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

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.

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Artists in Pittsburgh got wind that the Google Street View Car was visiting their locality and decided to throw a street party with balloons, confetti and a marching band. You can navigate the street view here at 488 Sampsonia Way for as long as Google leaves it live.

A Newscaster from ABC7 in Los Angeles strikes an uncanny resemblance to the police rapist sketch he is reporting on.

filed under Weird Photos

As the economy goes South, Roxanne Usleman’s Psychic business is booming.

“It’s more types of people I have never seen before,” says Usleman. “Men in the business world, high-powered jobs, stock market, Wall Street.”

Since last fall, she says she began to see a new type of client — a “logical, [A-type] of personality.” Many of them are “just completely lost,” says Usleman.

Relationship advice, typically the bread and butter of the psychic business, has been supplanted by something new.

“Should I merge with this company? Should I bring in a partner to my company,” are the kind of questions Usleman gets from her clients.

For a typical reading, she grips a client’s photograph or set of keys and consults “the angels.”

Business is good, she says. Usleman sees five or six clients a day and charges up to $135 a pop for sessions that usually last more than an hour.

Businessman Bruce Levy was skeptical at first but one of his clients pushed him to get a reading.

“What I expected was something like Ouija boards and someone looking at my palm and seeing my lifeline,” says Levy.

Instead, he found a psychic who he says helped him find the answers.

“She helps me make better decisions,” Levy says. “She is able to make me see things that I wouldn’t otherwise see. I just think that she has this intuition that gets through to my subconscious in a way that I can’t.”

There are no national statistics on the business of psychics. But Usleman’s experience is backed up by anecdotal evidence from other psychics around the country. Liveperson.com matches psychics with customers on its Web site and says the uncertain economy has been good for business. Some psychics charge up to $20 a minute for advice.

Many people simply feel like they have to do something, according to Professor Gita Johar at Columbia Business School in New York.

“The biggest reason people are going to see psychics is probably that they want to feel in control,” says Johar, who studies consumer behavior.

“And when they see that their financials aren’t looking so good and they really can’t turn to their financial adviser — they haven’t been getting really good advice and so they have to turn to someone else.”

Source: CNN link Filed under Weird US News

Late one evening last September, Caryl Jones ordered an iced tea at the drive-through of the McDonald’s near her Northwest Baltimore home. But that’s not what she got, according to her lawsuit in Baltimore City Circuit Court.

What Jones got was another sort of “T”: Triazinetrione — Dichloro-s-Triazinetrione Dihydrate, to be exact — better known as “McD Sanitizer,” a cleaning chemical intended for use on kitchen equipment and surfaces, according to her lawyer.

“She took a sip, it burned her mouth and she spit it out,” said Patricia S. Steiger, of the Law Offices of Seymour Goldstein.

Jones, an administrative assistant, convinced the restaurant employees to open the closed interior of the restaurant in the 4200 block of Mortimer Ave., Steiger said. The workers gave her some milk — and a sample of what she unwittingly put in her mouth, the lawyer said.

“They gave her a packet like the one that had been in there — as a matter of knowing what it was — to take with her and then she went to the emergency room” at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Steiger said.

There, doctors determined Jones had “a mild or moderate chemical reaction,” Steiger said, and eventually diagnosed her with chemical pharyngitis and tonsillitis. By mid-November, she had made a full recovery, according to Steiger.

In the suit filed last week, Jones seeks $100,000 on counts of negligence and breach of warranty.

Franchise owner Cynthia Brown declined to comment on the pending litigation, instead issuing an e-mailed statement through a McDonald’s spokeswoman.

“Nothing is more important to me than the well-being of my customers,” the e-mail said. “Rest assured, we take this matter seriously.”

According to label information from the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency, a packet of “McD Sanitizer,” produced by Greensboro, N.C.-based Kay Chemical International Inc. exclusively for McDonald’s, is meant to be combined with gallons of water to clean “shake/soft serve machines, kitchen utensils, kitchen equipment, counter tops and tables.”

At this point, Steiger said, she does not know “who mixed it, when they mixed it or how they mixed it.”

The chemical is a skin irritant and swallowing it could result in mucosal damage, according to the PMRA report. Jones did not swallow the solution, Steiger said.

Asked where this suit fits among others against fast-food chains for defective products — scalding hot coffee, for example — Steiger said her case is “much simpler.”

“It wasn’t iced tea; it was cleaning solution,” she said. “It’s not a matter of degrees. She was given something that was not meant to be consumed.”

Source: MDRecord  Link Filed under Weird US News