Man Witnesses Boston Marathon Bombings – then Watches Deadly Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion after Returning Home

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Photo Credit: AP

People keep asking Joe Berti if he feels unlucky.

A bomb exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon moments after Berti finished the race. Two days later, he was in his home state of Texas when he saw a fertilizer plant explode near Waco.

“I was just like, ‘I can’t believe this!’” said Berti, who said he had never witnessed an explosion before. Then he thought: “I just want to get out of here and get away from all these explosions.”

But Berti, as it turns out, is far from unlucky. Instead, he feels fortunate. He left both tragedies unscathed, while members of his running group and his wife – who was closer to the Boston explosion than he was – were also unhurt.

“It’s a miracle,” he said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. “People keep saying, ‘Don’t you feel unlucky?’ and I was actually the opposite – saying not only do I not feel unlucky, but I feel blessed that my wife could be 10 yards from the explosion and not have a scratch.”

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Elephant Dung Beer Sells Out in Minutes

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Photo Credit: The Drink Business

The beer, which is called Un, Kono Kuro, is made using coffee beans that have passed through an elephant.

The Sankt Gallen brewery called the beer a “chocolate stout”, despite it not containing any chocolate. The coffee beans used in the beer come from elephants at Thailand’s Golden Triangle Elephant Foundation, which cost over US$100 per 35 grams. The beans are so expensive as 33kgs of beans in the mouth yields 1kg of useable coffee beans.

The beans are definitely a candidate for one of the top 10 weirdest beer ingredients.

Mr Sato, from Japanese website RocketNews24.com, tasted the beer and said: “After taking my first sip there was an initial bitterness that got washed over by a wave of sweetness. Following that, a mellow body rolled in and spread out through my mouth.

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Global Warming? Honey Bees Dying Due to Record Cold

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Photo Credit: Reuters

The cold winter hasn’t just upset retailers trying to sell spring clothes.

The freezing temperatures have also led to shrinking honeybee populations in the U.S., according to George Hansen, president of the American Beekeeping Federation. This may seem like small potatoes – if not for the fact that honeybees pollinate $15 billion of U.S. crops, according to the USDA.

“We’re probably looking at 40% losses of colonies over this winter,” says George Hansen, the president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

Who’s Getting Stung?

Beekeepers and honey producers say they’ll be the first to get stung by poor honeybee health. Declining colony numbers are thought to be caused by a number of factors, including pesticides and the mysterious “Colony Collapse Disorder,” which Hansen says causes bees to suddenly disappear from the hive.

“I’ve seen a 65% loss over the winter … generally the loss would only range from 5% to 15%,” says Cathy Wolko of the Connecticut-based Humble Honey Bee Honey Company.

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Police: Stolen Diamond Engagement Ring Swallowed By Thief

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Photo Credit: Facebook

A Manchester, N.H., man was arrested Thursday after he attempted to steal a diamond engagement ring by swallowing it at Bellman’s Jewelers, reported WMUR-New Hampshire.

52-year-old Ronald Perley allegedly attempted to flee with a $2,000 white gold and diamond ring but was stopped by employee-controlled safety door looks.

“The gentleman walks in and says, ‘I’m looking for an engagement ring,’ so she brings him over to the showcase and she starts showing him a few rings,” said owner of Bellman’s Jewelers, David Bellman.

“While she’s doing that he takes one of the rings and says, ‘Thank you very much,’ and then goes to run out the door,” he said.

Perley can be seen on the store’s surveillance footage quickly putting the ring in his mouth, but according to employees, Perley refused to admit to any wrongdoing and waited peacefully for police.

See this hilarious video for what happened next:

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Montana Man Asks Feds to Reimburse $500 Eaten By Dog

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Photo Credit: Eliza Wiley

The saga of Sundance, the $100-bill-eating dog, apparently appealed to a lot of people.

A Google search Wednesday turned up 34,600 results for Wayne Klinkel’s story of his dog Sundance, who ate five $100 bills last Christmas, and his tale of woe in trying to pick up the digested remnants to recoup some of his loss…

The gist of his story is that Klinkel and his wife traveled to Denver last Christmas to visit their daughter, and when they stopped for dinner they left Sundance in the car, along with five $100 bills and one $1 bill. When they returned, the $1 bill was untouched and the $500 was gone.

Klinkel immediately guessed that his chew-loving dog ate the bills, so while in Denver he donned rubber gloves and followed Sundance around the yard as he conducted his “business.” Klinkel retrieved quite a few fragments, but it wasn’t until his daughter visited Helena recently that she was able to give him enough remnants for him to piece together a large portion of all five bills.

He washed and bleached them, taped them back together and submitted them to the Federal Treasury, hoping to be reimbursed. That could take up to two years; a spokesperson said that if more than 51 percent of the bills are there, Klinkel may get at least some of his $500 back.

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New York Parents Sue After County uses Son's Remains to Train Dogs

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Photo Credit: Clotee Pridgen Allochuku

The parents of a western New York man killed in a car crash are suing county officials after the coroner there took a piece of their son’s body for use in a dog-training exercise.

Roger Dunn, 32, died April 13, 2012, in an auto wreck in Cambria.

After his death, Niagara County Coroner Russell Jackman gave some tissue from the crash scene to a volunteer fire chief who was training a dog to sniff out human remains.

Both men later resigned and pleaded guilty to misdemeanors over their conduct. They also apologized.

Each was fined $1,000 and ordered to perform 100 hours of community service with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and write letters of apology to the Dunns.

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Transgender 'Woman' Banned From Idaho Store Over Use of Restroom

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Photo Credit: hunnnterrr

A transgender woman whose use of a women’s restroom in an Idaho grocery store reportedly upset other customers has been cited for trespassing and banned from the store for a year, police said on Friday.

A Rosauers supermarket in Lewiston asked police to charge 25-year-old Ally Robledo, who was born male but identifies as female, with the misdemeanor trespass charge on Monday, Lewiston Police Captain Roger Lanier said.

“The store security officer said he had been dealing with a problem over a couple days with the person going into the women’s restroom and urinating while standing up,” Lanier said. He added that the store had reported that Robledo’s use of the restroom made other female customers “very uncomfortable.”

Robledo said she was being discriminated against.

“I’m a female trapped in a man’s body. It’s natural for me to go to the ladies’ room. Getting the no trespassing order for a public restroom was really painful,” she said. The incident follows several cases that have stoked public debate about the boundaries of gender identity and the rights of transgender people to use accommodations such as restrooms in government buildings and businesses open to the public.

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Ants Can Sense Earthquakes a Day in Advance

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Photo Credit: sanchom

Ants know when an earthquake is about to strike, researchers have discovered. Their behavior changes significantly prior to the quake and they resume normal functioning only a day after it.

Gabriele Berberich of the University Duisburg-Essen in Germany presented these findings on Thursday at the European Geosciences Union annual meeting in Vienna according to LiveScience.

Berberich and her colleagues discovered that red wood ants preferred to build their colonies right along active faults in Germany. They counted 15,000 ant mounds lining the faults. These faults are fractures where the Earth violently ruptures in earthquakes.

Using a special camera mounted software that tracked changes in activity, Berberich and her colleagues tracked the ants round the clock for three years, 2009 to 2012. They found that the ants’ behavior changed only when the quake was over magnitude 2. There were 10 earthquakes between magnitude 2.0 and 3.2 during this period, and many smaller ones. Humans can also sense quakes of over magnitude 2 only.

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Two Girls Lift 3,000 lbs. Tractor off of Dad in Miracle Feat (+video)

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Photo Credit: DunlopSouth

A Linn County man pinned by his overturned tractor said his teenage daughters saved his life by lifting the 3,000-pound machine off of him.

Jeff Smith was able to wriggle free and get breathing room after his daughters, 14-year-old Haylee and 16-year-old Hannah, lifted the huge machine up, as first reported by the Albany Democrat-Herald.

Smith said he was trying to pull a stump out of his garden when the tractor flipped last Monday. The steering wheel pinned his chest to the ground.

He said he was losing breath with each scream, but his daughters heard and ran to him. “It’s amazing. You hear about this kind of stuff… this adrenaline rush, being able to pick cars up and slide people out.

Watch video here:

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Homeless Removed from Complex of Tunnels, Underground Shelters in Kansas City

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Photo Credit: Kansas City

Kansas City police, a local charity and other city departments on Friday cleared out and filled in a complex of elaborate tunnels and holes at a homeless camp near the East Bottoms.

“One of the tunnels probably went 20 to 25 feet underground towards the back and veered off in another direction about six feet or so, and there was some bedding and some candles,” said Officer Jason Cooley, community interaction officer for the East Patrol. “It was kind of in a little hill and probably four feet beneath the surface.”

Another tunnel dropped about five feet into the ground before shooting off laterally for seven or eight feet. Many of the holes were concealed. At least one had wood stacked around it and others were bare earth. PVC pipe provided ventilation. What especially concerned Cooley was a pile of recently soiled diapers, indicating the presence of children.

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