Weird news - Living with a needle in the ass for years

Once in a while, you will read a report about somebody having a medical examination and then having something removed from their body that was foreign to the body and yet was present there for years and years. It seems most unlikely, after all, how can something be present in the body for so many years and not come out, or not even be able to feel that foreign object in the body and so on. And yet there are cases where a person has got a bullet in their body for years and even decades and it was fine, until one day when it started causing problems and has to be removed. In this case, a person had a needle in their ass and after decades, the needle finally started causing problems and had to be removed (link to article):

Kiran Kumar, from Malayankeezhu in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram, has been living with a sewing needle in his rear for the last 22 years. Kiran, now 34 years old, had gotten the needle pierced inside when he was in the sixth grade after he sat on it. It seems he was taken to a hospital then, but the doctors weren't able to find the needle. Nor did he undergo any further check up because there was no pain or discomfort. But two weeks ago, after 22 long years, Kiran felt immense pain in his rear and went to a private hospital for check up from where he was referred to Thiruvananthapuram medical college hospital. Doctors there found that the needle is the cause of pain and swelling and understood it was one and half inches deep inside his body. They couldn't find the exact location then.

Weird news - Person dissolves in Yellowstone hot water spring

A horrific accident, that just goes to show how dangerous it can be to take security considerations and safety rules lightly. Yellowstone National Park is very attractive for visitors because of the beauty, and because of the hot springs and geysers; but underlying all this is the fact that the park sits on top of a huge volcanic chamber, and the conditions on top are because of the magma chamber underneath. As a result, there are many different types of gases (many of them dangerous), different levels of heat in the water along with many minerals that can make contact with the water dangerous. For the safety of visitors, there are regulations about where all visitors can go, and visitors are forbidden to go outside these regions. In addition, even though it may seem attractive to enjoy bathing in these hot springs, the conditions can be dangerous and hence it is prohibited. This horrific accident shows why these regulations should be followed (link to article).
This sister faced the horror of seeing her brother fall and die in a hot spring, and the high level of minerals (corrosive) caused a quick dissolution of the body to the extent that when rescuers tried to retrieve the body later, it could not found (link to article):

Like many of the 840,000 people who visited Yellowstone in June, Colin and Sable Scott, a brother and sister from Oregon, came to marvel at the basin’s thermal features. But their visit took a turn for the horrific, as The Washington Post reported, when the pair left the protective boardwalk and hiked 225 yards into the basin. “Then, somehow, Colin Scott slipped, and as his sister watched, the 23-year-old tumbled into one of the boiling springs. Despite her immediate call for help and the prolonged search efforts by park staff, her brother was never seen again,” The Post reported in June. One of the few pieces of evidence left behind was a pair of Scott’s flip-flops.

Weird news: Killing wife and cutting into parts

Imagine the horror that some bystander feels when they see a plastic bag, maybe oozing a bit of blood, or covered with red color that looks suspiciously like blood; then the curiosity takes over and you open the plastic bag and see a body part - it could be a head or a leg or hand. The sheer horror would cause you nightmares, and you wonder how somebody could be so depraved to do something like this.
One hears of this being done by crazed multiple murderers or in the movies, or even done as part of some mob action; but that this was done by a husband who killed his wife and then cut her into multiple parts, which in turn were put into plastic bags and placed around the area for unsuspecting people to find these parts and witness horror that might give them nightmares. It also makes problems for the police staff, since they have first to identify the person who has been killed and disposed off, and then try to identify the killer. However, since in a major part of cases, it is the spouse or family member who is responsible, they found the killer as well after the conclusion of the investigation (link to article):

A murder most macabre that had terrified the residents of Rajasthan's Alwar all of last week, has finally been solved. Since Diwali last week, dismembered parts of a woman's body - burnt and put into plastic bags - were being found in different residential colonies in the city. Over four days, the police came across seven such body parts, they all had one thing in common - they had been dismembered, burnt and stuffed into bags. It all began on October 30, when in Alwar's Arya Nagar - an upper middle class neighbourhood - a bag was discovered with a woman's right foot in it. The next day, two hands in two different bags were discovered. In the seventh and the last bag, found on Wednesday, was the woman's head.

Weird news - Finding a 16 feet python in the house

Ohmigod. That would be the reaction of people if they see a large snake, even on the path. There is a major fear of snakes that people have, even if the snake might be as afraid of them as they are of the snake. From ages ago, there is a fear of a snake suddenly appearing and biting and killing a person, this fear even being captured in the Garden of Eden in the Bible. So, imagine the reaction when you see a large python inside your house. I have handled a 10 feet python and know the strength (it was a baby), so the power of a 16 feet python must be incredible.
A python kills by squeezing its prey within the coils and exerting an incredible pressure till the prey gets suffocated and dies. A 16 feet python could do that to a human as well, so even though the python is not poisonous, it is deadly no less. This Australian lady who saw the python in her house did not do anything stupid, she took photos and video and called the correct authorities to handle it (link to article):

An Australian woman had an uncomfortably close encounter with a 16-feet python that she found stretched out from her living room to her guest bedroom - it looks as frightening as it sounds. Tina Hibberd from Queensland, which is partly covered in rainforest, found that the massive reptile had slithered in uninvited on June 19 at 4.30 am. She called the snake removal services for help and then took a picture of the 30 kg python that had made itself at home.

Weird news - Farted, and hence kicked out of the match

There are a number of societal rules, whether these be due to decency or for the rule of law. Farting or breaking wind in public is frowned upon in most societies, especially when this results in bad odor or a loud noise. And yet, as most people would know, farting is like the call of nature. If your stomach is not good or your intestine is full of gas, there has to be a way to remove this gas from the body and it comes out through farting. Stopping this, especially when the gas is trying to come out, is very difficult. The most a person can do is try to move away from other people at this point of time, do the expelling of air and then come back with the hope that other people do not comment on the reason for the person suddenly moving away. And yet, younger children, not bound by these rules, sometimes have fun with this sudden and loud expelling of air.

In a football game, being given a yellow or a red card is typically done for some kind of misbehavior, but this was probably the first time that a player was given a red card and thrown out of the game for farting during a game (link to article):

A Swedish footballer has hit out after being sent off for breaking wind during a match – with the referee accusing him of “deliberate provocation” and “unsportsmanlike behaviour”. Adam Lindin Ljungkvist, who was playing at left-back in the match between Järna SK’s reserve team and Pershagen SK, was shown a second yellow card late on in what local media called “bizarre circumstances”. “I had a bad stomach, so I simply let go,” the 25-year-old told Länstidningen Södertälje. “Then I received two yellow cards and then red. Yes, I was shocked, it’s the strangest thing I have ever experienced in football. “I asked the referee, ‘What, am I not allowed to break wind a little?’ ‘No,’ he replied … I don’t get it but maybe he thought I farted in my hand and threw the fart at him. But I did not.”

Weird news - Mom drives car, while overdosing on drug

It seems so weird. First of all, those who have not taken drugs and know the danger of drug addition wonder why people get caught up in drug addiction; and then there is the additional case where you wonder how a parent can put their children, especially minor children, at risk through drug addiction. After all, the concept is that minor children do not have all the abilities to survive in this world, and need the support of adults to some degree to survive and thrive; and that parents are hard-wired to care for their children and ensure that they come to no harm.
So this case where a lady was driving a car when she was basically out of control because of having over-dosed on a synthetic drug. It can be so dangerous; can easily have an accident, or drive across a red traffic light and be hit by another vehicle which was driving carefully. And of course, when police come across somebody who is being so dangerous, they are liable to take strict action (link to article):

Police say a Dallas woman was driving with her two children last week when she overdosed on a drug called Brainfreeze. Angela Williams, 37, remains in the Dallas County Jail on a charge of driving while intoxicated with a child under 15, as well as a hot check charge. Her bail is set at $7,000. About 8:20 p.m. last Thursday, Williams parked on a median at Samuell Boulevard and St. Francis Street, apparently having a seizure in her Chevy Malibu, a witness told police. Her two children, ages 11 and 13, told officers that Williams was driving “crazy” and acting irrationally, laughing at nothing in particular. The witness removed both children from the car for their safety, the police report says.

Weird news - Imagine, huge lizard tries to enter a house

A number of people are scared of lizards. If there is a lizard close by, or even if they are just old by somebody that there is a lizard, they get scared and can even jump in fright. And that seems perfectly natural, since people have from their childhood learned that there is something scary and icky about lizards. People call pest control experts to ensure that their houses are lizard free, look for many different natural solutions to prevent lizards from getting into their houses, and so on. Consider what is happening in this below case.

Almost like a scene from a horror movie, the images and photo show a giant lizard (and when we say giant, we literally mean giant - it would be longer than a man is tall with a large tail). The movie Godzilla comes to mind, although the lizard in the movie was much, much larger. But it would be an interesting experience for the people in the house, when they see this giant lizard on the door, wanting to get inside the house. And then there are people who are brave enough to want to lasso the lizard to capture it, during which the lizard could be seen swishing its giant tail (link to article):

If you don't do well with pictures or videos of giant reptiles, look away now. Then again, how often does one see a Godzilla-sized lizard on one's doorstep? A Thai resident on Wednesday captured on film his encounter with a not-so-welcome guest that knocked at his door and tried to force its way into his home. Attanai Thaiyuanwong found a monster lizard trying to get inside his house on Wednesday and immediately shared pictures on Facebook. The video shows the lizard slapping its fat tail on a glass door as someone tries to lasso it. And we thought belling the cat was difficult...

Weird news - Older boy kills younger one with a stone

In the case of adults attacking each other or one killing the other, the law is pretty clear on what action needs to be taken. The one who took the action leading to murder is prosecuted, where it can be determined whether this was done due to enmity or for some other purpose, whether it was in self-defense or in the heat of the moment, or was done with a lot of planning and then the punishment is done based on all these factors.
However, all of these make a basic premise. It is only when somebody becomes an adult, that is, he or she reaches the age of 18 that their minds are developed enough to know what they are doing. So, only an adult can take responsibility for any crimes that they may do, and hence a child cannot be punished the same way. This is incorporated into the laws of most countries, although some countries do make exceptions where the gravity of the crime and the way it is done enables making the final judgment about whether adult laws can be applied on children.
It remains tricky. What do you do when a child in school becomes violent and attacks somebody the same age as them or younger, and even kills the other person. Just a couple of years is not enough to make a difference in terms of development. So, there is an argument that just because somebody is 17 years old and commits a planned murder, they cannot be spared just because they were 17, and not a year older. If you take the current crime, what can be done ? (link to article)

On Wednesday morning the two boys reached schoo at 8.15am. Even before classes began, the duo got into a fight. "The boys reside in the same area in Karumarapa layam, and travel to school on the same bus," a senior police officer told TOI. "As the fight escalated, the boys began beating each other up. The older boy attacked the deceased with a stone on his forehead," said a police official on the case. In the impact, the 6-year-old collapsed, hitting another stone on the ground. "The fall killed him," said the official. The incident happened near the boys' toilet. Two other students had spotted the Class 6 boy leaving the toilet, police said. The juvenile in conflict with law was produced before the judicial magistrate on Wednesday evening, and was remanded to custody . "He will be sent to a juvenile home," a police official said.

Now, even though the child died in a fall, the fall happened because he was hit by the older boy and hence there is a responsibility for the crime, but under most existing laws, the older boy can be tried as a juvenile rather than be charged with murder.

Weird news - Jailed after reporting rape

Sometimes the clash of civilizations and differences in laws between countries can lead to weird situations and seemingly very wrong treatment. For the western world and all concepts of being civilized, a lady stating that she was raped would lead to a police investigation to find the rapist, to give her medical help and the counseling to enable her to overcome the trauma, and sometimes that trauma can take time to get over. It is not expected that she would be blamed for what happened, and it would not be expected that she would have to suffer a jail term.
And this is where what happens in the Islamic world can literally jar the western and 'civilized' world. Pakistan had many years implemented a stricter interpretation of laws through the Hudood laws, which mandated that a woman had to provide 4 witnesses for a rape allegation, else she could be prosecuted for adultery (link to Wiki).
Yet another instance of a case has come about in Qatar. A Dutch woman had gone to a bar where she was apparently drugged and found herself in a strange place, and realized that she been raped. Upon making the charge, she found that she was herself in the dock, along with the rapist. She was charged with illegal sex, and also for being drunk (so this makes it weird, she was raped and yet charged with an illegal sex act). (link to article):

At a court hearing in Doha Monday, the 22-year old, whom CNN has identified only as Laura, was handed a one-year suspended sentence and placed on probation for three years for the sex-related charge, and fined 3,000 Qatari Riyals ($823) for being drunk outside a licensed location. She'll almost certainly be deported immediately. A Syrian man also appeared alongside her and was found guilty of the same crimes. He was sentenced to 100 lashes for the illicit fornication charge and a further 40 lashes for the illegal consumption of alcohol. As a Muslim he is not allowed to drink at all under Qatari law. No mention was made of the rape accusation during proceedings. Neither defendant was present in court, in what was the third hearing in the case.

Weird news - Taken to hospital with shark attached to arm

Human shark interaction has been taking place at record levels in the recent few years. Even though the numbers of these attacks are low (and investigation reveal that in most cases there is usually some trigger for more sharks to be present - change in feeding stock, or weather changes, or something similar), the fear of being attacked by a shark when in the water is one of the most traumatic thoughts - just the visibility of a shark in beach waters causes all bathers to rush out of the water. Shark attacks are taking place all over the world, with the most reports from the US, South Africa and Australia; and each incident is reported in great detail (with the fatalities due to the shark attack also scaring people from going into the water).
People are terrified of the power of the Great White shark, with the thought of this incredibly large and powerful shark swimming stealthily under a swimmer and then coming up with the mouth open and teeth ready to slash and bite being the stuff of horror movies, and the Jaws franchise did a lot to scare more people from sharks. However, there are a number of species of sharks that have attacked humans in the past; in some cases, experts say that the shark attack is because the shark mistakes the human to be similar to their prey and takes a bite to explore (the power of the bite can be pretty traumatic and can even cause death use to blood loss). In the current case, this lady was bitten by a small shark, a 2 foot long nurse shark which could not be shaken off and she had to be taken to the hospital with the shark still attached to her arm (link to article):

Paramedics in Boca Raton rushed a beachgoer to the hospital with a two-foot-long nurse shark clinging to her arm after efforts to disengage it failed. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that the 23-year-old woman calmly walked up to a lifeguard station Sunday with the shark's jaws locked on her arm. Her boyfriend was helping hold the shark. Boca Raton Ocen Rescue told the newspaper that paramedics were called, but were unable to free her arm, even after the shark had died. So they loaded woman and shark into the ambulance and head for Boca Raton Regional Hospital. The Park Service says people swim near nurse sharks every day without realizing it and without incident. "Attacks" are rare and typically are the result of the shark being bothered with a hook, spear or hand.

Weird news - Woman regains sight due to injury after years

There are still many aspects of the human body and its various components that are not easily understood by doctors and medical science. From time to time, one comes across incidents that are sometimes seen to be miracles, where a medical practitioner is not able to logically and scientifically explain why something seems to happen; this does not necessarily mean that it was a miracle but that the level of understanding of medical science of what happened is not yet sufficient.
In the current case, it would seem that a miracle happened. A lady lost her eyesight 20 years back through a car accident and an injury to a spine in 1993. Then recently, she had a fall inside her house and hit her head, and then had to be hospitalized and had operations. And then after an operation, while coming to, she had a surprising observation; she was able to see again. The Doctor had no real reason as to why this happened; with a possible scientific reason being that a blood vessel supplying the brain had got blocked during the earlier accident and the recent one causing the blockage to get removed. (link to article):

A 70-year-old woman in Florida who was been blind for over 20 years has regained her sight after falling over and hitting her head at her home, baffling her neurosurgeon who says it is a “true miracle”. Mary Ann Franco, gradually became blind after injuring her spine in a car accident in 1993. Then, more than two decades later, another accident and a subsequent operation appears to have led to the recovery of her sight, although doctors are still trying to work out how exactly this could have happened. “I was fully blind all I could see was blackness,” she told The Independent. “I was in my living room, going over to the door. My foot caught on a tile, and it flipped me. I hit my head in the back, and hit it on something else, maybe the fireplace,” she said.

Weird news - Killing a customer through a curry meal

Typically, murder involves a trial. But this murder would normally be through a gun, through a knife, killing a person through poison or by some other direct, violent means. Even if you got somebody killed through an assassination contract, it does involve violence, even if this was indirectly. However, there are other ways to kill somebody, even if this is done indirectly, or even though actions that might be deemed careless, or something similar. What happens to the case where somebody has an allergy and you do something that aggravates that allergy and causes a massive medical reaction within the body and causes death, whether instantaneously or even after admission into the hotel.
In the current case, the owner of restaurants has been charged for murder for the use of a material that contains peanut even though the item is advertised as nut free. For people who are allergic to peanuts or other such items, the allergic reaction to peanuts or other allergens is incredible and can also cause death depends on the quickness of treatment and the amount of allergic reaction (link to article):

A Bangladeshi-origin owner of a restaurant in northern England went on trial today charged with manslaughter after a man with a severe nut allergy died as a result of dining at his restaurant. Mohammed Zaman denies manslaughter by gross negligence, perverting the course of justice and six food safety offences in relation to the death of Paul Wilson. "Zaman received numerous warnings that he was putting his customers' health, and potentially their lives, at risk. Tragically for Paul Wilson, Mohammed Zaman took none of those opportunities and ignored all of the warnings he was given," prosecutor Richard Wright told Teesside Crown Court in North Yorkshire.

Weird news - Woman kills and buries a man for attempting rape

Things get tricky when you have a case of self-defence; whether that be against attack (and this attack can be in the nature of a deadly attack, or an attack such as rape). However, whether the self-defense can lead to the death of the attacker and the subsequent legal proceedings depends on the actions of the defendants. In many cases, self-defense can lead to the acquittal of the defendants or reduced sentences, but it gets tricky when the self-defense leads to further actions designed to hide the act, or mislead the law enforcement agents.
Such acts can be get converted into criminal acts such as in this case, where a woman was apparently attacked and she fought back and inflicted deadly harm on the attacker. At this point, she would most likely have got away with either an acquittal or reduced sentences, but after this, she went ahead and hid the body and did not inform the police about what has happened - which would most probably lead to charges against her for these acts. One can sympathize with her for the self-defense, but the law does not allow her to not inform the law enforcement agencies about what has happened (link to article):

Rita told the police she hacked Krishna with an axe after he tried to rape her and her daughter in their house on April 4. “After he fell on his back, I chopped off his private parts as I thought he might survive the attack and retaliate,” she said. Krishna, however, did not survive the blows. Rita called seven women, her friends, and they buried the body in the crematorium.

Weird news - Laxative helps in retrieving smuggled gold biscuits

Smuggling takes many shapes and sizes; and there will be smuggling when an item is priced differently in different countries, or there are duties or levies that cause these differences in prices and hence drive the process of smuggling. Smuggling can be done through the shipment of regular items (within these items - for example, gold is shaped into different items and then coated or painted to seem normal); these can be transported to land in beaches at night where there is lower chance of detection, can be carried across borders that are impossible to verify 100%.
And then you have human carriers who carry smuggled items through airports, and the most extreme case is that of people who swallow these items and hope that they remain undetected. This can prove very dangerous for those who are carrying drugs in packets - if these packets open during the time that they are in the body, the person can die. For others, such as in this case, if they are detected, there is really no option that to force them to expel these items from their bodies, which is done by giving them laxatives and the items then appearing when they do their poop (link to article):

Mushir Ahmed, who came from Kuala Lumpur by an Air Asia flight on Thursday night, was detained while he was waiting near the conveyor belt to collect his checked-in baggage after clearing immigration by an official of the air intelligence unit. “He appeared tense. We approached him and after interrogation that lasted for barely a couple of minutes, we were definite something was wrong,” a customs official said. Ahmed was taken inside the detention room and the metal detector corroborated that there was some metal inside his stomach. But he kept insisting there was a problem with the machine. “For the next three or four hours, we gave him a laxative and asked him to consume water at regular intervals. At dawn, he went to relieve himself and the gold biscuits emerged,” a customs official said.

It seems a bit yucky, but there is a lot of money involved and it happens often enough that there must be processes to deal with it.

Weird news - ISIS everywhere

ISIS is the terror organization that has struck fear in a large section of the world. Besides its brutal tactics in the war zones of Syria and Iraq, it has even struck in many parts of Europe, and even had an attack in the United States where a massacre was committed by somebody pledging allegiance to ISIS. Further, the terror organization is very much present on social media and also does a lot of effort in trying to attract disenchanted westerners, something which is very scary for these societies.
However, in order to protect from these terror organizations, sometimes efforts are taken which seem like overkill. There is a constraint on suspicious sounding financial transactions, which sounds great but sometimes leads to weird situations, or innocent people are removed from flights because their names are similar to terror suspects or because somebody is suspicious of them. For example, in this incident, a person transferring money to his dog walker was not able to do since he put in his dog's name in the comment, and the bank thought that the name of the dog was very similar to another name for ISIS (link to article):

Bruce Francis, 55, from San Francisco, was transferring $374 from his account to his dog walker and wrote his dog’s name ‘Dash’ in the memo line, as he has done every month for the past couple of years. Chase Bank blocked Francis’ online payment because his pitbull mix’s moniker loosely resembles the terrorist network ‘Daesh’, another name for Islamic State. Bank officials thought ‘Dash’ was a hair too close to ‘Daesh’, the Arabic term for the Islamic State or IS, and cancelled the payment. The dog walker notified Francis ten days later that she still had not been paid.

Weird News - Lizard in greens makes it way to school

There are a number of law suits where people have found strange objects in their food - these could include lizards, bugs, different forms of insects, and so on. In many cases, there are also inanimate objects found in food, and some of these can be dangerous. Having dead animals in their food can be dangerous because of the possibility of different forms of bacteria or virus in these animals, which can then afflict the person eating the food. And unless one is clearly focusing on what one is eating, it is possible to consume these items without even noticing what one is consuming.
However, children can turn these kind of concepts around. In this case, a child found a lizard in a bundle of chilled salad greens and instead of getting shocked, the girl (who studies in kindergarten) along with her mom managed to revive the lizard and took it to school where it actually has got many fans now (and also is of a breed that is somewhat unique) (link to article):

The three-inch (7.5cm) critter went unnoticed for a few days in the refrigerator in Princeton, New Jersey, before Sally Mabon and her daughter Faye found its limp body while unwrapping a bunch of tatsoi, an Asian leaf, science teacher Mark Eastburn of Riverside Elementary School in Princeton said on Tuesday. Warmth restored its energy and soon the anole lizard was on its way to Riverside Elementary School, where it caught "oohs" and "aahs" like flies, and quickly became the class pet. Less Godzilla and more Geico Gecko, the juvenile lizard has been named "Green Fruit Loop" by the children.

Weird news - Yacht found after a year, dead body inside

In today's world, there are many cases where people live like a loner. An increasing number of people are divorced or have decided to live alone, or their spouse has passed away, and they are all alone. They have have friends and / or relatives, but not everybody visits their relatives so often. There are increasing number of cases where a person has died alone, and not been found for weeks or months; until somebody has a reason to come to their house - and this need not be a loved one, it could be a utility worker, or in a weird case, somebody come to repossess the house who discovered that the previous occupant of the house had died many months back in the house and nobody had discovered this.
The below situation is even more weird. This was a person who was living on a yacht, roaming the oceans of the world. He was separated from his wife (who had also died sometime in the past), and had been last in contact with people over a year back. Some people on a fishing boat come across this yacht floating derelict on the water, and when they explored, they found the 59 year old skipper of the boat inside, dead for a long time. With the ocean conditions being warm and salty, the body had mummified in its seat, the occupant having probably died of a heart attack (link to article):

It had been more than a year since anyone had heard from the 40ft Sajo's 59-year-old German skipper, Manfred Fritz Bajorat. It did not take long for Rivas to discover why as he scrambled on board to help. The Filipino fisherman found Bajorat's body sat next to the vessel's bank of radio transmitters. Such had been the dry, salty conditions since the unexplained death of the German sailor that his corpse had been mummified in its final position, slumped over a table used for charts with the transmitter handset just inches away. Police in the port of Barobo, about 700 miles south of Manila, where Rivas towed the Sajo, said that a post-mortem examination had found no evidence of foul play and it was believed Bajorat had died of natural causes, possibly from a heart attack.

Weird news - Rented house, found body in garden

Airbnb is a major player in the tourism business, creating a major new business in essentially the past few years and emerging as a threat to established hotel chains. After all, many people like to have an experience that is different from traditional hotels; and being able to look at homes of people and stay in them is a very different experience. Further, staying in a home, many of them located at choice locations, and with the option of being able to cook for your own needs rather than having to eat hotel fare or keep on looking for restaurants to ear sounds like a much better deal.
One problem with Airbnb is that you are totally dependent on the host, the good or bad experience comes from the host and Airbnb has only limited control over the experience on the ground. But nothing can compare to the experience that these people had. They went to a superb place in order to stay, have a nice family vacation, and it sounds like a lovely place with a nice garden. And what was present in the garden ? A decomposing body of a woman, having been dead for around a month; sounds like a horror story (link to article):

An Airbnb listing for a house in the French town of Palaiseau, near Paris, was quickly taken down after renters reportedly made a grim discovery in the garden: a corpse. A group of young friends had rented the home in the Paris suburb to celebrate a birthday. They said they found the body facedown in the garden and covered by branches. The corpse was "hunched in a dug-out area, her head against the ground, covered in branches and surrounded by wood stumps," police told Agence France Presse. Authorities have not identified the deceased woman, and an autopsy will be performed on Monday. The death is being investigated as a murder. French newspaper Le Parisien reported that the homeowner, identified only as "Emmanuel L.," was vacationing with his wife and five children when the renters phoned him on Saturday, saying they had discovered the body earlier that day. He told the newspaper in French that he was "dumbfounded" by the news.

Weird news: 3 year old boy shoots himself in tragedy

In a sign of how the increasing presence of guns in US society is making it easier for tragedies to happen, another tragedy happened where a 3 year old saw a gun (which was loaded and ready to fire) in his father's store and shot himself with the gun, right under the nose of the father. The increased presence of guns with citizens has statistically increased the chances that such of tragedies will happen; there will be an increased number of people who somehow forgot to ensure gun safety at all points of time. Children play with toy guns, and if they see a loaded gun, they do not have the knowledge to avoid the gun; it is the responsibility of the gun owner to ensure that the gun is always safe, in a place where children cannot access it.
Unfortunately in this case, the loaded gun (ready to fire, no safety latch apparently on) was accessible to the child, and even though his father was just next to him, a small gap in time ensured that the child was able to pick up the gun and fire at himself, leading to his tragic death (link to article):

Manal Jr. was sitting on a stool beside his father at the store on Sunday when he found a handgun stored on a shelf beneath the cash register. The three-year-old accidentally shot himself and died shortly after. It is illegal in North Carolina to have an unsecured gun in the presence of a child, according to the Associated Press. Authorities in Lumberton, a small city 100 miles south of Raleigh, are investigating the incident and the Robeson County District Attorney's Office will decide whether to file charges. Lumberton Police Department Capt. Terry Parker urged gun owners to keep their weapons secure. "Make sure it's where the child cannot have access to it," he told WTVD Monday. "Kids are going to be naturally curious about firearms. Kids, they need to learn gun safety but at the same time we as adults have got to protect the kids to the best of our ability."

Weird news: 3 year old boy picks up gun and shoots

This is getting to be a problem on a regular basis. The proliferation of guns in the United States is pretty high, given that the constitution protects the right of the people to bear guns. As a result, a large number of guns are in private hands. There are mass shootings happening from time to time, where somebody who is over the mental balance takes a gun or rifle and starts shooting people.
Another tricky situation is with regard to gun safety. Most people who have guns ensure that the guns are carefully locked away, so that few people have access to them, especially children. Children do not have that knowledge about the difference between a toy gun and a real gun, and this has proved deadly many times, such as in this case. Here, the boy picked up a gun and pointed it to his older sister and pulled the trigger, shooting the girl in the head. Tragically, the girl died soon after in a bitter impact to the family (link to article):

The pistol lay on the bedroom nightstand loaded and untouched. And then it was in the toddler's hands, pointed toward his older sister. A moment later, Kimberly Reylander was on the floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound to her head. The adults rushed into the room. The nine-year-old girl was flown by medical helicopter to Children's of Alabama Saturday, where she died of her injuries, according to AL.com. Irondale, Ala., Police Chief Ken Atkinson told AL.com and WIAT that the children's great-grandfather had left the pistol on his nightstand Saturday morning, not knowing that the kids were coming over. He wasn't home at the time of the shooting, but the kids' grandmother and uncle - whom police detectives are now interviewing - were, though they didn't know there was a gun in the room where the children were playing.

Weird news: Owner of horse in prize picture demands share

Sometimes a news item can seem funny, but wherever there is some money involved, it is also serious. The concept of copyright / model / property release is a hot reference in the case of stock photography, with disputes ongoing all the time. However, at the same time, there are many clear trends in terms of actual laws - the concept of what requires permission, and what does not require is settled to a large extent.
The issue here is interesting. On a public path, a photo was taken which also included a horse (with a unique type of smile and open mouth); this photo was submitted for a prize and won the prize. At this, the owner of the horse demanded a share in the prize. The prize was in terms of a holiday, and a holiday cannot be shared anyhow, and the prize recipient rejected the demand. Legal opinion dismissed this demand (link to article):

The owner of a horse that photobombed a selfie taken by a father and son has demanded a share of a prize worth £2,000 that they won after entering the image into a competition. David Bellis, 31, said his three-year-old son, Jacob, took the photo as they were out walking near their home in Prestatyn, north Wales, and they entered the picture into Thomson Holidays’ Made Me Smile competition. After they scooped the main prize, a £2,000 holiday, the horse’s owner, Nicola Mitchell, contacted Thomson Holidays to complain, claiming Bellis should have asked for consent. Bellis said: “I don’t understand why Nicola is so annoyed. I was on a public path that everyone uses to go to the local school and everyone sees the horse there.”

Weird news - Footballer shoots the referee after a red card

Sports can get pretty impassioned; at times of major sports events there can be clashes between the supporters of the teams which can get deadly as well. During the course of a football match in Belgium between Juventus and Liverpool many years, the push led to a stampede in which around 39 people died (one of the impact was that there suspension of Liverpool from competitions).
During matches as well, there can be a great sense that the referees are biased or that in a particular action, the referee either ignored a wrong or is blind and cannot see the problems occurring. This kind of feeling can be natural, but when somebody goes overboard, feels that the sense of wrong is so high that it needs to be remedied. In this case, the player got so emotional that he went over the edge and committed murder on the referee (link to article):

An amateur footballer enraged by getting a red card in Argentina fetched a gun and fatally shot the referee on the pitch, police said Tuesday. Cesar Flores, 48, was refereeing a match between local youth teams in the central city of Cordoba when he sent off the player for a foul. The youth took a revolver from among his belongings, went back on the pitch and shot Flores several times, a police source told AFP.

Weird news - Minor sons pawned to pay for husband's funeral

This is more of a tragedy rather than a weird news, but it does sound weird in some way or the other. People in many parts of the world are desperately poor; poor not to the extent that they have older TV's or have to restrict their eating out, but poor to the extent that they find it difficult to ensure that they get a meal at every meal time. In such a time, when there is a sudden need for money, it gets impossible. Something has to give, and it makes for tragic reading.
In the current case, this is a family in India that is desperately poor; so when the husband and father of the family gets ill and dies, things go totally haywire. In the end, just to ensure that the funeral of the husband can take place, the wife takes her minor sons and hands them to the neighbor so that she can get some money for the funeral. This is such a horrific story (link to article):

a heart-wrenching tale of poverty from a mineral-rich region of Odisha, a widow was forced to pawn her two minor sons for money to perform the last rites of her husband in Champua. Her tragic story came to light on Wednesday after block development officer S Nayak and other officials visited Champua on receiving information about the 'mortgaging' that occurred on Republic Day. Sabitri Nayak, a tribal from Gadhuli village in Keonjhar district, handed over her sons Mukesh (13) and Sukesh (11) to her neighbour for Rs 5,000 when she could not perform the last rites of her husband, Raiba, the breadwinner of the family.

Weird news - Woman turns up at her own funeral

A spouse killing the other in a fit of rage happens often enough, especially when emotions are running high. It is more of movie stuff when this happens through a professional hit, when one of the spouses has hired killers to kill the other spouse. Add the complications of living across 2 different continents and countries, with a incredible plan of sending the wife back to her native country to attend a tragedy and getting her killed there. There is a perfect alibi and very difficult to coordinate the investigation across 2 different countries.
The wife got lucky, with the killers finally deciding not to kill her and instead providing her audio evidence that her husband was trying to kill her. And she attended her own funeral and confronted her husband, and finally he was sentenced to 9 years in jail (link to article):

A Burundian woman living in Australia has told how she shocked her husband by turning up at her own funeral – after he had paid hit men to kill her. Noela Rukundo, a mother of eight, had arrived in Australia as a refugee in 2004 – the same year as the man she was to go on to marry, Balenga Kalala. In January 2015 she had returned to Burundi to attend her stepmother’s funeral. Lying in her hotel, she was dozing in the heat when Kalala called her from their home in Australia, and suggested she get some fresh air. "I didn't think anything,” she told the BBC. “I just thought that he cared about me, that he was worried about me."

Weird news - Burger does not rot in 6 years

Fast food restaurants can be found in all corners of the globe, with people eating in them in large numbers. Fast food items are very popular, although there are a number of people who decry the existence of these food chains and the type of food that they offer; it is alleged that they provide processed food that is full of salt and many chemicals, that they are responsible for obesity and many other health problems. Over a period of time, these chains have been hit by bad public perception and many of them are trying to counter by modifying their menu and providing more healthy food options.
Accusations that have come across them from time to time (although without rigorous scientific checking) state that their food is full of chemicals that it will not rot even if you leave it as it is for extended periods of time. It could be left for months or years and there will be no mold formation, no typical process of the food getting spoiled and so on. In this article, there is a claim that there is almost no change in the food even after many years (link to article):

The owner of an Alaska chiropractic clinic shared a photo she alleges to show a 6-year-old McDonald's Happy Meal that shows no outward signs of aging. Jennifer Lovdahl, owner of Balanced Health Chiropractic in Anchorage, shared photos on Facebook showing the receipt for the Happy Meal she purchased Jan. 8, 2010, alongside the chicken nuggets and French Fries from the 6-year-old meal. The fries and nuggets appear slightly discolored, but show no signs of mold, rot or decomposition.

Weird news - Selling a potato photo for more than a $ 1 million

There are a large number of people selling photos in different forms; these could be direct photos or creations such as shirts / mugs / framed prints, etc. Typically, if you leave aside the major sellers such as Getty images, most people sell their photos or such prints for not more than a few dollars each, being lucky to get amounts greater than that.
So it can be pretty interesting when photographers get amounts much, much larger than that, and too for simple photos. Imagine a photo of a potato selling for more than a million dollars, and yet it happened. One wonders about how impressed the buyer must have been with the photo to pay that amount for it (link to article)

A celebrity photographer said a photo sold to a European businessman for $1.08 million didn't portray any famous figures -- rather, it depicted a simple potato. Kevin Abosch, 46, an Irish photographer known for his portraits of famous subjects including Malala Yousafzai and Steven Spielberg, said a European businessman spotted "Potato #345" hanging in his Paris apartment last year and purchased the print for $1.08 million -- 1 million euros. Abosch, who normally charges up to $500,000 for a portrait, said the sale was the biggest of his career.

Weird news - Number mistake, lawyer receives a lot of texts

One hears of weird cases where a television program or a movie mentions a phone number as a part of its content; and the people behind the program had not bothered to check up whether the number was a genuine number or a fake. As a result, there have been cases where people have found themselves being bothered with a number of phone calls or messages. In some cases, the respondents take the message about a wrong number clearly, but others can get abusive when told that the number that they have been getting in touch with is not the number that they are looking for.
This one case is slightly more complicated in terms of how it happens. There was an offer for a free Chipotle burrito, and a number was given. However, in a issue about a phone number being local vs. national, people from a given location would instead find their text messages being sent to a local lawyer instead of the company. The lawyer suddenly found that he was getting a large number of messages asking about the offer rather than being sent to the company (link to article):

Chipotle offered a free burrito to anyone who texted "RAINCHECK" to the number 888-222 as compensation after the fast-service Mexican restaurant closed on Monday for a meeting regarding the recent E.Coli outbreak. The confusion occurred as some texters accidentally added an extra "2" to the end of the number, causing them to reach Levine instead of the number offering the free burrito coupon. "It started this morning around 9:00 a.m. when I suddenly got a text that just said, 'raincheck,'" he told Tech Insider. "Curious, I wrote back with a question mark."

Weird news - Dispute over washing machine leads to murder

Murder can sometimes happen for trivial items. In most cases, it happens when a person is already highly strung, and the latest sort of conflict pushes a person over. When there are guns involved, it can turn deadly. This happens even within families, especially when there is some kind of tension involved. It gets really problematic when there is an ongoing tension and this keeps on impacting the people involved in this kind of tension, putting them at a point where they can snap at any point of time. 

In this case, the dispute was so bad that the person actually killed his own family members, apparently over something as trivial as a dispute over a washing machine; when there is easy access to guns, the person over the top can suddenly take access to these guns and do something dramatic and tragic during the impulse (link to article):

A man shot and killed his wife and two others in his home on New Year's Eve before his son wrestled the gun away and fatally shot him in a chain of events apparently set off by a dispute over a washing machine, authorities said Friday. "It looks like it was a dispute between the dad and the son's girlfriend, probably over using the washing machine," Sheriff's Lt. John Corina told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. "For some reason, this set the dad off." The son, 33-year-old Christopher Morey, eventually recovered the gun from his father and shot him, authorities said. Morey is being held on suspicion of murder on $1 million bail, authorities said.

Weird news - Ants inside a girl's ears

There are all sorts of horror movies about insects or creatures that make their living space inside a person; or take over the body and start using the body for controlling it and mass-reproducing. Remember Alien, where the alien does all sort of things. There are numerous other bad movies that are on the same subject.
However, once in a while we come across a weird case where some kind of animal infestation manifests itself in a human body; sometimes it does not even appear real - but then, one has to believe others who has seen this to happen. For example, consider this case where this girl detects some pain in her ear and then it seems like ants start to come out from ear, and this is something that doctors have seen but don't have an answer for why this has happened (link to article):

elieve it or not, big ants seem to have made a 12-year-old girl's ear their home. At least 10 to 15 of them are emerging from her ear every day . Even doctors, who treated the girl, are shocked to see such a case, for which they have not found any precedent in medical history . However, she does not feel any pain despite the presence of the ants. The doctors, who checked her ear through laparoscopic camera, could not find any 'queen ant' inside the ear who might have laid eggs.

Weird news - Feeding a thief to extract gold

People smuggling items across airports and borders is one of the biggest problems that police and security agencies have to deal with. Smuggling routes and carriers can be quite sophisticated, and sometimes these routes are something new that agencies don't know about and it takes some time for that route to be intercepted and blocked, and the carriers captured. One of the ways that is common now, used especially for drugs and sometimes for other items, is for the carrier to ingest the item so that it is not obvious that they are carrying such items. Once in a while, these drug packets can burst, which can cause the death of the carrier.
The problem when somebody ingested such items is about getting it outside. So, if a person has ingested gold, it can be detected through x-ray and other devices; but how to get it out. Other than cutting up the person, the only way is for the person to excrete the items through the normal way that they get rid of body waste, through their potty. How to ensure this happens quickly, feed them items that cause them to quickly want to poop, The same happens when a thief runs off with gold, but is then caught and wants to get rid of the evidence (link to article):

The Mumbai police force-fed four dozen bananas to a chain-snatcher to recover a stolen gold chain which he had swallowed in an attempt to not get caught, an officer said on Saturday. The incident occurred in the Ghatkopar east fish market in the eastern suburbs late Wednesday night when the accused, Gopi R Ghaware snatched and ran off with a woman’s 25 gms gold chain. As the woman screamed, some residents gave chase, pinned him down and hammered him, according to investigating officer Kailash Tirmare of Pant Nagar Police Station.

Weird news - Thief sends own photo to police

Vanity gone to a new high, incredible stupidity, or sheer arrogance that nothing could happen. When the police are hunting for a suspect, they look for some means of identification, such as a photo. Now, these photos that the police can get is something that is in most cases not ideal - the police could be old, or taken from a side, or taken with some hat or cap or spectacles on, anything that makes the photo different from a passport type photo.
When the police do get a photo of a person who they are hunting for, they would publicize the photo or push it through channels, so that other police stations could pull in the person if they came across, or members of the public could find and report such a person to the police. The better the photo, the faster it is likely that the outstanding person could be captured. So, when you think that in a weird case, such a fugitive would come across their photo put out by the police, and send a better photo to the police, it would seem like the ultimate ego (link to article):

A wanted man in Ohio wasn't happy with his mugshot — so he offered police a "helpful" hand in the form of a selfie. The Lima Police Department said Donald A. Chip Pugh is wanted for failing to appear in court for a DUI and is also a person of interest in other cases including an arson and vandalism. The 45-year-old, though, obviously did not approve of official mug shots circulated by the department. It said Pugh had sent police a new picture showing him in a suit and glasses while sitting in a car with a sunroof.

Weird news - ISIS militant kills own mother

This is more of horrific news rather than weird news, but anything related to the terrorist Islamic group, ISIS has the possibility of being horrific and likely to cause a huge amount of horror in the minds of those who get information about any activity of the ISIS. Their past activities with regard to execution of anyone who does not support them, of beheading people, and so on, are scary.
But there are single activities that seem extremely strange, where you have people doing stuff that shows how badly they have been indoctrinated and how they are immune to logic. There are incidents in the world where people have been known to kill a parent / kill their parents, but it is something that is rare and always seem weird when it happens. However, to report your own mother to the headquarters of the terrorist organization, and then to follow orders by killing your own mother by shooting her shows the extent to which humanity has gone from followers of ISIS (link to article):

An Islamic State militant carried out a public "execution" of his mother because she asked him to leave the group, activists say. Ali Saqr, 21, killed his mother, Lena al-Qasem, 45, outside the post office in Raqqa, Syria, eyewitnesses said. Raqqa has served as IS' de facto capital since the group captured the city in August 2013. IS does not tolerate any dissent and imposes brutal punishments, often carried out in public.

Weird news - Poo falls from the sky on Indian

Imagine are you outside, and suddenly a chunk of ice falls on you. Hailstones from a height of several kilometers can fall with a pretty high speed, and in severe hailstones, these can actually cause damage to vehicles and break windowshields. So image such a chunk of hailstone hitting you, and causing enough damage to your body because of that. Now, this can happen once in a while, but what happens when you see that the chunk of ice that hits you is actually bluish colored, and once it thaws a bit, it starts smelling a bit. And then the realization that you have been hit by a chunk of solid excreta and urine from an airplane flying overhead.
This is not supposed to happen, and is rare compared to the number of flights that happen, but it has been found to happen enough times that a name has been given for this chunk - it is called 'Blue Ice'. This because the flushing systems of an airplane adds blue liquid to excreta and once in a while, a chunk can get free from the plane and fall below (link to article):

Her injuries could have been much worse, according to eyewitnesses. They say she only avoided being killed because the icy ball crashed into the roof of a house before hitting her. And the strong suspicion now is that this chilly projectile was composed of more than just frozen water. The newspaper claims that aviation scientists believe she may well have had the misfortune to become one of an incredibly rare group: people who have been hit by what the airline industry coyly calls "blue ice". That's its euphemism for the frozen human waste that very occasionally forms around the overflow outlets for aeroplane toilets, and then falls to earth. "Blue" because of the chemicals added to the toilets in planes to reduce odour and break down the waste.