It isn't very often that an aeroplane turns around for retrieval of a passenger's phone or laptop computer. Our first story represents an exception. Less than an hour after take-off from Washington, DC, the pilot of a trans-Atlantic United Airlines flight told air-traffic control that someone using a laptop computer in the cabin had 'somehow dropped [it] down the sidewall into the cargo-pit area'. With the computer and its lithium-ion battery proving inaccessible, the crew elected to make a U-turn for maintenance staff to rescue the laptop. The plane ultimately reached Rome four-plus hours behind schedule.
Veteran circuit-court judge Matthew Thornhill has left the building.
The Missouri Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline of
Judges did not appreciate what he called efforts to 'add levity at
times when I thought it would help relax litigants'. Specifically,
the panel found his frequent 'irrelevant' Elvis Presley references
detrimental to the integrity of proceedings. Those references have
extended to playing Elvis songs during swearing-in and donning
sunglasses accompanied by a wig style not typical of the legal
system.
The disciplinary commission pointed also to acts such as asking
people in the courtroom whether they had seen his election banners.
Thornhill has agreed to six months' suspension without pay, after
which he will return to the bench for 18 months and then retire.
While clearing out her son's belongings six days after his burial, a Detroit woman discovered that the young man had kept a live alligator in his bedroom for roughly six years. She called in animal-rescue worker Mark Rosenthal to collect the two-metre-long reptile, which reportedly was scared and angry in the absence of food, water, and heat. Rosenthal ended up placing a sweatshirt over its head and 'just grabbed it by the tail'. Navi the Gator will be relocated to a sanctuary in Florida.
When Tijuana native Jesse Angus Martinez attempted to enter the US
from Mexico, border-patrol agents asked him about the sizeable bulge
in the front of his trousers. They chose not to take Martinez, 35, at
his word that it was 'all me', and they found two small brown things
dangling there: paper bags containing one heavily sedated
orange-fronted parakeet each.
He stated that he simply didn't know enough about the papers needed
for his pair of vulnerable-species pets. However, records indicate
that he'd tried to sneak a parrot into the US in September - under an
armpit that time.
If you make an 'amazing' discovery while on a nature hike, calling in to a morning radio show is one option. However, a caller who stated 'I've always wanted to come upon something like that' left DC101 radio host Elliot Segal stunned upon specifying what he'd found 18 days earlier at an abandoned tent city: a human corpse. Segal repeatedly exhorted 'dude, call the cops', but it was the radio show that alerted them. Detectives in Frederick County, Maryland, collected the body and are investigating what appears to have been a death by natural causes.
Nobody seems to know why Danielle Oliver, a 39-year-old Welsh woman
halfway through gestating her fourth child, launched herself at a
stranger at a funeral just as the mourners were raising a toast.
As pensioner Belinda Strickland, the best friend of the deceased's
partner, lost consciousness, venue staff hauled Oliver out the door.
She was identified from CCTV footage and arrested two days later.
Meanwhile, Strickland, who was driven to hospital by a bartender,
awoke several days later in intensive care with six broken ribs, one
of which had punctured her left lung.
Cardiff Crown Court judge Simon Mills handed Oliver a suspended jail
sentence and referenced her pregnancy. Meanwhile, an infuriated
Strickland finds Oliver 'woven into my everyday life' because of
constant pain and lingering trauma.
In contrast, 22-year-old Kira Cousins wasn't pregnant, though she held
a lavish gender-reveal party, shared ultrasound images, and ultimately
announced the birth of a daughter with a heart condition. The truth
emerged after her mother found young Bonnie-Leigh Joyce, a Reborn
doll, in Cousins's bedroom.
While carrying a prosthetic baby bump to term, Cousins benefited
from a GoFundMe page that proclaimed 'no home no food, no money, no
clothes'. She has since deleted some of the social-media images
subsequently posted from locations such as Gran Canaria.
She has also confessed to the hoax online, explaining 'I made it up
and kept it going way too far [...]. I did not think straight head is
messed up from past trauma'. That trauma might include the failure of
an earlier attempt to pass off photos of a school friend's child as
her own. She went on to state 'My life has to move on'. A
documentary is among her plans for moving on.
The Fighterbomber Telegram channel, run by a person affiliated with the Russian Air Force, reported on an oopsie that took place on 7 December. Within the bomber-aviation regiment, the ejection system of an aircraft parked in a shelter was activated, sending the pilot and navigator into the shelter roof. Both were left with 'injuries incompatible with life'. Authorities were called in to investigate, but there have not yet been official statements regarding the involvement of alcohol.
The next story features ground-based weapons and no deaths, apart from perhaps that of common sense. A 53-year-old Pennsylvania man suffered a gunshot wound to his lower back. When the Shillington Police arrived at his home, they found him on the bedroom floor and heard the full story: the victim explained that he had been cleaning his shotgun, then set it down on his bed, 'at which time one of his dogs jumped onto the bed' and caused a round to enter his back. The man, who'd been on his own at the time apart from his three dogs, has undergone at least one of the two surgeries mandated by medics.
The next item brings resolution to a question that occupied courts in
South Korea for two years. When a delivery driver took a Choco Pie
and a mini custard, worth about 50 euro cents, from the office
refrigerator, the logistics firm where he worked as a subcontractor
accused him of stealing. His insistence on a formal trial initially
netted him a fine of around 50 times the snacks' value, largely on the
basis of claims that subcontractors were not allowed to open the
fridge door without permission. However, after 39 fellow
subcontractors testified that they too had eaten snacks from the
fridge, an appellate court found it 'difficult to conclude that the
defendant had the intent to steal'.
After the ruling, the driver's attorney told reporters that his
client 'felt deeply ashamed' of the entire affair' since he'd been
'simply hungry in the early morning and ate a Choco Pie'.
In northern Nigeria, the Hisbah Corps, police charged with enforcing Sharia law, have cancelled a court-ordered wedding of two TikTok celebrities. Magistrates had given them 60 days to solemnise a marriage between Idris Mai Wushirya and Basira Yar Guda, who had cuddled and kissed in a social-media video. Parental permission was in place, and the Kano State government had agreed to purchase a house for the couple; however, Hisbah director-general Abba Sufi reported that they admitted to lying to the court that they were 'in love', to avoid prosecution. Sufi has referred the case back to the judge.
After a bedridden 65-year-old Thai woman died at her home, her brother
drove her 500 km to the hospital to which she'd asked to donate her
organs. They turned him away since he could not produce a death
certificate. So he took her to the Buddhist temple Wat Rat Prakhong
Tham for free-of-charge cremation.
That too didn't go to plan: while speaking with him, the temple's
general manager, Pairat Soodthoop, heard knocking from the back of the
pick-up truck and ordered the opening of the coffin. He then saw the
'deceased' 'opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the
coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time'. Soodthoop
sent her to a local hospital for checks at the temple's expense.
A somewhat lighter story comes to us from California's Sequoia Park
Zoo, where daily inspection revealed a mismatch with the expected
number of bears. No, none of the zoo's three black bears had
escaped; on the contrary, a wild black bear had broken in to pay
them a visit. 'We do not know how the bear got in' said zoo director
Jim Campbell-Spickler.
He explained that the young visitor, who did not breach the inner
enclosure, interacted with the other ursine residents through the
fence in a 'really sweet, calm, and curious' manner'.
Police officers and a state wildlife warden guided the wild bear
into the adjacent Sequoia National Park.
A different sort of animal-related mystery unfolded in Michigan, where
a man who had not encountered any animals died of rabies. The cause
turned out to be an organ transplant: he began developing mobility
issues, confusion, weakness, and extreme breathing difficulties a
month after receiving a kidney from an Idaho man who had been
scratched by a skunk while defending a kitten.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several
of that man's organs had been harvested after he suffered cardiac
arrest. His family reported that, a month after the scratching, he'd
begun developing mobility issues, confusion, weakness, and
hallucinations.
About ![[IMG: RoboCop statue]](images/RoboCopStatue.png)
15 years ago, Detroit mayor Dave Bing solicited city-improvement
suggestions online. When one Twitter denizen opined 'Philadelphia has
a statue of Rocky & Robocop would kick Rocky's butt', Bing replied
that the city had no plans to erect a statue of Robocop.
Fans had other ideas. Within six days, a Kickstarter campaign
managed by a community arts group and others raised $67,436 to have
local sculptor Giorgio Gikas craft a 3.4-metre bronze likeness of the
cybernetically augmented Detroit Police Department officer.
Despite Gikas's battle with cancer and skirmishes with MGM's legal
division, the statue finally stands tall in Detroit's Eastern Market.
Peter Weller, who back in 2011 took Bing to task for calling a statue
of his character 'silly', hopes to appear at its welcome ceremony.
A couple weeks ago, Australian 20-something Sam Weidenhofer's visit to
the US took him to a big-box grocery store in Brighton, Michigan,
where he asked check-out clerk Ed Bambas, 88, why he hadn't yet
retired. The answer was 'I don't have enough income'. Struggling to
pay his deceased wife's medical bills after his retirement from General
Motors, Bambas had returned to work at age 82.
Thanks to 15,000 of Weidenhofer's social-media followers, Bambas can
now clear his $225,000 in debt and will be able to retire again. After
wiping away tears, he told reporters that the oversized cheque 'means
a terrible burden - I have to find everybody and say "thank you"'.