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July 2013


25 July 2013

On Saturday, a woman rode her pony into the drive-through lane of a McDonald's restaurant in Manchester and was refused service on account of company policy. McDonald's spokeswoman Becca Hary later explained: 'The health and safety of our customers and staff is our top priority and for this reason we are unable to serve pedestrians, bicycle riders or customers on horseback through the drive-thru.' The woman still wanted food, so she entered the restaurant on foot. So did the horse, which promptly defecated. Constables were called in and fined the woman for causing alarm and distress to customers and staff.

Pennsylvania estate agent Andrea Straub, 34, used to sell multi-million-dollar homes. However, she was dismissed from her job after she and her husband were accused of trying to stop her hospitalised neighbours from selling their house, through vandalism. The neighbours' caretaker installed a security camera, which allegedly captured the couple knocking over 'For Sale' signs, cutting branches from trees on the next-door property, stealing leaflets, and leaving dead snakes and mice on the driveway.
The couple initially confessed, but their attorney now says that the people in the footage are not recognisable and that the charges are 'horrible falsities'.

In Texas, David Underwood and his wife bought a lakeside home from his aunt and placed their current home on the market. Visiting the lakeside property earlier this month to mow the lawn, they saw only a slab of foundation. It turns out that the City of Fort Worth had hired a demolition company to tear down the condemned building next door, at a cost of $6,000. City officials say that they are investigating.

According to the Public Safety Department of Maranhão, Brazil, the problems started when referee Otavio da Silva told football player Josenir dos Santos Abreu that he would have to sit out the rest of a match. Things escalated to fisticuffs, and the referee ended up stabbing Abreu with a knife. While Abreu was dying on the way to a hospital, his friends and relatives 'rushed into the field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body'. According to local media, Silva's head was stuck on a stake in the middle of the field.

Michelle A. Bulger and Ashley J. Schaumberg no longer work as certified nursing assistants at Wisconsin's Brookview Meadows nursing home. The women have been charged with filming nudity without consent. One example involves Schaumberg, 20, videotaping her colleague's faecal forays as the 22-year-old Bulger appeared to be gagging while clearing an 84-year-old resident's obstructed bowel. Another incident involved 'only' mobile-phone videos of a resident bathing.

According to Australian news sites, police officers in Gilles Plains, near Adelaide, noticed a car weaving along on two flat tyres. When they pulled the white Holden over, they looked inside and noticed that there was no steering wheel - the 38-year-old driver had been steering with a pair of vise grips. A check of records revealed that the car was uninsured, was unregistered, and had just been involved in a hit-and-run accident. Also, the driver was driving while disqualified and tested positive for a couple of drugs.

Oregon's Paul Stoute gave 14-month-old daughter Sorella his phone to play with, and she 'decided to open up the eBay app and started clicking around'. He later received e-mail from eBay congratulating him on his purchase of a 1962 Austin Healey Sprite. He decided to keep and restore the $225 item, adding: 'I'm just glad she didn't buy the $38,000 Porsche I was looking at.'

A post-office employee in Blénod-làs-Pont-à-Mousson, France, felt something rubbing against her when she was working on her own. She screamed for help, and firefighters soon caught the metre-long ball python that had slithered out of a parcel. A second member of this protected species was still waiting patiently in the package. Both were donated to a local zoo, and a raid of the snake-sender's address revealed various reptiles whose owner had been trying to sell over the Internet.

Former US Marine Joseph Sincavage has a Nazi flag hanging outside his Stratford, Connecticut, home. While some Jews are unhappy about this, he explains that it's simply a statement that the US is becoming a totalitarian state. He says: 'I am going to keep flying [it] until Obama changes his policies, resigns or gets impeached.' It is flying alongside the US flag, a flag with the Vatican's coat of arms, and the Marine Corps flag.

Nure Bregu, 47, was upset about losing 5,000 euros over the span of two weeks to the slot machines in a bar in Fontaniva, Italy. He thought for a while and decided that the responsible party should pay. Therefore, he entered the bar with an axe, calmly (according to the bar-owner) smashed up seven one-armed bandits, gave a thumbs-up sign, and walked outside to wait for the police to collect him.
Bregu has been sentenced to six months in jail, for criminal damage and possession of an offensive weapon.

Jason Comer stands accused of running off with a coin dispenser attached to the tills at a convenience store near Altoona, Pennsylvania. Before doing this, he had asked to use the telephone because he had run out of petrol. Police officers had only to hit the telephone's re-dial button to find out Comer's identity, from the woman on the other end, the owner of the car he was driving. He was found waiting nearby for a tow.

A man stopped at a Burger King in Dundee, Michigan to pick up food for his four-year-old grandson. Instead of the usual toy in the Kid's Meal box, the family found a marijuana pipe. They contacted the police, who report that a 23-year-old employee had admitted to putting the paraphernalia in the box for safe-keeping while he worked. He'd had no intention of giving it away. He has been charged with possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia.
One reason he was caught is that two of his friends, in a car outside the burger restaurant, were trying to warn him about the police showing up. They too were arrested for possession of drugs.

According to UPI reports, the prosecutor's office in Russia's Bashkortostan Republic region is investigating the practices of the Navigator drug-rehab clinic. The clinic is accused of locking addicts in coffins. The idea, the clinic director reportedly told investigators, is to provide a memorable reminder that 'just a coffin and cold earth' await them if they don't stop using drugs.
Experts are being asked whether this is a legitimate and effective technique.

Terry Ragland, 55, who visited a new physician because of her back pain, has filed a complaint with the Tennessee Department of Health about the diagnosis he gave her. Dr Timothy Sweo explained: 'What I was trying to explain to that patient is that she has lumbar lordosis, which is a fancy name for the curve of the lower spine that makes the buttocks protrude more. In trying to explain that, I said that she had ghetto booty and she didn't like that apparently.'


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