An intoxicated Chinese man followed his urge to touch a Panda at Beijing Zoo, but wounded up biting the animal in self defense after his clumsy attempt was rejected, state media said Wednesday. Zhang Xinyan, from China's central Henan province, jumped into an enclosure that held Gu Gu, the panda, after he drunk four jugs of beer at a nearby restaurant, the Beijing Morning Post said. "He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand," and jumped into the enclosure, the newspaper said.

An elderly widow paid an estimated $14,000 to rent a rotary dial telephone for 42 years. Ester Strogen, 82, leased two rotary phones in the 1960s, when owning new phones was prohibitively expensive for most people. Strogen was paying AT and T $29. 10 per month to rent the phones. Two months ago, Strogen's granddaughters, Melissa Howell and Barb Gordon, found the bills and ended the arrangement.

The pilot of a Canadian airliner went to the bathroom, and couldn't get back into the cockpit. The crew of Air Canada's Jazz subsidiary had to remove the door from its hinges to get him back in. The incident occurred on a flight from Ottawa to Winnipeg, Canada.

Three Mexican shark fishermen claim that they survived more than nine months at sea in a small boat by eating raw fish and drinking rain water as they drifted thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean. The fishermen said they left their home town of San Blas on Mexico's Pacific coast last October to fish for sharks. But due to some mechanical problems at the boat and adverse winds they were blown towards the sea.

A Japanese man makes 37,760 silent calls to directory information so he could hear the "kind" voices of female operators. Police arrested the 44-year-old this week for obstructing the operations of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. by making 905 calls per day. He admits to the daily Mainichi Shimbun, "When I made a complaint call once, the operator dealt with it very kindly, so I wanted to hear these women's voices. "