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October 2026

16 October 2026

To spotlight his disputes with the local homeowners' association and neighbour Chris Hunnel, Colorado's Mark Dias rode atop a tank sporting the sign 'MAKE ME MOVE IT' for the benefit of cameras for the HBO reality show Neighbors. The police were summoned in response to the presence not of the military vehicle rolling through the streets of Arvada (not Armada) but of an unamused gun-brandishing resident. While Dias claimed that Neighbors producers had received signed releases from locals, among the locals who challenge this account are city officials, who say they found no evidence of having granted any of the necessary filming permits.

Someone forgot to engage the slide bolt of the inner doors to an enclosure at Taipei Zoo, so two male chimpanzees forced the outer doors open and proceeded to pay a mid-afternoon visit to various public areas. While 50 humans were setting up barricades and arranging an evacuation, one of the chimps, 11-year-old Wa Chih, went on a tour of the giraffe enclosure before scaling a tree near the lions' area. The other, Hsiao Chiang, 44, simply decided to spend some quality time with the female chimpanzees. Both simians were eventually found and tranquillised safely, though Wa Chih required a second dart. He had quickly removed, inspected, and discarded the first.

A Tallinn man recognised his missing cat among the animals placed in foster care by charity Cats Help. This care is intended to last only until the feline's owner comes forward, so he contacted the caretaker. She advised him that the cat had gone missing so was unreturnable. Upon getting a good view of his cat through her window, the man rang the emergency number to ask what punishment he might face for breaking in to retrieve his pet. After this, he teased open a window left ajar for ventilation, then offered a passer-by a bottle of vodka in exchange for the cat in the flat. The offer worked as intended.
Prosecutors have closed the ensuing case on grounds of the owner's 'low culpability', his willingness to pay 152.50 euros for window repairs and 475 euros in procedural costs, and a protracted case not being in the public interest.

Last year, 33-year-old model Haley Kalil told a podcast host that the biggest factor in the break-up of her seven-year marriage was her husband's painfully large penis. Her comments that 'we tried it all: therapist, doctors, [...] looked up lipo-type shit' but 'trying to do the damn thing' was 'impossible unless you're going to be in tears' caught the interest of adult webcam site CamSoda, which proceeded to offer her ex-husband $300,000 to show off his 'stacked Coke cans'. He responded by suing Kalil for $75,000, claiming that she had gained financially from breaching his privacy, though she had not identified him by name as Minnesota Vikings football player Matt Kalil (yes, his role for the team was offensive tackle).
A US district court judge has now dismissed his suit, finding that her remarks were connected to topics of public interest, such as human sexuality and the two public figures' divorce.

San Diego's Dante Rowley and Stephanie Calderon were about to board their flight home from Chicago when they received a home-intrusion alert. From the air, they watched live video of their 40-kilo golden retriever Nash presenting various plush toys to the burglar, who showed more interest in the couple's yoghurt stash than in playing. Once the man had removed his shoes and settled down on the dog's blanket for a nap, Rowley rang the police. They responded by flying a drone through the window that the man had used. Said copcopter chased him around the house while officers headed for the front door.
So did Nash, with a dog toy. The cops too didn't engage with the attention-starved animal. Instead, they caught 57-year-old John Paul Cline as he tried to escape via a bathroom window.
Rowley indicates that he might beef up his security system. Not leaving a ladder on the back porch below a cracked-open window might be a start. He noted also that Nash isn't usually so friendly.

As US mid-term elections approach, a Republican-aligned super-PAC ran an ad campaign to spotlight the tax-policy record of Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson. According to advertising-data firm AdImpact, Defending Main Street spent roughly $25,000 on the ads, designed mainly for the streets of Maine, where Jackson is battling incumbent Sen. Susan Collins. For four days, the group's video spotlight shone brightly in the Portland area, with the only problem being that the ads ran in Portland, Oregon - an entire continent's width away from the intended Portland.

Though the mushroom-meal news from Australia has subsided, Down Under might still be the go-to location for special diets. After a 58-year-old woman shared a mid-morning curry with work colleagues in Oldbury, near Perth, none of them fell ill. In contrast, when the food-sharer returned to the leftover portion at lunchtime, she ended up with a numb tongue and then noticed bright green granules in the curry.
Police detectives identified these as snail-poison pellets. They have fingered a 43-year-old worker who'd made a pre-lunch visit to a chemicals shed on the premises. That woman, who was in a 'personal relationship' with the victim, is due to appear in court in November.

Finally, the most recent Ottumwa, Iowa, city-council meeting began with a standard invocation read by Matt Dalbey. Beginning 'Dear dark father, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds and darkened times' and ending 'Hail Satan', it came as a rather predictable response to the council's passage of a rule that permits opening its meetings with a religious invocation. So predictable, in fact, that councillor Cara Galloway had stated before the rule's passage, early this year, that 'Satanists might [after filling out the requisite electronic form] show up and read a prayer and that everyone would have to be okay with that'.
Though some members insisted that action be taken to reverse the 'curse' before the meeting for the 25,000-resident city could proceed, the rules of order dictated otherwise.

28 October 2026

The driver of a speed-camera vehicle patrolling the roads of Australia's Wheatbelt region for the Road Safety Commission has been charged with dangerous driving. Video footage seems to show him overtaking a multi-trailer lorry such that a car was forced to drive off the road to avert a head-on collision. At the safety agency's request, the camera vehicle was released from impound in exchange for the 67-year-old operator's personal vehicle. He is due to appear before Northam Magistrates Court on 14 December.

While seated in the bathroom of a tourist villa in North Kuta, Bali, Nepalese tourist Gaorap Rana, 45, noticed a spiderweb in the corner, so he decided to set light to a piece of paper and scare the resident spider away with fire. He then exited the room himself. Later, Badung police representative Nyoman Yuni Eltari concluded that high winds then carried the burning paper he'd left behind into the thatched roof. Within minutes, 'all parts of the villa' ended up toast, and authorities were struggling to keep the blaze from spreading to the alang-alang grass roofs of nearby homes.
Authorities put the physical damage at around two billion rupiahs, about 100,000 euros. Rana survived; the arachnid probably did too.

In the decade following January 2016, prosecutors in Turkey opened nearly 83,000 cases for insulting the country or its president, state symbols, and institutions. Increasing the tally by 1 is a homeless man who doesn't mind being lumped in with journalists, a former Miss Turkey, and other critics of President Erdoğan in exchange for 1-4 years of food and a warm bed in jail.
When taken into custody, in a park in the resort town Alanya, the 66-year-old man celebrated his successful arrest for the offence of intentionally insulting the president, on his fourth attempt. He explained: 'I have nowhere to stay. I sleep in rubbish dumps.'

Baltimore mother Unique Wiggins sprang into action after her daughter described a frightening disembodied voice emanating from the sewers, a voice whose owner then emerged and chased her and other children through the city's streets.
Approaching a manhole cover that seemed to be singing, Wiggins shouted at the man beneath to stop harassing children. He responded 'No, tell them to leave me alone!'. She called in the police. They reported that, while not permitted to evict homeless people from the sewer system (since it is 'public property'), they'd offered the man housing services, which he had declined.
Wiggins replied: 'I'm not saying this gentleman should necessarily go to jail, but he should not be able to be down there. They can put a "no trespassing" sign there, and they can cover the holes.'

A 43-year-old Japanese man drew widespread social-media attention after uploading a video of himself pouring dishwashing detergent onto tuna sushi at a conveyor-belt-based eatery in Saitama Prefecture. The police police swiftly identified him and arrested him for forcible obstruction of business. Five days after being fined the equivalent of 3,000 euros and pledging to compensate the chain and never post via social media again, he shared footage in which he extensively fondles the spout of a soy-sauce bottle at a restaurant in the same locale. At the ensuing full-blown trial, he stated that the increase in view and follower counts after the first incident had given him 'a sense of happiness and superiority because I attracted public attention'.
His wife, who appeared as a character witness, offered to make him replace his smartphone with a feature phone and to enrol him with location-tracking services. Accepting her offer, the judge handed him a suspended one-year jail term, with a warning that there will be 'no second chance'.

In Gilbert, Arizona, 18-month-old Vincent Fiordilino somehow ended up in the family swimming pool while the family were watching the Super Bowl. After medics rushed the boy to the local hospital, a doctor declared him dead, cancelled a blood-gas test he'd initially ordered, and called for standard procedures. These included sending the toddler's body to the hospital's cold room, which serves as a morgue, where his mother Alexus Fiordilino could bid him farewell. A few hours later, a transport worker found the boy alive. In retrospect, Alexus recalled perhaps hearing Vincent breathing in the cold room.
The police found no reason to accuse the medics of criminal conduct or to charge the family with negligence. Nonetheless, the Arizona Attorney General's Office has been asked to weigh in, with the Fiordilinos' solicitor stating that the medical system should pay for the brain-damaged Vincent's life-long care.

Earlier this month in Cologne, Germany, a 16-year-old girl standing with friends outside a fast-food outlet found herself accosted by a roughly 120 cm tall buttock-groper. This individual, a humanoid robot able to follow either programmed routines or direct remote control, then performed several pelvis-thrusting motions in her direction, while its 16-year-old owner and his 19-year-old pal streamed video of the encounter online, with live commentary.
When the police arrived, the 5,000-euro robot had been packed into a car boot. One of the youths stated that it had merely bumped into a young woman while trying to avoid someone else; however, the online video supplied grounds for seizing it and the two teens' smartphones.
Since German law generally defines sexual harassment as involving direct physical contact between humans, legal experts are mulling over such options as charging the young men with 'a sexually motivated insult' and unauthorised publishing of images.

In some contexts, one might expect tittering in response to an 'unexplained bulge' in someone's underwear. At Miami International Airport, however, the response was twittering instead, not from the US Customs officials patting down returning permanent resident Alberto Hernandez Castillo but from the six plastic containers secreted in his underpants. Castillo had returned from Cuba with 10 undocumented live birds, all members of protected species: two blue grosbeaks and eight yellow-faced grassquits. One red-faced Hernandez Castillo is awaiting his day in federal court.

Though ough California native Maya Jean Yourex had successfully voted in 2021's statewide recall election, officials flagged her ballot for rejection in the 2022 federal primary. When registering to vote, she hadn't supplied proof of her affidavit-averred identify and residence. The bitch doesn't care, partly because she is now dead. However, her owner does: Laura Lee Yourex was forced to admit to casting mail-in ballots in her pet dog's name. In a plea deal, Yourex will pay for anti-voting-fraud billboards along two Orange County motorways. These are to feature the admonition 'Don't be a dog. [...] If you can't legally vote don't vote' alongside a photo Yourex had posted online of Maya posing with an 'I voted' sticker attached to her fur.

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