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.