Teenager brandishes banana in store hold-up, and more

Teenager brandishes banana in store hold-up

An ingenious North Carolina teenager allegedly brandished a banana rather than a gun while holding up a store, then tried to eat the evidence. John Szwalla, 17, tried to rob an Internet cafe with the fruit held beneath his T-shirt, but the staff overcame him, say police. Szwalla managed to eat the banana, but failed to eat the peel, which the police duly photographed and took into evidence.

Mel Gibson's anti-stress machine

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Mel Gibson has invested in a $100,000 “flow machine” to alleviate stress, says The National Enquirer. The 53-year-old actor, involved in an expensive divorce from wife Robyn, is trying to relax by

regularly strapping himself into a full-body contraption designed to bathe the user in what a friend describes as “some kind of ‘torsion field waves’ that are supposed to unblock clogged energy.” Some friends worry that “Mel’s getting weirder with age.”

Stench of rotting food causes building evacation

A California office building was evacuated when someone tried to clear out the rotten food from the office refrigerator. In the end, a total of 18 emergency vehicles, 50 firefighters, and a hazmat team responded to the AT&T call center in San Jose, where the stench from the mini-refrigerator drove 325 employees into the parking lot and sent seven to the hospital. Veteran firefighter Capt. Barry Stallard suspects the putrid, liquefied item was originally some kind of meat. “A steak and a dog and a person, when they all start to rot, it’s a horrible thing,” said Stallard.