NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Lifesaving beer

In a twist on stomach pumping, doctors in Quang Tri, Vietnam, saved 48-year-old Nguyen Van Nhat’s life in January by transfusing 15 cans of beer into his stomach.

As Dr. Le Van Lam explained to the Daily Mail, alcohol contains methanol and ethanol, and the liver breaks down ethanol first. But after a person stops drinking, the stomach and intestines continue to release alcohol into the bloodstream — even if the drinker has lost consciousness — and alcohol levels continue to rise.

In Nhat’s case, his blood methanol level was 1,119 times higher than the appropriate limit. Doctors administered one can of beer every hour to slow down his metabolizing of methanol, which gave them time to perform dialysis. Nhat spent three weeks in the hospital before returning home.

Not quite Ocean’s 11

A 19-year-old man from Nice, France, has received a four-month (suspended) sentence for a plot he hatched in September. The man, known only as Adel, removed a PlayStation 4 from a supermarket shelf and took it to the produce aisle, where he weighed it and printed a price sticker for fruit. Then he used the selfcheckout line to pay and left the store with a $389 piece of electronics for about $10. Adel sold the PlayStation for $114 to buy a train ticket.

The next day, he tried the same scheme, but police caught him. He will only have to serve his sentence if he reoffends, reported Kotaku.com.

An actual bag man

Sharisha Morrison of Albuquerque, N.M., and her neighbors have been the recipients since Jan. 1 of an odd gift: plastic grocery bags with slices of bread and bologna inside, delivered by an unknown man.

At first, Morrison told KOB TV, she thought the food deliveries were acts of kindness, until she opened the bag and smelled the contents.

“It smelled like urine,” she said.

Morrison said she can watch the man on her surveillance camera.

“He’ll just walk up and drop it on the little doorknob and walk away,” she said. “I just want it to stop.”

Police have told her they can’t do anything unless they catch him in the act.