Weird news - Parents discovered a dead baby in daughter's bed

Making the bed of their children is one of the most normal activities, but you can be scared out of your wits if you find a dead baby while doing this simple task. And yet this is what happened to the parents of a 17 year old girl when they were making the bed of their daughter. They found a dead baby in the bed and called the police. The police found that the baby belonged to the daughter of the couple who was unaware that she was pregnant right till the time that she gave birth, and gave birth to a full term baby boy. Experts say that this has happened before, where a girl did not know that she was pregnant almost till the time that she gave birth and has happened before (link to article).
This is also a difficult scene for everyone involved, there is really no one at fault, given that the girl did not know what had happened to her and she would have been suffering a severe emotional turmoil. Experts say that in such a case, the young girl (or girls in different cases), the girls needs counselling and support.

Weird news - Trick or treat results in child getting drugged

For parents, the safety of their children is paramount in their thoughts and actions. In parts of the United States where there are problems with increased incidence of drugs, it is even more important to try and ensure that your children do not get into the habit of drugs - many drugs can be highly addictive and also very dangerous, and with the opioid epidemic ever present, there are so many different ways in which people can get ensnared.
However, parents can get very puzzled when they find their children suddenly showing signs of being drugged, especially when the child has gone out for a Halloween trick or treat and is only 5 years old, an age where you would not expect your child to have consumed drugs or come into contact with somebody who could provide drugs (link to article):

This year, rain fell during that two-hour window in the northern Ohio city. Afterward, as Braylen Carwell peeled off his costume and prepared to dive into his haul, he thought his sudden shaking was related to the cold, wet weather. “I was putting my socks on, and then I started to shiver,” the 5-year-old told CBS affiliate WBNS. “And then I couldn’t move my arm or my fingers." The child’s father rushed him to a hospital. By then, “the left side of his face was just droopy, and then he fell and then he couldn’t move his left arm,” his mother, Julia Pence, told WSYX, an ABC affiliate. “And he didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know what he was doing.”

Weird news - Python falls into a conference room

We consider modern buildings as concrete houses, well protected and environments of peaceful working conditions where outsiders cannot get in. At the same time, many of the parts of the structure are very porous - there are air conditioning ducts, water pipes and sewage pipes, repair ducts that are essentially hollow columns within the building where repair can get in and access many common utilities. In addition, the ceilings in most places are artificial ones, meant to facilitate overhead lighting and increase efficiency of the air conditioning. With all these points, it is a wonder that more incidents such as these do not happen more often (link to article):

Surveillance cameras captured the shocking moment a massive python crashed through the ceiling at a bank in southern China, landing on the floor during a staff meeting of nine employees. Frightening footage shows the 5-kilogram snake dropping between two employees before slithering away. The video shows frightened staff members fleeing in different directions. According to ABC News, the incident took place last Friday at the Xin Cheng branch of China's Industrial and Commercial Bank in Nanning city. According to the Shanghaiist, the bank staff called wildlife authorities, who managed to capture the snake and take it away. The python was handed over to the region's Wildlife Rescue Research and Epidemic Monitoring Centre. Bank staff speculates that the python came to the building via a bird and flower market located next door.

weird news - Jailed for singing national anthem badly

China has been cracking down on dissent for some time. Given that the country is a dictatorship, the decision making process in the country can be quite unique. Leaders at different positions in the hierarchy have been dethroned for allowing certain levels of openness, or not showing ideological purity. In the current situation, the Great Firewall is meant to ensure that citizens do not get exposed to information that could corrupt them, or show something that portray the country or its leaders in a bad light. Anything pops up, there are censors present to remove the information quickly.
As a part of the leadership portrayal of any current leadership, there was a law that threatened persecution for anybody who could take an action that is construed as disrespect of the national anthem, and when such laws are present, there will be pressure to take action. So it was in this case when there was a 10 second section of an online broadcase that was interpreted as disrespect to the national anthem and the online pop singer was punished accordingly (link to article):

Shanghai police said this weekend they punished Yang Kaili, one of China's most-followed online celebrities, with five days of "administrative detention" after she bumbled through the first line of the Chinese national anthem while wearing fuzzy moose ears and waving her arms cartoonishly during a live stream. The offending segment, broadcast from what looked like Yang's bedroom on Oct. 7 to some of her 2 million followers on the "Huya" app, lasted barely 10 seconds. But it was enough to have violated China's new national anthem law that prohibits playing or singing the "March of the Volunteers" in a "distorted or disrespectful way in public," police said. "The national anthem is an embodiment and symbol of our country, and all citizens and organizations should respect and defend the honor of the anthem," Shanghai police said in a social media announcement. "Live-streaming webcast is not lawless territory and users should obey the law and uphold moral standards. The police will resolutely crack down on such behaviors that challenge the legal bottom line or public order and good social morals, in order to purify the Internet's public sphere."

Weird news - Cut off snake head bites back

The way of animals can be very different from that of humans. One of my earliest experience of an interaction with lizards was when I stepped on the floor from the bed and when my feet touched the ground, there was a sensation of something soft and icky. It turned out that there was a lizard on the floor and my toe had stepped on the tail. The tail detached itself and started hopping on the floor for some time, which was something very weird to watch.
In this case, a person found a snake in their courtyard which was a venomous snake, a rattlesnake. The guy cut off the snake's head with a shovel, and the head became separate from the rest of the body. 10 minutes later, having figured that he had given the snake enough time, he went to dispose off the head, but when he tried to catch the head, the head bit him and injected venom in him for a period of 30 seconds, enough time to inject a large amount of venom. According to experts, in such a situation, when the snake is dying, it injects more venom than normal. The wife hurried him to hospital, and eventually he was injected with many vials of anti-venom saving his life although there are still many complications that he is suffering, along with the medical expenses not covered by insurance (link to article):

Jeremy Sutcliffe, a 40-year-old Texas native, found this out the hard way. He and his wife, Jennifer, were outside doing yard work on the morning of May 27 when Ms. Sutcliffe discovered a four-foot-long, dirt-colored rattlesnake in their garden. She screamed. Her husband abandoned his lawn mower and ran to her, grabbing a shovel and lopping off the creature’s head with a single swing. After about 10 minutes, her husband tried to dispose of the snake’s severed head, Ms. Sutcliffe, 43, said in an interview. When he reached down, the snake — a Western diamondback — sank its fangs into his hand and held on for about 30 seconds. “Finally he got the snake head pulled off,” said Ms. Sutcliffe, who is a nurse. “I called 9-1-1 and just started driving because I didn’t know where to go exactly, what hospital carries antivenom.”

This is not the first time that this has happened, such incidents have happened to other people in the past, although very infrequently.

Weird news - 60 deadly snakes found in school kitchen

People are absolutely petrified when it comes to poisonous snakes, given the high number of people who die of snake bite, and also because there is a general feeling of revulsion when it comes to snakes. And with poisonous snakes, even a small young snake is highly dangerous since the venom is developed and present in the snake.
This can get more problematic when there are young children involved, as happened in a school in the state of Maharashtra in India. A cook spotted two Russell vipers in the kitchen and on further investigation, a total of 60 of these deadly snakes were found. However, it ended well when the temptation to kill these snakes were controlled and they were caught and handed over to the forest department (link to article):

The spotting of so many snakes at one place created panic among students and staffers of the Zilla Parishad-run school located in Pangra Bokhare village of Hingoli district, about 225km from Aurangabad in the Marathwada region. A cook spotted two Russells vipers near the place where wood used for fuel was stored on Friday afternoon. When she started lifting more pieces of wood, she found another 58 snakes in the kitchen, he said. The school’s headmaster, Triyambak Bhosle, said, “All of us panicked after seeing so many snakes. Several villagers rushed to the spot with sticks and stones but we stopped them from killing the snakes.”

Weird news - Rhino poachers and death by lions

Rhinos are big wild animals, who are unfortunately endangered because of their horns, which are supposed to have medical powers, especially aphrodisiac powers and is much sought over, even though trade in the horn is illegal the world over. Poachers, because of the money power of the trade, can be more powerful than the defenders of the animals, and are not bound by the same set of laws and rules.
Over a period of time, there has been a realization that it is not in the interest of humanity to keep on destroying animal species, and there has been more efforts towards ensuring the protection of these animals, who are hunted just because of money. However, once in a while, there are a set of circumstances that protect these hapless from poachers, and even though the death of these poachers is not something to be gloated over, there is a sense of irony that these poachers came to kill wild animals and were instead killed by ultra-predators, the king of the wilderness (link to article):

At least three suspected poachers who were apparently hunting for rhinos have been mauled to death and eaten by lions on a game reserve in South Africa, the owner said on Thursday. The men entered the Sibuya Game Reserve on the southeast coast armed with a high-powered rifle and an axe in the early hours of Monday and were found dismembered the following day. "They strayed into a pride of lions -- it's a big pride so they didn't have too much time," reserve owner Nick Fox, 60, told AFP. "We're not sure how many there were -- there's not much left of them.

Weird news - Going crabbing and getting major infection

This is the kind of weird and tragic news that shakes people who believe that the environment around them is tame and most dangerous items have been controlled. It also tends to scare people (atleast a section of people would get scared enough to not go into water for fear of contracting something similar).
What happened in this case ? Well, this person went crabbing into a local river, something that is fairly common. However, soon after, the person started feeling a pain into one limb, which spread soon to the other limbs. This eventually developed into blisters all over, and when he got the infection checked out, this was apparently a bacteria that is present during summer months and can get into the body through even small cats. Health advisories can be issued but the situation is very common that it is difficult to prevent such infections from happening, even though they happen rarely (link to article):

The hospital said he developed Vibrio necrotizing fasciitis, a bacteria that lives in warm waters and can persist during the summer months. The bacteria can enter through even the smallest wound in the body. "We can only recommend that residents avoid entering brackish waters, especially if they have are immunocompromised or have open wounds or sores on their body," Hetzell highlighted. Brackish water is the combination of fresh and seawater often found in the area where rivers meet the sea. Indeed, Perez's daughter said another family member who swam in the area got skin rashes and painful swelling in one of her legs. Fortunately, she was given antibiotics right away. One of Perez' friends who went fishing in Matts Landing had a swelling as big as a baseball in one of his elbows.

Weird news: Saves the snake but wrong action almost kills him

Snakes scare a lot of people. Because of the fact that some species of snakes are very poisonous and can kill people if threatened, snakes scare people. Some species of snakes are not poisonous but can be dangerous otherwise. Large species of snakes such as pythons are very powerful, much more powerful than a single person, and can actually eat domestic animals, a goat in this case. When villagers in this remote part of India saw a large snake eating a goat, they took the right action and called a forest ranger, an expert. The expert caught the snake, but that is where the action went awry. Dealing with such a large snake means that after catching the snake, it should be quickly enclosed and taken away to be released in a forest kind of environment.
The snake is an unpredictable wild animal, and when it comes across a strange setting, it can be provoked or feel threatened and will try to defend itself. When the forest ranger kept the snake in his hand and posed for selfies with a large number of people nearby, the snake took its normal action and started to squeeze this large animal that was holding it, and if the ranger had not taken quick action and got help, he was in real danger and just managed to get off (link to article):

It may sound like a cool thing to do - a display of bravado to entertain the masses - but a selfie with a snake is always a bad idea, even if you are a trained professional, as a forest ranger in West Bengal learned on Sunday. Called in by villagers to capture a rock python killing and eating a goat, the ranger and his assistants rushed to the village in Jalpaiguri 600 km from Kolkata and collared the 30-foot snake. The normal procedure in such cases is the snake would be stuffed into a sack and carried away, to be released into the forest later. But such is the power of the selfie and such was a vanity of the forest officer, he grabbed the snake by its neck with his right hand and slung it with great flourish around his neck. And the flashbulbs popped. And selfie-takers went wild and the forest officer preened. But not for long.

Weird news - Drugged mother takes babies to danger

Given the level of availability of drugs in our cities nowadays, you can see people doing all kinds of crazy things under the influence of these drugs. This is even more so under some modern drug concoctions, modern versions of LSD, where people see their sense of common sense go haywire, start going paranoid. Now, you would think that if somebody behaves like this, that is their person responsibility. But what do you do when the person who is doing that is a young mother, and is directly placing her young children in danger. Society typically tries to preserve the life of the children and get them away from the danger that they are in right now, even if that means keeping the children away from the mother (or the parents).
In this case, there was this young mother who was under the influence of a drug called Molly, who was so high and so paranoid that she believed that everybody was out to get her and had stepped out to a narrow balcony with a low guard rail, along with her young children, and police had the job of getting the children to safety without provoking the paranoid mom into causing danger to her children. They did manage to get it done, although it must have been terrifying for the children (link to article):

Officer Rob Addea positioned himself directly beneath the narrow, rain-slicked ledge and pleaded with the “paranoid” woman above. “Just get the kids back inside!” he implored. “Please. Please. That’s all we want you to do.” It was 4 p.m. Saturday, and police in Delray Beach, Fla., had apparently just stumbled into someone’s madness. A 23-year-old mother, who police said was agitated, deranged and high on the narcotic “Molly,” was hallucinating and becoming increasingly unstable, as the worried neighbors who called 911 could clearly see. Worst of all, she had brought her 1-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter onto the slippery ledge with her, and the toddlers were terrified.

Weird: Son died after being hit by mother's coffin

This is probably right there in the list of weird tragic deaths. The funerals in the Torajan community in northern Indonesia can be ornate, and very expensive, depending on the position of the person who dies as well as their family. These funerals can even last days with a large number of people attending, animals being killed and eaten, and more germane to the current situation, the coffins are placed on a temporary high platform, and that is where the problem occurred.
Coffins can be heavy, and with the dead weight of a body inside the coffin, it can be even more heavy, dangerously so. So when a group of people were trying to carry the coffin on a bamboo ladder to a temporary platform, some of the bamboo supports collapsed and eventually the people carrying the coffin fell down, with the coffin finally falling on a man named Samen Kondorura, who by a sense of twisted logic, was the dead lady's son, and who died due to the impact of the falling coffin (link to article):

The coffin, now vertical and supported by nothing, dropped more than 10 feet to the ground as frightened onlookers stared or screamed. At the bottom of the mass of people and bamboo and fabric was Samen Kondorura, Berta's 40-year-old son. He had been near the end of the coffin — one of the last trying to push it up into the tower. “As the mother’s coffin was being raised to the lakkian, suddenly the ladder shifted and collapsed, the coffin fell and hit the victim,” Julianto Sirait, chief police commissioner of the Tana Toraja municipality on Sulawesi, told the Guardian. Onlookers tried to dig him out of the pile, but it was too late. Samen Kondorura died on his way to the hospital, according to NDTV.

Weird news - Texas deputy removes snake from bathroom

One hears these stories from time to time and even though one feels that these stories are now becoming common place, it still feels weird. For a large snake to come out from the most personal of places, the bathroom, it still feels like a massive violation. And when you see the size of this snake, it seems even more difficult to believe that the snake could have been hidden in the bathroom, most likely it make its way out of the sewage system.
The owner of the house reported the matter to the local sheriff's house, and sure enough when the deputy reported to the house, she must have dealt with these kind of matters before, because she showed a lot of expertise in manhandling the snake and getting it out of the bathroom and releasing it into a more normal environment.
One has to give credit, especially since the snake could have been poisonous, it was not but was a protected species that in fact kills other poisonous snakes (link to article):

By the time Scotten arrived at Vielock’s ranch, the snake had made its way out of the toilet and into the bathroom vanity, according to the Bee County Sheriff’s Office. As Vielock held a flashlight over her shoulder, the deputy got down on her knees and calmly wrangled the blue indigo out of there with her bare hands. “The snake was not harmed and was released back into the brush,” the Bee County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post. The deputy is pictured posing with Vielock’s son, and smiling as she holds onto the snake at both ends.

Weird news - Pakistani children paralyzed at night

Whenever we think that we have learned a lot about our body and what could be impacting it, we come up with something new that tells us that there is a lot to learn about maladies and the functioning of the human body. So, for example, we have learnt how to dramatically extend the life duration for somebody afflicted with AIDS or with many different types of cancers.
What happens when somebody gets afflicted with a malady for which doctors are not able to provide any help. Family members are clueless about what to do, and depending on the society they are based in, they may try to get faith help or help from outside the medical system. This happened to a couple of boys in Pakistan, who were getting called 'solar' kids because they were active during the day but went into a sort of paralytic state when the sun went down (link to article):

The ‘solar kids’ who are being treated for an illness which leaves them paralysed by sunset each day might be suffering from a neuro transmitter deficiency, said vice chancellor of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) Dr Javed Akram, who also chaired a meeting of a medical board called to discuss the children’s case. “In simple words, neuro transmitters in the brain have been disturbed. A similar case was reported in Japan and was named JPA, but that disease occurs in both male and female children. However, our experiences in Pakistan indicate that this case only occurs in male children and we are considering giving the disease a new name,” he added.

Weird news - Solar power plant zaps birds

Solar power plants are growing in number all over the world, and are seen as an important component of the renewable energy matrix, necessary if we are to move away from coal and nuclear fired plants and onto clean energy. However, as somebody who has experienced hot summers know, the energy of the sun can be quite harsh and impact the human body (heat waves are known for killing people who are not prepared to face the heat).
However, an example in London shows the world the problems that such solar energy can also cause. A new skyscraper over there is constructed in such a way that at specific times of the day, it can act as a concave lens and focus light onto the road and people on the road, burning the tarmac and injuring people. An even greater example is this massive solar power station in the desert near Las Vegas, an advanced type that depends on a number of mirrors focusing their reflected sunlight onto a central tower where the temperature gets very high, in order to boil water and run turbines.
However, one problem is that no one told birds that they should not go near. Birds and insects that get near the tower face incredible heat and literally burn in a flash, dropping from the sky. This impacts a large number of birds, and the solar energy company is doing their bit to stop this from happening without impeding their work, and so far, it does not seem to be working (article):

A macabre fireworks show unfolds each day along I-15 west of Las Vegas, as birds fly into concentrated beams of sunlight and are instantly incinerated, leaving wisps of white smoke against the blue desert sky. Workers at the Ivanpah Solar Plant have a name for the spectacle: "Streamers." And the image-conscious owners of the 390-megawatt plant say they are trying everything they can think of to stop the slaughter. Federal biologists say about 6,000 birds die from collisions or immolation annually while chasing flying insects around the facility's three 40-story towers, which catch sunlight from five square miles of garage-door-size mirrors to drive the plant's power-producing turbines.

Weird news - Keeping a crocodile in the basement

People have a fascination with wild animals, especially those who can pose a risk to the life of human beings, there is a certain kind of fatalistic attraction to such kind of animals. So you find people rearing snakes (even large ones such as Burmese pythons which can be incredibly powerful), or even large cats such lions or tigers or leopards (although the number of these have reduced significantly with more laws against domestic possession of such animals). However, once in a while you find stories of people who keep dangerous animals at home, even though it is totally prohibited in most countries.
In this case, when police officers were looking for a person who was suspected of illegal arms trafficking and searched his home, they found, surprisingly a large crocodile in the basement. Such a crocodile can be very unpredictable and dangerous, not only for the owner but for others in the vicinity as well (link to article):

Pictures released by police showed the animal sitting in the dark, in a shallow muddy pool. Daytime temperatures in Saint Petersburg hovered around minus seven degrees Celsius (19 Fahrenheit), far below the preferred climate for the species. Pictures released by police showed the animal sitting in the dark, in a shallow muddy pool. Daytime temperatures in Saint Petersburg hovered around minus seven degrees Celsius (19 Fahrenheit), far below the preferred climate for the species.

Weird news - Man dies after hitting a manhole

When people die tragically or in an accident, sometimes the way that they go is very strange (or weird). Consider this case, which is also a prime example of the incompetence of the local municipal authorities who left the road in a state of disrepair during a pipeline laying process. Accidents are known to have a high rate of severe injuries, or even fatalities because of the speeds involved, and because of the impact on frail human bodies. However, when you combine this with the shock caused due to the vehicle hitting a manhole, the driver being apparently drunk, and the vehicle catching fire after falling in a manhole which caused the driver to burn to death (and if he was drunk, the ability to respond quickly would have been also lost) (link to article):

As per the police the victim, a resident of Ulwe, was drunk at the time of the accident. The incident occurred when he was crossing sector 20 around 12.30am as per reports by Hindustan Times. The man lost control of his vehicle, which then jumped on to a sewage pipeline along the road. Smita Jadhav, senior inspector of NRI police station said, "The manholes along the stretch are uncovered as the construction work of a pipeline and road is going on. The victim and his two-wheeler fell into a manhole. After the accident, the two-wheeler caught fire and exploded inside the pipeline. The victim suffered severe burns and died on the spot."