentment about such expenses. Further, there is a section of the population that believes that Governments really do not make too much effort to cut expenses and watch their spending, and that it is only public outrage that causes politicians to make efforts to check the flab in Government spending.
This gets more interesting when this relates to expenses on people who are in jail, since a section of the population would not want excessive money to be spent on such people; after all they have committed some crime or the other and that is why they are in jail. If then there is un-necessary money being spent on them, it is just an example of how Governments do not try to control money. This would be all the more true when you consider the following case where a convict is asking for state money for a sex change operation (link to article):

In a potentially groundbreaking ruling, a federal judge has ordered Massachusetts to let a transgender prisoner undergo a sex-change operation — and make taxpayers foot the bill. In 1993, Kosilek, who then went by Robert, was convicted in the 1990 murder of his wife, Cheryl Kosilek. Also in 1993, Kosilek officially changed his name to Michelle. Diagnosed with severe gender identity disorder, Kosilek has been living as a woman in an otherwise all-male prison in Norfolk, Mass., for the last two decades. Wolf now says that even though his ruling is "unprecedented," the surgery is the only way doctors see to adequately treat Kosilek's condition, and that denying her request would amount to a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Wolf, who was appointed to the bench in 1985 by Ronald Reagan, writes that the government can't deny an inmate necessary medical treatment just because it is controversial and "unpopular."

Weird news - Using stupid tactics to get step-daughter to have sex

Incest, even with a step-child can be pretty disgusting to a lot of people. And when you combine that with trickery, things can get even worse. And add stupidity to the whole mix, and things get even worse. In this case, a police detective tried to con his step-daughter with a story that she would get blackmailed unless she had sex with him which was video-taped. She took the right decision and called the cops, who refused to believe anything he said and arrested him (link to article):

Robert Glen Levinson, 43, of South Dartmouth, Mass. reportedly told his 37-year-old stepdaughter that someone would mail naked photos of the woman to her boss if they didn't videotape themselves having sex within 24 hours. The stepdaughter, however, didn't believe the story and contacted the police immediately, according to The Standard-Times. Levinson was arrested on Aug. 31 and pleaded not guilty to domestic disorderly conduct on Friday. The judge ordered him to cease all contact with his stepdaughter, who lives in Middletown, R.I., according to the Providence Journal.

Weird news - Man shoots wife so that she can avoid military deployment

Serving in the military means sometimes making tough choices. Armed forces have to deploy in different zones, sometimes far away from their families. For members of the US military, the world wide deployment of the US armed forces (including in war zones) along with rotational deployment means that members of the military, who can be in the country can be deployed in world wide zones, deployed for months altogether. For those members of the military who have been spending many months with their families, these orders of deployment can seem like a shock, and lead a few to wonder how to avoid these deployment orders.
But this lady took it a bit extreme, wanting to avoid deployment at all costs, and she did by getting shot in the legs in an intruder attack. However, on further investigation, it turned out that this attack was actually done by her husband on her request, and after this, criminal charges have been filed against both of them (link to article):

Police said Groomes allegedly claimed an intruder shot her early Friday while her husband and two children slept. Police responded to their home at about 3:30 a.m. She told investigators the alleged intruder fled out a back door on foot. But police said an investigation found that she convinced her husband to shoot her to avoid military service. Christopher Groomes was later arrested on a gun charge and booked into the Bossier City Jail. Judy Groomes was issued a summons on a criminal mischief charge for allegedly filing a false police report.

Weird news - Bride drowned after her dress became wet

When you look at wedding gowns, they seem so elegant, with the most lavish such gowns being very long and with a lot of cloth in them. These dresses are very heavy, but a lot of people don't realize this, and it can get even more problematic if they get wet. So a recent trend where brides want to shoot more sequences after the wedding, with them wearing their dresses in more non-elegant surroundings has caught on, but can have dangerous and disastrous results as in the following case.
In this case,  a bride wanted to shoot a series of photos in more exciting circumstances, near a river. As a part of the shoot, she decided to step into the river to get a better photo. However, with the water making her dress very heavy and with some unpredictable comments, she suddenly started getting pulled into the water and within a very brief period of time, was pulled into the water and unfortunately died. (link to article):

"I can't anymore, it's too heavy." Those were the chilling last words of a beautiful Canadian bride who drowned in a river during a photo shoot last week after her wedding dress became soaked and dragged her under, a friend told a Canadian news agency. Maria Pantazopoulos, 30, was having a photographer take shots for a "trash the dress" photo series when she waded into a river near Dorwin Falls in Rawdon, Quebec, at around 2 p.m. Friday, authorities said.

Weird news - Dog dedicated to master, stays by his grave for 6 years

They say that a dog is devoted to human, called man's best friend. There have been many cases where a dog has put in his best efforts to save the human, and other cases where a dog has senses danger (including a fire in the house) and managed to get his owner to get out of danger. A dog is also the prime leader for many blind people, leading them around safely and acting as their eyes.
This devotion to their human masters is a well deserved reputation, such as when you consider the following case where the devotion of the dog to its master went well beyond the life of the master, and it seems wonderful how the dog could detect where its master was buried, since the death took place in a hospital and the dead body was then taken to the burial ground to be buried. After this, even though the family wanted to take the dog to the house, he came back to the burial ground (link to article):

The dog called Capitan, a German Shepherd, had disappeared from his home in the small town of Villa Carlos Paz in the centre of Argentina following the death of his owner, Miguel Guzman, in March, 2006. Nobody in Guzman’s family noticed the absence of the dog for days, until the members visited Miguel’s grave at a municipal cemetery. “Damian (Guzman’s son) started to shout that it was Capitan and the dog came toward us barking, as if he were crying,” the New York Daily News quoted Guzman’s wife, Veronica Moreno, as telling the La Voz del Interior.

Weird news - Man gets lucky, falls 13,000 feet and survives

From time to time, one hears of stories where people fall from higher levels in high rise buildings and survive, sometime with minor injuries, and yet you can also hear of cases where people fell from a few meters and suffered horrific injuries or died. But, can you imagine that you could fall from a sky-jump, not have your main chute fall and the reserve one only open when you are very close to the ground, and yet survive. Such a person is incredibly lucky, since even some injuries are unprecedented in such a fall, and yet if you fall from a height of 13,000 feet and not have your main parachute not open, the fear of dying is itself bad enough to cause a heart attack.
Consider this case where a skydiver fell from a height of 13,000 feet, reserve chute opened pretty close to the ground but fell in a soft area that caused injuries but prevented the fatality that would normally happen from such a height (link to article):

His reserve parachute opened at the last moment on the horrifying descent at a festival in Moteuko, New Zealand, but it was still too late to prevent him suffering serious injury, the Daily Telegraph reported. Dunne, originally from St Annes, Lancashire, was treated at the scene by medics and taken to a specialist spinal unit in Christchurch where doctors have said he should walk again. Since the accident two weeks ago, he has astonished doctors with his recovery after undergoing surgery to insert metal pins into his shattered spine. Speaking from his hospital bed, Dunne said: "Those last 1,000 feet it was like 'here we go, this is it' . It wasn't nice. But that said, it was a one in a million accident and a one in a million save.

Weird news - Father throws his son out of the window, son dies

Fathers are typically the ones who are expected to ensure that their children are safe. In history, there are literally countless cases where parents have given up their lives to save their children, or dedicated their lives to ensure that their children have a better life. So, it seems very strange to come across cases where you find parents ill-treating their children, or in this specific case, actually causing the death of the defenseless child, one who cannot protect himself and for whom everybody expects that their parents will be the one who take care of them.
In this case, the parents had 4 children, 3 daughters and 1 son (and in these areas, having 1 son and 3 daughters would mean that the son would be very well thought over and loved by his parents), and yet the son was thrown out of a window during an argument and died (link to article):

Police added the couple was married for 11 years and the boy, Hanif, was their fourth child. They had three daughters as well. "The couple was fighting on Thursday and Hafiz, in a fight of rage, picked up the boy and threw him from the balcony of their house situated in Jodhpur's Nai Sadak area," said the officer. Neighbours informed the police and rushed the injured boy to the hospital. "The boy had sustained injuries on his head and other body parts. He was admitted in the Intensive Care Unit," said the officer, adding that Hafiz was arrested on charges of attempt to murder.

Weird news - Cigarettes containing all sorts of stuff, including shit

You might have heard of defective medicines, those which are fakes made by those looking to make some quick money. A lot of these are sold over the internet, and are also sold in countries where the regulatory and law enforcement standards are a bit lax. If this seems horrible, see how this sounds. Imagine smoking cigarettes that contain all sorts of items such as human excrement, mould, or asbestos. Now, the manufacturer of cigarettes are not responsible for the addition of these items, they are only responsible for the normal addition of nicotine and tobacco, which can cause a number of health problems.
These come into cigarettes based on the manufacture of fake cigarettes, as per a study in Great Britain where analysis of cigarettes based on the stubs and packets found in rubbish bins found that as much as 30% of cigarettes are fake, and are more dangerous than normal cigarettes (link to article):

The survey in Birmingham by MS Intelligence, a Swiss-based brand protection company, found that 30.9 per cent of packets were either bogus or purchased abroad. The UK Border Agency has also intercepted items containing asbestos, mould and human excrement. A haul in Derbyshire found cigarettes made from the remains of crushed flies.