The police in Victoria, Australia, report on someone who, with an accomplice tagging alone, spent the early hours of Christmas morning setting light to shops in the Melbourne suburb Doncaster East. This all was warm-up for the 'final target', a fast-food outlet where their plans went up in flames. In CCTV footage released by the cops, our arsonist, after attempting to set light to flammable fluid the pair had poured over the façade, leaps back with trousers ablaze. While the accomplice collects the jerry can, the pants-on-fire pyromaniac runs off, pausing to remove the flaming garment, which remains tangled around an ankle. They and their getaway driver are still at large.
Our second item too is from Australia. Upon arrival at a social-media
friend's party in Sydney, a Melbourne woman found that she was the
only one obeying the 'wear white' dress code. At the venue, a church,
he asked her to act as the bride in a prank wedding to boost his
17,000-strong following on Instagram. She honoured the request, after
ringing a friend to be sure a ceremony without banns etc. holds no
legal weight. When he asked her, two months later, to add him to her
application for permanent Australian residency, she did not love
hearing that she was really his wife. She then found documents
bearing her 'signature'.
A family court found little credence in the man's claims that videos
from the church prove the devoutly religious woman was willing, that
she'd moved in with him, and that he wasn't even an online influencer.
Accepting the unwitting bride's explanation 'we had to make it look
real', the judge declared the wedding unreal - i.e., annulled.
I've found another Australian influencer. And so have the police.
This one is a 34-year-old Queensland woman whose one-year-old
daughter's medical travails led to surgeries and cardiac arrest
chronicled on social media, donations large and small, and a hospital
visit that prompted medics to suspect drugging. Then, CCTV-captured
furtive syringe action came to light.
Months of investigation culminated in charges of torture, fraud,
making child-exploitation material, and administering poison - both
over-the-counter medicines and pills prescribed to other members of
the household. Reportedly, efforts to repay the GoFundMe donations
are under way, and the child is now safe and doing well.
O
fficers with the Summit County, Colorado, sheriff's office described
it as 'not our everyday illegal parking call': they found a car parked
on one of the slopes at a skiing resort. While the naughty driver was
no longer on the Schoolmarm slope, deputies received an explanation by
way of a note stuck to the vehicle's window. In the note, the driver
shoulders the blame for turning the wrong way while trying to follow
GPS-based instructions. A tow truck proved able to reach the car,
which was hauled back to its owner.
Being 'very proud' of the non-medical penis implant he received,
Spanish native Juan Bernabé posted images of his shiny new prosthetic
pee-pee on various personal social-media accounts. And he explained
on Italy's radio show La Zanzara that it left him feeling 'more
masculine' in his work as a falconer for the Lazio football club. The
Italian club responded by deciding to do without their eagle mascot,
at least for the next few games. The bird traditionally flies over
Lazio's stadium in Rome for home matches.
Bernabé has courted controversy before: the club suspended him in
2021 for chanting 'Duce, Duce' after a match to the accompaniment of a
fascist salute. In the recent La Zanzara interview, Bernabé said 'I
admire [Mussolini] so much'.
Y
our passport is not your personal property. This came as news to a
54-year-old US woman who attempted to enter Poland with 'defaced'
documents last month. Officials at the Kraków airport took her to the
side because she had written the names of airports and cities next to
the visa stamps on nine pages of her passport from the various
countries she'd visited. According to border-security spokeswoman
Justyna Drozdz, the woman was refused entry to the country and booked
for a return flight to London. She was informed that the holder of a
passport shall not write in travel documents except to provide any
required signature and details of emergency contacts.
Let's retrace our steps to the end-of-year holidays, when tracing two Portland, Oregon, men's steps led not to the Sasquatch they'd been seeking but to their frozen corpses. A five-day search by more than five dozen helicopter-assisted volunteers revealed that the pair, 37 and 59 years of age, had died in a heavily wooded portion of Gifford Pinchot National Forest of what the Skamania County Sheriff's Office concluded was exposure 'based on weather conditions and ill-preparedness'. There is no evidence of anyone harming Bigfoot, an act that is illegal in Skamania County.
On the opposite side of the country, we find Florida's Donald Calloway,
arrested by Polk County sheriff's officers for sexual contact with a
horse. Responding to a woman's report of having found the 53-year-old
Lake Wales man masturbating next to the head of her 24-year-old horse
and seen him try to shove his penis into one of the animal's nostrils,
they sought clarification. The witness - Calloway's girlfriend -
therefore supplied a video that Sheriff Grady Judd characterised as
accurately showing the actions described.
After he was read his rights, Calloway shrugged off his 'dumb
decision' by stating that 'I haven't had any sex in probably two
months' and 'maybe it was just a sexually frustrated moment'. It is
unclear whether he is less sexually frustrated in jail.
In slightly different animal news, Malaysia's Aqila Nasir took young daughter Hayfa's ear pain seriously enough to peer into the girl's ear with a torch but detected nothing out of the ordinary. Since Hayfa's hijab covers her ears when she plays with stray cats, Aqila presumed a pimple to be responsible. However, neck pain and lethargy followed, accompanied by reminders from the girl's father about her high pain threshold. Ultimately, an otoscope-equipped physician found hundreds of black spots within the girl's ear. She was prescribed a course of antibiotics once all of the ticks had been removed.
Florida's Cocoa Beach Police rang Elizabeth Hill-Brodigan, 47, in response to complaints about a raucous alcohol-soaked party at her house. She assured them that she would return home to 'handle the issue', then half-heartedly asked her son to have all 100+ juveniles leave. When the cops showed up a few hours later, they arrested Hill-Brodigan, who is the principal of nearby Roosevelt Elementary School, and fellow sozzled teacher Karly Anderson. They also summoned emergency aid for a youth in the front garden, nabbed a minor for drunken driving, and took statements about fisticuffs and handgun horseplay. Some unfazed attendees downplayed the seriousness of these, telling investigating officers that such parties occur at least monthly.
Officers at a classic-car show in Rättvik, Sweden, spotted a drone in the event's temporary no-fly zone and castigated the 55-year-old man who admitted to operating it. They also checked his blood-alcohol level. When informed that he faced charges of operating an aircraft while intoxicated, he denied flying the drone. According to SVT, he was fined anyway, with district court presider Karin Hellmont explaining that the fine, of about 3,000 euros, is equivalent to the punishment for drink-driving, since 'it is an aircraft. Even though it is flown by itself, it is controlled by someone down on the ground and can fall from a high height and injure someone'.
Pattaya, Thailand, is back in the Clippings, thanks to a randy woman
who decided to go on holiday abroad after a car fire damaged her home
in Plymouth. At 3am, a highly inebriated Jude Hill and her partner of
the moment entered the Flipper Lodge Hotel, where they were not
staying, and started engaging in sex on a sofa in the lobby. They then
mounted a glass table, which shattered. The pair left with staff in
hot pursuit. While Hill, 42, picked a fight with an armed security
officer at the nearby beach, her companion slipped into the night.
Bystanders detained her. The ensuing expletive-rich ride to jail was
peppered with such comments as 'I'm from England, mister'.
MailOnline reports that, after viewing security-camera videos, a
10-year acquaintance of Hill concluded 'that's just what she's like'.
P
ontfadog is a Welsh village seldom recognised for its tourist
attractions. In an effort to change this, residents along a stretch
of road that time forgot have erected signs advertising the adventures
available at Pothole Land, which boasts the 'deepest, longest, widest
potholes in Wales' - called impassable by local farmer Donald Roberts,
ever-growing by resident Tim Raddock, and award-winning by the
signage. While reportedly short on cash, the council have now decided
to direct their own attention to the two-kilometre stretch of
pothole-pocked road.
In the first round of qualifying for tennis's Davis Cup, Chile's
Cristian Garin, 28, was walking toward his seat via the gap between
the net and the umpire's chair just as opponent Zizou Bergs bounded
into the same space by the net while celebrating a valuable point
during the third set. The two collided, with the 25-year-old
Belgian's shoulder catching Garin in the eye. Profuse apologies and
medical aid swiftly followed.
Bergs was cited for unsportsmanlike conduct, but officials' work
wasn't done. Garin, 28, insisted that they disqualify Bergs. And he
wouldn't budge, literally. Handed three successive time violations
for not leaving the bench, the Chilean lost game and match. Belgium
has advanced to round 2.
Despite Japan's reputation for innovative treats, from crispy insects to wasabi KitKat bars, customs inspectors at the Los Angeles airport decided to open up some snack packets from Japanese air cargo that scans had flagged as odd-looking. The packs contained decidedly non-snack-sized items: 37 giant beetles, up to 13 cm long. US Customs representative Cheryl Davies estimated the total value of the smuggled beetles - live scarab, stag, darkling, and other beetles - at $1,500 for exotic-insect collectors. Rather than private homes, they are now bound for local zoos that hold suitable permits.
Australians are accustomed to living alongside wildlife, sometimes of
a rather hostile sort, so western Sydney's David Stein paid little
mind to the four venomous snakes he saw disappear into his family's
backyard mulch pile over a span of two weeks. Then, one of them
attacked his dog. This prompted him to call in Reptile Relocation
Sydney, whose Cory Kerewaro reported finding more than the expected
quartet of red-bellied black snakes: 40-plus reptiles, which took
three hours to bag up. When checking the bags before leaving, the
snake-catchers found that the total had swollen to 70, thanks to
pregnant females.
Back at home base, they tallied up 102 snakes, only five of which
were adults. Kerewaro has arranged to release them all at a national
park in 'the middle of the bush in the middle of nowhere', and Stein
has sworn off mulch piles.
After Pennsylvania 46-year-olds Jared Wolfe and Jane White smoked what Wolfe later called an unknown substance at a friend's flat, he leant a 'paranormal meter' against a statue. Its high 'energy' reading reading disturbed him so greatly that he ran outside to fetch his unlicensed handgun. Next, he fatally shot long-term partner White. Wolfe later explained this solution to his brother, who alerted authorities. Then, he reported the nature of the problem to Sunbury police officer Trey Kurtz: she and the friends 'were all trying to kill him and eat him'.
The Florida Highway Patrol's midnight pursuit of a reckless motorist
in Pasco County didn't end when the driver erratically dropped off a
passenger. Neither did it stop when a tree eventually stopped the
pickup: Dalmatian-onesie-clad Dylan Keith Devereaux sprinted from
it. Though promptly tased to the ground, he wrestled with troopers,
who managed to attach only a single handcuff before a second dash for
freedom. He lost his flip-flops, and officers lost him in the
trees.
They knew where to look, though - his girlfriend's home beside the
forest. There, she refused to let them in, citing drugs on the
premises and a fear of jail. She stated that the same fear would keep
her from admitting Devereaux, 36; however, he was there and ripe for
arrest when cops arrived with a search warrant the next day.
Not everyone finds the arm of the law long enough. Proof comes from
a procedural hearing at New Mexico's Bernadillo County District Court,
where Alexander Segura Ortiz, 21, stands accused of shooting abused
girlfriend Alianna Faran in the face and of killing another woman a
week later. Two of Faran's enraged family members, uncle Carlos
Lucero, 48, and stepfather Pete Ysasi, 51, leapt over a barrier and
set upon Ortiz with fists and feet. Other relatives of Faran tried to
intervene, but that added to the chaos. The accused's father entered
the mix, and a chair-wielding woman hit Ortiz and side-swiped an
officer. Calm arrived when a law-enforcement officer drew a stun gun,
though Ortiz's father still gave Ysasi a parting kick in the kisser.
Several people face charges of felonious battery and assault on a
peace officer; however, Lucero concluded that, since Ortiz had killed
Faran 'like a coward', the courtroom brawl was 'worth every moment'.
After a disturbance to a single line recently left the entirety of Sri Lanka without electrical power, energy minister Kumara Jayakody explained that a monkey coming in contact with a grid transformer near Colombo had created 'an imbalance in the system'. In response, local newspaper the Daily Mirror highlighted engineers' warnings to several successive governments that avoiding frequent blackouts would require system upgrades. Editor-in-chief Jamila Husain wrote: 'Only in Sri Lanka can a group of monkeys fighting inside a power station cause an island-wide power outage'.
Attacks at schools - whether with knives or with firearms - are far from unusual these days; however, Korea recently turned this phenomenon on its head. An eight-year-old girl who had not boarded the bus home at the end of the day was found stabbed to death at a primary school in Daejeon, alongside a teacher sporting her own stab wounds. The police believe that all the stabs were the work of the 40-something teacher, who had been medically cleared to return to work after requesting a leave of absence for treatment of depression. A few days earlier, she had placed another teacher in a headlock, according to the Daejeon education office.
Shortly before an Alaska Airlines flight was due to depart for Oregon,
concerned passengers summoned the cabin crew to deal with a man who'd
begun rocking in his seat and mumbling repetitively. When flight
attendants reached him, the disturbed passenger seized the hair of the
woman seated in front of him, refusing to let go even as an air steward
attempted to pull his hands open. So the air steward proceeded to
punch the man in the throat until he relented.
While the woman scampered away, the flight attendant requested
'another capable male' to help keep the troublesome passenger under
control until handcuff-bearers could arrive. Citing an apparent
'violent medical episode', Alaska Airlines cancelled the flight.
Finally, the owner of an Advanced Auto Parts shop in Forsyth, Georgia, rang the police to report that a man had 'been at the store for over an hour and was barking like a dog'. Upon their arrival, 29-year-old Jonathan Navas professed unawareness of having created issues with his barking. As officers neared his car to fetch Navas's ID documents, a baggie of syringes on the passenger's seat led to questions - Navas stated that these merely contained blood - and then to a search of the vehicle, which revealed perhaps bark-inspiring methamphetamine. He was arrested accordingly, then found to be a wanted man in Florida.