In addition to using fake fireworks at Friday evening's grand opening of the Summer Games in Beijing, the ceremony also used the recorded voice of a young female singer who did not have impressive-enough looks to appear on the globally-broadcast show. According to the Guardian Unlimited, nine-year-old Lin Miaoke, who sang "Ode to the Motherland" merely lip-synched. Seven-year old Yang Peiyi, who was considered not photogenic enough for international stardom, was the real voice behind the song.

In an effort to highlight the ease in which drugs are available on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside streets, radio station DJs played a prank, sending someone out to buy find and buy heroin, all while wearing a beaver costume--and it didn't take the DJ long to find it. On June 4, CFOX-FM sent a DJ that goes by the on-air name, Captain Scotty, to a street that is notorious for drug deals. Dressed as a beaver and carrying a sign that said he was looking to buy heroin, the DJ was reportedly able to purchase the drugs in a matter of minutes.

A female Eastern box turtle called Turtle No. 72 has led Washington police to a well-tended marijuana garden in Rock Creek Park. The turtle is one of 135 wired animals with a small radio transmitter on its shell to provide scientists data on turtle movements. The six-inch turtle wanders through 50 acres near the District-Maryland boundary.

A 15-year-old boy doing a paving job here Friday after accidentally being buried by hot asphalt that suddenly unloaded from a truck. Co-workers failed to dig the boy's body out of the heated asphalt and burned their hands in the process. Firefighters who came to the scene on Quarry Road took 14 minutes to recover the dead boy.

Two guards were eaten by a pack of hungry Kamchatka bears in Russia's far eastern region last Thursday. Since then, the Associated Press reported that a pack of 30 bears are stalking two mines of a platinum mining company, causing 400 mine workers to refuse to go to work on the small island where Kamchatka brown bears live in the densest abundance of anywhere in the world.