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 - 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 - Killing a customer through a curry meal

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

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

Weird news - Burger does not rot in 6 years

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

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

Weird news - Girl eats a lightbulb, and is only 3 years old

You read about people doing all sorts of weird things, many of them for some sort of publicity or the other. If you read some of the facts listed in Ripley's books, or even the Guinness World Records, some of those exploits seem so weird. But most of those are done by adults who want the publicity.
When a young child does something that seems weird, the immediate need for doing that act is blamed on the parents (since it is assumed that the parents are the one who are forcing the child to act, and the child is too young to do something on his / her own). Consider the following case where a very young girl (all of 3 years old) ate a lightbulb due to a medical condition (link to article):

A three-year-old girl has eaten a light bulb.
Natalie Hayhurst - who suffers from Pica, a condition characterised by an appetite for non-nutritive substances - nearly died when she consumed the inedible object, and she polished off nearly a whole brick "like a chocolate chip cookie" in the past.
Her mum Colleen told the Daily Mail newspaper: "She doesn't try to eat glass so much since it hurt her, but she will try and eat rocks and sticks she finds in the garden.

Weird - South Korean couple took care of an online / virtual baby and let real baby starve to death

Sometimes when you read some news, you cannot believe as to how this is possible. When parents have a baby, they are fiercely protective of them, taking care of them, making sure that the baby is getting all the required attention and nourishment. Even poor families try their best to ensure that their children get all the required attention, and Governments have programs to ensure that children get attention, including free meals. A baby is so defenceless and without any ability to take care of itself that it treated as a criminal matter to neglect a child.
Modern virtual games which allow the creation of virtual avatars, friends, relatives, are very engrossing and can lead to people spending large amounts of time, being totally engrossed in these. However, the combination of these events spelt doom for a poor infant in South Korea, whose parents neglected to feed the baby, instead spending all their time on a virtual child, and their baby eventually starved to death (link to article):

The couple, residents of a Seoul suburb, allegedly neglected their prematurely born three-month-old daughter, feeding her just once a day in between 12-hour stretches at a neighborhood internet cafe, the official Yonhap news agency reported.
Professor Kwak Dae-kyung of Seoul's Dongguk University told the Yonhap news agency that the couple appeared to have lost track of reality. "Online game addiction can blur the line between reality and the virtual world. It seems that taking care of their on-line game character erased any sense of guilt they may have had for neglecting their daughter."

Eating a burger made with camel meat

Restaurants all over the world serve exotic meals, but how often have you seen a traditional food item becoming exotic. Burgers are famous for chicken or beef patties, and in countries such as India, having vegetarian patties. But to use meat that is something that most of us would not associate with traditional food, to eat camel meat, can be pretty strange (link to article):

A new fast food sensation has hit the Emirates' culinary scene. Right now, Dubai diners can't seem to get enough of the "camel burger." "It's a sensation," Ramesh, restaurant manager at "Local House" the restaurant chain behind the burgers told CNN. "Everyone's bored of beef and chicken. So, as soon as the word got out, we had queues of customers eager to give it a try."
"Not only are they super healthy, but the flavor is amazing," he told CNN of the centuries-old Bedouin delicacy they have given a 21st century twist. Instead of the familiar sesame bun, they serve the burgers with freshly-baked "khameer" -- a popular and yeasty regional read.

Rat eating plant found in Phillipines

Not many people know that there are plants that eat meat as well. Say again ? Plants that eat meat ? Yes. There have plants such as the pitcher plant and sundew that eat meat. But humans need not be worried as yet. In a recent discovery by scientists, a plant that can eat rats has been found on Mount Victoria in Palawan, central Philippines. The plant has been named in honour of Sir David Attenborough. The plant has a pitcher which attracts insects and rats, and then takes nutrition from these animals (link to article):

The new discovery measures up to 30 centimeters in diameter and is formed by a tendril which inflates into a large cup-shaped trap. McPherson told CNN: "Around the mouth of the pitcher are secretions of nectar which attracts insects and small animals. The rim has lots of waxy downward-pointing ridges which help prey fall directly into the pitcher.
"These plants grow in really harsh areas where soil quality is very poor -- often pure gravel or sand. Catching insects allows the plant to augment nutrients that it otherwise wouldn't have access to." "These plants have evolved to catch insects. But on rare occasions they do catch rats and mice. The first reports of these plants catching rats was made in the 19th century by a British explorer called Spenser St John," McPherson said.

This is very interesting for those people who see a very clear separation between vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. If a plant can itself eat meat, then that separation starts to wither away.

Festival celebrating roadkill

Food festivals are different the world over, with different cultures all over the world, and different cuisines. Let me ask you this - how many of you have heard of roadkill ? You know, the case where animals such as deer, snakes, squirrels, possums, get killed by speeding vehicles and can be found on the side of roads. How do you combine the two ? Ugh - what a prospect. But there is a food festival where the food is essentially supposed to be based on roadkill, and this festival is so popular that hotels and motels are booked in the city when it is supposed to happen (link to article):

Thousands of people converge on the small town of Marlinton, West Virginia, each fall for a feast whose main ingredients were unlucky enough to crawl, slither or lurk too close to a speeding car. "There are some that are better than others, but I've never really had anything that I really didn't like," Cain said. "But there was one year they cooked a rattlesnake in some kind of stew, and ... there was no way I could taste that one."
About 10,000 people from all over the country came to last year's gathering, Cain said. All dishes featured in the festival must have animals commonly found dead on the side of the road -- such as deer, squirrels and snakes -- as their main ingredient. But the meat doesn't have to be actual roadkill.

I certainly don't want to be the judge for such an event, but it does seem to be incredibly popular.

Going topless a way to make a coffee shop a hit

The economy is real bad, businesses are not getting enough customers. You want to find a way to attract repeat customers to a coffee shop, so what should you do ? Why not play to the temptation of every human being for the human flesh, and if you can get the local authorities to agree to it, there would not be anything wrong. And so did Donald Crabtree, who visualized having a new coffee shop with plenty of customers, and who went ahead and opened Grand View Topless Coffee Shop in Vassalboro, Maine, where the waiters and waitresses serve their customers topless. You can just imagine, you go inside and a waiter or waitress comes and serves you, with their upper body totally bare (link):

In a town with fewer than 4,500 residents, the topless coffee shop is booming with business. Paul Crabtree, the owner's brother, describes business so far as "fantastic." "It's just been crowds mobbing in," he said. Donald Crabtree faced initial opposition to his plan, but he won the right to go ahead in a planning board hearing last week. Many local residents were irate over the idea of combining coffee and nudity. Crabtree, however, saw a profitable business venture.
The flood of job applications -- more than 150 -- for Grand View Topless Coffee Shop reflected the rough job market. Crabtree hired 10 women and five men under stringent requirements, including friendliness and, what he considered most important, that the wait staff "treat everyone equally." Of the 15 selected, most had been laid off from other jobs in the past few months.

Interesting, but there is a very high chance that people will copy this idea all over (subject to the local council approving such a special coffee shop).

Can you believe this - Potato chips can beat certain cancers

For any health conscious person, potato chips are something to be severly avoided. They are labelled as junk food, and have a major part to play in the creation of the lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and obesity (and are part of the lifestyle of colas, chips and pizzas that lead to a much higher intake of fat). However, it seems that potato chips can also play a positive role in cancer treatment (link)

The mouth-watering chips have long been labelled as a “junk food”. Yet, experts have claimed that gorging on a deepfried potato diet can help people in beating certain cancers. According to them, chips are rich in vitamin C, which tackles dangerous free radicals associated with cancer growth, and those suffering with the disease can even shrink the size of their tumours by eating wafers, the Daily Star reported.
“Chips give vitamin C, which is an important nutrient believed to help protect against certain types of cancer. People who eat food rich in vitamin C are much less likely to suffer from cancer of the oesophagus, cancer of the stomach and breast cancer.

This is part of ongoing research, and one would expect that if you eat other foods rich in Vitamin C, you would get the same effect. This is something that more research should be able to validate.

Toddler survives for 6 days without food, his mother dead nearby

This is like a miracle straight out of child heaven. Imagine the sorry state of a toddler when his mother, the one who provided for a baby who cannot meet his own needs, died. The baby, even if not very perceptive, would have missed his mother, and been unable to understand as to why the nourishment that he needs was not available. Thankfully, the crying of the baby, was heard by an aid worker after 6 days, and the baby was rescued:

Sacramento, California: Police in California say a 2-year-old boy survived on dry cat food for up to six days after his mother died.
The Sacramento Bee newspaper reported that a social worker heard the toddler crying while making a visit to check on the family Thursday morning. The worker called police after no one answered the door.

This is a heart-rending story, with the plight of the toddler being difficult to imagine or understood.

Horrific apartheid-era happening in South Africa

South Africa has been free of racial discrimination / apartheid for many years now, and no longer are there incidents of white vs. black allowed legally. In fact, the country is rules by a party that represented the aspirations of the black people fighting the white government. So it was all the more surprising to read of an incident where white students at a University tricked some black workers into having some meat stew laced with urine, something that sounds positively horrible:

A South African university said Tuesday it will close the dormitory where white students tricked black workers into tasting stew laced with urine, an incident that sparked protests when revealed earlier this year.
The school became the focus of protests in February, after video surfaced of white students at the dormitory urging at least five black housekeepers to eat what appeared to be beef stew in a plastic bowl. Before serving the stew to the housekeepers, the students urinated into the mixture. At the end of the video, recorded in September, a message appears on the screen in Afrikaans saying, "That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration."

This essentially shows that there are racial feelings still present among people, and it will be a challenge to get rid of them.

Dioxin found in some Italy mozzarella

Italy prizes its buffalo mozzarella and is well loved; so imagine the shock when news started coming in of high levels of dioxin being found in samples of buffalo milk. Dioxin is known as a cancer causing agent, much reviled in public news; not considered in any way safe - the news of food stuffs containing it would be a very scary prospect. As can be expected, this news caused a frenzy of action; the police and health authorities got involved - the association of buffalo mozzarella got involved as well in trying to reassure the public, with ads proclaiming that mozzarella made by their members were safe and all the contaminated products made were made by others:

The tainted products came from a few buffalo dairies in the southern Campania region, whose reputation as a top agricultural producer already has been tarnished by the months-old garbage crisis that has fueled fears of food contamination. Dioxin, a chemical environmental pollutant, can be hazardous even in small amounts. When it accumulates in the body, it can be linked to cancer, birth defects and organ failure.
Over the past week, Italian authorities have searched dozens of buffalo dairies and seized milk samples for tests after higher-than-permitted levels of dioxin were discovered in products from 29 mozzarella makers, news reports said. Prosecutors in Naples have placed 109 people under investigation in connection with the probe, on suspicion of fraud and food poisoning.

Given the wide spread usage of mozzarella in pizzas, as well as eating as it is, it is necessary that this be resolved quickly, and an investigation as to how this has happened; this is the way forward that would reassure consumers.

Pythom stalks family dog and eats it

Australia is famous for its dangerous animals, and this was proved in an example that you will read below. The python is a non-poisonous but dangerous snake that kills by squeezing its prey to death. In an attack hitting a family in Queensland state, a 16 foot scrub python stalked the pet dog of a family for days before attacking, killing and eating the pet dog in front of the horrified members of the family:

Stuart Douglas, owner of the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda, said scrub pythons typically eat wild animals such as wallabies, a smaller relative of the kangaroo, but sometimes turn to pets in urban areas. "It actively stalked the dog for a number of days," Douglas said.
"The family that owned the dog had actually seen it in the dog's bed, which was a sign it was out to get it," he added. The zoo manager, Todd Rose, said pythons squeeze their prey to death before swallowing it whole. The 5-year-old dog would have been suffocated within minutes.

Cow that relishes chicken

In a rural chicken farm, suddenly chickens started vanishing. Such an occurrence is bound to pinch, although initially the neighbouring dogs were suspected. It was only when a watch was kept that a most incredible sight was seen. A calf was found to be the chicken eater, having devoured 48 chickens.
The family watched at night as the calf went over to the coop and grabbed a chicken with amazing precaution. This is very strange behaviour. In India, Hinduism considers a cow to be holy, and such a behaviour is most unusual.
The local vet thinks that this could be caused by a lack of vitamins in the body, and has asked for further investigation. Read the story here.

Pardon for Turkeys

In an annual event, President Bush, the leader of the mightiest nation on earth, pardoned 2 turkeys that were planned for the annual Thankgiving dinner. Read about it on CNN.
This is so much of an annual ritual that the only surprise would be if the turkeys did not get pardoned, but it is expected that every year, the president will have to do it, otherwise, there will be lots of questions asked, and the president might be portrayed as an man without a heart.
And what will happen to the lucky turkeys ? These turkeys will be flown at US Government expense to California where they will serve as Grand Marshals at the annual Thankgiving parade. Of course, we still don't know as to whether President Bush or other people in the White House will eat any other turkey for Thanksgiving. And in a final twist to the story, the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA - remember the nude protest by Pamela Anderson ?) sent Bush a turkey made of Tofu.

KFC symbol visible from outer space

Kentucky Fried Chicken has put up a giant mosaic of its founder and symbol (Colonel Sanders) in the Nevada desert. It seems that the logo has also been changed somewhat, with the apron becoming red.
The pic of the Colonel comprises 65,000 one-foot-square painted tiles laid out on a plot near Rachel, Nevada. Because of the size, the logo is visible from outer space, but unless there are aliens orbiting near the earth, we need not worry about aliens landing on earth hunting for a bucket of KFC's best. What might happen though is that astronauts on the space station might work up an excellent appetite.