THE MAGPIE:DOG OWNERS in Amsterdam are angry because the city has legalised public sex in one of its most famous parks. Councillors agreed that heterosexual and gay couples could have sex in the Vondelpark, which has 10 million visitors a year. But they also promised to clamp down on dog owners who let their pets walk in the park without a lead.
One dog owner protested: "As long as the park has existed, we've been allowed to let our dogs run freely. It's outrageous that we will be punished from now on but public sex won't."
A spokesman for the council said: "When the dogs are not kept on a leash they pee on whatever they see and they cause a lot of nuisance for other visitors."
Alderman Paul Van Grieken defended the decision to allow sex in the park from September: "It isn't a nuisance for the other visitors and gives a lot of pleasure to a certain group of people."
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A fortuneteller in Worcester, England, claims she can tell people's futures by using asparagus. Jemima Packington throws asparagus spears on to the floor and makes predictions based on how they land.
Packington, who calls herself Britain's only "asparamancer", has been showing off her technique at the British Trade and Travel Fair in Birmingham.
She says she stumbled across her asparagus-predicting skills a few years ago by chance, after some stalks fell on the floor and she made a prediction which came true. "I can't even remember what prediction I made when I was young but my family went very quiet and it came true and the rest is history."
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A woman (35) in Kansas sat on her boyfriend's toilet for two years. Sheriff Bryan Whipple of Ness City said it appeared her skin had grown around the seat.
She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.
"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body. It is hard to imagine . . . I still have a hard time imagining it myself."
Her boyfriend told police he brought her food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom. "Her reply would be, 'maybe tomorrow'."
Police are investigating whether she was mistreated but she has refused to co-operate.
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German police are trying to trace the owner of a sheep which outran police patrol cars and assaulted a police dog.
Police say the sheep ran through the streets of the German village of Guester at more than 48km/h. It reportedly leapt over the bonnets of police cars used as a road block and chased pursuing police dogs with a few well-aimed head butts.
Officers eventually caught up with it after it jumped into a field and started tucking into the grass.
"It was not an easy pursuit," said a police spokesman.
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In Munich, a woman was stopped at the airport after baggage control handlers found the skeleton of her brother sealed in a plastic bag in her luggage.
The woman (62) and her friend (63), who both live in Italy, were hauled in by airport police after a scan of the bag showed a human skull and other bones. The women were travelling to Italy from Brazil.
The woman was trying to fulfil the last wish of her brother - who died 11 years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil - to be buried in Italy. She showed police the appropriate papers from Brazilian authorities, and they were allowed to carry on their way - bones and all.
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Eleanor Fitzsimons, an Irish Times reader who, like Magpie, is attracted to unusual tales, e-mailed the following gem from the Associated Press in Pennsylvania:
A hairstylist shot an unhappy client after she complained about her haircut, police said. Lauren Newton (28) was getting her hair cut at the home of Monique Reed (38) when the two began to argue about the style, police said. "She [ Reed] went to the bedroom, got a gun, fired a shot in the ceiling," police chief James Blyth said.
Newton was then shot in the lower back, but her injuries were not life-threatening. Reed was charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.