Weird

An Elmwood Park teen was injured Friday night in what police believe was a self-inflicted shooting, police said.

The 17-year-old boy was in a vehicle with female friends when he was shot at about 7.20pm, according to what he told police, said Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli.

The boy was at Loyola Hospital in Maywood with a wound to his left groin area when police were called there at 8.15pm, Mirabelli said.

Initially, the boy told police he was outside on the 3300 block of North Harlem Avenue at 7.20pm when two men dressed in black and wearing Ninja masks jumped out of a black van, said Mirabelli. The boy initially told police at least one of the men had a semi-automatic handgun and shot him, Mirabelli said.

After police received the information, police went to the alleged shooting scene but could not find any evidence of the shooting. In addition, the police interviewed potential witnesses and reviewed surveillance video but failed to find any evidence of the attack, Mirabelli said.

After police returned to the hospital, they confronted the teen with their lack of findings. The boy continued to give conflicting information, Mirabelli said.

Eventually, the boy, who has gang ties, told police he was driving in a vehicle with several female friends when he was playing with a gun and it discharged in his lap and struck him — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Police are trying to determine whether the death of a 21-year-old Canadian tourist at a Los Angeles hotel was an accident or a murder.

Elisa Lam, of Vancouver, British Columbia, was discovered in a water tank on the roof of the budget 600-room Cecil Cecil Hotel after guests complained of low water pressure, AP reported.

Police sources told the LA Times mystery surrounds her death and it was hoped an autopsy would yield more clues because there appeared no obvious trauma on her body.

It was also not yet known how long she had been in the tank — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Earlier this month, Brian Dennehy started a new job as chief marketing officer of Nordstrom Inc. In his first week, he pulled aside a colleague to ask a question: How hard it is for a non-employee to enter the building?

Mr Dennehy doesn’t have a particular interest in corporate security. He just doesn’t want to be It.

Mr Dennehy and nine of his friends have spent the past 23 years locked in a game of Tag.

It started in high school when they spent their morning break darting around the campus of Gonzaga Preparatory School in Spokane, Wash. Then they moved on — to college, careers, families and new cities. But because of a reunion, a contract and someone’s unusual idea to stay in touch, tag keeps pulling them closer. Much closer.

The game they play is fundamentally the same as the schoolyard version: One player is It until he tags someone else. But men in their 40s can’t easily chase each other around the playground, at least not without making people nervous, so this tag has a twist. There are no geographic restrictions and the game is live for the entire month of February. The last guy tagged stays It for the year.

That means players get tagged at work and in bed. They form alliances and fly around the country. Wives are enlisted as spies and assistants are ordered to bar players from the office.

/q>You’re like a deer or elk in hunting season, says Joe Tombari, a high-school teacher in Spokane, who sometimes locks the door of his classroom during off-periods and checks under his car before he gets near it — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The theft of dreadlocks in Johannesburg is thought to be because of the rising demand for natural dreadlocks as extensions.

Erin Conway-Smith, Globalpost’s senior correspondent in South Africa, wrote wrote The Times, a Johannesburg newspaper, has reported that a growing number of people with dreadlocks are having their hair stolen. Jasper Munsinwa described how his friend’s dreads were stolen while out partying at a Johannesburg club.

Munsinwa’s friend, Mutsa Madonko, was found passed out, and his hair shorn — but unusually for South Africa, his cellphone and wallet were untouched.

The demand is thought to be coming from the hairstyle trend of dreadlock extensions — with the ultimate being real hair rather than synthetic — and trendsetters are willing to pay for a natural look — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Northern Territory police have arrested a 40-year-old man for smashing a watermelon over a bus driver’s head in Darwin’s northern suburbs.

Police say the attack began when the driver asked the man to pay his bus fare.

Watch Commander Debbie Gabolinscy says the man got off the bus after the watermelon attack but then got back on and continued the assault — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The family of a Pennsylvania kindergartner suspended from school for talking about a soap bubble toy gun is protesting her punishment and wants her record cleared, an attorney for the family said on Monday.

The unidentified 5-year-old child from Mount Carmel in eastern Pennsylvania was suspended after she talked on January 10 about a Hello Kitty Bubble Gun while waiting for a bus after school, said attorney Robin Ficker.

According to the attorney, the little girl said to a friend: I’m going to shoot you and I will shoot myself, and we’ll all play together.

Her comments were overheard by an adult who reported them to the school, he said.

But the toy shoots only soap bubbles, and the girl did not even have one, he said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Near the end of World War II, Soviet and American soldiers met at the Elbe River in Germany. Lacking a common language, they compared their boots.

The Americans wore socks and lace-up boots. The Russians wore something that boggled the minds of their allies from the West: pieces of cloth twirled around their feet and inserted into bulky, knee-high boots.

The cloth strips, called portyanki, have been a signature element of the Russian military uniform since the 16th century. On Monday Russia’s minister of defence issued an order for a militarywide switch to socks.

I have an instruction for you, the minister, Sergei K Shoigu, said to a gathering of the equivalent of the chiefs of staff and regional commanders in comments broadcast on NTV television news. In 2013, or at least by the end of this year, we will forget foot bindings. I’m asking you, please, if there is need we will provide additional funds. But we need to finally, fully reject this concept in our armed forces.

It is hardly the stuff to alarm a Central Intelligence Agency military analyst. But it sheds light on the Russian military all the same — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A Volusia County man is in fair condition after he was beaten and dragged behind his ex-wife’s truck, according to investigators.

Three people are accused in the attempted-homicide of Robert Hall. Doctors do expect him to survive.

Officials said 46-year-old Joan Hobart of New Smyrna Beach was arrested Wednesday. Hall’s 61-year-old ex-wife, Jeanette Morris, and her brother, 63-year-old Harold Anderson, were arrested first.

Investigators said Morris still lives with Hall and learned he had another woman over while she was away.

Morris, Anderson and Hall were all drinking together when a fight began.

Deputies said Morris and Anderson beat up Hall, waved a gun around and used a stun gun on him. He was then tied up by Hobart and Morris and dragged from the back of a truck for about a half mile, according to authorities.

Hall told authorities that at one point they stopped the truck and were overheard saying that they were going to drive and find a hole to bury him in — via redwolf.newsvine.com

When Florida Highway Patrol officers pulled over an erratically swerving grey Camaro yesterday outside of St Augustine, they figured they had a standard DUI on their hands. The driver, 63-year-old Leslie Richard Newton, had in fact been boozing and driving, the FHP says — but that’s not the main reason he was having trouble staying in his lane.

Newton had a piece of a traffic sign embedded in his skull.

It’s not entirely clear when the signage ended up in Newton’s head, but Jacksonville’s Fox30 reports he rammed into a sign earlier in the evening on eastbound SR 16 outside of St Augustine.

Photos of his Camaro show a front headlight bashed in and some window damage; apparently Newton hit the sign hard enough for a chunk of it to fly into his cranium — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Thick, handsome moustaches have long been prized by men throughout the Middle East as symbols of masculine virility, wisdom and maturity.

But not all moustaches are created equal, and in recent years, increasing numbers of Middle Eastern men have been going under the knife to attain the perfect specimen.

Turkish plastic surgeon Selahattin Tulunay says the number of moustache implants he performs has boomed in the last few years. He now performs 50-60 of the procedures a month, on patients who hail mostly from the Middle East and travel to Turkey as medical tourists — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A high-flying lawyer fled naked in terror after his girlfriend used her 38DD breasts to try to kill him, a German court has heard.

Tim Schmidt, 30, said buxom girlfriend Franziska Hansen, 33, mounted her assault while they were having sex because she was jealous of his successful career.

She denies a charge of attempted manslaughter with a weapon, after the incident in the town of Unna in May. According to her, it was a sex game gone wrong and Schmidt panicked — via redwolf.newsvine.com

About once per decade, the medical profession takes a careful look back at Thailand’s plethora of penile amputations. The first great reckoning appeared in a 1983 issue of the American Journal of Surgery. Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam, by Kasian Bhanganada and four fellow physicians at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, introduces the subject: It became fashionable in the decade after 1970 for the humiliated Thai wife to wait until her [philandering] husband fell asleep so that she could quickly sever his penis with a kitchen knife. A traditional Thai home is elevated on pilings and the windows are open to allow for ventilation. The area under the house is the home of the family pigs, chickens, and ducks. Thus, it is quite usual that an amputated penis is tossed out of an open window, where it may be captured by a duck.

The report explains, for readers in other countries: The Thai saying, ‘I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat,’ is therefore a common joke and immediately understood at all levels of society — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A woman in western Sweden who was arrested after police found skeletons in her apartment has now been charged for using the bones as sex toys, a hobby she claimed was motivated by an interest in history.

I have never heard of a case like this and neither have my colleagues, so I dare to say that this kind of case is quite uncommon, prosecutor Kristina Ehrenborg-Staffas told The Local.

A 37-year-old woman, who was arrested in September, was formally charged on Tuesday at the Gothenburg District Court for the crime of violating the peace of the dead (brott mot griftesfriden).

The prosecutor could not explain how the woman had managed to collect almost an entire skeleton, but explained that the human remains had been used in an “unethical” way.

In the confidential section of the investigation we have material which indicates she used them in sexual situations, the prosecutor told the TT news agency — via redwolf.newsvine.com