KEY POINTS:
Syed Akbar Kamal came across this ominous sign on New North Rd, Kingsland, and wonders if "some misfortune" suggests harsher penalties than the standard tow charges.
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Jan Coyle from California responds to the Herald story about Mission Bay's famous pink house, now repainted a grey-green. "I was born in the front room of that house when my parents lived there in 1938 and my mother planted the palm tree at the foot of the steps. It was, I was told by my mother, pink at that time and certainly it was always pink during the years I grew up in Auckland and when I have visited over the years since. It was indeed an icon of the eastern bays, a soft and gentle facade blending gracefully into the surrounding bush and in welcome contrast to the bland and boring apartment built next door ... Now, when I return to Auckland in a couple of weeks, I will have to avert my eyes as I drive around Tamaki Drive."
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A hospital patient was trapped for more than three days in a broken lift after he sneaked away from his bed for a cigarette. Relatives, hospital staff and police searched high and low after wheelchair-bound Karlheinz Schmidt, 68, went missing from the Charite Hospital in Berlin, Germany. It was only when repairmen were finally called out to fix the lift that the man was found.
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Young and stupid: Jeremy Lyons, 20, from Pennsylvania, was arrested for an alleged vandalism spree, bashing car windows with a baseball bat. He rang a local TV station, which had carried a story of the arrest of another person and, laughing, told them they had the wrong man. He was arrested when the call was traced. (Source: News of the Weird).
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Not-so-young and stupid: Ivo Jerbic, 55, from Croatia, was so angry when he couldn't find any clean underpants that he threw a closet full of old clothes out into the garden and set fire to them. But the fire spread to the house which burned to the ground. He told police: "My wife never throws anything out, I just lost my temper." Jerbic could end up in jail for up to eight years for putting other family members in danger, even though no one was injured.
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More heterosexual men would choose to sleep with David Beckham than with his wife Victoria, says a survey, which also revealed that three out of 10 British men would abstain from sex for life in return for £1 million ($2.85 million). Others would embrace a lifetime of celibacy if they never had to work again ( 9 per cent) or if their football team won the treble (3 per cent), the study by Company magazine and condom manufacturer Durex found. A lifetime supply of alcohol would be enough to persuade 1 per cent of men to give up sex, and another 1 per cent would take up abstinence for one final night with their dream celebrity.
