Weird News Files

Gary Hesterberg was in a national park in San Francisco with his two lap dogs. A park ranger saw him with his dogs and told him that the dogs must be leashed. She asked for his name and told him to not to leave. When he started walking away, she shot him in the back with her “electric-shock weapon.”

Rancho Corral de Tierra has long been an off-leash walking spot for local dog owners. In December, the area became part of the national park system, which requires that all dogs be on a leash, Levitt said.

The ranger was trying to educate residents of the rule, Park Service spokesman Howard Levitt said.

Witnesses said the use of a stun gun and the arrest seemed excessive for someone walking two small dogs off leash.

“It was really scary,” said Michelle Babcock, who said she had seen the incident as she and her husband were walking their two border collies. “I just felt so bad for him.”

Babcock said Hesterberg had repeatedly asked the ranger why he was being detained. She didn’t answer him, Babcock said.

“He just tried to walk away. She never gave him a reason,” Babcock said.

The ranger shot Hesterberg in the back with her shock weapon as he walked off, Babcock said.

“We were like in disbelief,” she said. “It didn’t make any sense.”

Rancho Corral de Tierra has long been an off-leash walking spot for local dog owners. In December, the area became part of the national park system, which requires that all dogs be on a leash, Levitt said.

The ranger was trying to educate residents of the rule, Levitt said.

The park service is investigating the incident, he said.

Source:  SFGate

They’re calling it the face of testicular pain.

Doctors Naji Touma and Gregory Roberts at Queen’s University Hospital in Kingston, Ont., have spotted what looks like the face of a screaming man in an ultrasound of a testicular tumor. The bizarre image jumped out at them while scrolling through scans of a 45-year-old patient suffering from extreme testicular pain. The picture then went viral after it was published in the journal of Urology and it’s been compared to sightings of the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwiches or pizza slices.

In the journal, the doctors say they debated amongst themselves “whether the image could have been a sign from a deity” — possibly the Egyptian god of virility — but quickly dismissed it as a coincidence. In the end, the patient decided to undergo surgery and have the testicle removed. The tumor turned out to be benign.

An estimated 500 more dead birds were discovered littering a quarter-mile stretch of highway in Point Coupee Parish in Louisiana today. State biologists are trying to determine what killed the red-winged blackbirds and starlings, according to an AP report.

The discovery on Monday discovery came just three days after thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas, about 300 miles away. Authorities there say lab examinations indicate that those birds suffered internal injuries that formed deadly blood clots.

At this time there is no clear link between the incidents. The cause of death is undetermined. Testing in the Arkansas case could continue for a month, according to Arkansas officials.

Guangzhou, CHINA – A man has died after his mobile phone exploded, severing a major artery in his neck, according to reports.

The man, thought to be a shop assistant in his twenties at a computer shop in Guangzhou, China, died after he put a new battery in his phone. It was believed that he may have just finished charging the battery and had put the phone in his breast pocket when it exploded.

According to the local Chinese daily Shin Min Daily News, the accident happened on January 30 at 7.30pm. An employee at the shop told Chinese media that she heard a loud bang and saw her colleague lying on the floor of the shop in a pool of blood. The employee said the victim had recently changed the battery in his mobile phone.

Chinese authorities have yet to determine the make and model of the phone and its battery. Some reports indicated the store was a Lenovo shop, but it was thought that this might be because the shop advertised Lenovo computer products. Police were investigating whether the phone and battery were counterfeit.

Local reports said that this was the ninth recorded cellphone explosion in China since 2002. In the most high profile recent incident, in June 2007, a 22-year-old welder, Xiao Jinpeng, died from chest wounds when his mobile phone exploded while he was at work at an iron mill in Gansu province.

A local government inquiry found that the mobile phone battery had exploded due to the heat of the iron mill. Lithium batteries are widely used in mobile phones – but if they are overcharged or exposed to heat, the inflammable liquid inside can explode.

Motorola and Nokia, two of the world’s biggest mobile phone makers, denied links to the distributors of problem batteries in China, suggesting they were counterfeit.

After the latest incident, the Shin Min Daily News published advice for consumers on how to avoid mobile phone explosions. The tips included:

- Always use original batteries. Be sure that batteries by the manufacturer are meant for your mobile phone.

- Never modify your phone

- Always use original battery chargers

- Do not expose your mobile phone to high temperatures, and avoid exposing it to direct sunlight

- Avoid long phone conversations

- Do not make or answer calls when the phone is charging

- Try to keep your phone in a bag instead of in a pocket

- Do not use damaged batteries

Source: TimesOnline Link Filed under Weird World News

On the afternoon of June 12, 1981, a Japanese man named Issei Sagawa walked into the woods in Bois de Boulogne, France, carrying two suitcases. The postgraduate student at the Sorbonne had shot and killed a female exchange student, a classmate of his, the day before. After eating portions of her body, he tried to dump the corpse in a remote lake. Witnesses saw him and he was soon arrested. According to reports, Issei uttered the following to the French police who raided his home: “I killed her to eat her flesh.”

French psychologists found Sagawa to have been legally insane at the time of the crime and, therefore, unfit to stand trial. He was subsequently exempted from prosecution. He returned to his homeland, where Japanese authorities tried to put him on trial for murder. French justice officials refused to hand over the necessary documents to carry on and he was again set free.

In his own words:

Around the time I entered junior high school I became obsessed with the Western actress Grace Kelly—an obsession that lasted right through high school. That was the beginning of my infatuation with Occidental people. Before I knew it, tall, healthy-looking Western women became the trigger for my cannibalistic fantasies. I guess my infatuation with such women stemmed from the fact that I was short, ugly, and had an inferiority complex and therefore sought people who were the exact opposite of myself. Eventually, I began feeling a strong desire to bite into them—not to kill them or eat them per se, but merely to gnaw on their flesh. It was purely a form of sexual desire. It wasn’t like I felt like eating someone every time I was hungry. But you know how you tend to feel a stronger sexual desire when you’ve eaten a full meal? That’s when I would start feeling the urge to eat a girl. It’s absurd, right? In essence, it’s different from the type of hunger that people experience for food. This cannibalistic urge, “I want to eat human meat,” is a sort of sexual appetite…

To read the full macabre and fascinating interview, head over to Vice Magazine

It has been called the Betty Ford clinic for jihadists and within minutes of arriving at the Care Rehabilitation Centre on the outskirts of Riyadh, you can see why. The small complex, where the Saudi Arabian government is exploring a new way of reforming its wayward radicals, feels more like an exclusive boarding school than a Saudi jail.

Inmates have access to swimming pools, table tennis and PlayStations. In the evenings, guards and prisoners play football. An air-conditioned tent sits adjacent to the sports field, serving as a dining hall and common room where the prisoners are served rice and lamb with fresh fruit.

In return for this privileged treatment, the prisoners – Islamic extremists, some of whom are convicted murderers – are obliged to attend lessons based around Islamic law and the jurisprudence of jihad. A team of psychologists teaches detainees how they should manage their emotions, particularly when reacting to world events.

The Saudi government insists all this is necessary to promote genuine rehabilitation and foster a meaningful relationship with the jihadists. But in the easy-going atmosphere of the “resort” – nobody calls it a prison – where inmates are referred to as “beneficiaries”, it is easy to forget the seriousness of some of their crimes.

The centre is divided into six areas, four of which hold Saudi nationals who fought (or tried to) in Iraq. The other two hold returnees from Guantanamo Bay.

The government has realized that the use of force alone will not contain Al-Qaeda. It has created an ideological security unit that coordinates the kingdom’s efforts in the war of ideas against its native jihadists. Those arrested in connection with terrorism are routinely subjected to attempts to reform their thinking. Hundreds of men have passed through the Saudi program, which has been viewed as a model for similar efforts elsewhere.

Since the program started in 2004, Nine graduates, including some who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, have been arrested for rejoining terrorist groups .

The Saudi Interior Ministry acknowledged the arrests after it emerged last week that two other graduates had joined the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda. Both had been released from Guantanamo, in Cuba, in 2007, and one is suspected of having helped plan a deadly attack in Yemen last year.

Sources: Times Online &  Sydney Morning Herald  -  filed under Weird World News