Weird news - Getting back your parked car after 20 years

Nowadays I see a number of people, who when they have parked their car, take a photo of the location, or take some notes because with everything that people have on their minds right now, they can forget where they put their vehicles, the parking lot and spend time trying to find out their vehicles. This can reach extreme levels, I once spent 30 minutes trying to find my vehicle. However, this extreme case referenced in the article is more extreme, with the person forgetting where he left his vehicle and reported it stolen. And then found it, wait, 20 years later. The car had to be junked, but it was still weird (link to article):

Ever forgotten where you parked your car? It has happened to the best of us. For one man in Germany, however, it was a reunion two decades in the making with a car he 'lost' back in 1997. According to the Metro, authorities in Frankfurt found the car in a garage in a building which is set for demolition. The owner of the car had parked it there in 1997 and forgotten all about it. It was reported stolen and never recovered, until recently, when authorities found it rotting in the garage.

Weird news - Man wants nuggets, not available, so orders 200 hash browns

Sometimes an item can catch your fancy. So you have people who love to eat at Taco Bell, others gloat over the regularity with which they eat at McDonald's. When people do not get their regular fix, it can be frustrating for them, and you sometimes have odd events such as people calling 911 to complain about a food item not being available. In other cases people have become real angry when they realize their favorite food item is over or not in stock. In this case, a man wanted to have chicken nuggets so showed up at the McDonald's, only to be told that the breakfast menu was available and it did not have nuggets. What did he do that made it weird ? (link to article):

A man in Sydney craving to have some chicken nuggets showed up at a McDonald's in the early hours of Saturday. But he was left disappointed when staff told him there were no nuggets on the breakfast menu. Frustrated with the absence of chicken nuggets, the man allegedly opted for hash browns - 200 of them. The alleged incident took place at a drive-through McDonald's in North Sydney. When the man's early morning request for chicken nuggets was turned down, he did four laps of the drive-through outlet. On the second round, he stopped to place the order for 200 hash browns, reportedly worth $230.

Weird news - Apologizing for being 20 seconds early

There are so many stories on the internet where services (flights / trains) get delayed for various reasons and the service provider sometimes apologizes, sometimes not and sometimes the passengers are left fuming without any information at all. So it seems weird when a service provider apologizes when the train leaves 20 seconds early - we are not talking about hours, not talking about minutes, but talking about seconds (contrast this with the case of fog when trains can sometimes be hours late in other countries such as India) (link to article):

A Japanese railway operator has issued a deep apology for the "tremendous nuisance" caused by a train departing 20 seconds early, surprising even a nation renowned for both punctuality and politeness. The Tsukuba Express train linking Tokyo and the capital's northern suburbs pulled out of Minami Nagareyama Station at 9:44:20 instead of 9:44:40. A spokesman told AFP the apology was issued because strict safety procedures were not followed. "What matters is not the 20 seconds... The point is that our formal procedure should be this: A sound rings 15 seconds before the departure, followed by an announcement asking for caution due to the closing doors, and then the doors shut," he said.

Weird news - Flight affected as woman finds out husband cheating on her

When you find out that your spouse is cheating on you, things can get very rocky. In the extreme cases, the husband or wife have killed their spouses directly or got somebody else to kill them in their anger. In other cases, a divorce happens in many cases, since this is seen as an extreme betrayal and the parting can be very bitter. However, the immediate reaction when the person gets to know this can be exhibited in terms of extreme anger, and the anger will take an outlet at whoever is there, the current situation in which the person finds themselves can also be affected such as this flight having to offload the couple because of the high level of anger shown by the wife, which was compounded by the fact that she has also consumed alcohol (link to article):

Hell hath no fury like a woman cheated, especially if she happens to be tipsy and 37,000 feet above ground when discovering shocking news about the man she loves. Qatar Airways’ Doha-Bali nonstop flight on Sunday (November 5) had to be diverted to Chennai because an inebriated Iranian woman created a ruckus after she found out that her husband was cheating on her when she unlocked her sleeping husband’s phone by doing his finger scan and saw some content on it, say sources. The husband was the obvious target of her anger. Co-passengers and crew members who tried to pacify her also became the target of her ire. The uproar compelled the pilots to land the plane mid-way in Chennai. Qatar Airways’ Doha-Bali nonstop flight is almost 10 hours long while Chennai is midway.

Weird news - Happiest day, but then crown jewels shot off

In many parts of the world, marriages are celebrated with firing in the air, or rather, firing of revolver, pistols, etc. And we are not talking about rival mob hits, but actual shootings by friends and relatives of the groom (in most cases, this is done from the groom's side). Now, when you fire bullets, they will go somewhere, and they end up hurting many bystanders. There have been numerous cases where bullets fired during celebratory firing have hit other guests and even killed some people (tragic when people have come to the place to celebrate the marriage). However, this case is weird where the bullet actually hit the groom in the genitals, doing damage to a vital organ, and that too at the time of marriage (link to article):

An Egyptian groom will have to live a life remembering he was shot in his genitals. An over-excited friend shot the groom in his genitals at the bachelor party. Groom Omar al-Alsaied, 28, was taken to a hospital. Talking about the genital-killer friend's excitement, the dude was firing celebratory shots but zeal made him forget to aim the gun upwards. Omar, who is still a bachelor, suffered serious wounds to his testicles, thigh and hand.

Weird news - Sending trash in a package to her son

In a family, there are different responsibilities allotted to different members of the family. This is particularly important as children are growing up, since that is the age when they learn responsibilities and even if they are reluctant at times, it is something that they need to do. Some of the tasks seem onerous such as shoveling the snow, removing leaves, or taking out the trash seem something that the allotted person would try to avoid, but they need to be done. In this particular case, the mother wanted to make sure that the message was clear enough that if the son went away from home without taking out the trash, it would follow him (link to article):

A Pennsylvania college student got a reminder to take out the trash when his mother sent him some garbage in a care package. Eighteen-year-old Connor Cox tells WHTM-TV that his mother sent two boxes to him at Westminster College in New Wilmington last month. One box contained food and other goodies. The other contained garbage. When he called to ask whether that was a mistake, Cox’s mother, Connie, told him, “No, that’s the trash you were supposed to take out” during a recent visit home.

Weird news - Singer arrested for keeping bear cub, said it was a dog

Social media is very active nowadays, with very action of people (especially the famous ones being highlighted and commented upon by people all over the world). So if somebody does something that can be criticized, you can be sure that there will be a large number of people that will criticize it. In this case, when people are forbidden from keeping wild animals as pets, especially when they are endangered, and somebody famous is found with such a wild animal in their home, there will be a lot of criticism. In this case, the singer claimed that she found the bear by the side of the road and took it home to give nourishment (link to article):

Last week, a Malaysian singer was arrested for keeping a wild bear in her home. However, she insists she thought the animal was a dog, not a sun bear. According to Asia One, Zarith Sofia Yasin claimed in an interview that she found the bear nearly two weeks earlier and picked it up hoping to nurse it back to health. "It was night time when I found the bear cub in a weakened state by the side of the road, and I thought it was dog!" the 27-year-old said to Kosmo in a report published on Sunday.

Weird news - Child gets left behind in bus in Dubai, dies

This happens in different countries, and gets repeated so much you would wonder there would be a technical solution that can detect when a child gets left behind in a vehicle when it is very hot, so that they don't suffer in the stifling heat, something that can kill (and in fact, has killed many children over the years). However, it is still odd. When parents send their children to school, they sort of transfer the responsibility of the children to the school as soon as they get into the bus. So when they find out that the child had slept off and nobody noticed, and in the heat of Dubai weather, the bus would have become a death trap with heat and suffocation (link to article):

DUBAI: A six-year-old Indian boy was found dead after he dozed off in his school bus and left behind alone for several hours in the UAE on Saturday, according to a media report. Mohamed Farhan Faisal from Kerala was a student of Islamic Centre in Al Quoz and had dozed off after boarding the bus. He was left behind after all other students disembarked outside the centre at 8 am, the Khaleej Times reported. The Dubai Police said that they were told of the tragedy at 3 pm. "The child was found as the driver took the bus out to drop the students back home," a senior police official was quoted as saying by the paper.

Weird news - Carrying a snake on a plane

How many of you would have seen the movie, 'Snakes on a plane' ? Well, it wasn't so good, but you can imagine the prospect of sitting in a completely closed tube, and suddenly a snake starts slithering around and you could be bitten at any minute. Sounds scary and weird right ? Well consider that it was just a mistake, that a passenger accidentally packed a snake into their bag, but it seems dangerous. In this case, the snake was non-venomous, but it could very well have been a deadly snake that managed to make its way into the bag. Equally dangerous was the fact that the plane was going to Hawaii, and snakes are very dangerous for Hawaii since snakes do not have any natural predators on the islands, and the snakes can cause havoc on the island. Fortunately, the snake was detected and caught (link to article):

A small snake managed to get a free trip to Hawaii - by hiding in a passenger's bag. According to the State of Hawaii Department of Agriculture, the juvenile snake was found in slithering out of a traveller's bag after he showed up at his rental in Maui on Monday night. The man had apparently not realised that he was carrying a stowaway, until the owner of the rental spotted the serpent. The snake had presumably slithered into his luggage in Florida. Snakes are illegal in Hawaii. As they have no natural predators on the archipelago, they pose a serious threat to the wildlife and environment

Weird news - Political press conference by cats

Social media is an essential part of all parts of life today, and with the proliferation of mobile networks, it would seem that everybody has access to social media accounts and a large percentage of people get some information from or seek access from mobile networks for this information. At the same time, there is a greater need for more responsibility from those who are coordinating the social media usage. There is a need for coordinators who are balanced and aware of the extent of features and options in the technology. At the minimum, you need somebody who is aware that the usage of filters while doing a real time serious press conference by a political party can have implications and be immediately picked up by people (link to article):

While some of our most embarrassing ones may have been typos, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan's political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's(PTI) provisional page of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa may have raised the bar up a notch. In a video posted on their Facebook, where the were broadcasting a government session live, they accidentally turned on the 'Cat filter' on the video. The 'cat filter' is a tool which started on Snapchat, essentially superimposes itself onto what it can detect as a human face. The cat filter, which consists of two cat ears, whiskers and a button nose. Along with just existing, it also adjusts to peoples faces as it moves, and adapts to add its features onto the face. Shared on Twitter, screenshots of the video cracked people up.

Weird news - Employee bathing in restaurant kitchen

With frequent reports of people getting sick because of contaminated food, any reports of unsanitary conditions in kitchens or places where food is getting prepared can cause great amounts of outrage. With social media, any such report quickly becomes viral, and the organization that is the focus of this has to quickly take action for fear of a horrible public relations disaster. So one wonders about the employees of this restaurant chain who took part or cheered this case, where an employee got into a sink in the kitchen and took a bath and when the shit hit the fan, the restaurant had to respond to the outrage (link to article):

A man in Florida has lost his job after a video surfaced showing him bathing in the kitchen of a restaurant he worked at. The man, an employee of the American fast food restaurant chain Wendy's, was filmed taking a bath in an industrial sink at the franchise's Milton location, reports Northwest Florida Daily News. The video has gone massively viral online, collecting over a million views on Facebook and disgusting many patrons of the popular chain. The viral video shows the employee stepping into a sink of soapy water wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Other employees are heard laughing and cheering him on. Once inside, he proceeds to wash his armpits and comment on how warm the water is.

Weird news - Alligator breaks into Florida home

Florida is known as the alligator state, with a large number of alligator occurrences happening there. There are cases of alligators being found in pools, on roads, in gardens, and so on. There are reports of alligator encounters in lakes and other waterways, even though the reported encounters would be far less than the cases where alligators and humans share the same waterway. There are alligator trappers who remain busy, catching these alligators wherever they come into contact with humans and take them to the wild or to alligator farms. These would be needed because of incidents like this where an alligator climbed inside a house through a window and then proceeded to do some wrecking before it was caught (link to article):

A late-night intruder at her home woke up a woman on Friday - but it was no ordinary burglar that she found when she went to investigate. Mary Wischhusen, 77, found a huge alligator in the kitchen of her Clearwater, Florida home when she heard a loud crash on the early hours of Friday morning. According to the official City Of Clearwater Twitter account, the alligator had managed to break into her home through some low window in the kitchen. "I had this beautiful face staring at me as though he belonged there," Ms Wischhusen recalled to Spectrum News. "He was just lying there. It's like he made it all the way through the kitchen and he thought he was so smart," she said. Ms Wischhusen then went back to her bedroom after finding the reptile and called 911. A trapper was then sent to her home to remove the alligator, that had by then managed to shatter the windows, put several holes in the wall, dent the fridge, damage some furniture, and raid Ms Wischhusen's wine collection, reports Spectrum News.

Weird news - Finding vomit on your airline seat

In the service business, quick turnaround is a necessity for earning more money, but that sometimes clashes with service levels. I once had to take a train, and it was a turnaround from another train that was supposed to arrive some time earlier, be cleaned and then take on more passengers. It was late so it was probably decided to quickly just let it be used again without cleaning, and that was what happened. The problem was, the inside of the train was pretty dirty, one is used to see a train after there has been some amount of cleaning. Similarly, when you take a cinema hall or a flight, it is typically a quick turnaround. If you spill some popcorn or soda, do you stop to think about how quickly they would be able to clean it before the next set of customers arrive ?
Well, this gentlemen got to see the case when the seat was not cleaned and got a seat with vomit on it, and with not much of sympathies or action from the cabin crew (link to article):

A British Airways passenger was horrified to find his seat covered in what appeared to be vomit. Passenger Dave Gildea was travelling from London Heathrow airport to Seattle when he was assigned seat 64K. "I had upgraded to business class at the airport in London Heathrow and was assigned seats 64K," the 38-year-old told The Sun. "I didn't notice anything until about two hours into the British Airways flight when I popped down the foot stool so I could get some sleep and saw the vomit on the seat. "It was also splashed on the wall behind and the floor below, which I then noticed." However, Mr Gildea says that he when he told the cabin crew about it, they asked if he had been sick on the seat himself. "I went to the cabin crew and the attendants first response was 'was this here when you boarded?' but it was clear it was dried in," he says.

Weird news - Too many calls caused dismissal of rape charges

Rape is a heinous crime, and is also one of the most reported (and as many probably unreported) crimes. Trying it legally and prosecuting can be difficult, with little evidence available in many cases. There may not be witnesses, and in the past, the word of the lady was given high value with the presumption that a lady would not lie about something that would affect her so much, which might affect her reputation and so on. At the same time, there are also the black sheep, and it is also true that there would be cases where the accused was almost asked to prove his own innocence, with the charge against him being in the open, and could be false in order for some kind of revenge. In recent times, courts have also become more careful, not automatically taking the version of the lady, but trying to view all the circumstances and then evaluating whether the case did indeed hold water (link to article):

The Delhi High Court has upheld the acquittal of a man by a trial court in a rape case, saying the woman's testimony was "untrustworthy", full on contradictions and she had called him 529 times between the date of alleged rape and the filing of the complaint. A bench of Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said it was in agreement with the trial court's view that the woman's testimony was "highly unreliable", "untrustworthy" and "inspires no confidence", while dismissing her appeal against the man's acquittal. The trial court had acquitted the man on January 5. The high court noted in its judgement that there were several contradictions in the woman's statement regarding how she met the man, how the alleged incident took place and why there was delay in reporting. The other inconsistencies in her allegation the court noted were that even after getting her phone back from the man, who had allegedly taken it, she did not call the police for over 30 days and in-between called him 529 times.

Weird news - Stealing a bridge in Russia

Movies sometimes show robbers making spectacular robberies, right under the nose of the authorities. It can be by in older times by robbing trains that was carrying cash or gold, or in more recent times by drilling into vaults, or in even more recent times by hacking into accounts or stealing bearer bonds that are untraceable, and so on. At the same time, another time of stealing is going on from time immemorial - the stealing of the items that make up modern infrastructure. Thieves steal the copper wires that make up communication networks, or steal metals from different locations, especially when the price of commodities has increased. However, stealing the metal from a bridge over a period of time until it totally vanishes seems very different (link to article):

The disappearance of a 56 tonne bridge in Russia's Arctic region has sparked a criminal investigation into the incident. According to Daily Mail, the 75-foot structure made up the central section of a dismantled bridge over the Umba river, in Russia's Murmansk region. In May, reports of the bridge's mysterious disappearance began to circulate on VK - a Russian social media platform. Pictures shared on a VK page on May 16 show a part of the bridge lying in water. Just ten days later, however, more pictures of the area surfaced on VK. These pictures showed no trace of the bridge, and even the debris in water had vanished. "It was taken away by unknowns. At the bottom, too, there are no large debris. Natural phenomena could not bring down the bridge," wrote the page where aerial shots of the bridge that disappeared where posted.

Weird news - massive swarm of ladybugs

Sometimes we come across natural behavior that seems incredible, and weird in some ways. The mass movement of animals is something that happens in many species, but when we come across it, it is an awe-inspiring experience. In earlier times, before man intervened in the environment, there were vast herds of large animals moving across the land (these were disrupted because of man settling in there, or shooting many of them), and in the skies, there are these huge movement of birds or insects as a part of their migration. Most of these are not seen now, and the ones that are seen are seemingly so out of the ordinary and incredible that they become news, such as this movement of ladybugs over California (link to article):

A huge blob that appeared on the National Weather Service’s radar wasn’t a rain cloud, but a massive swarm of ladybugs over Southern California. Meteorologist Joe Dandrea says the array of bugs appeared to be about 80 miles (129 kilometers) wide as it flew over San Diego Tuesday. But Dandrea tells the Los Angeles Times that the ladybugs are actually spread throughout the sky, flying at between 5,000 and 9,000 feet (1,525 and 2,745 meters), with the most concentrated group about 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide.

Weird news - Waitress catches hold of reptile's tail and throws it out

Most people are afraid of the lizards that we encounter in the vicinity of our houses, whether inside or outside. There is no real reason to since these are very small creatures, and if you take a step in their direction, they will typically run away since they realize the size mismatch pretty quickly. However, what happens when you come across lizards that are much longer, and there are plenty of such lizards to be found in the wild - some of them are large and others are much larger (the Komodo dragon comes to mind when you think about huge lizards, and it can be dangerous if you come across it and don't know the proper techniques of dealing with it).
So what happens when a large lizard walks into an Australian restaurant and to a table - you can expect a lot of yelling and screaming, and that is what happens. What you would not expect in most cases would be for somebody to gather their wits, drag the offending lizard by the tail and throw it out; but that is what a French waitress did, her presence of mind being incredible (link to article):

This plucky waitress is evidently not scared of trespassing lizards so big they are mistaken for dogs. 25-year-old French waitress Samia Lila has made international headlines after grabbing the huge reptile by the tail and swinging it out of the restaurant in New South Wales. She has since been dubbed "goanna girl" - the reptile is thought to be a goanna - and has been widely commended for her bravery.

Weird News - Calling the police when Taco Bell runs out of tacos

One often comes across weird stuff where the police or emergency services get involved. In the US, the 911 service is so well known that people have been known to use it for any case, even when it is not an emergency or police matter and is strictly commercial. Consider the case where you go to your favorite restaurant and they have run out of stock of the item they are most famous for - in this case, this particular Taco Bell had run out of tacos. What would most people do ? They would be disappointed and would take something else, or they would go to another Taco Bell or try some other restaurant. Would you call the police for this ?
You would realize that there is not really something the police can do in this regard - as long as there is no discrimination or something similar going on and they really don't have the food item, they are powerless to interfere. Getting involved in such a commercial transaction is not really the job of the police, and in fact, by involving them, the customer is literally wasting their time (link to article):

When a Louisiana Taco Bell allegedly ran out of tacos, a consumer called the city's police department to report the "travesty." The Slidell Police Department took to its Facebook page Monday to share "another 'we can’t make this stuff up' story." "Somebody called in to complain that the Taco Bell on Gause Boulevard ran out of both hard and soft taco shells," the post said. "While this is truly a travesty, the police can’t do anything about this." This isn't the first time a consumer called the police to report a restaurant running out of an item or an item missing from their order.

Weird news - Finding a snake in the toilet, and then finding many more

People get easily scared by snakes, especially when they appear in the relative safety of the urban environment; and it is right to get scared (but not panicked). There are many species of snakes that are venomous, and there are others that pack a bite that would need medical attention. Unless you are an expert, if you encounter a snake in a confined space (as opposed to say in a park where the snake has space to feel non-threatened and crawl away), it is best to call in an expert and get them to make the identification and remove the snake from that area.
Further increasing the need for calling in an expert is the following case whereby the expert searched for more snakes after one was detected and killed by the house-owners, and found 23 more snakes, and these were deadly venomous snakes, the Western diamondback rattlesnake. Now, these snakes may not have posed an imminent danger, but there is always the risk of some accident arising if the snake feels cornered or threatened in some way (link to article):

What do you do if you find a snake in your toilet? If you're Isac Mcfadden, you go get your mom. The young boy from Abilene, Texas, woke up Tuesday morning and headed to the bathroom. To his surprise, he found a rattlesnake slithering up his toilet bowl, KXVA reports. "I found this big clump, and I knew it was a snake," said Isac. He quickly called his mom, Cassie Mcfadden, who recruited one of Isac's older brothers to get a shovel to kill the snake. Cassie Mcfadden killed the snake while dad, Jason, called Big Country Snake Removal. When the technician arrived, he found 24 Western diamondback rattlesnakes -- 13 in the cellar, five adults and five babies underneath the house, and the one snake in the toilet, which had entered through a relief pipe.

Weird news - Woman dies after wrong blood transfusion

Blood transfusion is a very common medical procedure, and needed for a host of services. Whether during an operation, or after an accident, or for numerous other such cases, blood transfusion is critical. However, blood is of several different types, and the body will reject blood of a different type. Hence, when going in for a blood transfusion, it is highly critical that the right blood type be selected. In this, there are some variables, some blood types are more common than the others, and some blood types can be used by others while others cannot be used - so there are terms such as universal donor, and universal recipient. However, given how routine blood transfusions are, everybody involved in this business knows what is involved and there is very little chance of error. So when an error happens, it is strange, and also deadly, such as this case in India (link to article):

45-year-old Sukanti Nayak of Hadabandhasahi locality in old town area was admitted to the medicine ward of the district headquarters hospital here yesterday afternoon and doctors advised her one unit of blood, hospital sources said. Acting as per the doctor's advice, the patient's husband Birendra Nayak went to fetch a unit of 'O' group blood from the blood bank in the hospital premises, they said. However, the laboratory technician at the blood bank allegedly handed over a packet of 'A' group blood which was administered to the woman by a staff nurse, they said, adding that the patient died after a short while last night.

Weird news - Hearing of a robbery before it could happen

It is the stuff of science fiction where one if able to figure out when a crime will happen in the future. In the current case, where a phone call arrives at emergency services, the dispatcher listens in, trying to figure out if somebody will say something, or maybe somebody is already in an emergency and is unable to communicate. And then suddenly the dispatcher hears abut a plot, with people discussing a robbery about to take place, but there are no details about the location where the robbery could happen, although the name of the police chief was discussed.
What was funny was that the police chief was in a restaurant while the police was trying to pinpoint the location of the callers, and after some amount of trying to determine the location, it was determined that the would-be criminals were highly intoxicated in a car in the parking lot, and so when they were caught, they were charged with being drunk in public rather than attempted robbery (link to article):

The mysterious phone call arrived about 9 p.m. Saturday night. A Danville, Kentucky, dispatcher answered, but the other end was silent. Instead of hanging up, the dispatcher continued to listen, fearing an emergency might be unfolding in the central Kentucky town of 16,000. Eventually, the dispatcher was able to make out tidbits of a conversation between two male voices. "They were saying things like, 'What if I went in there with a gun and what if we robbed the place?' " Danville Police Chief Tony Gray said. "Then the other one said something like, 'What if they know it's us? We go there all the time.' Gray said that both of the men were "highly intoxicated" and that one of them, though he didn't realize it at the time, was still on the phone with dispatch. The chief said he recognized one of the suspects from his high school class. "He had accidentally butt-dialed emergency dispatch after they started talking," Gray said. "The entire phone call from start to finish was about 14 minutes."

Weird news - Japanese boy abandoned by father, found after a week

Sometimes the behavior of parents seems very weird. Among all animals, human children seem the most vulnerable when they are alone, they need the most help. Given this, it seems odd when one visualizes this case where parents abandoned their 7 year old son in a Japanese forest as a punishment, and then he went missing for a week. Given a forest and being alone, it is a miracle that the boy made it out alive, having found a hut with a tap so that he was able to get water to drink.
He was very hungry when found by a soldier who provided him with some food, he was checked for injuries and then reunited with his parents who were very sorry for their behavior. They could have lost their son, and in the US or UK, child services would have got involved if parents had behaved like this (link to article):

The father of a seven-year-old Japanese boy who went missing for nearly a week after his parents abandoned him in a mountain forest as punishment apologised today hours after his son was found safe. "My excessive act forced my son to have a painful time," he said. The boy, apparently unharmed and in good health, was discovered at a military base. Reports said he had taken shelter in a hut and found a tap to drink from but was hungry and immediately asked for food when discovered. "A Self-Defence Force official who was on a drill found a boy whose age appeared to be seven," said Tomohito Tamura, spokesman for police in northern Hokkaido island.

Weird news - Son reported father for running red light

In school, students are taught traffic discipline, including when to stop at red lights, when to go, what are the various traffic signals. So whenever I drive, even though I follow stop lights, I get a reminder from my first-grader about following the signal, "Daddy, it's a red light, stop". Hopefully when these children grow up, they will be similarly inclined to follow traffic signals when they start driving (if driverless vehicles haven't taken over already).
The below case does seem a bit extreme though, where a 6 year old called 911 to report his own father for driving through a red light, after apparently having warned his father when he was doing that, even though his father tried to convince the son that he was taking a right turn which was perfectly legal. The police department put the call to their Facebook page to show the kind of calls they get, and not in a negative way (link to article):

When the light went red but the driver turned anyway, officer Robbie Richardson's training kicked in. Green meant go, yellow meant slow, and red, he was certain, meant stop. But the driver, turning right, just blew on through the light, his crime all but undetected. Officer Richardson, who spends his free time patrolling the streets of his Boston-area neighborhood, couldn't stand the injustice of it all - especially since the delinquent driver was his dad, and Richardson, a sassy six-year-old who'd left his Little Tikes toy cop cruiser at home, was in the back seat. So the kindergartner did what any good purveyor of justice would do, family loyalty be damned: he called 911.

Shopping - how about adopting a snake

With the conflict between man and animal getting more intense as man enters more and more into the habitat of wild animals, there is greater contact with wild animals and that can literally scare people, and it is right of people to get scared when they have such encounters, since wild animals can be unpredictable and can badly injure or kill you depending on the circumstances. For example, if you come across a 12 feet long snake while searching for a shopping basket, the snake could be venomous or non-venomous, could be aggressive or could be scared of people; most people are not expert enough to figure out. The right thing to do is to call experts such as happened in this case (link to article):

A cart attendant at a Walmart outlet in Texas received a huge scare when he found a large snake in a shopping cart. The employee was collecting shopping carts from the supermarket's return area when he saw the snake. His "loud scream" drew the attention of a cop standing on the opposite side of the parking lot, the Northeast Police Department said in a Facebook post. According to the post, the snake was identified as a nonvenomous rat snake. Found entangled between two shopping carts, it was removed with the help of a man whom the police identified as a "snake charmer" - John Heckaman.

Weird news - Hiding inside small spaces in the car

The urge to migrate to a richer place is irresistible. Places that have far better economies such as the United States and Europe see migration of a large number of people from poorer places such as Mexico or Africa, or from places that are seeing turmoil such as Syria. These migrations can cause incredible tension in the places where they are heading towards, and hence this migration is attempted to be controlled through border controls and by funneling people through legal channels. However, people cannot be stopped simply through such measures and there are ongoing efforts by people to enter a country by stealth and then hope that they will not be easily deported and might finally become a citizen. People attempt crossings by boat, inside vehicles, through deserts, even though some of these can be deadly and even result in the death of those doing the migration. Consider the following case where people are attempting to hide inside a vehicle, not in the trunk, but in the dashboard area and other places - wonder how they are even fitting (link to article):

A migrant was found hiding inside the dashboard of a car on the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla, trying to enter Europe illegally. The man, in his 20s, was one of four migrants found inside four separate vehicles within several hours on Saturday, said Spain's Civil Guard officers. Three more vehicles were stopped in Beni-Enzar, Morocco, during the weekend, the Daily Mail reported. Another stowaway was found in an engine compartment, a third under a rear seat and a fourth man in a dangerous position in a dumper truck, where they were in danger of being crushed. Two of these men had to be stabilised by doctors after they were found to be suffering from asphyxiation, disorientation and joint pain due to the conditions in which they travelled. A 15-year-old girl was also among those found.

Weird news - Dying with a stomach full of cocaine

The drug trade is a very lucrative trade, with the amount of money involved being huge. The difference in price of the drug in the drug producing regions such as Colombia, compared with the price in the developed countries is so huge that there are massive efforts made to transport this drug in large quantities to meet user demand. At the same time, there are a lot of efforts made by the enforcement agencies to stop this movement of drugs. As a part of this cat and mouse game, the drug cartels keep on thinking of new ways to move these drugs. In the past, drug supplies have been moved in through fast boats along the coastal regions, through hiding these items in regular trade, through the use of innovate methods such as small submarines, and in the below case, through using people as mules when they actually carry the drug on their persons.
This method involves taking small pouches of the drug, and ingesting it so that it can be carried in the stomach, and later excreted when their reach their destination. However, this is fraught with a high amount of risk since the stomach is full of strong acids that can dissolve items, and if the drugs are exposed in the stomach, their high concentration will be mostly fatal for the person (link to article):

A Japanese man with 246 packets of cocaine in his stomach and intestines died mid-flight on his way from Bogota to Tokyo, authorities said Monday in northern Mexico, where the plane made an emergency landing. The 42-year-old man, identified only as Udo "N," began having a seizure after traveling from the Colombian capital to Mexico City and catching a connecting flight to Japan, said the prosecutor's office for the state of Sonora. "Flight attendants noticed a person suffering convulsions, and requested permission to make an emergency landing in Hermosillo, Sonora," it said in a statement. "When the plane landed at 2:25 am on Friday, paramedics boarded it and declared Udo 'N' deceased." An autopsy found the man had swallowed 246 packets of cocaine, each measuring one by 2.5 centimeters (about one by one-third inch).

Weird news - Penalty on man for forcing plane to dump fuel

Over the years, especially after 9/11, airlines have stopped becoming lenient on passengers who cause a ruckus on a flight. This can happen often enough when people have had too much to drink, something that causes weird behavior and which can threaten the safety of other passengers, or atleast cause them major inconveniences. In this specific case, the drunk man caused a huge ruckus on the flight and the pilot had to land back at the airport from which he had taken off, before doing that, he had to dump some of the fuel that he had loaded on the plane in order to have a safe landing (link to article):

A few preflight drinks can get expensive rather quickly. But for David Stephen Young, a round of six alcoholic beverages he drank before his flight from Calgary to London prompted a rash of unruly behavior, culminating in an abrupt turnaround, an arrest and a hefty fine of more than $16,000. Young, 44, was ordered by a judge to pay WestJet for 20,000 tons of wasted fuel the pilot dumped over Alberta to safely land the aircraft back in Calgary on Jan. 4. The fine came after he pleaded guilty last week to resisting arrest and failing to comply with safety instructions during the fight, according to USA Today.

Weird news - Buying a flat, and finding a body inside

This is truly a horrific experience. Imagine buying a house, opening it and then finding a body inside. For most people, such an experience would make them have a lot of negative thoughts about the house, with a number of house buyers would then refuse to live in such a house. And after six months of death, investigating the death would also be difficult, since even with a reduced amount of decomposition, a post-mortem would not reveal as many details given the elapsed time period. One wonders about the people who committed the murder but then were brazen enough to leave the body in a bed in a house which they then sold off; they would have known that the body would be found and eventually investigated (link to article):

The police have found a six-month-old decomposed body hidden in a box bed in a flat in Bhopal’s Bagsewania area on Sunday evening. The flat has reportedly been locked since June last year and the owners have not been seen since that time. The police is still not sure whether the recovered body is that of a man or a woman. “Everything will become clear after the post-mortem and DNA test. We are searching for the flat owners as only they will be able to reveal how the body reached here. Prima facie it appears to be a case of murder. The body had long hair, so we are suspecting it to be that of a woman,” SP South Sampat Upadhyay said. Police sources say the body had been kept on a mattress and wrapped with a cotton blanket, among other clothes inside the bed box. Even though the body appears to have been lying there for six months, it had not decomposed, instead it had become mummified.

Weird news - Stealing a giant bronze hippo

Sometimes when an item is stolen, people stop and wonder as to how it can happen. Consider a large large animal sculpture in a park, and when I say large, I mean large. This hippo sculpture, made of bronze (and hence somewhat valuable) weighted as much as 1500 pounds, so obviously it was not the work of one person. In fact, it must have required some heavy machinery to have moved the sculpture, and would have taken some time, so a bit puzzling about how no one noticed that the sculpture was being stolen (link to article):

A giant hippo is missing in England. No, it is not real, and yes, it is made of bronze. The 6.5-foot goliath statue, weighing at a whopping 1,500 pound was reported stolen on Friday, CNN reported Kent police saying in a news release. Reportedly, the hippo is believed to have been stolen when someone forced their way into Chilstone Garden Ornaments in Tunbridge Wells.

Weird news - Stealing the ATM

You would have heard of people trying to rob a bank, making many different strategies and mechanisms - in fact, movies about major bank robberies show many different weird methods of doing the same. The same extends for trying to get money when it is on the way, this includes looting cash vans and other major movements of money or precious items / jewels. However, there are so many mobile money spots that seem to be now becoming more of a target. Some scripts talk about hacking ATM's to enable them to dispense money to the attacker, but how about just taking the ATM away and retrieving the money inside it at leisure. '
In many cases, ATM's are located at remote locations with no security guards, which means that these ATM's are vulnerable to anybody wanting to pick up these ATM machines forcibly. Even with security devices and connections to police monitors, their remoteness means that there is a good chance that the attacker can pick up the ATM and be on the way before somebody can stop them (link to article):

Unidentified robbers took away at least two ATMs of Axis Bank, one containing Rs 10 lakh, in the past two days in Noida and neighbouring Hapur district. While five masked men allegedly uprooted an ATM from Rachna market on the NH-91 in Badalpur area on Thursday night, another ATM was taken away from Pilukhwa area in Hapur district on Friday night. Both the ATM booths were not guarded and their security depended on a locked shutter. According to police, at least five robbers were caught on CCTV taking away the ATM from Rachna market around 2.30 am on February 1. The machine contained nearly Rs 10 lakh. Kuldeep Singh, who owns a vehicle-repair shop adjacent to the ATM in Rachna market, said: “When we reached our shop around 8am the next day, we found a part of the machine lying there. The machine was gone and the shutter of the ATM was open.”

Weird news - Cryptocurrency CEO dies without sharing password

The wonders of modern technology can sometimes make things pretty difficult. Modern privacy is built on using cryptology, with its system of private and public keys (and other key mechanisms). The more recent development of cryptocurrencies use encryption as their basis, which makes storing of these keys the 'key' to everything. There have been many cases in the past where hackers have managed to get the key and stolen the money held in cryptocurrency wallets, with no recourse to the people who owned the money held in these wallets.
This is a different kind of problem, but one that can also suddenly arise, with the problem of knowledge being held only by one person, who suddenly dies, not having transferred the knowledge to anybody and leaving the cryptocurrency money locked up (link to article):

This is a story worthy of a film script -- which will doubtless be realized. A 30-year old CEO of a Canadian cryptocurrency firm reportedly died in India from complications from Crohn's disease (an intestinal inflammation disorder) taking with him passwords that has locked up $190 million in investor cryptocurrency. Top security experts have been unable to unlock the encrypted password throwing his clients into a tizzy. The saga, just unfolding in the western media, goes back to December when Gerald Cotten, 30-year old founder of QuadrigaCX, died due to complications with Crohn’s disease, according to the company and Cotten’s wife, Jennifer Robertson. Cotten died “while traveling in India, where he was opening an orphanage to provide a home and safe refuge for children in need,” the company's social media page said.

Weird news - Hole under the road for bank robbery

Robberies can take some weird forms. When you read about the various forms and types taken by robberies in the past, you can come across some weird examples where people have tried all sort of things - in home robberies, people have tried to come in through chimneys and even large pipes, for banks and vaults, robbers have tried to dig in through tunnels so that they can get inside undetected. Sometimes, these attempts have been stopped in the nick of time, through security measures meant to protect against thefts. However, there are other times when these attempts have been discovered by accident and thefts avoided, such as this case where road workers were attempting to fix a sinkhole under a road and found that somebody was building a tunnel to a bank (link to article):

Road workers in Florida sent out to repair a sinkhole got a surprise this week when they discovered it was caused by a tunnel leading to a nearby bank. The FBI posted pictures of the narrow underground tunnel leading to a branch of Chase Bank in Pembroke Pines, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Miami. Police and the FBI were called in Tuesday night after the road workers realized that a manhole-sized hole in the road was caused by a tunnel.

Weird news - Not a ghost in the closet

When you are living alone in an apartment, and you find that your clothing has been disturbed, it can feel real creepy, like somebody has come into your house and touched your things. But when you find strange hand prints in the bathroom, and they are not yours, scripts from horror movies would come into the mind, as if there is a ghost in the house (even if you do not believe in ghosts). But whether you have a ghost in the house, or when you suddenly find movement coming from a closet and a man's voice from inside, it can be equally scary. In today's world, the threat of a strange man in the house when you are all alone can be equally scary - the horrors of a slasher or a murderer or a rapist all come to mind.
It takes a lot of courage to handle such a situation, and this girl managed to handle this weird situation well enough, managing to get the man out of her apartment (link to article):

Maddie, a student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who identified herself only by her first name, explained to WFMY-TV that her clothing had mysteriously disappeared in the past. Moreover, the junior told other local news outlets this week she had previously noticed handprints on the bathroom walls. They weren't hers. On Saturday, Greensboro police say, Maddie confronted her "ghost" after hearing something rattling in her closet. "Who's in there?" she recalled asking in the interview with WFMY. As she pressed against the closet door, she realized a spirit wasn't responsible for the sounds. "Oh, my name's Drew," a man's voice replied.

Weird news - Pilots shut down wrong engine

The safety of an aircraft when it is flying is controlled through a series of checklists and procedures, and if pilots deviate from that, it can have deadly consequences. These procedures also typically handle what to do when the plane goes through some disaster, such as a storm or lightning strike, or a bird hit. Normally you would not expect a bird hit to impact a plane significantly, but the plane moves at very high speed, and because of the speed, a bird hit on the engine can significantly damage the engine and cause fire in the engine or it to shut down.

So, if a bird hit happens on the engine, depending on the severity of the strike, the pilots may shut down the engine. There are multiple engines on a plane, so the plane can still work on the other engine(s); however, what happens if a bird strike happens and the pilots shut down the working engine by mistake and leave the bird hit engine on. It can become very critical, threatening the passengers, and the capability of the pilots can be questioned (link to article):

The pilots of a GoAir flight going from Delhi to Mumbai shut down the wrong engine after a bird-strike incident on June 21, 2017, the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said in a report. While engine number 2 of the flight was affected due to the bird-strike, the pilots of the GoAir plane decided to shut down engine number 1, the report said. Once the aircraft stopped climbing at an altitude of 3,330 feet, the pilots "realised their mistake", and consequently started engine 1 and brought back the plane to Delhi airport, said the report dated November 5, 2018. "(The) incident was caused by incorrect identification of engine affected with high vibration followed by non-adherence to recommended procedures, lack of situational awareness, poor cockpit resource management and poor handling of aircraft during emergency subsequent to bird strike," it said.

Weird news - Sold kidney for iPhone, now in serious problem

The iPhone, by Apple Corp, is a much sought over phone. Fans love the design, considering it much above the competition. The phone also sells at a premium to other phones, but in the past, there was a huge demand for new versions of the phone (with people lined up in the night outside an Apple store to buy the new version of the phone, when it would be released). There are jokes about payment options for the phone including selling ones own kidney to raise the required money for buying these products. However, as it turns out, this is not a joke, but it has actually happened. Taking a loan for buying a new iPhone would have been done a lot, but something so weird as selling a kidney to buy a new phone really seems weird.
And now the person is suffering the repercussions of that action; not because a kidney was donated. Donating a body organ is something that people do, but such donations take place in proper hospitalization settings; in this case, since selling a kidney is legal, the medical conditions may have caused an infection that is now troubling the person who sold the kidney (link to article);

San Francisco: A Chinese man who sold his kidney as a teenager to buy the latest Apple iPad and iPhone in 2011 is now bedridden with organ failure, the media reported. Wang Shangkun was 17 years old when he made the decision to undergo surgery and sell his right kidney in the black market to buy the Apple products. Shortly after the illegal surgery, he began suffering from a decreased level of kidney function, news.com.au reported late on Monday.

Weird news - Head severed by leaning out of the bus

When we are on the road, there is a constant need to follow safety precautions, because with the speeds and the forces involved, there is always the threat of serious injury or death. From childhood, along with other safety precautions, the need to keep all parts of the body inside the car and not have anything outside the windows has been emphasized. Part of the reason for the same is because passing vehicles (in the same direction or in the opposite direction) can hit and with enough force, the shearing action can cause serious injuries or death.
In the following case, a lady was feeling a vomiting sensation, and in order to do it quickly, she moved her head outside the window, and that is where it got tragic. Her head hit an electric pole outside, and the impact was so severe that her head got severed from her body (link to article);

The head of a 56-year-old woman was smashed and severed after hitting an electric pole when she leaned out of the window of a rashly-driven bus to vomit here in Madhya Pradesh Friday, police said. The incident took place near Diamond crossing here and the victim was identified as Asha Rani, who was travelling from Satna district to Panna district, they said. Asha Rani leaned out of the bus’s window to vomit when her head hit the electric pole. The impact was so massive that her head got severed and tumbled on the road, Kotwali police station inspector Arvind Kujur told PTI over phone.

Weird news - Helicopter blade accident kills man

We use a lot of machinery as a part of our daily life, and this is normally fine. However, human life is fragile (in the sense that the body is fragile) and malfunction of a lot of the machinery can threaten this human life. From time to time, we hear of incidents such as a boiler accident or factory explosion or chemical accidents where people or more than one person gets killed. This is another such case where an accident claimed the life of a person, the accident being just a freak accident.
There was maintenance happening of a helicopter, when the helicopter was started and the machinery moved up and down with one of the helicopter blades striking the man, causing his death. Now, maintenance of such aviation assets such as helicopters and planes is a routine work, happening for decades now and with a checklist of activities that need to happen one after the other. For a person to die during such an operation means that something went seriously wrong (link to article):

A maintenance man was decapitated by the rotor of a helicopter at the Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport in Brooksville, Florida, a Hernando County Fire Rescue official told CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP-TV. The Federal Aviation Administration said the blade struck Salvatore Disi, 62, of Hudson, Florida, who was doing maintenance work on the aircraft Thursday afternoon. According to the Hernando County Sheriff's Office, a caller said he and another person were using a power cart to jump-start the copter when it jerked up and came down quickly. That's when Disi was struck by one of the main rotor blades. He died instantly. Deputies said no foul play was suspected.

Weird news - Vandals try to destroy large snowman, but ....

What is karma ? Karma, in nowadays everyday usage, is meant to depict an event whereby people get their just rewards, whether that be positive or negative. Look at what has happened in the following case where people were trying to be destructive and faced damage themselves. Modern cities struggle with vandalism - whether this be spray painting of walls, damage to statues, damages to new infrastructure, and so on. How much can you catch such stuff going on and punish them ? The Government of Singapore would damage such vandalism such as spray painting of cars by whipping the perpetrators. 

During the winter, with huge amounts of snow falling from the sky, building a snowman is a favorite pastime. It looks like fun, the raw material is totally free and it can be decorated with a range of items from mufflers to buttons to hats, and so on. However, there is always a worry about vandals, as the following incident highlights. The couple in Kentucky used a large tree stump as the base on which to build the snowman and ended up with a 10 feet tall structure in which the tree stump was totally hidden by the snow. A lot of people admired the massive snowman.

However, you have people who are destructive, so apparently some people with a vehicle decided that using the vehicle to knock down the snowman would be fun, so they took their vehicle and rammed the snowman. However, imagine their surprise when their vehicle hit a hard unmovable object, and it would have surely impacted their vehicle itself and would have caused some damage to the vehicle (link to article):

"Everyone driving by loved him, and waved and honked to express their delight," Lutz said. "However, evidently not everyone was a fan! I arrived home to find a set of tire tracks across my yard, ending abruptly at the base of the snowman." Lutz realized someone tried to drive into their snowman, but since the base of it was a stump, the would-be vandals failed — miserably. "The massive stump is now exposed, with a snowy imprint of a bumper stuck to it!" Lutz said. Apparently Frosty had been handing out life lessons to some very-surprised 4x4 vandals," he joked. "'You reap what you sow!' Still standing, and still smiling, Frosty certainly had the last laugh!"

Weird news - Parents of 3 year girl with huge tumor arrested

Any kind of illness in a child can scare a parent and cause them to take all kinds of action. The minimum would be to see a doctor and figure out what kind of treatment. This would happen even if the parents are busy, or if the weather or bad, or something similar. The care and concern shown by parents is something that is supreme. This is something that is present in a vast majority of parents, so it always seems weird when you see a parent who apparently does not show concern for their children. And given that children are incapable of looking after themselves, it is the responsibility of the parents to take care of their children, and if it seems that they are not really doing so, they will face criminal charges for not taking care of them. The children can also be taken away and kept in foster homes where atleast they will get better care.
In this case, authorities in a town in Oklahoma were called to a camper home where they found a 3 year old girl with a 17-pound tumor, and who died soon after being admitted to hospital. Now, a tumor can be deadly and fatal, but it does not happen suddenly. Tumors develop and get bigger over a period of time, and in any normal case, the parents would have been frantic with worry, getting medical attention for the girl. The tumor may have been treatable or may not have been, but atleast the child would have had a chance, except the lack of attention meant that she did not have a chance. And which is why the parents will face manslaughter charges (link to article):

The parents of a 3-year-old Oklahoma girl who died from cancer and had a 17-pound tumor face manslaughter charges for allegedly failing to provide medical care. Authorities in Lawton were called Jan. 3 to a camper home near Lake Lawtonka on Oklahoma State Highway 58, the Lawton Constitution reported. The child was unconscious but breathing when responders arrived. She was taken to a hospital where she died. The state medical examiner found the child had cancer. Comanche County Sheriff Kenny Stradley said she had a 17-pound tumor, although it was not immediately clear exactly where the tumor was located.

Weird news - Couple enslaved girl for 16 years

From time to time, we come across cases of people exhibiting extreme behavior towards other people. We saw this in the case of the terrorists belonging to the Islamic State, and we also see this in the case of dictators and people living in oppressed countries. However, even in developed countries, one can see people exhibiting similar behavior. It is even more surprising that this can happen inside the western countries, where there are institutions to find out and catch people who are doing illegal activities.
From time to time, there are stories that come out about people enslaving other people, and doing it is reprehensible, even more so when you do it to somebody who is a child and who does not know his or her rights. There are steep penalties including long jail terms and financial penalties as well when somebody is convicted of the same, but how do you compensate a child who has lost their childhood and has huge scars because of the mistreatment. In this case, the jury convicted the couple for the 16 years of enslavement that they did (link to article):

A federal jury on Thursday found a Texas couple guilty of enslaving a girl from Guinea for 16 years at their home in a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, where she was forced to cook, clean and care for their children, investigators said. Federal authorities had accused the couple, Mohamed Toure and Denise Cros-Toure of Southlake, of forcing the girl to work for them and their five children from when she was 6 until she was 22, according to a court filing. Mr. Toure is the son of Guinea’s first president, Ahmed Sékou Touré, who led the country for 26 years until his death in 1984. After a four-day trial and a day of deliberations, the jury found the couple guilty on several counts, including the forced labor charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. A sentencing date has not been set.