Weird news - Going crabbing and getting major infection

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

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

Weird news - Cockroach up the nose and into the skull

It is the stuff of horror movies, where an insect or a giant invasion of insects, or an 'alien' in space gets inside the human body (or in movies such as the 'Mummy' where an Egyptian insect gets inside the skin and cause huge damage); but it apparently happens from time to time. So, for example, doctors have had to do delicate extractions of insects and small creatures from inside the nostrils or the ears where these creatures have climbed inside (typically when the subjects have been sleeping). Now, inside, these creatures are still alive, and movie, giving rise to dreadful feelings in the patient; and it is only in hospital that such conditions are medically cured and the invading insect or creature is removed.
Consider the following case where a cockroach climbed in through the nose, and the lady afflicted, could feel the cockroach moving inside her. She went to one hospital, referred to a second and then a third and finally when a scan was done and then an endoscopic examination, could doctors determine the source of her discomfort. There was something inside her head, and it was moving. Finally the doctors managed to fish inside her head and retrieve the insect (link to article):

She was soon referred to a second hospital, where doctors suspected she might be suffering from a nasal growth. At a third hospital, doctors recommended a scan, and told her the discomfort may be coming from "a foreign body that seemed to be mobile," The Times of India reported. Finally, in her fourth doctor visit - at Stanley Medical College Hospital - doctors used an endoscope to find the culprit: a blob with a pair of antennae. "It was a full grown cockroach," M.N. Shankar, the head of the ear, nose and throat department, told the Times of India. "It was alive. And it didn't seem to want to come out."

Weird news - Family kicked off flight because cut on daughter's face cited as hazards

In the light of the 9/11 attacks, a lot more authority was given to the captain and the crew of the flights, and any disturbances during the flight were treated more seriously. So if there was somebody who was disturbing the flight or causing problems to the crew, the captain could land the place at the nearest possible airport where the local police would take away the person causing the disturbance, and that was that. So, there were misunderstandings, people who tried to act funny by speaking jokes about bombs in the flight were reported by co-passengers and captains would refuse to let the flight go until such a person was taken off the flight; in other cases, people were turbans and speaking languages other than English were reported and forced off the flight. There were genuine cases, but a lot more cases about misunderstandings.
However, sometimes things goes beyond such cases and people have to suffer a lot of inconvenience when something like this happens. In the following case, a family was forced to be moved out of the aircraft when the crew saw a small cut on their daughter's cheek and worried that this could be a health hazard when the flight was in the air. The family was embarrassed at being forced off the plane, and had to make their own way since the next flight was only 3 days later. They also had no option since the crew threatened to call the police (link to article):

A British family was kicked off a local plane flight because the pilot reportedly thought a small cut on their toddler’s face was a health and safety hazard. John Maitland, 33, and his partner, Laura Bishop, 36, were traveling with their 19-month old daughter, Robyn, between the Isle of Jersey and Newcastle, England this month when they boarded an easyJet flight, Sky News reported. A stewardess noticed a scrape on Robyn’s cheek that she got after falling on a radiator while on vacation. The couple did not think the small cut was serious. The stewardess alerted the pilot to the injury and the family was told they had to exit the plane.

Weird news - Man wins jury award for eating too much popcorn

You would keep on reading stories about how some of the ingredients in modern food can cause health problems, about how artificial additives to food can cause issues to the body depending upon the quantity that one is exposed to, and so on. Over a period of time, the food industry has invented a number of items that makes food look better, maybe even taste better and last for longer periods of time. From time to time, these inventions also end up causing problems to a section of consumers, and then there are the cases where people don't know that stuff that they can eat has the potential to cause them to fall ill.
Consider the case where popcorn has been treated with a chemical to make it more buttery and is found in microwave popcorn. People working in popcorn factories are exposed to such chemicals in high enough conditions that it can cause problems, but bet you did not know that. What could you further unease is that a person who ate this popcorn in high enough quantities was also affected and filed a case claiming impact to health and won millions in damages (link to article):

A Denver man has just won $7.2 million in damages from the makers and sellers of his favorite snack — microwave popcorn. Wayne Watson, 59, ate bags of the stuff every day for years, and developed a potentially fatal condition known as "popcorn lung." What is this odd-sounding ailment, and is the company that made the treat really to blame? It's relatively common in people who have been exposed to high levels of diacetyl, an artificial flavoring used to give popcorn a buttery taste. Workers in factories that make microwave popcorn are the ones who usually suffer from it. The Centers for Disease Control recommends that anyone subjected regularly to the chemical wear a respirator and get regular breathing tests. Hundreds of popcorn-factory workers have sued over diacetyl exposure — winning settlements as high as $34 million — but Watson was the first consumer to go to court.

Weird news - Chinese boy unable to afford iPad, sells his kidney

One does not know whether this is weird news or stupid news. In our current modern generation, there is a craze to have the most modern gadgets, and there is a lot of peer pressure dealing with the same issue. So, for example, if somebody got a new phone, there will be a lot of comparison with other people, and you would find that some of the peer group will find themselves under pressure to also get a new phone.
However, this can take a strange and tragic turn when the peer pressure gets to so much that people lose their sense of reasoning, and want to do anything to get hold of such gadgets. For buying a new desired gadget, you can consider pooling up your savings, or even trading in some of the items you already own, but to do something as dangerous and life-threatening as selling one of your kidneys is unheard of, but this boy in China did this, and now his family is desperate to get him some help (link to article):

Zheng found an agent ready to buy his kidney and travelled to Hunan province in central China to undergo surgery in a local hospital. With the 22,000 yuan ($3,900) he was paid, Zheng bought a new iPad 2 and iPhone and then returned home, according to a report on the Dongfang TV channel Thursday.
"Xiao Zheng returned home with a computer and a new Apple phone. We do not have the money for such expensive gadgets. At first, he did not want to tell me where he got that much money from. Later he confessed he had sold his right kidney to buy these things," his mother told the channel.

Weird news - Woman wakes up when being carried to her funeral, but dies later

Imagine that a person is being carried to her funeral, to the burial grounds; and then the person who is being carried suddenly wakes up ? Such an occurrence has the potential to shock the mourners, and if any of them are elderly or otherwise have a heart condition, this can cause people to have heart attacks.
Further, if the person has been declared dead by doctors, and is being taken to the burial grounds; but if still alive, then they are missing urgent medical attention, something that could actually worsen their health and plausibly lead to their death (link to article):

A woman, who was declared dead by doctors and whose body was being taken in a procession to the burial grounds, suddenly stirred and stood up sending shivers down the spine of relatives and others present here on Thursday.
She had been admitted to King George's Hospital after she collapsed in the house while attending to her daily chores on Wednesday. The callous KGH doctors had declared her dead and even issued a death certificate. After her `rebirth,' the family later took Varalakshmi to a corporate hospital in a 108 vehicle on Thursday morning. A relative, Nageswara Rao, said the 108 staff noticed her pulse and shifted her to a private hospital where she succumbed later.

Man's lung problems caused by bits of plastic spoon

For some time now, there has been a constant push that fast food is not healthy, with its focus on sugars, fried food, and non-healthy ingredients. However, even if a person knew all that and accepted it, here is another way in which fast food affected a person.
A person had been feeling ill all these years, and when he finally got some investigations and expert medical advice, he found that it was a fragment of a plastic spoon that had finally ended up in his lungs that was causing him the ill-health (link to article):

His doctor found the spoon after looking into his lungs with an endoscope, a medical instrument with a long, thin tube containing a light and a video camera.
"He explained that there was an object down there, and it had writing on it," Manley said. "It spelled out 'Wendy's' on one side and 'hamburgers' on the other, and I was a little floored."

Using a powerful magnet in a heart operation

When a patient's life is at stake, medical personnel can do anything, take any measure to save the life of the patient. Consider the case of a patient who suddenly finds himself in mortal danger because of a needle in their heart. While sleeping, this guy suddenly had a sharp sewing needle piercing his body and getting to the muscles around the heart, with the tip actually entering the heart. The danger was that if the needle got into the blood stream (it was only 4 cm long), it could move to other portions of the body, causing damage wherever it went (link to article):

Turning in his bed, he felt a sharp pinch on the left side of his chest. It was a needle that had pierced halfway into his heart. "I suddenly woke up and saw a small portion of the needle protruding from my chest. But as I bent forward to pull it out, the needle penetrated further in," said the Jammu resident.
With each contraction, the needle was sliding deep inside the heart. It is difficult to locate a thin 3-4 cm long needle in the huge chunk of muscles. We couldn't cut open the thick layer of muscles around the left ventricle, as it would have caused a lot of trauma to the heart. We decided to enter the heart through the usual procedure. We were lucky as the tip of the needle had pierced the wall of the left ventricle. When I peeped inside the valve in the left side of the heart, I could only see the tip of the needle," said Dr Mishra. As a major portion of the needle was still stuck in the muscles, Dr Mishra decided to use a magnet to pull the needle inside the valve. "We could get a grip on the tip of the needle with our surgical instruments. That is why, decided to use a magnet to pull it out slightly before extricating it," said Dr Mishra.

Weird: To-be-bride bride wants to reduce weight, but then dies of crash dieting

In a tragic story that underlines the problems with going on crash diets without regard to the innate health of a person, a bride-to-be wanted to quickly reduce weight before marriage so that she felt that she would get more respect. However, even a weight loss program that was said to be medically monitored did not help, and she eventually dies of a probable heart stoppage due to her low daily calorific consumption. Learn more at this article (link):

It was revealed at an inquest that Samantha Clowe, 34, was “fit and well” when she started the diet, but passed away 11 weeks later, after losing three stone from her original 17st 6lb. Clowe, a metal researcher, had got her GP’s approval before she started the LighterLife diet of special soup, bars and shakes.
Pathologist Dr Alfredo Walker said a post-mortem failed to establish a cause of death. “It may be related to her low calorie diet and weight loss,” he said. Coroner David Hinchliff, who recorded a narrative verdict, said Clowe probably died from cardiac arrhythmia, when the heart stops.

This is also a warning that being obese is also a major reason for a enhanced chance of higher health problems, including the very serious ones.

Being able to prevent cancer in your babies

For some years now, science has been promising many changes in the field of medical sciences. This includes determining problems in many different areas, trying to find solutions for them, and so on. One area that has raised ethical issues is about the field of applying genetic cures in the field of embryos. There is a fear that eventually, without resolving such ethical debates, these advances in the field of science will be used to select 'designer' babies. The following is an example of a case where advances in medical science were used for a good cause:

A woman has conceived Britain’s first baby guaranteed to be free from hereditary breast cancer. Doctors screened out from the woman’s embryos an inherited gene that would have left the baby with a greater than 50% chance of developing the cancer. The woman decided to have her embryos screened because her husband had tested positive for the gene and his sister, mother, grandmother and cousin have all had the cancer.
The 27-year-old British mother, who asked not to be named, says that after seeing all her husband’s female relatives suffer from breast cancer, she felt she had to take action to save their children from the same plight. Any daughter born with the gene would have had a 50% to 85% chance of developing breast cancer. The couple’s doctor, Paul Serhal, medical director of the Assisted Conception Unit at University College London hospital, said the breakthrough gives parents the option of avoiding passing a high risk of breast cancer on to their children.

This is very good news, letting people avoid the pain of not being able to prevent the chances of an enhanced risk of the disease passing onto their children.