anna's archive anna's archive anna's archive

November 2021


30 November 2021

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.


Want more?

Follow the link for an earlier bundle of Anna's News Clippings.
Want later clippings? Well, just have a browse through the December to January pile.

Go to the Clippings index page

Go to Anna's main index page


Pages and content © 2000-2021 Anna Shefl