Waking in the night, a 71-year-old man in Rome discovered a prowler who had become engrossed in a book from a bedside table. Though the burglar, 38, managed to climb back down the balcony to freedom, this was only a temporary respite. He was arrested shortly afterward and relieved of his ill-gotten gains, including a swag bag of luxury clothing from another burgled residence. Giovanni Nucci, the author of the relevant tome on Homer's Iliad, has offered to provide some jail-time reading, stating: 'I'd like him to be able to finish it.'
KnowBe4 is a computer-security firm that emerged red-faced after a new hire proved unsuitable - both as a 'principal software engineer' for the internal AI team and as a subtle spy for North Korea. As soon as the man had received his company-issued Mac workstation after passing the interview and background checks, 'it immediately started to load malware' with the aid of a Raspberry Pi, according to company founder Stu Sjouwerman. Later in this 'organizational learning' incident, KnowBe4 recognised that the worker had adopted a stolen identity and supplied an 'AI-enhanced' photo.
Before take-off from Miami, an American Airlines flight noticed that a passenger was bleeding through bandages around his forehead. When asked to change the dressing, Eugenio Ernesto Hernandez-Garnier refused, then stated that the bleeding was merely from a hair transplant, and finally said that he didn't have a new bandage. Citing concerns about bodily fluids, the crew then asked the 27-year-old man to leave the aircraft. He remained adamant that he shouldn't have to 'go out because somebody don't like what you have on your head', with travel companion Yusleydis Blanca Loyola, 32, adding that if he couldn't return to Las Vegas, 'no-one else can either'. Both were arrested and removed from the plane.
In other travel fun, a man whose mid-morning flight from Sydney was rolling in at a gate at the Melbourne airport demonstrated impatience by sprinting to the emergency exit and opening it. Ignoring the automatically deployed slide, he walked along the wing and climbed down the engine to the ground. The man, who had already earned the Jetstar flight crew's attention for demanding alcohol and engaging in vaping, was restrained by at least three ground staff, and police apprehended him for 'alleged aggressive behavior and breaching aircraft safety protocols'.
Something seemed fishy about a detail-thin story I chose not to run last time, in which cow-herders found an emaciated American woman chained up in a forest in the Indian state of Maharashtra. For instance, while she claimed that her husband had dragged her there to die, she was carrying her identity documents and a mobile phone. The police now report that the woman, identified as decidedly non-married Lalita Kayi, admitted to hatching a plan to feign kidnapping and torture after her visa expired. Kayi, 50, used some of her dwindling funds to buy locks and chains, and now the state is paying for her psychiatric care.
Our next item, arriving via Kip, centres on a woman who caused drama
by ordering a $15.99 all-you-can-eat special at an Applebee's
restaurant in Portage, Indiana, and proceeding to share it with the
others at her table. This breach of all-you-can-eat rules prompted
the staff to charge her party for two 15.99 specials, whereupon the
group refused to pay. Shouting, threats, and cops followed.
Outside the restaurant, an officer pointed out the words 'Per
Person' on the menu, but neither this nor a friend clamping her hands
over the woman's mouth mollified the 28-year-old principal aggressor,
who ended up arrested for misdemeanour disorderly conduct. Meanwhile,
the friend went inside to settle the entire bill.
Eugene Robertson is another disgruntled restaurant visitor. When the
worker at an Aurora, Colorado, Burger King's drive-through window refused
his means of payment - drugs - the logical response clearly was to
point a handgun at the worker and make threats.
He further expressed his anger by levelling the weapon at people
inside a convenience store across the street, taking out a surveillance
camera, and firing in the direction of two people in the car park. He
was arrested in the evening after demanding that a friend let him
into her flat. In court, witnesses recalled him also wielding a Bible
throughout the various crimes. The Good Book proved unable to ward
off a 143-year prison sentence, though.
In a display of ingenuity that continues our thread of food or maybe drugs, smugglers stretched their artistic skills beyond their limits by wrapping methamphetamine in shiny paper packages painted to resemble watermelons and trying their luck at the US border in Otay Mesa, California. Customs agents were not fooled by the 1,220 papier-mâché non-fruits, and the 29-year-old lorry-driver is now in the hands of Homeland Security.
A New Zealand charity hit the news for distributing parcels of donated
food to homeless people - parcels that included solid blocks of
methamphetamine dressed up as Rinda pineapple candies. The ostensible
sweets, which contained 300 times the usual dose of the drug, landed
three people in hospital, one of whom was a food-bank staff member
investigating reports of 'funny-tasting' candy.
Though saddled with the unenviable task of tracking down nearly 400
recipients of no fixed abode, Auckland City Mission could take solace in
the fact that many people spat out the 'revolting' candies instantly.
The New Zealand Drug Foundation's Ben Birks Ang opined that their
street value, at 600 euros/sweet, points to an accidental donation.
Another donation for the down-and-out didn't go well. Thomson,
Georgia, police handcuffed and arrested the small town's mayor,
Benjamin Cary Cranford, after a meeting at City Hall for attempted
felonious furnishing of prohibited items to inmates. Cranford, 52,
allegedly nestled a freshly purchased bottle of Seagram's Extra Dry Gin
in a ditch on the known path of a state-prison work crew.
If suspended from office, the freshly minted mayor might have to
return to his work as a paving contractor. At least his company is no
longer in legal hot water: he paid off a firm that had sued him for
hiding assets from debtors.
Pennsylvania state game warden Salvadore Zaffuto was summoned to a minigolf course in Duncansville to inspect not the grounds but the claw machine, where he 'saw a wave of stuffed animals move' through the power of a live groundhog within, which soon poked its head out above the contraption's less animated furry occupants. Once a representative of the claw-machine company was available to unlock the unit, Zaffuto released the groundhog into the wild.
Less professional animal-rescue efforts can have less positive
results. This is what Joseph Ricciardella learned after pulling
over to attempt to remove a snake from a Connecticut road. When he
threw a shirt over said timber rattlesnake and tried to pick it up,
the perturbed reptile bit his hand. He drove himself to a hospital.
Not much later, he entered cardiac arrest and was placed in a
medically induced coma. Ricciardella, 45, remains intubated while
family members attempt to raise funds for his medical care.
One of them, brother Robert, opined: 'He does quite know better.'
In a somewhat more disturbing story featuring animals, Australian
zoologist and senior animal researcher Adam Britton has pleaded guilty
to 56 counts of bestiality and cruelty to animals. His career has
encompassed numerous recordings for the BBC and National Geographic but
also releasing videos of himself abusing dogs - his own and pets of
people on holiday - in a shipping container on his property. He had
tortured at least 39 dogs to death before a clue in one video led the
police to his identity.
Though the abuse videos in his possession crossed species boundaries,
not least to human children, he is banned only from owning mammals
after becoming eligible for parole in 2028.
A man taking a train from Zurich to Milan was found in possession of quite a few mobile phones: 71 iPhones, 29 Samsung units, and 21 other devices, all in foil packages within a thick blanket in his luggage. It is not a coincidence that 121 mobile phones had been liberated from people attending Zurich's Street Parade dance-music festival earlier this month. The 40-year-old Romanian national was sent to jail, and the phones are being sent to their owners.
After teachers in Florida had the temerity of withholding permission
for Brendan Depa to use a Nintendo Switch console in the classroom, he
spat at nearby teacher's aide Joan Naydich. When she left the
classroom to report him for assault, he followed. The 18-year-old
behemoth left her with five broken ribs, a useless ear, and a severe
concussion.
Depa has now sued Flagler County Public Schools for failing to
address his autism-linked bad behaviour in the time leading up to the
attack. According to the legal filing, the district 'should be held
to account for its failures' to provide, for instance, 'direct
instructions on how to problem-solve and express himself', failings
'which have forever changed the trajectory of this young man's life'.
An investigator at the scene of a coal-train derailment in Bennet,
Nebraska, gave an honest answer to an approaching teenager's query
about what had happened: the cause hadn't been identified. The youth
replied: 'Obviously, a switch was flipped the wrong way', then
proceeded to describe how railway switches work. Two days later, the
17-year-old boy posted a video of the crash to YouTube. A prequel soon
followed: security footage revealing his furtive activities near the
switch's padlock before he set up his tripod.
In juvenile court, he has been charged with two counts of felonious
criminal mischief, related to $200,000+ in rail-company losses and at
least $150,000 of damages to Omaha Public Power District property.
A Swindon woman left flummoxed by the rejection of her passport application for her six-year-old daughter on 'trademark' grounds sought legal assistance. Lawyers reassured her that she shouldn't have to receive written permission from Warner Brothers for the girl, yclept Khaleesi, to use a name from Game of Thrones. The Passport Office later rang the 39-year-old mother to explain that the 'guidance [...] originally given applies only to people changing their names'. The Home Office confirmed that the application is now being processed.
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