Dateline: AustraliaAn 18-year-old fugitive on the run from police was apprehended after she asked a local TV station to start using a more flattering mugshot of her. Teenager Amy Sharp is alleged to have broken out of a police station in Sydney on Friday, Aug. 19. Sharp was being held in the Surry Hills Corrective Services Cell Complex for what authorities described as “property offenses.” Shortly after 3pm she allegedly left the complex and was last seen running down Riley Street. Following the escape from custody, police issued a statement and two photographs of the 18-year-old to local media. Sydney’s News 7 posted Sharp’s mug shot to its Facebook page. The very first person to comment was Sharp herself, who posted a more glamorous face shot, adding, “can you use this photo, please and thank you. Yours truly Amy Sharp xx.” The comment was accompanied by a smiley face emoji and was liked more than 47,000 times. Sharp was apprehended in Wentworth Park, not far from where she allegedly escaped, shortly after the comments were posted Dateline: EnglandA musician in Liverpool has died of what doctors are calling “bagpipe lung.” British doctors are blaming the death of the 61-year-old man on his bagpipes, whose moist, dark interior provided an ideal breeding ground for fungus. Technically speaking, the man died of “hypersensitivity pneumonitis,” which is the result of scar tissue on the lungs caused by mold or yeast. Experts say the man’s demise appears to be the first documented death by bagpipe. “It sounds like a Monty Python skit or an Agatha Christie story gone wrong,” William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, told USA Today. According to a report published earlier this month in the British medical journal Thorax, the bagpiper suffered from symptoms including shortness of breath for seven years—highlighting “the importance of good instrument hygiene.”Dateline: IndiaA man is recovering in the northern Indian town of Amritsar, Punjab, after doctors surgically removed 40 knives from his stomach. The unnamed man, identified as a police constable by The Times of India, came to doctors complaining of abdominal pain and weakness. A CT scan revealed multiple pieces of metal in his stomach. The man endured a five-hour procedure to remove the items, which proved to be a selection of knives, many of which were now broken and rusted. “In my 20 years of practice, I have never seen anything like it,” Dr. Jatinder Malhotra old CNN. “He had a wild desire to consume metal. Even for us, the experienced surgeons, it was frightening.” The man admitted to doctors he swallowed the 40 knives over the course of two months. “I don’t know why I used to swallow knives,” he told CNN. “I just enjoyed its taste, and I was addicted.” The man is currently recovering and has promised to stop snacking on the cutlery.Dateline: New YorkAn apartment building in Rochester was evacuated by hazmat teams after a resident evidently microwaved a hot pepper. According to the Facebook page for the Monroe County Fire Wire, firefighters, decked out in hazmat gear, responded to an “unknown odor in the lobby making people cough” at about 10:20am on Monday, Aug. 29. Investigators eventually traced the source of the air contamination to a resident who had put a pepper in a microwave. “It seems whatever kind of pepper they were using, once it’s aerosolized, if you’ve ever gotten pepper in your eyes, you know how hard that can be on your system,” Lt. Dana Cieslinski of the Rochester Fire Department told WHAM-TV. “I don’t know what kind of pepper it was, but clearly spicy enough to affect the people in the hallway.” Authorities said no one required medical attention, and residents were allowed back into the building shortly after noon.
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. Email your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
