A castaway cocker spaniel and his companion, a macaw parrot, were rescued by Norwegian Cruise Line workers from a tiny atoll about 1,000 miles south of Hawaii. Snickers, an 8-month-old dog, survived 95 days adrift on a 48-foot boat then four months of being stranded on Fanning Island, one of 33 scattered coral atolls that make up the remote island nation of Kiribati.

A local school was sent up in panic when an 8-year old student brought a genuine World War II hand grenade for the class's show and tell. The weapon, an Mk2 grenade, was found in the backpack of a third-grade student, who admitted bringing the item to show the entire class of the Ezra Baker School

Millions of British adults are becoming bad spellers and they are blaming this on predictive text functions of their mobile phones. In a study conducted by of spelling and grammar software firm whitesmoke. com 40 percent of the 2,500 surveyed could not spell "questionnaire", 38 percent misspell "accommodate" and 37 percent are confused by "definitely".

Local authorities arrested a man for intentionally crashing his vehicle into the car wash after becoming dissatisfied with the service. The man, 37-year old Assi Touti, was at the Mr. Hand Car Wash complaining about the unsatisfactory job done on his Chevrolet Silverado truck after he drove it through the car wash.

ubergine has bumped off sprouts as children's most hated vegetable, according to 2,300 kids polled by Heinz. Based on survey results, some 39 percent dislike the dark vegetable. Eggplant has replaced the once most hated vegetable, which is now in second place - brussel sprouts, disliked by 37 percent of the children. The third most hated veggie is celeriac at 32 per cent, followed by cabbage (16 percent) and mangetout (12 percent).