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 - 10 year old boy shoots his mother dead, on trial

These are the sort of cases that both judges and juries dread to have. If you have a murder trial, where an adult has killed another person, you would not feel too much trouble in being part of such a trial, and even if it came to passing a judgment of execution in such a case, you would feel that you have gone through the proper process and done what needs to be done. However, this can get real tricky when you are dealing with a 10 year boy who is on trial for killing his own mother.
Typically, societies consider the age of 18 to be one where a person is considered to be an adult, and more important, when a person is considered of sound mind and capable of being responsible for their own actions. For somebody younger than that, and specially when somebody is like 10 years old, you would think that the child cannot be responsible for their own actions. What was more of a problem was that the 10 year old was in such anger after an argument with his mother, and equally important, had access to a gun with he was able to shoot his mother (link to news article):

An Ohio boy admitted he fatally shot his mother in the head with a rifle when he was 10 after what a relative described as an argument over chores. The boy, now 13, entered the equivalent of a guilty plea Monday in juvenile court. In January 2011, the boy went to a neighbor's house, called 911 and told the dispatcher he had shot his mother at their home in rural Holmes County, about 70 miles northeast of Columbus. "I shot my mom. I shot her with a gun," he said. At the time, his uncle said the boy and his mother had argued over carrying firewood.

Weird news - Man drunk, takes a trip on an airport conveyor belt

Most people have seen the conveyor belt at airports, the belt located behind the counter where your luggage is placed after you drop it at the desk. The conveyor belt is also where the luggage is picked up after you have completed your flight and want to get on your way. However, most people have no idea about where the luggage placed on the conveyor belt goes, with the presumption that the luggage passes through security and X-ray scanners before it gets sorted to the relevant flight.
Secondly, most people who get drunk during the flight actually get drunk by drinking too much during the flight, with very few people actually reaching the airport drunk. Also, airlines have got far more strict in terms of what they allow and what they do not, so if somebody is already drunk when boarding, an airline may actually restrict the person from boarding. But very few people take a trip like this person did (link to article):

A drunk Norwegian tourist raised a security alarm at Rome's Fiumicino airport after he fell asleep on a baggage belt and travelled 160 feet before being spotted by an X-ray scanner. The 36-year-old arrived at the international terminal of Italy's busiest airport at the end of last month with a backpack and a can of beer in his hand. The Norwegian was due to check in for a flight to Oslo and when he found no one on duty at the airline desk he leapt across the counter and fell into a deep asleep on the baggage belt with his bag beside him, the Daily Mail reported.

Weird news - Man kills his daughter because she did not smile at him

Sometimes it is difficult to write about something, something so weird that you cannot even imagine how somebody could do this. A parent is somebody who is supposed to protect their children, especially when the child is unable to protect themselves. In nature, the protective nature of parents is incredible, and they say that the biggest danger is standing between a mother bear and its children, since that would make you a threat to the young bears and the bear would act to remove all such dangers. In the case of humans, children need the support of their parents for many many years, till the time that they are in their late tears, and parents put in a lot of effort to ensure that their children get a better future.
In this case, a father felt that he was not able to make a bonding with his daughter, maybe due to the fact that she was living with her grandparents for some time; and given that he had an anger and attitude bad enough that he killed her for something that was not so important, it could be that his behavior towards her was never loving; but killing your own daughter could not be forgiven (link to article):

The man threw his daughter against a wall and then stomped on her because she never smiled at him, the prosecutor told the court. The girl died of fatal injuries in March 2010, 21 days before her third birthday. She was affected with pneumonia, which the court heard had been caused by the injury to her brain. The court heard the accused was not able to form a close bond with his daughter, and became "frustrated and angry" with what he thought was the spoilt behaviour of his child.

Weird news - Man bites and kills snakes in revenge after snake bit him

In areas that have forests or green land nearby and the temperature is more tropical, there are snakes to be found. And given the increased presence of humans in such areas (and especially with activities such as agriculture where there is a lot of disturbance of the ground), there is bound to be more interaction between humans and snake. And when these snakes are poisonous, when the snake feels threatened by some activity of the human, snake bites happen, which in turn can be dangerous. These cause a large number of people to die by snake bite in such regions, especially when these regions can be away from medical facilities that can provide the anti-venom.
But there are far fewer cases of humans attacking the snake after the snake has bit, such as in this case where the farmer who was bit by the snake (a non-poisonous one) got angry and got after the snake, biting it to death (which is not at all a common reaction after being bit by a snake) (link to article):

A Nepalese farmer who was bitten by a venomous snake took revenge by sinking his teeth into the reptile and killing it, police said on Thursday. Mohamed Salmo Miya was farming near his village 200 kilometres (125 miles) southeast of Kathmandu when he encountered the deadly common cobra, district police chief Uma Prasad Chatrubedi told AFP. "A farmer in Bardanga village has killed a white cobra with his teeth out of anger," he said. "The snake bit him while he was working in his paddy field on Tuesday evening and the man chased it and killed it."

Weird news - Traveling long distances to get the perfect haircut

If you find a shop that seems to appeal to you, which provides you the right amount of service or the materials that you are buying (say a favorite brand), then it is possible that you would go some amount of extra distance to get to that shop. But at some point, when the distance becomes large, you would probably decide that the extra effort and time would not be worth it, and you would select some shop nearby. However, from time to time, you will find people who are willing to spend time and effort to go the extra distance just because they cannot bear to move away from whatever they are getting. Suppose that you had a favorite baker, and then the baker moved to another part of the town, you might just time your visits to that part of time such that you get your favorite supplies on a regular interval.

But what would you say when somebody is so much in love with the quality of haircut and the type of attention that you would travel hundreds of kilometers multiple times a year, just to get to a hair stylist who moved away from near your neighborhood (link to article):

A good haircut can be hard to find! A loyal British customer has clocked up a phenomenal 38624 kilometres, equivalent of the Earth's circumference, visiting the same hairdresser for the past 37 years. Susan Parker-Jones from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, travels 644 kilometres six times a year for a haircut, to a stylist she trusts with her locks. The guest house owner embarks upon her trip at least six times a year to get her hair-styled by Jo Sparks, who has been cutting her hair since 1975, the 'Daily Mail' reported. Parker-Jones has been making the journey for the past two decades since Sparks moved from Shrewsbury to Kettering in Northamptonshire.

Weird news - Man jumps into tiger enclosure in zoo, escapes with injuries

If you see programs about wildlife or see movies where wild animals are involved, you will understand the sheer power of these animals. They can be very dangerous, and their instincts are not the same as that of humans - which means that they can attack you for reasons that seem natural to them, but which may be dangerous to you. Which is why people are advised to be careful when they are near wild animals, and when they are in the zoo, there are enough protection measures to prevent people from getting close to these wild animals.
However, you cannot make everything fail safe, and there have been cases where people have climbed over protective measures and entered the cages of animals such as bears, tigers, lions, etc, and have been mauled, and sometimes have died. So, it is hard to understand the motives of this person who made an effort to jump into the enclosure from a monorail that moves over the zoo at tree height (link to article):

A man was mauled by a 400-pound tiger after leaping from a moving monorail train and plummeting over a protective fence at the Bronx Zoo, authorities said. The man was alone with the tiger for about 10 minutes Friday before he was rescued by zoo officials, who used a fire extinguisher to chase it away. He suffered bites and punctures on his arms, legs, shoulders and back and broke an arm and a leg. The tiger mauling happened at around 3 p.m. in the Wild Asia exhibit, where a train with open sides takes visitors over the Bronx River and through a forest, where they glide along the top edge of a fence past elephants, deer and a tiger enclosure.

The man was lucky to have escaped with whatever injuries he suffered.

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 - Man spent money received accidentally from bank

Suppose a person is living a middle class life, and then suddenly gets a large amount of money deposited into his account. The next steps depend on the amount of money. Some months back, there was a case where an ATM in Britain was loaded with 20 pounds bills rather than 10 pound bills, and a number of people benefited before the bank realized. However, the bank decided not to pursue cases with the people who had benefited, letting them take the extra money. But when the money involved is much higher, the bank will take decisive action.
So it was in this case where a man received a huge amount of money in his account, and over a period of time, withdrew the money before the bank realized. And before the bank could take back the money from him, he went on the run along with his girl-friend, with the bank getting him declared as an international fugitive, spending more than 2 months on the run before he was arrested in Hong Kong where he had run away from New Zealand. Now he is back on trial (link to article):

A New Zealand gas station owner turned international fugitive has been sentenced to four years and seven months in prison after stealing millions of dollars accidentally deposited into his bank account. Hui "Leo" Gao, dubbed the "accidental millionaire," sparked a global manhunt after fleeing New Zealand with his girlfriend Kara Hurring in April 2009. Gao had applied for overdraft financing for the gas station he co-owned with his mother in Rotorua, New Zealand, court documents said. The bank approved his application with a $100,000 limit, however while inputting the figure a bank employee made a clerical error and gave him access to 100 times the intended amount.

Weird news - Things that are found in people's stomach

Once in a while, you would read about strange stuff that is found in the stomach's of people. There are those performers who eat glass, there are others who chew chalk and paper, but what do you say to someone who eats their own hair, others who eat cutlery from wherever they have gone for a meal. Most people cannot even contemplate eating anything other than proper food, since their stomachs would revolt against eating something different. In addition, when people eat food that has gone a bit bad or similar, their stomach can go bad and they can fall sick.
Here is an article that talks about the various items that people have in their stomachs, and some of the would be surprising to you even when you would have read similar articles in the past (link to article):

The baby recently ate what her great grandmother and guardian, Freida Deweese, thought was "a piece of candy," and wound up in emergency surgery at Texas Children's Hospital. That's because the child hadn't eaten sweets — she had swallowed a Water Balz toy, which begins around the size of a marble and grows to up to 400 times its original size when placed in water. A felt-tipped pen 78 pieces of cutlery A 10-pound hairball An entire magnet set More than 400 coins A man's twin brother

Weird news - Hacking into a bank without any special skills

Banks routinely tout their extra high security, with most instances talking about bit length (256 and above) encryption keys. Given the nature of business that banks are involved in, ensuring that there is a high amount of security is also critical. Also, given today's fast paced world, there is a need for banks to ensure that they remain on all the time, with no delays. A downtime can cause problems to many customers of the bank, and can cause them to take their business to other banks along with penalties to the bank concerned, especially if their security measures are not as strong as they should be.
So what do you do when it seems that a person can stop a bank's operations or trigger a stoppage on the operations of the bank, such as in this case when a person called into a number that was tied to a back end service machine in the bank and entered some codes that caused the software to trigger an alarm and stoppage of services. The person was arrested by the police, but finally exonerated by the court after there was no malice detected in the 'hack' (link to article):

A Frenchman has been cleared of wrongdoing after a court accepted he accessed the Bank of France's internal telephone systems by accident. An unnamed 37-year-old Breton longed to avoid premium-rate calls while using Skype back in 2008, and set about hunting for a cheap-rate gateway number to the public networks. Judges sitting in a criminal court of Rennes, northwest France, dismissed the case against the man on Thursday, citing the prosecution team's failure to demonstrate any criminal intent in his actions.

Weird news - Debate about taxpayers paying for a sex change operation

This is the season where there is a lot of pressure to control costs, not to spend in ways that seems excessive and out of control. So when there are cases which show taxpayers money being spent on something that seems outrageous, there can be a lot of resentment about such expenses. Further, there is a section of the population that believes that Governments really do not make too much effort to cut expenses and watch their spending, and that it is only public outrage that causes politicians to make efforts to check the flab in Government spending.
This gets more interesting when this relates to expenses on people who are in jail, since a section of the population would not want excessive money to be spent on such people; after all they have committed some crime or the other and that is why they are in jail. If then there is un-necessary money being spent on them, it is just an example of how Governments do not try to control money. This would be all the more true when you consider the following case where a convict is asking for state money for a sex change operation (link to article):

In a potentially groundbreaking ruling, a federal judge has ordered Massachusetts to let a transgender prisoner undergo a sex-change operation — and make taxpayers foot the bill. In 1993, Kosilek, who then went by Robert, was convicted in the 1990 murder of his wife, Cheryl Kosilek. Also in 1993, Kosilek officially changed his name to Michelle. Diagnosed with severe gender identity disorder, Kosilek has been living as a woman in an otherwise all-male prison in Norfolk, Mass., for the last two decades. Wolf now says that even though his ruling is "unprecedented," the surgery is the only way doctors see to adequately treat Kosilek's condition, and that denying her request would amount to a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Wolf, who was appointed to the bench in 1985 by Ronald Reagan, writes that the government can't deny an inmate necessary medical treatment just because it is controversial and "unpopular."

Weird news - Man shoots wife so that she can avoid military deployment

Serving in the military means sometimes making tough choices. Armed forces have to deploy in different zones, sometimes far away from their families. For members of the US military, the world wide deployment of the US armed forces (including in war zones) along with rotational deployment means that members of the military, who can be in the country can be deployed in world wide zones, deployed for months altogether. For those members of the military who have been spending many months with their families, these orders of deployment can seem like a shock, and lead a few to wonder how to avoid these deployment orders.
But this lady took it a bit extreme, wanting to avoid deployment at all costs, and she did by getting shot in the legs in an intruder attack. However, on further investigation, it turned out that this attack was actually done by her husband on her request, and after this, criminal charges have been filed against both of them (link to article):

Police said Groomes allegedly claimed an intruder shot her early Friday while her husband and two children slept. Police responded to their home at about 3:30 a.m. She told investigators the alleged intruder fled out a back door on foot. But police said an investigation found that she convinced her husband to shoot her to avoid military service. Christopher Groomes was later arrested on a gun charge and booked into the Bossier City Jail. Judy Groomes was issued a summons on a criminal mischief charge for allegedly filing a false police report.

Weird news - Swedish man discovered after 2 months in a snow isolated car

In many cases, people get lost in the wild outdoors without any form of support. The ability of a person to retain onto their life, even in adverse conditions continues to surprise people all the time. When somebody gets lost in the outdoor without any form of food or drink support, you would expect unfortunately for them to not survive for too much outside, so people feel very good and happy when those stories come out where somebody has survived for a long period of time in the outdoor without any form of support.
Consider the following article where this Swedish man was lost outdoors, in freezing temperatures and without any food or drink, and was then found alive. This was a remarkable story, and you need to admire the fact that the person managed to survive outside for so much time (link to article)

"We received word yesterday (Friday) that a person had been found in a snow-covered car deep in the woods, more than 1.5 kilometres (nearly a mile) from the main road," Ebbe Nyberg, a duty officer in the northern Vaesterbotten county, told AFP. 

A man on a snowscooter had noticed the top of the car on the deserted and snowfilled forest road, not far from the northern town of Umeaa, just south of the Arctic Circle, and after clearing off some of the snow had peered inside. 

"He saw movement and realised there was probably a person in there and called the police," Nyberg said, adding that rescue services and an ambulance that had been belted to drive on the snow had rushed to the scene. 

Weird - Businesses being able to know information about people before family members

A couple of years back, there was a story about how a researcher had a challenge; how to identify a person based on their search patterns. After all, what a person searches for reveals to some extent clues to a person, and putting together all the details for a person in terms of their search helped the researcher get details of the person, to the extent that the actual person was identified by the researcher.
There is a lot of hoopla about privacy details, with the amount of details being recorded by search engines, social networks such as Facebook, and online stores that are integrated with these search engines; but the normal citizen is not so worried about such details. Read the details of this story, which worried the giant store Target so much that they tried to stop the details of this story from emerging (link to article):

Every time you go shopping, you share intimate details about your consumption patterns with retailers. And many of those retailers are studying those details to figure out what you like, what you need, and which coupons are most likely to make you happy. Target, for example, has figured out how to data-mine its way into your womb, to figure out whether you have a baby on the way long before you need to start buying diapers.
What Target discovered fairly quickly is that it creeped people out that the company knew about their pregnancies in advance.

One can be sure that it sounds creepy.

Online Privacy (Issues in the Digital Age)	Online Privacy: A Reference Handbook	Privacy Lost: How Technology Is Endangering Your Privacy

Weird news - Door to door magazine salesman exhibits shocking behavior

There is an increasing air of insecurity that shows up in today's world. Parents are more scared for their children, for the safety of the children, and so on. Gated communities keep on popping up in more cities, people are warned against strangers. Some of the common stories relate to not letting strangers into the house for any reason, with the fear that once they come into the house, some trouble could happen.
Consider the following weird story, where a door to door magazine seller came into the house and made a sales pitch which was astounding, and liable to get the seller a jail term; you would never think that a normal person would make such demands as the person was making (link to article):

The man, Jerad Michael (pictured at left), who was peddling magazine subscriptions, allegedly forced his way into a woman's home, and refused to leave unless the woman either "submitted to drug use and sexual activity" or bought what he was selling, reports TV Station WCYB in Bristol, Va.
The woman said that she bought the magazines and promptly called the police. Arnold was charged with common law robbery, and was booked under a $20,000 bond.

Weird news - Prisoners in Kyrgyz stitch up their mouths in jail in a protest

Protest can take many novel forms. The most common form of protest that people in jail employ is the hunger strike, whereby people start indefinite hunger strikes or a group of prisoners go on a relay hunger strikes, with the expectation that such a step would force the authorities to agree to some of their demands. In some cases, this works, and in other cases, people have died with hunger strikes in jail.
In some other cases, the protest by prisoners takes a more violent form, with prisoners going to the extent of a riot in jail, sometimes causing riot police or the army to step in to stop such riots. However, in recent times, protests are taking on more unusual forms, such as this case where the prisoners sewed their mouths shut (link to article):

Over 400 Kyrgyz prisoners stitched up their mouths Tuesday as part of a nationwide hunger strike that has spread throughout the country's pre-trial detention facilities, Kyrgyz human rights ombudsman Tursunbek Akun said.
The protest follows a riot in mid-January during a routine cell check in one of Bishkek's pre-trial detention centres, when inmates started a fire and some slashed their wrists, protesting violence from the prison staff and visitor restrictions.

Weird news - Man kills his own children after estrangement with his wife

In today's world, marriages are made easily, but can also get broken far more easily. This is a far cry from medieval times where the church refused to let divorces happen, and a bad marriage still meant an existing marriage. With the number of broken marriages increasing, there are more tensions due to children and the issues related to who gets to keep the children as part of divorce proceedings.
However nasty such divorce proceedings go, it is in the very rare case that such proceedings lead to violence, and even less so that the father actually kills his own children and that too in such a brutal manner, by knifing them to death (link to article):

A jilted man in Britain killed his daughter and son by slitting their throats to hurt his estranged wife as he was about to be evicted from their flat. Jean Francis Say, 62, murdered his eight-year-old daughter Regina and son Rolls, ten, when he had custody of them for the weekend, the Sun reported Thursday.
He carried out the killings shortly after receiving a letter confirming that he was being kicked out of the family's three-bedroom property where he lived alone. His estranged wife Adjoua had moved out with the children six months earlier. So, Say wasn't entitled to the flat any longer.

Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce [Paperback]	He's History, You're Not: Surviving Divorce After 40 [Paperback]	The Breakup Bible: The Smart Woman's Guide to Healing from a Breakup or Divorce [Paperback]

Weird news - New carnivorous plant found by scientists

The common association of plants is that they grow in their place, taking in sunlight and being easily affected by factors such as weather, the grazing action of animals, or even somebody just starting to cut the plants. The number of people who know that animals can be carnivorous as well (just some selected plants) is very low, with some of these plants being the pitcher plant or the Venus fly trap, which actually catch insects and other small creatures.
But as scientists keep on finding new plants, it always astounds people about the complexity of life in the plant world as well, with plants being able to adapt to different conditions, and also having evolved to not only make energy from sunlight and nutrients, but also be able to eat insects (link to article):

Scientists have discovered a new carnivorous plant which has sticky leaves beneath the ground to help it capture and digest worms. The rare plant Philcoxia minensis is found in Brazil's tropical savannahs region which is rich in biodiversity and highly in need of conservation.
They fed the plant nematodes loaded with the isotope nitrogen-15, atoms of which have one more neutron than regular nitrogen-14. Then, they placed these Caenorhabditis elegans worms on top of underground leaves of plants kept in a lab setting.
Chemical analysis of the leaves that had been covered in nematodes revealed significant amounts of nitrogen-15, suggesting the plant broke down and absorbed the worms.

Spoonleaf Sundew Plant -Drosera spathulata- Carnivorous	The Savage Garden: Cultivating Carnivorous Plants	Growing Carnivorous Plants [Illustrated]

Weird news - Train goes on the wrong path, and then backs up

When you see vehicles on the road, there is always a possibility of losing the way, and getting to a wrong place. In fact, this happens often enough when a person is not familiar with the place, and can take wrong directions and end up somewhere else. After all, the way a vehicle can go is constrained only by the road surface available.
But consider the case of a train, the train moves on a track, so it can only go where the track goes; and if it steps off the track, it's mobility is very limited, almost not being able to go anywhere. It is people who move the connections between tracks that decides where the train can go, and so it has to be a human mistake if the train goes elsewhere other than where it was supposed to go.
So it was surprising when the passengers of a train found themselves going backward, and that was because the railways authority found that the train had gone off in a wrong direction and hence needed to be called back (link to article)

It was a good 6-7km before the error was spotted and the 12339 Coalfield Express started backing up slowly. Passengers knew something was wrong when they started going back the way they had come. Red-faced Eastern Railway officials admitted that the mistake could have led to a major accident. Train services have been badly affected in the east since morning due to dense fog.
It was 100 metres from Talit when station staff realized that the Coalfield Express had lost its way. The train was stopped at 7.30pm by "alert railwaymen", an official said. "There was no possibility of a head-on collision. However, had the train moved further ahead, its pantographs could have got entangled as it is a non-electrified section. It seems that those in charge mistook the Coalfield Express for some other train," an official from Burdwan Jn said.