Thanks to 12 hours of narcotics training, Los Angeles SWAT-team leader Kenneth Franco knew that drawing far more electricity than surrounding shops points to a cannabis 'grow op'. So he obtained a warrant to storm Noho Diagnostic Center, whose MRI field snagged a signage-immune cop's dangling rifle. The ensuing unilateral choice to press the big red button initiated a rapid superconductivity loss that freed the LAPD service weapon but also 2,000 L of helium gas. This lawsuit-sparking incident left the MRI office with a magazine full of cartridges on the floor and an extensively damaged imaging machine.
Would he have fared better in Oregon? Officers there who pulled
![[IMG:the items seized... not drugs]](images/notdrugs.jpg)
over a stolen car in Portland found a bag labelled 'Definitely Not a
bag full of Drugs'. According to the police, that small brown vanity
case contained plenty of fentamyl and meth. The vehicle's occupants,
Mia Rochelle Baggenstos, 37, and Reginald Lamont Reynolds, 35, were
carrying scales and a loaded revolver also.
In a video posted to social media, a woman in the air between San Diego and Las Vegas ranted at a Frontier Airlines flight attendant that 'if I was white and in a suit, you would stop the fucking plane' for the sake of a mobile phone left in the boarding-gate area. The woman, who proceeded to identify herself as 'an affirmed sovereign ruler here in the government (seven continents I own)', then issued a warning to the flight crew, who'd 'had enough time to tell the pilot to not go': 'Keep laughing; watch what happens.' At last report, the airline had not yet identified dire consequences for any of the parties involved.
The character at the centre of our next item, also air-travel-related, showed rather more presence of mind. When requested to open his carry-on bag after x-ray inspection, a man in the security queue at the Tashkent airport complied, revealing a decidedly undeclared three-metre snake. The character in question, thought to be an albino tiger python (subject to CITIES protection), remained placid while being conveyed from the Gishtkuprik customs point to Uzbekistan's Tashkent Zoo. So the constriction task fell to arresting officers.
With much fanfare, retired Anglican priest Andrew Wagstaff, 69, returned to Antwerp for the papal visit earlier this month. These celebrations were cut short, however, by his celebrations at an area rectory, in Kalmthout: he collapsed after drug-enhanced sex with another sixty-something priest. After summoning the emergency services, the latter pastor was arrested on charges of drugs trafficking that ultimately resulted in death. Autopsy results remain pending.
In Las Vegas, a woman broke into Affordable Cremation and Burial Services and lugged a casket out the front door. Later in the late-night hours, a member of the public spotted a new feature of the landscaping outside the funeral parlour: the casket's erstwhile occupant, dumped face-down. Alerted to the burglary, the authorities reviewed surveillance footage and identified the culprit as Patricia Sierra, 47. Thanks to a plea deal, she faces a single charge, of burglary.
A Düsseldorf-region man's encounter with a school building's cactus plant served as a wake-up call for the mayor of Plettenberg. While the city council stated that privacy concerns preclude revealing the nature of the man's injury, which required medical attention, they also stated that 'what was an injury to the adult man's arm could easily have been a serious injury to the face for a small child in the same place'. Mayor Ulrich Schulte has declared that 'official and private cacti (Cactaceae) alike must be removed from all municipal buildings immediately', from schools to council desks.
From spiky to spicy...
A California neurologist has sued a Thai eatery in Los Gatos whose
Dragon Balls appetiser seemed too hot to handle. When visiting Coup
de Thai with a friend, Dr Harjasleen Walia asked for a mild version of
its spicy chicken balls. She contends that a newbie cook erroneously
added more bird's eye chilis - allegedly 'unfit for human consumption'
- instead, thereby leaving her with burns to her vocal cords, right
nostril, and oesophagus that 'an entire glass of coconut water and more
water' could not fix. In response to the suit's assertion that Walia
'will forever be damaged', the restaurant's Luck Pryer said that they
have yet to see any related medical records or evidence, and he
stressed that spice-intolerant diners are directed to an alternative:
the chili is cooked into the balls, so a 'mild' version is impossible.
Now we head from head to foot. A judge has handed a 28-year-old man
from Sindos, northern Greece, a suspended one-month prison sentence for
repeatedly disturbing his neighbours with his clandestine visits to
their homes. After repeatedly asking his family to intervene,
neighbours had finally summoned the police while he was following his
established nocturnal pattern of sniffing shoes that families had left
in their front garden to air.
The man, who was unable to explain the reason for his non-aggressive
intrusions, has agreed to see a therapist.
From the Eggy McEggFace Department come reports of technical and
human failure aboard a Qantas flight from Sydney to Tokyo. With
a balky in-flight entertainment system having delayed take-off for
over an hour, the crew decided to embark irrespective of its glitches.
Since these rendered people unable to select films for nine-plus
hours, passengers were probed for their choice of title for cabin-wide
viewing. Therefore, the sexually explicit Daddio, complete with
raunchy instant messages, began on all seat backs, with no ability
for parents or others to pause, dim, or turn off the monitors. After
roughly an hour, a 'child-friendly' film superseded the first.
A Qantas representative stated that 'we are reviewing how the movie
was selected'.
Every so often, a fire breaks out at a fire station, occasioning
remarks about irony and the like. The case of the Stadtallendorf
volunteer fire department, in Hesse, Germany, is special, though.
This isn't just because the facility was less than a year old and the
blaze torched the entire equipment hall and nearly a dozen emergency
vehicles. Local officials have explained that experts had deemed a
fire-alarm system unnecessary, so no such safeguards were in place.
Stemming from a vehicle with lithium-ion batteries and an external
power connection, the damage is estimated at in excess of 20 million
euros.
University of Birmingham medical students dissecting a cadaver donated
to science discovered that the deceased 78-year-old man under their
hands had more than one penis. In fact, he possessed three of the
![[IMG: the paper's diagram of the penile morphological abnormalities, with my vomit-green mark up]](images/triphallia_with_anna_markings.jpg)
things. Since this marks only the second triple-penis case recorded,
it has earned them a spot in the Journal of Medical Case Reports, for
an article on triphallia, 'a rare congenital anomaly describing the
presence of three distinct penile shafts'. The two supernumerary
penes, which were stacked atop each other within the deceased's
scrotum, might well have subtly affected the man's day-to-day life.
A Massachusetts high-schooler might rue having confirmed teachers'
suspicions that he'd turned to an AI agent during his research for a
social-studies project last term. He received lower marks for the
project than peers who had honoured the policy of not cut[ting]
corners by using AI to craft their projects', and he served a Saturday
detention for acting 'unfairly in order to gain an advantage'. So his
parents are suing the school because of imminent 'irreparable harm'
linked to 'applying to elite colleges and universities given his high
level of academic and personal achievement'.
I wouldn't wish to guess whether the publicity or being mortified by
legal attempts to get his mark increased and his record scrubbed of
any references to cheating could lead to greater harm.
Finally, Matilda Campbell became trapped upside-down Down Under while attempting to rescue the mobile phone she'd dropped during a hike with friends in Hunter Valley, New South Wales. After roughly an hour of trying to extract her from a three-metre gap between boulders, her friends called in the professionals. She dangled by her ankles for a further six hours while a multi-agency rescue team crafted a frame for stability and winched away several boulders, at least one of which weighed in at 500 kg. Having emerged with only minor bruises, she posted online 'Thank you to the team who saved me you guys are literally life savers. Too bad about the phone tho.'