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August 2025

5 August 2025

The US Food & Drug Administration is warning consumers to make sure their cans of Celsius energy drink contain the expected liquid. This alert comes after vodka company High Noon issued a product recall upon noticing that a shared packaging supplier had mistakenly shipped them empty Celsius cans, which it proceeded to fill with its own beverages and bundle into Beach Variety vodka seltzer 12-packs. Two lots include cans that claim to contain not alcoholic drinks but 'Celsius Astro Vibe Energy Drink, Sparkling Blue Razz Edition'. The FDA advises to 'dispose of the [...] cans with the impacted lot codes' in a manner that does not involve 'consum[ing] the liquid'.

The Air Force Times reports on a $3,933,106 torch. A hand-held torch left behind by a Luke Air Force Base maintenance worker tending to an F-35 engine after a post-servicing tool inventory became sucked into the jet's air intake during a test run on the ground. 'Abnormal noises' after power-down revealed the $14M Pratt & Whitney engine's ingestion of the forgotten flashlight, which damaged the aircraft's stage 2, 3, 5, and 6 rotors; fuel nozzle; bypass duct; high-pressure compressor and turbine; and fan inlet variable vane.
Investigators blame, in part, automation-linked complacency, plus the sheer number of checklists and 'difficulty in accessing the correct ones'.

Four years ago, a family-run bakery in New Jersey allegedly served a customer a stomach-upset-inducing eggplant sandwich rather than the egg one he'd ordered. No, long-time Clipper Kip has not sent me a stale story. Only a couple of mornings ago, that customer returned to berate Baladna Bakery manager Mohammed Assad for the aubergine. Offers of a refund or credit were met with knife stabs in the chest. Stepping in to aid his brother earned co-owner Abed Assad a slash to the arm.
Abed returned to work yesterday with a bandaged arm while Mohammed remains in hospital with serious injuries. Their assailant remains at large.

Investigating the disappearance of senior monk Phra Thep Wachirapamok from his Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thai police found tens of thousands of compromising images, still and moving, of him on the mobile devices of female acquaintance Wilawan Emsawat. The central investigation bureau's Jaroonkiat Pankaew described Emsawat's web of activities as encompassing many respected monks, with 'a financial trail [that] involves many temples' and lavish gifts therefrom. Thus far, she has been charged with extortion, money laundering, and receiving stolen goods. She has expressed guilt for 'falling in love with' two monks and a religion professor, in relationships that netted her a Mercedes-Benz SLK200 and millions of baht.
Sweeping investigations of monasteries are under way, while Phra Wachirapamok might have fled to Laos. Meanwhile, among media responses is an op-ed by Thai broadcaster PBS that thanks Emsawat, 35, for helping expose the clergy's moral decay amid deference and privilege.

A Florida woman noticed roughly $100 in fraudulent charges appear against her bank card after she visited a Tallahassee Chuck E. Cheese children's-entertainment restaurant, so the police rocked up to the relevant outlet to take the perpetrator into custody for felonious credit-card fraud. This entailed handcuffing the chain's titular giant-mouse mascot in front of several children. Reportedly, one confused tyke asked 'Was he on the Epstein list?'
While police spokesperson Alicia Hill explained that, by resisting arrest, credit-card thief Jermell Jones had scuppered officers' hopes of an arrest outside public view, perhaps they could at least have chosen better words than 'Chuck E, come with me, Chuck E'.

India's police have arrested Harshvardhan Jain, 47, for masquerading as an ambassador for multiple micronations, among them Westarctica and Ladonia. After raiding the ersatz embassy facilities he operated from a rental property near Delhi and seizing 12 counterfeit passports, four cars with fake diplomatic number plates, and various forged documents, they gathered further evidence that he had tricked people into paying to obtain overseas appointments over nearly eight years, with the aid of doctored photos of himself with world leaders and fake stamps/seals from around 35 countries.
The Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force's Sushil Ghule does expect knotty problems stemming from legal lacunae in official communication with the largely notional micronations that Jain claimed to represent.

In response to two State Board of Education members' complaints about naked women cavorting about on his office television during a closed meeting held there on sensitive issues such as teacher licences, Oklahoma superintendent of schools Ryan Walters cited a politically motivated 'Most Absurd, False, and Gutter Attack from a Desperate Failing Establishment', stated that he was unaware of what the screen showed 'during the alleged incident' and denied 'any suggestion that a device of mine was used to stream inappropriate content'. Also, he did turn off the TV as soon as board member Becky Carson, having ascertained that she was witnessing not tan bodysuits but nipples and public hair, demanded 'Turn it off now!' The state senate and the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office are investigating nonetheless.
While the embattled Walters faces lawsuits related to other matters, such as open-meeting laws, he has fired off a few of his own – e.g., one reasserting his mandate that schools teach directly from the Bible.

When a traffic light in Tilburg turned green, six rolling crates escaped from the rear of a dairy lorry from a large supermarket chain in the Netherlands. Newspaper Omroep Brabant states that light rain began turning the busy junction into a slippery yoghurt, pudding, and milk soup, whereupon the frustrated driver, unable to clean up on his own, shouted to onlookers to 'Just take some with you!'. This prompted dozens of locals to start gathering up cartons of milk, dessert cups, and butter packs. As others joined the salvage effort with crates, bin liners, and carrier bags, the police stepped in to clear the area, which had become 'ankle-deep in custard'. Some hours later, 'the last traces of dairy were scraped from the asphalt'.

Honourable mentions in the truck-spillympics go to a sticky-sweet roadway in Washington, where crushed cherries and the remains of a truck had to be dealt with, and to a lorry that rolled onto its side in New York's Columbia County, shedding its load of milk and necessitating a multi-agency clean-up operation. There is also a minty-fresh stretch of road in North Carolina where the Asheboro Police Department found that toothpaste mixed with sawdust spread to facilitate clean-up 'may smell good but it sure is slippery'.
Finally, the frozen wieners that spilled out of a mechanically challenged trailer scraping along a concrete divider in Pennsylvania after it ripped itself open were 'pretty warm' when they hit the road, according to Shrewsbury Fire Company Chief Brad Dauberman, who continued 'I can tell you personally, hot dogs are very slippery; I did not know that'. A front-end loader scooped up the slimy highway sausages during morning rush hour.

In 'another desperate plea to stop hiding animals in weird places on your body before airport security', the USA's Transportation Security Administration has reported on a Florida woman who elected not to follow the rule that small pets must be carried openly through security checkpoints rather than tucked out of view. Imaging technology at Miami International Airport pointed to anomalies in her chest area, whereupon the passenger removed two turtles from 'the alarming area'. Only one of the reptiles fished from her brassiere survived its ordeal.

After Timothy Garlington died, his parents, in Pennsylvania, asked the funeral home where he'd lived, in Georgia, to ship his remains to their local funeral parlour and also to ship Garlington's belongings for them to collect. Among the latter were a white box in which rested an unlabelled locked red box that – by its aromas and ooze – ultimately revealed itself to contain some of the former: Garlington's brain.
In a lawsuit against both funeral homes, the deceased's father argues that the brain and body should not have been separated, boxes of this nature ought to be labelled in any case, and body parts should never get intermingled with the deceased's belongings. Furthermore, he stresses that the fluid leaking into his car mars his memories of his son and required him to get rid of the vehicle.

An accident report states that Alaska's Eugene Peltola, husband of former US Representative Mary Peltola, died partly because he had too much moose meat. A 'hefty meat cargo' rendered the small plane he was piloting overweight when it took off from the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge airstrip. The recently published safety report concludes that the 225 kg of meat, in combination with winds and the parasitic drag from the antlers strapped to the right wing of Peltola's Piper PA 18-150 Super Cub brought it down in the mountains near St. Mary's, in south-west Alaska.

Central London's St Andrew's Church suddenly went dark while the City Academy Voices choir was performing there. In what some members of the audience of 300 initially thought to be part of the event, Bishop of Fulham Jonathan Baker took the microphone and declared the concert over. Clad in his dressing gown, the barefoot bishop gave the musicians a dressing down for making a 'terrible racket' in his Holborn home.
After one more piece, an a cappella version of ABBA's 'Dancing Queen', the choir retired from view until acknowledging the formal apology that followed. In it, Baker stated that, when demanding that the event end at 10pm, he'd been unaware that the booking was valid until 11pm. He added 'You have been, and continue to be, welcome.'

28 August 2025

Our first item is from the Netherlands, where a man sparked panic by parking beside a Dordrecht motorway and jumping into the Hollands Diep. Though the sea-rescue institute, a police helicopter, the local fire brigade, and an ambulance rushed in to prevent his suicide, it was a passing boatman who scooped up the jumper – a Hungarian trucker who sheepishly explained that he'd been seeking relief from the summer heat. He will not receive relief from the fine that accompanies parking on the hard shoulder and jumping off a bridge.

A young woman visiting Turkey faces the possibility of a three-year jail term thanks to posting a 12-second video of herself violating national law by flag-pole-dancing on a hilltop in Cappadocia. The governor's office called her performance a 'heinous incident [disrespecting] our nation's moral values'.
The national transport minister, Abdulkadir Uraloglu, occupies an adjacent category. The video he posted, tagged '#TurkeyAccelerates', shows the landscape as he drives along to the sounds of folk songs and clips from speeches by President Erdogan. That landscape briefly displays his speedometer, with readings of 190 to 225 km/hour. A few hours later, he reposted the video to add that he'd just been fined for accidentally exceeding the 140 km/hour limit during his 'check' of the Ankara-to-Nigde highway.

Ethan Guo is a 19-year-old US 'influencer' who set out to garner cancer-research funding and personal acclaim as the youngest person to fly solo to every continent. The main problem is that, to actualise the Antarctic leg of his journey, he filed a bogus flight plan: Chilean authorities authorised him to fly his Cessna 182Q only as far as Punta Arenas. Since his clandestine landing in June, he remained stranded in Antarctica at a military base. His lawyers have now negotiated a deal under which he may leave after the weather clears and after paying for his upkeep at the base. Also, the judge has ordered him to donate $30,000 of his own money to a cancer foundation.

In airborne antics by another 'influencer', we find Peter Nguyen, caught using an e-cigarette by an American Airlines stewardess who had claiming to be a lawyer who would share the video he was taking of her noted the vapours and forced open the lavatory door. Nguyen reacted by – alleged proof of his dignity being 'violated in ways that left me shaken, humiliated, and hurt' – if she didn't 'say sorry right now'.
After posting it, Nguyen blamed the airline for a backlash that 'has been devastating to my career' as a self-professed pickleball coach, founder and CEO of a not-for-profit, Hollywood producer, and AI expert. He also claimed that he'd had to vape because his struggle with nicotine withdrawal was so great that he couldn't wait half an hour for the plane to land.
The image shown here captures Nguyen's most recent comment: 'I can't delete this, it's already on the internet.'

A 60-year-old man armed with knowledge from 'studying nutrition in college' decided to eliminate all chlorine from his diet while still retaining the benefits normally conferred by table salt. So he sought advice from ChatGPT. Three months after replacing all his sodium chloride with sodium bromide, he sought emergency medical help because his neighbour seemed to be poisoning him. He remained in hospital for three weeks while medics painstakingly traced his paranoia, hallucinations, and other symptoms to bromism.
Pointing to AI's limits in medical settings, which extend far beyond hallucinations, the write-up in Annals of Internal Medicine: Clinical Cases notes: '[I]t is highly unlikely that a medical expert would have mentioned sodium bromide when faced with a patient looking for a viable substitute for sodium chloride.'

A member of the public with a different DIY approach to medical matters is California's Jason Brauner, 47. In a janitor's guise, he became a familiar face at several San-Jacinto-area hospitals, where he made multiple visits to lug away bin liners filled with surgical equipment. He also made off with skin grafts, though unable to shift these via any tissue bank. Upon his arrest, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department put the total value of his loot at $300,000.
As selling stolen equipment through Facebook brought him near his bail target, a judge increased the amount set. Since then, Brauner has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him.

Big game in South Africa turned the tables on Texas real-estate baron cum trophy hunter Asher Watkins. Upon becoming cornered, a Cape buffalo that Watkins had been tracking with the aid of a safari company mounted a preemptive strike rather than wait to be shot. The firm's CEO, Hans Vermaak, described the bull's fatal attack as 'sudden and unprovoked'.

Let's now turn our attention to a few honourable-mention animal troublemakers. The culprit first on the list is an osprey in British Columbia or the large fish that slipped from that osprey's clutches onto lines carrying hydroelectric power to several Canadian towns. The results are harder to dispute: a power cut plus a brush fire that broke out after embers fell from the lines.
The creatures recently causing problems for utility operators in France, on the other hand, were jellyfish, which are proliferating in the area's warming waters. A 'massive and unpredictable' swarm of them accompanied seawater pumped in to cool the Gravelines nuclear power plant's reactors. By blocking the pumps' filters, they caused a complete shutdown of all four active units, which had been producing 900 MW each. Efforts to resume operation slowly are in progress.

Next in our animal identity parade is a more official miscreant. Nub Tang, a cat found wandering the streets in Thailand, was brought to a Bangkok police station, where she proceeded to bite and scratch several of the cops on duty. Policeman Dar Parinda Pakeesuk posted her mug shot for assaulting officers, in hopes that the news would alert Nub Tang's owner to collect her. This worked. Though she escaped without charges, she now has a police record – she'd been pawprinted, and all prints taken must be retained.

Also worthy of note is what a model-train enthusiast in Australia initially mistook for a rubber snake blocking his tracks. Explaining that a 'rather large' brown tree snake had simply decided to sleep in the train set's tunnel in preparation for shedding its skin, Stuart McKenzie of Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24/7 released it 'back in the tree where you belong, away from the model train set'.

Staying on track by heading from Australia to Austria leads us to the Sankt Pölten station, west of Vienna, where a passenger aboard a high-speed train from Zurich stepped onto the platform for a quick cigarette break. He detected the passage of time only as the train began pulling away, whereupon he grasped hold of the exterior and clung on for dear life. Though, in the words of state railway spokesman Herbert Hofer, 'this kind of thing usually ends up with someone dying', the crew pulled him aboard safely after his banging on windows prompted the conductor to apply the emergency brake.
The conductor laid into the 24-year-old Algerian man verbally, and then the cops took a turn as they led him away in Vienna.

The first time California's Jason Hong noticed that his Cessna Skyhawk had gone missing, he wondered whether the airport manager had moved it or, being in his 70s, he had forgotten where he'd parked. It was found at a different airport, 40 km away. Checking tracking data, he learnt that someone had absconded with it at least twice before, for flights over southern California. After removing cigarette butts from the cabin, he removed the plane's battery too, to thwart further capers of this sort. Another joyride followed nonetheless. Upon its recovery this time, the aircraft had a fresh battery, a new headset in the cockpit, and several tools aboard. Hong has now chained it down.

In response to a whistleblower's report, federal officials in Russia have concluded that members of the 83rd Guards Air Assault Brigade reaped the equivalent of more than two million euros in state compensation, plus decorations, for war wounds they'd staged by deliberately shooting at one another. Among the 35 co-conspirators identified was the group's former commander, Col. Artem Gorodilov. Another was former special-operations head Lt. Col. Konstantin 'The Executioner' Frolov, all seven of whose medal-earning injuries in combat had been faked at his request, according to investigators.
They also uncovered evidence of bribery and of fabricated claims broadcast nationally. For example, Frolov, known for such activities as the Bucha massacre, did not rescue and adopt a girl hurt in Ukrainian attacks or lead Russia's 'most effective sniper group'.

After his 11-year-old step-daughter gave birth at home, Oklahoma's Dustin Walker was charged with felonious child neglect for not having sought any prenatal care for her. His response that he'd been utterly unaware of the full-term pregnancy prompted further questions, the answers to which crystallised in a paternity test showing a 99.9% match between his genetic material and the infant's paternal DNA. He now faces more charges, while wife Cherie is accused of enabling child sexual abuse. Also, both stand accused of neglecting their shared children, ages 9, 7, 6, 4, and 2, who were removed from the home after being found unclothed and wallowing in dog faeces.

In an even more cheerful story, 45-year-old Old Order Amish Church Marcus Miller is believed to have been subject to a 'spiritual delusion' when swimming far enough out into Ohio's Atwood Lake that he could not be rescued. His son Vincen, age 4, died simultaneously, cast into the water by the 40-year-old mother as a gift to the Lord in parallel with her husband's 'test of faith'.
The couple's 15-year-old daughter and twin 18-year-old sons later told authorities that they'd seen her leave in the morning with the boy, then return alone. That was before she drove the three teenagers into the lake aboard a golf cart. Though all four emerged on their own, first responders prevented her from leaving the scene when witnesses expressed concerns about the missing family members. Sheriff Orvis Campbell reported that she was taken to a locked mental-health facility and drew a map that helped investigators recover the bodies. Campbell concluded in summary that the pair were 'devoted to the Bible and that just manifested itself incorrectly'.

Finally, Australian defence attorney Rishi Nathwani, KC, has accepted 'full responsibility' for AI-polluted submissions in a teenager's murder case in Victoria. Responding to Nathwani's apology for backing up the defence's arguments with fabricated extracts from a speech before legislators and bogus Australian Supreme Court rulings, Justice James Elliott complained about the 24-hour delay created after his own staff detected the problem, which prosecutors had failed to spot.
Elliot emphasised: 'The ability of the court to rely upon the accuracy of submissions made by counsel is fundamental to the due administration of justice.' In their defence, the defence team stated that they had verified the first few citations and assumed that the others too would be correct.

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