Weird news - Kid died in hot car, father charged

It is an accident, something that no parent would want to happen. At the same time, it would seem as a lot of common sense that a car will quickly get hot when left in the open, and anybody left in the car would quickly become uncomfortable in the vehicle and given enough time, suffocate in the heat. This is more problematic when a child is left in the car and because of their inability to help themselves, suffer the heat and some of them even die. In such cases, even if the parent would most likely have forgot the child in the car, the child died and this is a crime (link to article):

A Mississippi man has been charged with second-degree murder after he left his 8-month-old daughter in an overheated car while he went to work. Joshua Lewis Blunt left the child in the vehicle outside the restaurant where he works for “some period of time,” Grenada Deputy Police Chief George Douglas told the Clarion-Ledger.

Weird news - Alligator on the road

One of the animals that most people are scared of are large reptiles such as snakes and alligators. However, there are plenty of places where people do come into contact with such reptiles, especially when they live in a place where there are a large number of such predators. For people living in the Amazon rain forest, there is the potential to come into contact with wild animals; for people living in the Sunderbans, there is the ever present danger of coming into contact with a tiger. In the US, Florida is the place where people have the highest possibility of coming into contact with reptiles - for example, there are so many cases where house pools have found alligators in them which have then had to be removed. In this case, on the road, there is this large alligator and you would be scared seeing this pretty large alligator (especially if you were walking or cycling on the road) (link to article):

An unusually large alligator was found wandering on a road in Florida, USA, during the ongoing gator mating season. The Florida Highway Patrol said troopers received a surprise on Sunday morning when they spotted the massive reptile taking a stroll along a highway, next to a chain link fence. The alligator was spotted at the appropriately named Alligator Alley of Interstate 75 in Collier County. While writing about the incident on social media, officials quipped that the gator at least obeyed traffic rules. "Way to at least stay in the grass shoulder and out of the travel lanes," Florida Highway Patrol joked on Twitter while sharing a picture of the alligator looking up the fence.

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.