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 - 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 - Man in California buries son, learns son alive later

It's like a horror story, although the horror is more in terms of the psychological impact it has on the people. One of the worst experiences that they say that a parent can have is to witness or be told about the death of their children, and this is what this father had to experience.
One of their children (a man aged 57) had been suffering from mental illness and was living on the streets. Then his father got a call that their son had been found dead and that the police department had done verification of identity using fingerprints. In their shock, the family gathered together and did the burial for their son, and went through their grief. However, to their shock and relief, 11 days later, they got a call in which his son told the father that he was indeed alive, and the family learnt that the coroner had made a mistake in identification and that the son was alive (link to article):

Eleven days after laying his son to rest, Frank J. Kerrigan got a call from a friend. "Your son is alive," he said. "Bill (Shinker) put my son on the phone," Kerrigan said. "He said 'Hi Dad.' " Orange County coroner's officials had misidentified the body, the Orange County Register reported Friday. "When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them," Kerrigan said. "If he wasn't identified by fingerprints I would been there in heartbeat."

Weird news - Bangladeshi airport shows porn for 5 minutes, investigations on

In Islamic countries, the public display of porn and sex is a strict taboo. So, for example, somebody committing adultery can be punished by death under Sharia laws, and couple who have kissed in public or shown other emotions can be lashed or subjected to other penalties. It would be very difficult to believe that in such countries, there can be such a thing such as showing porn publicly (one can expect some severe penalties to happen to anybody who does such a thing). Well, consider the case of the airport in Bangladesh (a Muslim majority country) where a porn clip was shown for 5 mistakes (a grievous mistake no doubt, but still something that could cause some head chopping if it happened in Saudi Arabia) (link to article):

Travellers at Bangladesh's main airport were taken in by shock when a huge display screen meant to air programmes about the country showed a porn video, prompting the civil aviation authority to launch a probe into the incident. Bangladesh Civil Aviation Authority has launched an investigation into a scandal at the Hazrat Shahjalal Airport where the huge display screen aired for five minutes a pornographic movie, officials said today.
"An investigation is under way while the people responsible for the scandal were already taken to task," a Civil Aviation Authority spokesman told PTI without elaborating. Another official said the operator was handed down two months of jail term instantly after a summary trial by an on duty magistrate at the airport.

Weird news - Powerful missile sent as an ordinary parcel, from Afghanistan to Britain

One considers missiles as being very powerful, and they can do a great amount of damage. For example, the missile armed to Apache helicopters can do an incredible amount of damage to targets as powerful as tanks and enemy troops and weapons. One would consider that the transport of such weapons would be done with the greatest amount of care and without involving any danger. So how would you feel if you came to know that a live missile was sent over long distances by normal parcel post by mistake, and was only detected when the parcel was opened in Britain (link to article):

The 70 mm Flechette rocket travelled 3,500 miles from Afghanistan to a Royal Air Force base inside an ordinary package, triggering a full-scale alert, The Sun reported. The missile, used by Apache helicopter crews, is said to be one of the most powerful rockets in the world. When it was opened at Wattisham Airfield, in Suffolk , more than 70 defence workers had to evacuate as bomb disposal experts rushed to the scene.
Britain's ministry of defence documents show engineers servicing a gunship chopper at Camp Bastion declared its missile launcher broken. But they did not notice it had a missile in it.

Woman impregnated with wrong embryos, gives birth

Medical science has promised a lot of people in need of help; for childless couples, the prospect of being able to have children through in-vitro fertilization or through the help of a surrogate mother is a huge deal. However, once in a while, there are errors that happen. In this case, a couple was implanted with their embryo by a fertility clinic through in vitro fertilization, and was then informed that they had been implanted with the wrong embryo (a news that would have been horrifying to the couple, who were hoping to get a child through this technique). The couple finally decided that they would give the baby after birth to the natural parents, and, now the woman has finally given birth, and they are going to carry out this promise (link to article):

The couple said a fertility clinic implanted another couple's embryo into Carolyn Savage's uterus -- in essence, she became an unwitting surrogate for another family. Ten days after the procedure in February, they received a call from the clinic's doctor: "Carolyn is pregnant, but we transferred the wrong embryos."
They met with the baby's genetic parents and the DNA-related mother of the child came along for one doctor's appointment. In their statement after the birth, the Savage family congratulated the biological parents of the baby.

Such a decision requires a huge deal of courage and selflessness, and it is great to see that the couple have decided to go ahead with this decision.

Imagine shooting live bullets when fake ones were supposed to be used

This is the worst nightmare of most people in the defence services, especially during shows meant to showcase the abilities of the military. It is often necessary to stage events that are very realistic, such as the simulated saving of hostages from terrorists, fights with terrorists in urban landscapes, etc. In many such situations, the public can be very close by, having been already informed that the bullets being used are fake. Now imagine the panic and horror when these bullets are fired, but they are not fake, and are instead real ones. Such an incident happened recently in France, and resulted in punishments for many of the soldiers involved, including the moral-grounds resignation of the head of the French Army, General Bruno Cuche:

Paris: The head of France's army has resigned following a weekend shooting at a military show that injured 17 when real bullets were used instead of blanks, the French presidency said on Tuesday.
The defence minister, meanwhile, suspended the use of blank munitions at military shows for the public. Investigators are looking into Sunday's display of hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks in southern France. Most of those injured were civilians, and three were children.

This was apparently a mistake when the ammunition was being loaded; it however seems a clear case of negligence at the minimum since the concept of having live ammunition nearby when fake ammunition was supposed to be loaded (along with no cross-checking) seems a bit strange.