Global Oddities

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A New Zealand man had a novel idea when he found himself in a queue at a service station counter with no money, could he pay with marijuana instead?
Unfortunately he didn’t get a chance to discover whether the attendant would accept his offer, as the person behind him in the queue was a police officer, the Dominion Post newspaper reported.
The man’s attempt to buy two packets of M&Ms and a packet of potato chips to satisfy his “munchies” was caught short when he was arrested.
He must have been hungry, as he failed to notice the police patrol car sitting on the station forecourt being filled with petrol, the paper reported.
The 28-year old mechanic from the small North Island town of Carterton pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis in the Masterton District Court and was remanded for sentencing.
(Reporting by Adrian Bathgate; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

An elderly American tourist in Rome, Italy, was on Monday killed by train after he wandered onto the train tracks. The man, Frank Phel, was 74.

According to the Rome police, a conman befriended the dead man and his wife and offered them cups of cappuccino coffee which he laced with drugs. Thereafter, he robbed the couple.

Upon drinking the coffee Frank lost orientation and walked right onto the train tracks where he was killed.
Source: AP, May 26, 2008

A family in Germany’s western city of Aachen got a surprise visitor on Monday, May 19: It was a raging bull.

According to police spokesman, Paul Kemen, the bull charged through the family’s backdoor, surged into the living room, before taking its exit through the front door.

Although no member of the surprised family was injured by the bull, it left damages worth about 10,000 Euros or $15,000 as it tore furnishings in the house.

It was later learnt that the bull was part of a herd that escaped its owner at a nearby village. The bull was later shot dead.

Source: Reuters, May 19, 2008

Criminals appear to be having the last laugh in Mozambique, southern Africa, because the cops in the country are generally too fat to run after them after an operation.

According to the country’s Interior Ministry’s advisor, Pana Chande, the cops have to undergo serious physical training exercise to cut down on their weight and improve their health.

Pana had told the BBC that many of the cops have protruding bellies as a result of too much drinking and “some of them are so large it is affecting their health an ability to run.”

The training exercise will mostly involve running, gymnastics and simulating chasing criminals.

Source: BBC online, May 19, 2008

CONAKRY (Reuters) – More than 30 prisoners escaped from a jail in southeastern Guinea by using spoons to scoop a hole in the baked earth wall of their prison building which had been softened by rain, prison authorities said.

The 36 detainees made their escape this week after taking advantage of heavy rain which had fallen on the southeast city of N’Zerekore where the prison was located, the authorities, cited by state media in the West African country, said.

“We found that the detainees used spoons, once the wall was moistened, to dig a hole. They used their sheets and shirts to make a rope to climb down the right wall of the jail,” one of the warders told Guinean TV.

Many of Guinea’s old prison buildings were damaged during bloody riots which erupted across the country early last year during a strike by unions protesting against high inflation and the rule of veteran President Lansana Conte.

More than 130 people were killed, mostly civilians shot by security forces.

Source: Reuters, May 3, 2008

Bill Bramanti of South Chicago Heights, USA, loves his beer and showed it when he ordered for a casket in the shape of a beer can to be made for his funeral.

When the casket arrived from Panozzo Bros. Funeral Home in Chicago Heights, the 67-year-old beer lover did a fitting and told his friends that “I actually fit, because I got in here.” He went on to celebrate the arrival of the casket with a party for his friends.

Mr. Bramanti is the administrator of Glenwood village.

Source: AP, May 4, 2008

Authorities in The Royal Malaysian Police have come up with an innovative way of dealing with policemen and women who show signs of character troubles: they are to receive counseling from the police department’s section for religious and counseling matters.

The director of management in the 100,000-strong police, Dr. Hassan Haron, told reporters May 9th that about 800 police officers in the country have been identified with such character problems as not obeying their superior officers and reporting late for duty.

He disclosed that since such problems were not serious, the police personnel concerned will be made to undergo counseling.

Source: The Borneo Post Online – http://www.theborneopost.com – May 9, 2008

By Jon Hurdle Wed Apr 30, 4:13 PM ET
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Families who claim the corpses of more than 1,000 relatives were dismembered and sold in an illegal body-parts scandal sued funeral directors and others on April 29.

The class action suit represents hundreds of people who claim their relatives’ body parts were harvested for medical use without their consent.

It charges seven individuals, and the funeral homes and human tissue services with which they worked, with conspiracy, negligence and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The seven were indicted by a grand jury last September and accused of harvesting bones, skin and tendons in unsanitary conditions, and selling them to hospitals with the risk that they could infect patients who received them.

The defendants allegedly made $3.8 million from sale of body parts obtained in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey between February 2004 and September 2005 in an operation that was “ghoulish, greedy, dangerous and criminal,” the grand jury’s report said.

In all, the scheme took tissue from 1,007 bodies, including 244 from Philadelphia funeral homes.

Xochitl Parra’s is an ordinary 17-year-old girl with an extraordinary story about giving birth to her son, Alejandro.
Labor pains began last week in her home in Long Beach, California, and she went ahead and had her baby. Then she did the unbelievable by walking four blocks away to the hospital, with the child still attached to the umbilical cord.

Dr. Jose Perez, director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit who attended to Parra, praised her courage and said: “She was very clever. She knew what to do. She wrapped the baby up and walked over here.”

Parra said she could not call 911 for help because their home phone had been disconnected. Neither did she want to wake up the neighbors because the contractions began before dawn.

Source: AP, May 4, 2008

Steve Kreuscher is a US citizen who says God has helped him survive rough times, so he wants to change his name to “In God We Trust” in appreciation.

The 57-year-old bus driver from Zion, Illinois, also has another reason to change his name. He believes the growing number of atheists in the US might one day campaign for and succeed in removing the inscription: “In God We Trust” from the US dollar, so changing his name will also preserve that phrase just in case the atheists get it off the currency.

To underscore his seriousness, Kreuscher has filed a formal petition before a judge to change his name.

Source: Associated Press, May 4, 2008