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.

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.

A French female tourist was stripped of her pants, shoes and socks while she took photographs of an wild orangutan in Malaysia's Semenggoh Wildlife Centre, located on Borneo. The orangutan involved in the incident is named Delima, and roams freely through the wildlife preserve.

We arrived in the town of Sta. Ana in Cagayan Valley, the northernmost tip town in the Philippines at 3 a. m. in the morning. The first thing we noticed was the eerie sound of the place, or better yet, the lack of any sound of life. There were no lamp post and all we saw was darkness. The only light available was emanating from the vehicle we were using. We drove for another half an hour and still all we saw was darkness, we didn't see any houses or any other living soul. For someone who has lived in the city all his life, the environment in Sta. Ana was a strange one to me. I came from the capital where the city never sleeps and that has been the case even in some provinces I have visited, this is the only town I have been to where all I heard was the sound of silence even at that hour of the morning.

The city beaches in Fort Lauderdale, Florida will soon be equipped with high-tech automated toilets that welcome its users with a polite greeting and also soothe them with light music during the process. The computerized toilets are expected to cost between $250,000 and $350,000 for a single-toilet restroom. The city commissioners voted Tuesday in favor of paying $25,259 to an engineering firm to design the site.