Crazy World: Hospital to keep baby till mum can pay for delivery

GREECE: A Greek hospital has threatened a new mother that it would keep the infant till the mother cleared the dues racked up during child delivery.

The case comes as no surprise in austerity-stricken Greece as the hospital asks that the payment of 1,200 euros (£970) be made in full before the baby is discharged, reports Daily Mail.

Hospital denies the claim, but campaigners say it is merely the latest in a spate of cases, says the daily.

The woman, named only as Anna, told BBC News: 'The hospital asked us for a lot of money and the man at the administration office told us we had to pay the whole amount or they would not let the baby leave the hospital with me.

'Who wouldn't be scared by that? You have just given birth and they want to keep hold of your baby if you can't afford to pay? Don't these people have children of their own?'

After the woman was threatened, she went to a campaign group for help. Women Against the Debt campaigns against government-imposed austerity measures affecting women. The head of the gorup called the head of the hospital who allowed her to take her baby home.

However, the hospital insisted that she pay her bills, albeit in instalments.

Drunk man alive after run over by 26 railcars

CANADA: The roar of a diesel locomotive and 26 screeching railcars weren't enough to wake a drunken Alberta man -- and Mounties say he'd surely be dead if they had.

It's a case that has veteran RCMP officers flabbergasted, given the overwhelming odds against the sloshed long-weekend camper surviving being run over by an 8,000-tonne freight train.

But he not only walked away intact, the 20-something was still coherent enough to remember his beverage.

He got up and grabbed his beer and just walked away.

The man, from the Crowsnest Pass-area of Alberta, had left his campsite near Elko, B.C., and somehow ended up on the nearby railway tracks.

Inexplicably, the luckiest lager drinker in the world then decided the tracks would be a fine place for a nap.

It was a sharp-eyed Canadian Pacific Railway engineer who noticed the body lying between the rails ahead, but stopping a laden freight is no easy task.

With whistle blasting, the locomotive and 26 cars passed over the man before the screeching train finally stopped.

Railway workers assumed he was dead. But one of them touched him, and he woke up.

It took dogs to track the track-napper back to his campground, where officers arrested the man and hauled him to a nice safe cell, where he could sleep off the booze in a locomotive-free environment.

Charges are pending which will likely be for public intoxication, or something similar reports cnews.

But a fine for being sloshed seems like a small price, given the penalty the drunk miraculously avoided.

Victim uploads video of suspected thief

US: A Wisconsin man whose camcorder was briefly stolen has found a way to get back at the suspected thief: He uploaded to YouTube a video that the suspect took with the camera, a clip in which the man reveals his name, shows his face and admits he stole the camera.

Chris Rochester, 25, of La Crosse, said his camera was stolen a few weeks ago from the car of his boss, Republican state Senate candidate Bill Feehan. Police eventually arrested the suspect and returned the camera to Rochester, who set it aside.

Then, when Gov. Scott Walker made a recent visit to La Crosse, Rochester used the camera to film the event. When he went back to retrieve the video, he found 20 other segments the suspect apparently recorded.

Most were uneventful, generally 15- to 20-second clips of television screens. But one video caught Rochester's eye.

"This is my house, yes, and a stolen camera that I stole. But it's OK, the cop won't figure it out," the suspect says in the 79-second video, as he pans around a home and points out the kitchen and bathroom. Later he adds, "Oh yeah, to introduce you, my name is Houaka Yang. So yeah, how do you do."

Finally, he turns the camera to reveal his face and says with a smile, "And this is me. Hi."

The 20-year-old Yang was scheduled to make an initial appearance in court Wednesday, but the judge recused himself because he knew one of the victims. A new court date wasn't immediately scheduled.

Yang was charged with two counts of being party to misdemeanor theft and one misdemeanor count of carrying a concealed weapon. The charges carry a maximum penalty of two years and three months in jail and a $30,000 fine.

A message left with Yang's public defender Wednesday was not immediately returned.

Rochester said he almost disregarded the videos on his camera, thinking maybe he'd accidentally hit the `record' button.

"Then it hit me pretty quickly as to what it was," he said. "I was astounded. I was like, `Wow, I can't believe this.'"

Yang was already in custody, but Rochester decided to have fun with the video by sharing it with friends. So he uploaded it to YouTube under the title "Confessions of a stupid criminal: Thief is sure he won't get caught."

As reporters began asking him about the video he began to realize it was more entertaining than he first thought, he said.

Police recovered the videocamera after investigating a number of other thefts in the area. Rochester said he didn't think Feehan had been targeted as a Republican political candidate.

Security videos at Feehan's home showed two suspects rifling through the car in his driveway. Investigators showed the footage to officials at a local high school, who identified one suspect, La Crosse police Sgt. Randy Rank said. The 14-year-old in turn identified Yang, he said.

Rank said police weren't concerned that Rochester uploaded the video even though Yang's case is still pending.

"It's his recorder, those are his images on there," Rank said. "I don't see an issue with it." (AP)

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