After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone in the queue a free ride.
He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies.
The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.

In Minneapolis, USA, 28 year old Derrick L Richardson has been charged with third degree murder of his much-loved cousin, Ken E Richardson.
According to local police, Derrick had suggested to Ken that they play game of Russian Roulette, but having no revolver, instead put a semi-automatic pistol to his cousin's head. Apparently, he did not realise that one bullet always loads into the firing chamber of a semi-automatic.

Texan prisons have banned convicts on death row from having a last cigarette, on the grounds that it is bad for their health. However, to compensate for this, condemned men will instead be permitted to chew a stick of celery.

An American teenager was in hospital yesterday recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked about how he received the injuries, the lad told the police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

Thrash-happy judges in Saudi Arabia have sentenced a Filipino man to 75 lashes for possession of alcohol - after he was caught with two chocolate liqueurs at an airport.

Following the initiatives of the Afghan Taliban government - which has banned kite flying, T.V watching and wearing white socks - Iran is also cracking down on its more decadent citizens. Ayatollah Mohammed Yadzi has decreed that dog walking be made illegal, saying that taking dogs out onto the streets was "a public insult" as it was a blind imitation of Westerners.

An Italian father has been charged with child abuse after making his son cut the family lawn with his teeth. Neighbours alerted the cops when they saw Angelo Franco's 17-year-old son chomping away in the garden as punishment for not completing his chores.

A 24-year-old Michigan man has been charged with the possession of child pornography, even though the material was of his 17-year-old girlfriend, taken with consent. In a quirk of the law, Patrick Corp's girlfriend is old enough for sex, but too young to be photographed in the act.

A Charlotte, NC, man, having purchased a case of very rare, very expensive cigars, insured them against fire (among other things).
Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of cigars and without even having made his first premium payment on the policy, the man filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the man stated the cigars were lost "in a series of small fires." The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The man sued and won. In delivering the ruling the judge, agreeing that the claim was frivolous, stated nevertheless that the man held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure against fire, without defining what it considered to be "unacceptable fire," and was obligated to pay the claim. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he lost in "the fires". After the man cashed the check, however, the company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and using his testimony against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.