UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News

Escaped ostrich snarls Golden Gate traffic

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- An ostrich rescued from the butcher snarled rush hour traffic on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge when it crashed through the back window of a van.

The ostrich stopped traffic in both directions Monday afternoon as it ran through traffic and dozens of tourists snapped pictures of the 6-foot-tall creature.

"It should never have happened," driver and Love Farms owner Ronald Love told the San Francisco Chronicle of what happened after he accelerated strongly. "The ostrich's butt broke the window. You never would think an ostrich could fit through a little window, but she did."

Love said he had rescued the ostrich several hours earlier in Watsonville, Calif., where it was slated to be butchered.

California Highway Patrol Sgt. Wayne Ziese said the bird suffered "minor road rash" but otherwise was unhurt when it was rounded up 10 minutes later on the Golden Gate Bridge.

12 injured queueing for 'fortune rice'

HONG KONG, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- At least a dozen people were injured in Hong Kong Tuesday as 10,000 queued up to receive bags of "fortune rice" said to bring them peace and safety.

Six elderly women suffered bruises and minor injuries after being pushed to the ground as the rice handouts began at a local sports ground, Radio Television Hong Kong reported. Others complained of feeling unwell after having waited in line since the day before to receive their rice packets.

The rice is distributed by non-profit organizations, sometimes along with small cash payments, as part of the annual Ghost Festival. The method of distributing the rice has come under fire from the Association Against Elderly Abuse of Hong Kong, which says organizers have not taken care to ensure the safety of the mostly elderly people who come to collect the packets.

Other Ghost Festival activities include burning paper money and other paper objects to appease the spirits of relatives who have passed away but are allowed to wander the earth during the seventh month of the lunar calendar.

Mayor shakes up gray Albanian capital

TIRANA, Albania, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- Albania's capital city, Tirana, is losing its former communist "gray curtain" with the mayor ordering buildings painted in bright colors.

Edi Rama was first elected mayor in 2000, and re-elected in 2003. Along the way, the artist who trained in Paris decided the city needed a facelift, and ordered one building painted bright orange, a Washington Times report said.

"It was a scandal, but a scandal that I wanted," Rama said. "We took some colors and decided to paint to try to penetrate this very gray curtain of communist buildings."

Now, dozens of buildings sport camouflage patterns, bold red or purple geometric figures splashed over blue backgrounds.

Shut off by xenophobic ruler Enver Hoxha since the end of World War II, Albania was completely isolated from the world until 1991. But now, Rama has begun tearing down illegally built, flimsy shacks along the Lana River, and brought streetlights and garbage collection to the city and widened narrow roads.

"I am not a normal mayor, and Tirana is not a normal city," Rama said.

Prickly weed invades California bike path

SACRAMENTO, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- Sacramento, Calif., officials fought an invasion of goathead puncturevine on a bike path that one group of cyclists said took them on the Tour de Flat Tire.

The group of seven people had nine flat tires in their recent Tour de France party on the bike path invaded by the annual weed that packs large thorns.

Experts said seeds of the goathead puncturevine, which affects much of the United States, may have arrived in California in sheep wool imported from the Mediterranean, The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee reported.

Parts of the Sacrament path are so infested it is almost impossible for bicyclists to avoid getting flats from thorns, said Ed Cox, city bike and pedestrian coordinator.

"It's almost perfectly designed to be picked up by a bicycle tire," Cox said.

City officials were drawing up a long-term attack plan that could combine herbicides with weevils that attack puncturevine, a difficult task since the seeds remain viable for up to seven years.