A man from Florida has bitten more than what he chewed from a $10 plate of steamed clams he and his wife ordered at a beach bar. He found from the dish a rare purple pearl that is probably worth thousands. George Brock and his wife Leslie turned out to be the lucky diners at Dave's Last Resort & Raw Bar on Friday. The couple from Royal Palm Beach ordered steamed clams containing the gem.

Thieves in Hungary have made off with an entire riverside artificial beach that had 6,000 cubic meters of sand, beach huts, shops and furniture. Cross-border thieves are to be suspected because at part of the Schengen zone there is no border controls between Hungary and other EU states. Hungarian authorities also believe that the stolen material has been shipped across the border to be sold. Land-locked Hungary doesn't have beaches; hence tons of sand were used to make the riverside as real as possible. But managers who cleaned up and covered the leisure park for winter were taken aback to discover that thieves had carted off 6,000 cubic meters of sand and playground rides, huts and even the wooden shops.

Around 20 riot police were summoned to help pacify angry tourists in Macau, China who claimed they were being forced into shopping by being led to shops instead of being shown the country's cultural heritage. The tourists complained their guides were pressuring them to buy foods and other goodies instead of showing them more of the former Portuguese colony's historic sites.

After disappearing five years ago, a canoeist reportedly walked into a police station in central London, identifying himself as missing person John Darwin. Darwin had disappeared in 2002 after going on a canoe trip and failing to return. He was last seen setting off towards some rocks at around 9 a. m. in March, 2002. When he did not turn up during the night shift at his job at the Holme House prison, a search spanning 16 hours was started along the coast of the Seaton Carew beach, where his shattered canoe washed up, followed up his paddle weeks after.

A kayaker on Monday repelled the attack of an 8-foot great white shark along the coast of one of Australia's popular beaches using her paddle and escaped to safety with only a minor bite wound in the wrist. Linda Whitehurst, 52, was paddling her kayak near the eastern coast of Byron Bay when the shark lunged at her and knocked her off her craft. The shark reportedly bit a portion of the kayak.