A hotel in Portland is giving out silly hats to its customers who go outside for a smoke. Clifton Hotel owner Chaz Charlton, 41, said she came up with the idea after being refused permission by local authorities for a smoking shelter for fear that the shelters could get blown away by sea gales.

A screaming parrot, which likes to imitate different sounds, mimicked the sound of a smoke alarm and saved his master and his son from fire, the bird's owner says Monday. According to Shannon Conwell, the bird's owner, he heard Peanut, the amazon parrot around 3 a. m. mimicking the sound of a fire alarm and found out that his house was on fire last Friday. Conwell immediately woke up his 9-year-old son who fell asleep on the couch after watching a movie.

Fearing a chemical attack, police did everything to evacuate a busy London street, only to find out later the cause of the commotion: A Thai restaurant's spicy chilli sauce. Local police had to close off three roads and evacuated homes as a mysterious cloud of acrid smoke hovered over the streets of Soho for three hours.

A Thai chef in London triggered fears of a chemical attack among local restaurant patrons when smoke from his eye-watering hot chilli sauce led to the emergency services being called out Wednesday, reports said. The Thai chef Chalemchai Tangjariyapoon, who works at the Thai Cottage restaurant in the entertainment district of Soho, was cooking up bird's eye chillies as he prepared a huge batch of nam prik pao, a Thai's cuisine exotic food, an extra-hot dip served with prawn crackers.

Patients around the world relying on a little feel-good pain relief from nibbling on marijuana-laced snacks baked at a California factory will be out of luck because federal agents closed it down. Drug Enforcement Administration officials said agents raided the Tainted Inc. factory in Oakland on Wednesday and arrested several people. They also seized 460 marijuana plants along with a variety of pot-laced products intended for medical users of the drug. Those products included such things as barbecue sauce, chocolate-covered pretzels, candy bars, cookies, marshmallow pies, ice cream, peanut butter, jelly, energy drinks and "Rice Krispy treats. "