Weird news - Charter airline forces passengers to withdraw money from ATM's midway

Seems horrid. Imagine booking a charter airlines for your group, getting to the airport, getting all the formalities done, and finally taking off. You would have covered the most of your flight time relaxing, getting together with friends, and generally having a good time (and if you are on the return journey of your trip, you would be thinking about the good times that have been spent).
But would you ever think that at the midway flight stop, the airline would force you to withdraw additional money from any ATM that you could find, just so that you could complete your trip, else they would not leave the airport (and this is neither your departure nor your arrival airport).
What would you do in such a case ? You would mostly pay up, right ? You would be very angry, but you would pay up - which is what the people in this particular case also did (link to article):

A six-hour stay on the tarmac left passengers with no choice but to withdraw money from cash machines in the terminal building and pay the operator to complete the journey. The incident involved four chartered Austria-based carrier Comtel Air flights over the weekend and occurred during refuel stops in Vienna. Three of these have now reached Birmingham ; the other is said to be indefinitely delayed.
Dalvinder Batra, whose 80-year-old visually-challenged relative was forced to go without medicine during the ordeal, told the UK's Daily Mail website: "It is absolutely disgusting how they treated us. There are still people stuck out there. We have been told that the company has gone bust mid flight."

Weird news - Dropping an iPad from 1300 feet, and it still survives ..

... continues to work.
We are used to our electronic instruments being somewhat fragile, not able to take drops very well, and because they can be very expensive, any malfunction can hit us hard. In the recent past, with the introduction of Gorilla glass, the large touch screens are more resistant to impact and to damage from scratches. Only very recently my HTC phone fell down, and the volume rocker switch got twisted with loss in functionality.
As a result, there are a number of accessories that can reduce the chance of such devices being impacted due to falls or cuts, or even when they are kept in a pocket along with keys. But, imagine dropping the iPad from a plane and it still works; this requires a special kind of protection, such as the iPad covers at G-form (link to article):

Gadget sadists at G-Form, who make rather unattractive but undeniably tough cases for iPads, threw the tablet computer out of a plane from 1,300 feet, and it not only survived, the film on screen was still playing.
Previously, the company had thrown an iPad from 500 feet, and dropped a bowling ball on one, but the current test, choreographed using altimeters, is wince-inducing to watch, the Daily Mail reported.

Weird news - Being sentenced to a prison term for a Facebook entry

Earlier this year, England was struck by a large number of riots in multiple cities across the country. The riots were totally unexpected and stuck the country with horror at the ferocity, and it took the confused administration and police some time to tackle the riots and to bring order back. Post the riots, there was a massive push to strike back with ferocity at the people involved in the rights, with talk of removal of benefits to those who were involved, as well as passing sentences that were at the higher end of the typical sentences for such crimes.
These riots were also fanned by social media, with Twitter and Facebook being used for organizing people and passing on information about possible locations of riots. This usage of social media is also considered as involvement in the crime, so you had the police and investigating agencies getting involved in finding out who said what on Facebook, and using such investigation as a part of the case against them. Consider this case where a person was sentenced to 4 years for such a crime (link to article):

A British court on Wednesday sent a stern warning to thugs using social media to incite riots by sentencing a man to four years in jail after he admitted inciting public disorder on Facebook during riots in England.
Jamie Counsel, 25, set up a page called Bring the Riots to Cardiff, later changed to Bring the Riots to Swansea. The sentence should be a warning that anyone using modern media to incite riots would face stiff punishment, said the judge at Cardiff Crown court.

Weird news - Man digs up dead bodies, and turns them into mummies

People sometimes do such strange things that they puzzle everybody around them. This gets particularly horrid when it comes to such things such as dead bodies, where there is a morbid feeling with regard to dead bodies. In addition, even when a person is dead, there are some rights attached to a person, which dictates laws that prohibit mis-handling of dead bodies. In fact, people tampering with a dead body can face severe legal issues.
So when something happens such as this person, who dug up dead bodies at cemetaries (an offence by itself), where all of these were young girls, and then kept them like dolls. This created a furore in the region, since initially these digging up of graves was considered to be the work of extremist groups, and was finally blamed on this person (link to article):

Ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin said on Monday that the suspect from the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod dug up the bodies at several cemeteries in the region. The man, whose identity was withheld, dressed them in clothes dug up from the graves.
Gribakin said that the suspect is a historian who has authored several books. He said the arrest followed a police probe into the desecration of graves in the region, which was initially blamed on extremist groups. Nizhny Novgorod is located about 250 miles (400 kilometers) east of Moscow.

Weird news - A woman gets a huge phone bill due to data roaming charges

You must have heard of those stories where people get huge phone bills for roaming charges on their mobile phones; and you see people worrying about data plans when they go roaming. So, when somebody plans a trip abroad, they also do a lot of planning about their phone and internet data links, how to get the best plan that would not cost them a packet, and so on. Many of us think that this is strange, after all, how much extra cost would there be when you are on a roaming charge ?
Well, consider the fate of this lady. Her brothers depended on her for their phone bills, and neglected to change their data plans when they went out of their city, and then the lady was hit for a bill that exceeded $200,000 (and when the lady checked, the bill was found to be genuine). What a shock. It was only after some publicity that the phone company decided to be generous and reduce the bill to a much more manageable $2500 (link to article):

A South Florida woman opened up her monthly cell phone bill to find a balance due of $201,000-- and it wasn’t a typo.
Celina Aarons, who uses T-Mobile, usually sees a bill of about $175 per month. Her plan not only includes her phone, but her two deaf-mute brothers, the Associated Press reports. Her brothers communicate primarily through texting and also use their phones to watch videos.
But when her brothers spent two weeks in Canada, with their cell phones on and changed to an international plan, Aarons saw her bill jump to $201,000, the AP reports. They had sent more than 2,000 texts and downloaded videos, charging up close to $2,000 data charges at a time.

Weird news - Hot chilli contest causes hospitalization of contestants

There are always people who like to think that they can handle all sorts of situations, and then end up in trouble that other people have to handle. And we are not talking about the hikers who end up lost and have to be evacuated by rangers from some isolated site and so on. In this specific case, the situation was that a contest was arranged where it could be said that things would turn nasty.
So, consider a case where a contest was arranged for something that most people would stay away from; namely dishes in the form of curries where the amount of spice was such that it would affect most people. People who took part suffered a great deal due to the dangerous nature of the curries, with even the Red Cross people standing by unable to provide help. External emergency services were required, along with hospitalization (link to article):

Two people have been taken to hospital following the "world's hottest chilli" competition at an Edinburgh Indian restaurant.
Emergency services were called to the Kismot restaurant in St Leonards Street on Saturday afternoon after some competitors became "very unwell".
The competition involves people eating the "Kismot Killer" curry.
The Scottish Ambulance Service is now calling for a review into how the event is managed.

Weird news - Iranian actress sentenced to an year in jail and lashes

It is always bad to be generic, but it has typically been found that Islamic societies tend to be more conservative than western countries, frowning upon expressions that are fine with other countries. For example, Saudi Arabia tends to be very conservative on the rights of women, not even allowing them to drive, or to move around with men who are not related to them. Iran is also conservative, but it gets more difficult since Iran lives in the condition of paranoia, especially when it comes to something that is like the expression of freedom or against the power of the theocratic state. Consider how this actress was sentenced to a relatively harsh punishment for her portrayal of scenes from inside homes in Iran, and was objected to by the censors inside Iran (link to article):

Actress Marzieh Vafamehr has been sentenced to a year in jail and 90 lashes by an Iranian court for her role in an Australian film on the limits imposed on artists in the Islamic republic.
The film My Tehran for Sale which won the 2009 Independent Spirit Inside Film award and the jury award for best feature film at the Trimedia Film Festival in 2010 has been directed by Iranian-Australian Granaz Moussavi.
It was a production of Adelaide-based Cyan Films and the movie tells the story of a young actress in Tehran whose theatre work is banned by the authorities.