The return from summer time to standard time left a man in Quickborn, Germany, with not merely another hour: 10 boxfuls of letters from the tax office arrived at his door, each informing him of his password for online filing system ELSTER. Officials later explained that the agency's automated system had been processing its letter to him when the time change occurred, then spent the next hour repeating this action. Without human supervision, it printed, enveloped, stamped, and dispatched 1,700 copies of the missive. The finance ministry issued an apology and offered to cart away the boxes.
Our next item too involves someone in Germany who ended up with more than expected. Returning home after an outing with her young son at Karlsruhe Zoo, 30-year-old Elina Öfele expressed annoyance at her husband's immature Halloween prank involving a fake bat, but it turned out that she'd uncovered a very real stowaway: a leaf-nosed bat had shared her jacket ever since mother and son entered the zoo's bat cave. After spending the night in a box with honey water and a banana, the bat was on its way back home to the zoo.
In more animal news, a man brought 73 fancy mice to a New Hampshire
animal shelter and advised that he'd be giving up 150 in all. To the
workers' mounting horror, he brought hundreds more in the next four
days - and then clarified that he'd meant to say he had 150 glass
containers full of mice.
Lisa Dennison, speaking for the state's society for the prevention of
cruelty to animals, called the burden crippling, adding that the
facility, which seldom takes in more than 125 animals in one day,
is facing 'an exponential problem that keeps growing'. They have
sought help from other shelters, are scrambling for food donations,
and have appealed to anyone who might want to adopt a rodent.
Perhaps TAP Air Portugal can count itself lucky in comparison: the number of escaping pet-shop-bound hamsters that disrupted a fully booked domestic flight was much lower, a paltry 132. Maintenance personnel at the destination airport still needed five days to capture the rodents, though, and return them to their boxes in the cargo hold. The aircraft returned to service once its electrical wiring had been inspected for gnawing-related injuries.
A![[IMG: The bear suit]](images/bearsuit.jpg)
s mainstream news outlets' coverage attests, even fake animals can
cause ample damage. Video footage supporting insurance claims for
damage to multiple luxury cars depicted an ursine marauder whose
exploits netted four residents of the Los Angeles area payouts worth
more than 140,000 euros. Though a California Department of Fish and
Wildlife biologist called in by sceptical investigators had swiftly
concluded that the culprit was 'clearly a human in a bear suit',
execution of a search warrant yielded firmer evidence - the costume
and the metal 'meat claws' used for scratching up upholstery and
paintwork. All four men were arrested for insurance fraud and
conspiracy.
Animals were merely bystanders in the goings-on in our next Clipping,
which takes us to Canada. Checking out a promotional video for her
dog-sitter's OnlyFans account, Nova Scotia resident Amanda Joudrey
LeBlanc recognised the unique pattern of her bathroom tiles.
With suspicions and hackles raised, she shelled out for a month's
access to the associated premium content. With her sense of violation
having been validated by videos of the woman masturbating in her
bathroom and luxuriating in her backyard pool, Joudrey LeBlanc, who
eventually persuaded the woman to remove the offending material,
stressed that 'people have to make money [but] I just don't want it
done in my home'.
As for the homes of families to whom Joudrey LeBlanc had recommended
a reliable dog-sitter, plenty of associated videos remain available on
the site, according to the CBC.
A motorist in Stalowa Wola, Poland, became slightly worried when a sheet blew onto his car window, obscuring his vision. His concerns multiplied once the sheet fell: it appeared that he'd run someone over at a pedestrian crossing, fatally. Both the sheet and the body, however, had escaped from the back of a Hades Funeral Services transport vehicle at a pedestrian crossing. Blaming 'an unexpected technical failure of the electric tailgate lock in the hearse', the company apologised to the deceased person's family and to everyone else who was left upset or disappointed by the incident.
By rejecting an appeal filed by supermarket chain Mercadona, Spain's Superior Court of Castilla--La-Mancha has upheld a ruling that the company illegally fired a worker for eating a bin-bound croquette after work hours. Though acknowledging the policy against workers consuming any food products without having paid for them, the court stressed both that staff often noshed on 'ready-to-eat' deli products that had evaded customers' same-day ingestion and that the man ate not 'an entire package of croquettes but instead one single croquette'. The chain has been ordered to reinstate his employment and pay him 39,700 euros in lost wages plus his 600 euros of legal fees.
Other dismissed employees handle their grievances rather differently.
A few months after Michael Scheuer's job as a menu-production manager
was terminated in conditions that employer Walt Disney World called
'contentious and not considered to be amicable', the Indiana man
allegedly broke into the computer systems used for Disney-operated
restaurants and proceeded to alter the prices of some food items,
delete allergen notes for peanut-laden dishes, and spice the menus
with expletives.
Disney caught the tampering before any menus were shipped, thanks to
further, rather less subtle actions - universally applying dingbat
fonts etc. - and the ensuing FBI investigation landed Scheuer in jail.
According to his court-appointed lawyer, he intends to plead not
guilty and cite mental-health issues.
GPS-based tracking was among the probation conditions imposed on Los
Angeles's Nhazel Warren after a high-speed chase that revealed a
firearm in his underpants. Three weeks after his release, he was
arrested for robbing an elderly couple of their car, engagement ring,
bank codes, etc. The judge in that case too freed him while mandating
an ankle monitor. After two further robberies, the company that the
county pays to the tune of 350,000 euros a month to monitor the
monitors declined to provide data for Warren's whereabouts at the
times in question. Therefore, LAPD detectives served a search
warrant on said contractor, but Securus analyst Jeff Marino deemed the
material so flawed that he'd be 'uncomfortable' calling it accurate.
Meanwhile, Warren, 19, has racked up his fifth arrest in five
months. He has pleaded not guilty to carrying and assaulting people
with concealed guns in public, committing four robberies, evading
police, and resisting arrest.
The county probation department's figures for August state that 402
of the 1,438 people under GPS monitoring had vanished, 231 others let
the batteries die, and 142 failed to see their probation officer.
While kayaking in Green Lake County, Wisconsin, 45-year-old Ryan
Borgwardt sent his wife a text message advising that he'd soon return
to shore. He then went missing, with his life jacket, capsized kayak,
fishing rod, wallet, passport, and car all readily visible in the area.
However, Chief Deputy Sheriff Matthew Vande is certain that 'he's not
in our lake'. This is partly on account of divers' persistence but
mainly because his name had been checked at a Canadian border crossing
the day after he was reported missing - some time after he'd reported
his passport missing and received a replacement.
When he left to go fish, he left behind a fresh hard drive, a virgin
browser history, a change of e-mail address, and bank tendrils leading
to 'Eastern Europe'. Further traces of him are being probed.
Customers with pre-booked car rentals faced an abandoned desk at the Syracuse, New York, airport when all Hertz workers absconded from work six hours early. Roughly 20 people tried to find the right keys at the abandoned desk or 'looked through cars in the Hertz section of the garage and just took random cars that had keys in them', in the words of someone who fruitlessly sought help from airport officials in contacting Hertz. Local staff later popped up to demand the incorrect cars' return, with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston being among those dutifully returning to exchange the vehicle he'd believed was for him.
Finally, personnel at Thailand's Freelancer Hotel initially paid no mind to the late-night groans and banging noises emanating from a 51-year-old British tourist's room: after all, this was the red-light district of Pattaya, dubbed 'Sin City' by some. That was before gamers at the Internet café below his balcony were interrupted by a pair of legs crashing through the ceiling. A foul odour followed. Police soon arrived to cart the naked, faeces-encrusted man away for medical checks and to sober up.