Weird News: Artificial...Intelligence?
Pope’s Blessing
Pope Francis’ popemobile has been repurposed as a mobile health clinic for children in war-torn Gaza, NBC News reported on Nov. 25. Francis used the vehicle during a visit to Bethlehem in 2014 and blessed the project before his death in April. The open platform where he stood has been enclosed and converted to a treatment area. Caritas, the Catholic organization tasked with the conversion, said the vehicle will be able to treat about 200 children per day.
Who’s Wrong Here?
On Nov. 14, a mom popped into W.A. Wright Elementary School in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, to deliver some paperwork, leaving her 10-year-old son in the car outside. She returned to the parking lot to find the car gone, WSMV-TV reported, and assumed it had been stolen with her son inside. A witness said they’d seen the car driving recklessly out of the parking lot. But when police checked the family home about a mile away, they found the car in the garage and the child in the house with his dad. He explained that he’d had an argument with his mom and decided to drive himself home. Officers declined to charge the boy because he’s too young to be held criminally responsible.
Artificial...Intelligence?
Kohl Bertels, 33, had an unusual explanation for breaking into a Circle K store on Nov. 23, eating a bag of beef jerky and drinking a sweet tea, The Smoking Gun reported: “I know you’re going to think I’m crazy,” he said, “but there is an AI intelligence speaker in my neck.” Bertels kicked through the glass door of the store in St. Charles, Missouri, around 2:15 a.m. He explained that the voices in his head told him to break the door, since it was locked. He faces charges of burglary and property damage, but it’s not his first rodeo: His rap sheet is full of felony burglary convictions.
Surprise!
A Buddhist temple near Bangkok, Thailand, was the site of an unsettling situation on Nov. 23 after a woman was brought in for cremation, the Associated Press reported. The “deceased” was in a white coffin that her brother delivered to the temple, but as workers went to unload the cargo from the bed of a pickup truck, her brother heard a faint knocking. “I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled,” said the 65-year-old brother. “I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time.” The woman’s brother said she stopped breathing two days before; after her startling recovery, she was sent to a local hospital.
Bright Idea
CNN reported on Nov. 25 that an unnamed 57-year-old man in Borgo Virgilio, Italy, dressed up as his mother, Graziella Dall’Oglio, and tried to renew her government ID card so that he could continue to collect her pension. He wore a wig, makeup and her clothing, but authorities were tipped off by the hair on his neck and chin. Inconveniently, the signora passed away in 2022 at age 82. Her son, an unemployed nurse, did not report her death to authorities. When they visited his home, they found his mother’s mummified body in the laundry room closet, wrapped in sleeping bags. An autopsy was ordered, and the son was held in a local jail.