Squirrel on rampage

One is afraid of big animals such as wild dogs, lions, tigers, snakes, etc. It is far easier to live in a city as such dangerous animals are not present in the city, and the only thing you need to be afraid in the city are other humans, whether the are muggers, careless drivers or junkies. You do find very cute animals in the city, such as small birds, puppies, cute cats, and even wilder animals such as squirrels and racoons. However, even such a small animal such as a squirrel can become dangerous:

An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.
The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

It takes a lot for a small animal such as this one to become agitated; doubtless there must have been some of irritation caused to the squirrel for it to become violent like this one did.

Firefighters on high

Imagine taking a drug test of people on government rolls, and finding that most of them tested positive; further imagine that this drug test was held after they had completed a job, and still they tested positive. Indignation would go high, and there would be screams of investigations, suspensions and firing of these people.
Now imagine that people got high on a job. Well, that has happened. Firefighters reporting to a fire in a wareouse also had around 2,000 pounds of marijuana burnt, and the fumes of these drugs were so strong, that even after protective masks, the fire fighters inhaled enough marijuana fumes to reach a condition where they would have failed drug tests:

Firefighters who spent half an hour fighting a blaze in which 2,000 pounds of marijuana went up in smoke breathed so much of it that they would have failed a drug test, a fire chief said.
Snider said Thursday the firefighters were exposed to so much marijuana smoke that they would not be able to pass a drug test, despite wearing air packs to prevent them from inhaling toxic or hazardous fumes.

This is also another sign of how much people are dedicated to doing the jobs that make us safe. Firemen have volunteered to enter fires from which people are desperate to escape, in order to do their duty of rescuing people trapped, and to put out the fire.

British Man jailed in Slovakia for jumping nude into a fountain

Well, he was actually jailed in May end, sentenced to 2 months in prison for jumping naked into a fountain during drunken revelry, was released early (after 10 days).
What happened earlier ? Well, this guy was due to be married on June 15, so during some pre-marriage celebration in Bratislava near the end of May, he obviously had too much to drink, and then jumped naked into a fountain. This sort of display was obviously not appreciated by the Slovakian police, who arrested him, and he was then sentenced to a 2 month prison sentence.
He looked all set to miss the marriage date, and then his parents rushed to Slovakia to help him, and the British Foreign Office intervened as well, and he was finally released a few days ago; presumably his marriage date stands.

Wheelchair man gets long truck ride

Not as simple as it sounds. This was actually a pretty scary thing that scared a number of observers. Imagine if you will, a truck speeding down a highway, with a man in a wheelchair being pushed by the truck at high speed, with the man hanging on for dear life.
They moved along like this for some time, with the man in the wheelchair whizzing by at a high speed, but thankfully, after some time the truck pulled over and bystanders came and rescued the man. What probably saved the man in all this? The good quality of the wheelchair and the seat belt that kept him safely in the wheelchair. This actually happened:

A wheelchair user has been taken for a high-speed ride along a US highway after his handlebars became tangled up in the front grille of a lorry.
The driver was completely unaware that he had a new passenger, kept in his wheelchair by a seatbelt

Elephant robbing motorists

You must have heard of elephants sometimes running crazy, destroying crops and maybe humans as well. But in another sign of how closely we have managed to get wild animals to integrate their life style with us (not a very good sign), an elephant in India that has got old stops cars and does not let them pass until the inhabitants have given it food. Refer this article:

An elephant in eastern India has sparked complaints from motorists who accuse it of blocking traffic and refusing to allow vehicles to pass unless drivers give it food, a newspaper has reported.
The Hindustan Times said Monday the elephant was scouting for food on a highway in the eastern state of Orissa, forcing motorists to roll down their windows and get out of the car.
"The tusker then inserts its trunk inside the vehicle and sniffs for food," local resident Prabodh Mohanty, who has come across the elephant twice, was quoted as saying. "If you are carrying vegetables and banana inside your vehicle, then it will gulp them and allow you to go."

Yet another sign of how much the human civilization has encroached on the domain of wild animals, where the elephant has chanced upon this technique to get easy food. This is a very imperfect balance, because there is a very real chance that one of the car inhabitants will irritate the elephant, and then the situation could turn ugly.

Border divides a library

You got to see this. There is a town in Vermont on the US - Canada border that has facilities on both sides of the border. So, for example, if you take the library, if you are at the front door, you are in the US, but walk to the circulation desk, and you are now in Canada. There is a white line on the floor that depicts the border. There are streets that cover both countries. For a long time, the cross-border controls were lax, but as these started to be misused, and US Border Control grew more active, this particular town and its uniqueness is coming into focus. Refer this article:

Step through the front door of the Haskell Library and you're in the United States. Walk across the carpeted floor to the circulation desk and you're in Canada. But if you sit down on the couch, you're back in the U.S. The 106-year-old Romanesque building, which straddles the international border, has enjoyed a kind of informal immunity from border restrictions through the years.
"There's been an increase in illegal activity, both north and south, in the last little while," said Mark Henry, the operations officer for the Border Patrol's Swanton sector, which runs across northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. "There have been some significant cases."
Under the crackdown, instead of parking their cars outside the library in Quebec and walking to the front door in the U.S., Canadian patrons would have to detour through one of two ports of entry linking the municipalities.
"For as long as I've lived here, the practice was if they were only going to the library, they didn't have to report," said village trustee Keith Beadle, who also sits on the library board. If the streets are closed, smugglers will just walk across lawns or through the woods, Beadle said.
Smugglers have learned the side streets are unguarded, and while surveillance cameras monitor activity on other streets, border agents on both sides can't always get there in time when illegal activity is spotted. Even though Derby Line and Stanstead are separate municipalities, they share water and sewer systems and emergency crews, which respond to calls on both sides of the border.

For a long time, people have lived their life without worrying about the actual border between the countries, but all that seems to be changing now. With more terrorism, more smuggling and more people knowing about the easy border crossing, things are going to get more official.

2 kids rob store using water gun

It's bad enough that you get robbers using a plethora of legally available weapons stealing from banks and stores, but it gets real bad when kids (and that too very young kids) steal from a store using a plastic gun. One wonders about the kind of education that these kids are getting, maybe they are watching the wrong stuff on TV. Refer this story:
Two kids, aged 11 and 14, using a water gun concealed in black tape stole cash from a discount store. They walked into the store, and demanded cash while showing the weapon, eventually fighting with the clerk and stealing the money.
They were arrested by police soon after, but it must be equally hard for the policemen, who would have seen hardened criminals, to witness such young kids displaying such behaviour. The kids will be charged with stealing using a weapon.