Swinging into action after a child's birthday party left six children
with severe vomiting and diarrhoea, sleuths with the Rhode Island
Department of Health identified the culprit as metallic 'luster dust'
atop the bakery-supplied cake. Lab tests revealed that the frosting's
sheen had provided the children, ages 1-11, with more than 1,000 times
the recommended daily adult intake of copper per slice of cake.
Checks of other dusts used by the bakery in question, marked
'nontoxic' but also 'inedible', revealed a bevy of heavy metals, from
aluminium and barium to zinc. The ensuing FDA advisory about these
products, some imported 'for consumer goods such as floor coverings'
has not prevented, for instance, the dust atop another one-year-old's
cake, this time in Missouri, from boasting 25% lead.
Intoxicated-appearing regular Jason Jones walked into the Catskill, New York, police department and promptly started getting aggressive and stripping. A Taser was raised. As it was being deployed, the 29-year-old Jones doused himself with the desk's hand sanitiser. He burst into flames. It wasn't long before ICU staff were treating him for grave injuries. Village police chief Dave Darling later reported that the 'horrible' incident is under investigation by the Greene County district attorney's office.
Hungary's Pest Central District Court has disallowed an insurance claim
for more than million euros by a man identified in the media as Sándor
Cs. The court found that he had climbed onto the train tracks in
Nyírcsászári so as to have his lower limbs run over by a locomotive.
The 54-year-old's case that he'd fallen in front of a train after
stepping on a shard of glass was not aided by the incident's timing -
he had taken out 14 high-risk life-insurance policies over the
preceding year.
The wheelchair-bound Cs. reports that he is bankrupt and now studying
law so that he can one day assist people abused by large companies.
The Times of India reports that a 34-year-old textile trader in Tamil Nadu violated his post-travel quarantine to run out the door of his home naked and attack a 90-year-old woman who was sleeping outside her house. Hearing a commotion, neighbours came to her aid and subdued him - but not before he had delivered at least one sizeable bite to her neck. The nonagenarian was taken to Theni Government Hospital, where she died, and the agent of the zombie apocalypse was taken into police custody.
According to Estonian newspaper Postimees, a customer has gone to court with a complaint about injuries caused by local craft brewer Ulvar Veldi. The man explains that, upon opening one of Veldi's beers with a bottle-opener, the cap hit him in the eye. The brewer responded: 'The list of damages was so long that he must have shot it very skillfully into his eye'.
In another case of an uncontrolled opening, an armoured vehicle on
Interstate 5 instigated chaos in San Diego County when one of its
doors swung open. Sacks began to fall out, breaking apart on impact
and sending showers of $1 and $20 banknotes onto the roadway. Traffic
soon began to pile up as motorists left their vehicles to collect what
California Highway Patrol Officer Jim Bettencourt described as
'free-floating bills all over the freeway'. Several arrests have
since been made, and the police have called on members of the public
to return the loot.
Finally, in a story from the Philippines, Nehemias Chipada and his
family were celebrating his 68th birthday at the Amaya View theme park
when he decided to take selfies in a pool with a life-sized plastic
crocodile. Upon jumping into the pool, he discovered that the
four-metre animal wasn't a model. He found himself with fractured arm
and leg bones, a 7.5 cm tooth as a souvenir, and a traumatised family.
His daughter, Mercy Joy Chipada, later said that there should have
been signs warning visitors not to enter the enclosure. The park,
which had provided the necessary first aid, agreed to cover his
surgery costs but maintained that Chipada had entered a clearly
restricted area.
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