Odd, Weird and Offbeat News

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, in his latest incarnation as a gay Austrian fashion reporter, jet skied through a canal into Amsterdam’s red light district on Friday to open a brothel full of men in thongs ahead of the Dutch premiere of ‘Bruno’.

Money doesn’t grow on trees, but a tree-care supervisor in New York City’s Central Park found an old wallet inside a dead one.

A teacher who became notorious in the 1990s for having an affair with a sixth-grader is hosting a “Hot for Teacher” night at a Seattle bar - along with the former student, now her husband.

A popular Chinese online video showing a woman going hysterical after her male companion refuses to buy her a car is stirring debate about Shanghai’s females, who are renowned for their demanding ways.

A man who tried to hire a prostitute to take his 14-year-old son’s virginity as a present was spared jail by a court on today.

A Serbian union official who chopped off his finger and ate it in a protest over wages that in some cases have not been paid in years, said Monday he did it to show how desperate he and other workers were.

Humans have it. Pigs don’t.

An 84-year-old man has a black eye, but he still has his car, after fighting off two would-be carjackers.

A Kenyan man bit a python who wrapped him in its coils and hauled him up a tree in a struggle that lasted hours, local media said Wednesday.

A Russian karate expert has been charged with beating to death a 61-year-old woman and her son, whom he accused of infecting his wife with lice, an investigator said Friday.

After decades of denying the facility’s existence, five former insiders speak out

For three years, Porterhouse was so close to the title he could drool on it.

It’s no April Fools joke. The baby bunny really does have two noses.

Falling off a barstool can hurt one’s pride, if not more, but an Ohio man got into trouble with the law for crashing his motorized version.

Whether you’re a g-string girl or prefer granny-style knickers, a Japanese lingerie maker is inviting women to liberate themselves from conventional, body-hugging underwear and don loincloths instead.

Police were hunting Monday a convicted arsonist who escaped from London’s Pentonville prison by clinging to the underside of the security van that brought him there.

Police arrested a school safety officer, saying he demanded $300 from a woman after finding her cell phone.

A woman sued a police dog that she blamed for injuries after it bit her in the buttocks.

A retired police chief said he was robbed by “probably the dumbest criminal in Pennsylvania,” at a police officers’ convention on Friday morning.

A British tourist’s bid to flee a delayed flight by opening an emergency exit as the plane idled on the tarmac at a New York airport could earn him a year behind bars on charges of reckless endangerment.

A Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16 people, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot.

The top bowler for the Special Olympics looks forward to meeting President Barack Obama in an alley.

40 years apart in age, James and Christine were an odd couple. Now she’s accused of murdering her husband -- by exercise.

A legally blind man was credited with saving a woman after authorities said a 45-year-old man broke into her apartment on Saturday night.

Former United Technologies Corp. chief executive George David and his wife are doing battle in Hartford in a divorce trial that shines light on the couple’s extravagant lifestyle.

Authorities arrested a 32-year-old Texas man on drug charges on Thursday after construction workers saw him on his hands and knees, eating mud and growling like a dog.

A North Carolina family’s dog didn’t eat the children’s homework, he ate mom’s money.

Six high-risk prisoners escaped a Canadian jail last summer after spending four months chipping a path to freedom with nail clippers and other makeshift tools, according to a government report released on Thursday.

You forgot to buckle up, dummy!

A robber gets more than he bargained for when he targeted a Tae Kwon Do studio in suburban Milwaukee.

Feminists of the world sit down before you read this.

Christine

A Massachusetts man has been fined $500 for assaulting a Chuck E. Cheese mouse.

The Segee family in Leimert Park has discovered a simple way to get daughters Jai’Neil, left, Dee’Anna and Jai’Lynn excited about growing their own food: cultivate a 28-pound cucumber.

An infant boy was married off to his neighbors’ dog in eastern India by villagers, who said it will stop the groom from being killed by wild animals, officials and witnesses said on Wednesday.

A Utah woman listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for her long fingernails has lost them in a car crash.

He’s 13. He scarcely looks 10. And according to a British tabloid, he’s a father.

Two Myanmar fishermen have survived for almost a month in shark-infested waters by floating in a large ice box after their boat sank, rescue officials said.

A 72-year-old man with eyebrows so long he brushed them each morning raised $1,600 for charity from people who paid to take turns trimming his out-of-control brows.

A suspect who ran away from a traffic stop on Wednesday chose the wrong place to hide when he slipped under a parked moving truck - and then was run over when the driver pulled away.

Police say a New Jersey man posed as a female animal doctor, ran an illegal veterinary practice and set up a phony rescue agency that may have duped pet lovers out of thousands of dollars.

“American Idol” wants an Austin strip club to take it off.

Position: Island caretaker. Duties: Lazing around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for six months.

A 107-year-old Chinese woman who was afraid to marry when she was young has decided to look for her first husband and hopes to find a fellow centenarian so they will have something to talk about, a Chinese paper reported.

Nebraska zookeepers are seeing double and they’re thrilled about it, with the births of twins to a rare species of tree kangaroo.

A couple accused of assaulting each other over an unappreciated Christmas gift have been ordered to stay away from each other.

A New York doctor is demanding that his estranged wife pay him $1.5 million to compensate him for the kidney he gave her while they were still on good terms.

An Australian man broke into three adult shops, had sex with blow up dolls named “Jungle Jane” and then dumped his plastic conquests in a nearby alley, local media reported Wednesday.

The country that gave the world chewing gum is getting gummed up: The average square yard (meter) of Mexico City sidewalk has 70 blobs of discarded chew.

An inspector’s report shows Chicago Public Schools employees bent rules to spend $67,000 for espresso machines that largely haven’t been used.

An Australian court has issued a blunt warning about the sexual predators a young driver faces in jail if he does not stop speeding, as authorities struggle to stop teenagers street racing.

Some women in Naples said they won’t make love if their men shoot off dangerous fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

An 89-year-old Cincinnati-area woman arrested for confiscating the neighbor kid’s football is now suing the boy’s parents.

Authorities said a Sarasota man about to be pulled over by police tried to lure officers away by making a fake 911 call.

The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said an 88-year-old woman fended off a naked intruder by grabbing the man’s crotch and squeezing.

A movie about a “maverick,” his journey “from Wall Street to Main Street,” his “desperate search” for a “monkey” and a “game-changing” revelation about his “carbon footprint” probably would make the nation’s word-watchers physically ill.

Those eager to put 2008 behind them will have to hold their good-byes for just a moment this New Year’s Eve.

A Goffstown, N.H., woman slipped out of a pair of handcuffs and kicked two officers after being arrested on a drunken driving charge.

A 45-year-old paraplegic rammed his wheelchair into an officer, threw urine from his catheter bag a patrol car and spat at the officer, police said Sunday.

Authorities said a stolen gun was recovered when a detective tried to used the suspect’s bathroom and couldn’t get the toilet to work.

China’s freezing northern city of Harbin is building what organizers say is the world’s largest Santa Claus ice sculpture.

An Egyptian man said on Wednesday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at U.S.

Indian police began a probe on Monday into reports that villagers in a tribal area of central India beat 50 women with sticks after accusing them of witchcraft, and cut off their hair.

Some things never change.

A man jumped into the Berlin zoo enclosure of famed polar bear Knut on Monday, but officials were able to keep the animal away from the intruder by distracting him with a leg of beef, police said.

Looking to beef up your mojo this holiday season? Burger King Corp. may have just the thing.

It gives fresh meaning to the phrase shooed away. President George W.

Fed up with the nocturnal work habits of its mayor, a city council has approved a curfew limiting how late she can work at City Hall.

Me-ouch!

Chileans have a new hero: an apparently homeless dog who’s gone missing.

Police have arrested 49 people this week in a northern Iranian city during a crackdown on “satanic” clothes, IRNA news agency reported Thursday.

They’re cute, they’re cuddly and, in these times of financial woe, they make an affordable festive gift that’s also good for the soul -- adopt a rescued koala.

A dog weighing more than 120 pounds survived being frozen to a sidewalk overnight, probably because he was insulated by layers of fat, authorities said.

Police have arrested a man in southeastern Nigeria who said in a television documentary he had killed 110 children he believed to be possessed by evil spirits, officials said on Wednesday.

Researchers using closed-circuit televisions to create an illusion have made volunteers virtually swap bodies, even making women believe they were in a man’s body and vice-versa.

A man who rammed his truck into a woman’s vehicle on a highway early Friday told authorities he crashed into her while going more than 100 mph because God told him “she needed to be taken off the road.”

A man who saw his pickup truck being stolen jumped into the bed of the moving vehicle, kicked out the back window and crawled into the cab to stop the thief.

Edna Parker, a former Indiana schoolteacher who was certified as the world’s oldest person, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Shelbyville, Ind.

An Italian right-wing party is offering 1,500 euros ($1,930) to parents who name their babies after wartime fascist dictator Benito Mussolini or his wife Rachele, saying their names are under threat.

An eight-year-old German schoolboy who wanted to complain to his mother about being sent out of class took his teacher’s car and crashed it, police said.

A federal judge says a Detroit city employee can proceed with a civil suit claiming she couldn’t work because of a co-worker’s strong perfume.

Police said a thief used a Vaseline-like lubricant to swipe an expensive ring off an elderly woman’s hand in broad daylight.

Puzzled Japanese zookeepers have cleared up a mystery over a lack of chemistry between a couple of polar bears as both turn out to be female, a Japanese zoo said Wednesday.

Who said bras are only for women?

A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear’s enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday.

R.J. Richard says he doesn’t normally put his cell phone in his chest pocket.

Obese people have the right to two seats for the price of one on flights within Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday.

A 74-year-old blind woman was shocked when her daughter found a letter from the city saying a lien would be placed on her home unless she paid an overdue water bill.

A hand model, magician and actor blames a Martha Stewart-branded lounge chair for snipping off a bit of his livelihood.

Police say a central Pennsylvania man tried to rob a bank - but tellers’ empty cash drawers thwarted his attempt.

Kanye West is to music what Michael Jordan was to basketball--at least that West thinks, in his humble estimation.

An obese inmate who goes by the nickname “Big Mike” has been granted early parole because a Canadian prison could not accommodate his 430-pound frame.

Police say a woman has died on the way to a cemetery when a traffic accident hurled her husband’s coffin against the back of her neck.

Peruvians crazy about their national dog, a bald and often toothless breed popular among Incan kings, offered Monday to send a hypoallergenic puppy to the Obama family.

An elderly woman has been living with two skeletons and a badly decomposed body of her siblings in a suburb of Chicago, one of whom may have died at least 20 years ago, authorities said on Saturday.

A one-eyed, three-legged dog that won the title of world’s ugliest pooch this summer has died.

Indiana state police said that after a mother was arrested for drunken driving, the three relatives who came to pick up her 1-year-old son also had all been drinking.

A group of men used dynamite to blow up a police station in a town in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state on Monday, after seizing machine guns and a large cache of confiscated drugs from the building.

Talk about a biting critique of the press.

It could be called the case of the careful cat burglar.

A New Zealand rape victim drove her rapist to a police station when he fell asleep in his car after assaulting the woman, local media reported today.

Sarah Palin unwittingly took a prank call Saturday from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and telling her she would make a good president someday.

A suburban Detroit woman has decided to scare up the vote among neighborhood children by just offering treats to John McCain supporters.

He had belonged to the same team at a bowling alley for 45 years, and he had just rolled a 300 for his first perfect game.

Faced with mounting public criticism, Vietnam’s Health Ministry suspended a widely ridiculed plan to ban short, thin and small-chested drivers.

The world’s heaviest man has tied the knot.

An officer at a San Diego County correctional facility who had complained about the barking of her neighbor’s dog was arrested after being accused of stealing the animal and abandoning it some 15 miles away.

Asha Mandela has hair that could rival Rapunzel’s.

Lightning struck only once -- but 52 cows are dead at an Uruguayan ranch.

A 43-year-old player in a virtual game world became so angry about her sudden divorce from her online husband that she logged on with his password and killed his digital persona, police said Thursday.

Actress Tina Fey says she glues her ears down for her popular television impressions of Sarah Palin, but it took her a while to accept she was almost a perfect double for the Republican vice presidential candidate.

A woman decided to go to jail rather than pay her bill at a Fort Pierce Waffle House restaurant.

Brigham Young University has yanked the diploma of a man who created a calendar featuring shirtless Mormon missionaries and was later excommunicated from the church.

It took Brad Sciullo 4 hours and 39 minutes to finish a marathon. A meat marathon, that is.

Iran failed Friday to register what it said would be the world’s largest sandwich in the Guinness book of World Records after people rushed forward and began eating it -- before it was measured.

British police say they found a naked burglary suspect trapped in the chimney of a supermarket in the northern English town of Pemberton.

A father took his 20-year old son to an Islamic court in northern Nigeria for idleness, asking that he be sent to prison for refusing to engage in productive activities, state news agency NAN said Friday.

While normally effective on people, a Hernando deputy learned the hard way that Taser stun guns do not work very well on wild boars.

A man discovered making kebabs near a corpse has been banned from managing food businesses and fined 3,800 pounds, Wolverhampton City Council said Tuesday.

Ireland’s major betting company Paddy Power is so sure that Barack Obama will win the U.S. presidential election next month that it paid out more than 1 million euros ($1.35 million) on pro-Obama bets Thursday.

Daughter and grandson of the 84-year-old allegedly made a necklace with a chunk of skull and cashed the woman’s Social Security checks. Cause of death is probed but murder isn’t suspected.

A judge has thrown out a Nebraska legislator’s lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn’t properly served due to his unlisted home address.

A senior official in South Sudan who ordered a crackdown on young women wearing tight trousers has been sacked, officials said Saturday.

A couple in rural Cambodia has terminated their 18-year marriage with a divorce settlement that entailed sawing in two the wooden house they once shared, villagers said Friday.

Who is running for president?

A Long Island, N.Y., family thought they got a good deal when they found a rental house for $1,000 a month -- until the owner showed up and asked what they were doing there.

Police said a strong-arm robber got locked in a chokehold by his intended victim and ended up $30 in the hole.

A man who caused damage at a waste water treatment plant in Eau Claire has decided to pick public humiliation over jail time to pay for his crime.

There’s no doubt what Vladimir Putin’s favorite birthday present is this year -- a rare Ussuri tiger cub.

A defendant had a hard time facing the music.

Yet another band is complaining about John McCain’s use of their song to promote his campaign.

A Connecticut judge has given the brush-off to a blonde woman’s lawsuit claiming L’Oreal Inc. ruined her social life when she accidentally dyed her hair brunette with one of its products.

The world’s tallest man, China’s Bao Xishun, became the world’s tallest father this week with the birth of his first child, a boy whose initial height seems a compromise between his gigantic dad and average-sized mum.

Catholics, Jews and Muslims gather at the Huntington Beach Pier to offer brief prayers. After a bowl of holy water is poured into the ocean, some grab their boards and hit the waves.

Authorities say a Fort Myers man shot himself in the arm after his girlfriend refused to have sex with him.

Deborah Anderson had heard the urban legends about the contraceptive effectiveness of Coca-Cola products for years.

With a winning bid of just $1.75, a Chicago woman has won an auction for an abandoned home in Saginaw.

A New York man is being sued for trademark infringement after he towed a 25-foot-long fake missile around Manhattan with the words “Viva Viagra” printed in blue on its sides.

Dolphins at a Japanese marine park are going on a low fat diet after developing pot bellies and failing to look sharp in their aquatic performances.

A West Virginia man who police said passed gas and fanned it toward a patrolman has been charged with battery on a police officer.

A man convicted of stealing $20 from a toddler’s piggy bank has been sentenced to six years in prison.

Hackers broke into the Yahoo!

A small hotel on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast has fired all its male employees for repeatedly having affairs with foreign female guests, the manager said on Wednesday.

A Nigerian Muslim court Monday detained an 84-year-old Islamic preacher with 86 wives after he failed to heed a call by local leaders to divorce all but four of them.

An angry Deltona father whacked his teenage daughter’s boyfriend with a metal pipe after finding the boy naked in his daughter’s room.

Boy, how people here wish their busiest vandal would find another way to make his mark.

New Zealand’s national airline is offering to pay bald travelers to use their heads - literally - in a new advertising campaign.

A Colorado Springs elementary school principal has apologized for making students look inside a bag of human feces and urine.

A 54-year-old man says his obsessive-compulsive disorder drove him to eat 23,000 Big Macs in 36 years.

It’s a fishing tale that packs a wallop so strong it broke the jaw of a southeastern Arkansas teen and covered him in fish blood and guts.

Cries for help inside a Trenton, N.J., home turned out to be for the birds.

Diamonds really are forever.

A man was freed on $20,000 bond after being accused of setting another man’s pants on fire.

Police in Port St.

A 22-year-old suspected truck burglar made a dirty mistake after he tried to hide inside a portable toilet on Saturday.

He’s driven a big truck, flown in a Russian fighter jet and fished shirtless on national television.

It was an unusually honest ad for a live-in nanny, a 1,000-word tome beginning, “My kids are a pain.”

A Los Angeles man who killed his girlfriend’s cat, telling her to “follow the blood trail to find Tweety,” has been sentenced to two years in prison.

A disposable diaper has saved the life of an 18-month-old boy, breaking his fall from a third-floor apartment window, officials said Thursday.

An Italian museum today defied Pope Benedict and refused to remove a modern art sculpture portraying a crucified green frog holding a beer mug and an egg that the Vatican had condemned as blasphemous.

An Indonesian man dubbed the “tree man” because of gnarled growths on his body has returned from hospital after six kilograms (13 pounds) of warts were surgically removed from his body, a doctor said on Tuesday.

An Illinois man who police say held five people hostage in a motel in Fort Madison, Iowa, was arrested after he sent two of his hostages on a beer run.

A woman wearing a T-shirt promoting lesbianism said she was forced the leave a federal building Monday by a security guard who didn’t approve of her attire.

A school in northern Australia will review a ban on cartwheels, handstands and other gymnastic tumbles in the playground after a community backlash, the state education department said Wednesday.

A four-year-old cat in Germany called Bonny has survived after being walled in beneath a bathtub for seven weeks, its owner said today.

The owners of Yoda - a cat with four ears - could use a couple extra hands to answer their telephones.

If only Goldilocks had a cockapoo.

A newborn baby abandoned outdoors in winter by her 14-year-old mother was found safe in a dog pen with a mother dog and her brood of puppies near the city of La Plata, Argentine media reported on Friday.

David Hayes’ granddaughter just asked him to hold her Barbie rod and reel while she went to the bathroom.

It sounds like this cow had a beef with the bear.

A New Zealand court has allowed a parade of topless porn stars on motor bikes to proceed on the main street of the country’s biggest city, local media said Tuesday.

A British man has been banned from visiting his girlfriend’s home after neighbors complained about noisy sex, a local government official said Thursday.

Australian media say a lost humpback whale calf has bonded with a yacht it seems to think is its mother.

Fire investigators have come up with an unusual cause of a blaze that damaged a home in Reno - spider killing.

Two men claim they’ve bagged Bigfoot, and they say they have the hairy corpse of the legendary creature stored away in a freezer.

An Ohio man who says he doesn’t trust paper money has delivered enough coins to cover half the price of a brand new pickup truck.

A former part-time Pennsylvania police officer has been sentenced to 30 days in jail for pulling over a woman while he was off duty - just to give her his phone number.

An Australian woman has taken revenge on her cheating husband by putting a photograph of his lover’s underpants up for sale on the auction site eBay.

A man claiming to be a police detective tried to get an adult novelty shop to give him free X-rated videos, saying he wanted to make sure the performers weren’t underage, authorities said.

A 700-pound man once considered the world’s most obese person left his home for the first time in five months Sunday with the aid of a forklift and a platform truck.