News from a Weird World - Offbeat News 2 February 2011

In this latest edition of News From A Weird World you can find bizarre news stories that include the Chinese Dogfight that isn't what it seems, Japanese Pensioners Who Shoplift, The Farmville Baby Murderer, Pickle Juice De-Icer, Palm Beach Sharks, Fire In The Closet and more.

THIS IS A VERY SPECIAL EDITION OF NEWS FROM A WEIRD WORLD - IT'S ONE YEAR TO THE DAY SINCE THE FIRST EDITION WAS PUBLISHED.

News From A Weird World (previously known as Offbeat News) is a selection of bizarre stories, strange stories, odd stories and weird news stories from the past week, that have been cleverly extracted by scouring news sites from around the world.

The stories to be found on News From A Weird World are the kind that are just so bizarre, they make you realize that fact is often stranger than fiction, and make you wonder what on earth people were thinking to get into the news in this way.

This is a selection of weird news stories from the past week that I hope you enjoy, and if you do, please can you help spread the word by sharing the stories with your friends.

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China Military Drill Dogfight Clip Isn't What It Seems

Footage of Chinese Air Force military training as seen on China National Television on 23^rd January, showed an exercise where an aircraft was seen firing a missile at another.

The target aircraft was hit, and disappeared in a fiery ball of flame.

However, internet users who viewed this recognized the explosion as coming from the dogfight at the end of the 1986 movie Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise.

This incident appeared just a week after China agreed to boost it's efforts to stop internet piracy and to help protect intellectual property rights.

Hmmm...

Read the full story HERE .

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Shoplifting By Pensioners In Japan Hits Record Highs

Apparently the number of pensioners that have been arrested in Japan is on the rise, with a staggering 30,000 arrested just last year.

The items that they are caught shoplifting are mostly basic items, such as food or clothes, but it's not always a shortage of money that is the root cause of this new trend.

An increasing percentage of Japan's population is reaching retirement age, and by the end of the century it is estimated that 40% of the population will be aged 65 and over.

With younger members of the family moving away from home in search of work, many older Japanese are suffering from loneliness, and have taken to shoplifting as a means of coming into contact with other people.

It's a sad world that we live in isn't it.

Read the full story HERE .

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Woman Kills Baby Who Interrupted Her Farmville Game

This just brings home how serious the addiction to internet games can be, with a story from Florida last week, where a 22 year old mother shook her 3 month old baby to death, just because he would not stop crying while she was trying to play Farmville, one of the most addictive games on Facebook.

The death occurred in January 2010, and the woman was convicted last week, being given the maximum sentence for second degree murder, 50 years in prison.

Now is Farmville really that important, that you have to kill your own baby?

How sad our world has become...

Read the full story HERE .

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Run Out Of De-Icer? Use Pickle Juice

We all know that some counties in the USA are fast running out of cash, and Bergen County in New Jersey is no exception.

Cash has become so tight, that they can no longer afford the salt that they need to keep the ice melted on the highways, especially during this exceptionally cold snowy winter season.

They have found a solution, however, a salty solution.

They are using a mixture of salt and water, that looks remarkably like pickle juice, and are pre-spraying this on the roads, sidewalks, and parking lots before the snow falls, and it's doing the trick at a fraction of the cost.

Apparently while salt costs $63 a ton, the brine mixture costs just 7 cents a gallon.

The county budget for snow control is a staggering $4 million a year, and even by the end of January they have used up $3 million of this already.

Actually, my father-in-law was telling me a few months ago, that the city where we live used to use tankers years ago, take water from the sea, and spray it on the roads, to help de-ice them. It makes you wonder why this technique is still not being used, especially since the cost of seawater should be nothing.

Read the full story and see the video HERE .

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Fancy A Swim Off Palm Beach? You Might Want To Read This First.

The beaches of West Palm Beach in Florida are wonderful, and even in January or February the ocean is often warm enough to swim in - I know because I have done it.

However, last week sharks were spotted off the beaches there.

Not the odd one or two sharks though - the sighting was of literally thousands of sharks, and only about 100 yards off the shore too.

This is the time of year when sharks do head for warmer waters, and when needs arise they head towards the shore to chase shoals of bait fish.

So if you fancy a nice swim in the Atlantic Ocean off South Florida, just be careful, or you too could become one of those bait fish.

Read the full story and see the video HERE .

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Wife Sets Man's Clothes On Fire

With a name like Niceville, you would expect the people there to be well "nice", and the police department to be generally underworked.

But if you realize that Niceville is actually in Florida, and this is where many of our really weird stories come from, then if something weird were to happen there, I am sure you wouldn't be surprised would you.

Well, take a couple who live in Niceville, add a few ingredients like alcohol, Facebook, and text messages, and you have a combustible combination.

A man called 911 late last Saturday evening, and when the police arrived at the apartment there was a strong smell of smoke, and the occupant said that "my wife set my clothes on fire".

It seems that the couple had been drinking, and having an argument over the photograph of a woman on Facebook that the man had commented on, and he had also been texting her.

The man's wife, aged 22, went upstairs and used a candle to set the man's clothes on fire in the closet.

When she realized that there were flames coming out of the closet, she went back downstairs and told him what she had done, and said that he might want to put the fire out.

The wife was arrested and charged with arson.

Read the full story HERE .

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I hope you enjoyed this edition of News From A Weird World as much as I enjoyed compiling all the stories.

You can now also find links to all of the News From A Weird World and Offbeat News editions at Squidoo , and if you do enjoy these weekly Offbeat News articles, please could you help share them with your friends etc. I am sure they could use a good laugh too.

For more fun at the expense of victims around the world, take a look at the previous editions of News From A Weird World:

5_Jan_2011 - 12_Jan_2011 - 19_Jan_2011 - 26_Jan_2011

1_Dec_2010 - 8_Dec_2010 - 15_Dec_2010 - 22_Dec_2010 - 29_Dec_2010

3_Nov_2010 - 10_Nov_2010 - 17_Nov_2010 - 24_Nov_2010

6_Oct_2010 - 13_Oct_2010 - 20_Oct_2010 - 27_Oct_2010

1_Sep_2010 - 8_Sep_2010 - 15_Sep_2010 - 22_Sep_2010 - 29_Sep_2010

4_Aug_2010 - 11_Aug_2010 - 18_Aug_2010 - 25_Aug_2010

7_Jul_2010 - 14_Jul_2010 - 21_Jul_2010 - 28_Jul_2010

2_Jun_2010 - 9_Jun_2010 - 16_Jun_2010 - 23_Jun_2010 - 30_Jun_2010

5_May_2010 - 12_May_2010 - 19_May_2010 - 26_May_2010

21_Apr_2010 - 28_Apr_2010

3_Mar_2010 - 10_Mar_2010 - 17_Mar_2010 - 24_Mar_2010 - 31_Mar_2010

2_Feb_2010

As always, your comments on any of these news stories are appreciated, and if you enjoy News From A Weird World, please share this edition with your friends.

News Reports Are Taken From The Following Sources:

ABC News Australia

Courthouse News

Demotix

Digital Spy

Football 365

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The Bournemouth Echo

The Daily Mail

The Daily Telegraph

The London Evening Standard