Russian Surgeons have found a 5-centimeter high spruce growing inside a man's lung. Artyom Sidorkin, 28, had complained of extreme pain in his chest and had been coughing up blood. Instead of cancer surgeon Vladimir Kamashev found the sprout. "I blinked three times and thought I was seeing things," Vladimir said. Medical staff believe Sidorkin had somehow inhaled a seed, which later sprouted inside his lung. That theory seems much more likely than an evil pharmaceutical company treepacolypse, which was discussed during a smoke break this morning.

A passenger who landed a twin-engine plane at Southwest Florida International Airport after the pilot died in flight, saved four lives and is being called a hero. Federal Aviation Administration officials say the pilot died after takeoff from Marco Island Executive Airport on Sunday. The plane was on autopilot and climbing past 10,000 feet when the pilot died. The passenger who took the controls is licensed to fly single-engine planes but isn't certified to fly the two-engined King Air plane. An air traffic controller called a friend in Connecticut who picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue, and is rated to fly the aircraft. The pair talked the new pilot to a safe landing.

John Hunt, an atheist, has won the right to have his baptism removed from Church of England records after arguing that he was too young to give his consent to the ceremony. John was baptised at the age of five months but by the time he was eleven the oppressive nature of elementary school, and the inherit unfairness that comes along with picking soccer teams had convinced him that there was no god. After the church told him that his baptism could not be deleted because it is a matter of historical record, John secured a "de-baptism" certificate produced by the National Secular Society (NSS), rejecting "superstitions" or the idea of original sin. The certificate reads: "I reject all its creeds and other such superstitions in particular the perfidious belief that any baby needs to be cleansed of original sin." This week the church finally agreed to remove the record saying the entry would be "corrected."

More and more schools in the UK are turning to bouncers to watch over classes when teachers are not available. One London school went to a doormen's agency for "cover supervisors," who watch over lessons when teachers are away, and gave jobs to two bouncers, one of whom is still at the school. Andrew Baisley, a mathematics teacher, said, "The idea is that it's about crowd control and childminding. If they're stern and loud, that's what is necessary to do the job." At least the kids get to watch Road House instead of old National Geographic specials when the teacher decides not to show up.

The Finch Arboretum is being overrun by ground squirrels. Their plan is to do what any slightly disturbed and high assistant groundskeeper would do: blow them up. The Spokane Parks and Recreation agency is using a machine called the Rodenator Pro to detonate some of the estimated 100 to 150 squirrels tearing up the grounds. The Rodenator Pro pumps propane and oxygen into the tunnels of squirrels, then sends an electric spark that causes an explosion. The shock waves kill the squirrels, collapses their tunnels and decides the winner of the $20,000 golf match. In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, "Au revoir, squirrel."

Helps put our economic power in perspective.

Afforess writes "A recent closer look at the oft-skimmed EULA agreement for iTunes has an interesting paragraph in it, Gizmodo reports. 'You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.' Although humorous, some readers suggested that this may be a defense measure to previously discussed price changes in the iTunes music store."

A man who rushed his girlfriend to the airport to catch a flight to see her dying mother, watched her miss the flight because a United Airline's ticketing agent refused to help because "it was time for her to go on her break." His girlfriend finally reached the gate in time to watch her flight depart, and the gate agent defended his colleague's lack of sympathy, saying "management really makes us work some unreasonable schedules." To be fair, breaks are serious business.

The Vermont Legislature is considering making sexting between teenagers legal. Under current laws, participants can be charged with child pornography, but lawmakers are considering a bill to legalize the consensual exchange of graphic images between people 13 to 18 years old. The bill passed the state Senate earlier this month. Hiding in the bushes and peering through windows will remain a crime.

A Polish politician is upset with his local zoo for acquiring a "gay" elephant named Ninio who prefers male companions and will probably not make little elephants. Michal Grzes, a conservative councillor in the city of Poznan in western Poland, said, "We didn't pay 37 million zlotys (7.6 million pounds) for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there. We were supposed to have a herd, but as Ninio prefers male friends over females how will he produce offspring?" It is unlikely that zoo officials will be able to teach or counsel Ninio out of his alternative lifestyle because a gay elephant, like his straight counterpart, never forgets.

Old carnivals really did have the best attractions.

cottagetrees writes "Claudio Soares, a Brazilian author and literary blogger, has launched an online publishing experiment involving Twitter, CommentPress, videos, music and eventually, the ebook self-publishing service, Smashwords. Soares has broken his novel into pieces, and is serializing it from the unique perspectives of each of the eight characters, each of whom has their own Twitter account. In an interesting twist, the characters will interact with their Twitter followers. This has the potential to create an immersive experience, not just for the community of readers that congregates around the book and its characters as the story unfolds, but for the author as well. The book, Santos Dumont Número 8, is written in Portuguese."

The large sums of ransom money being paid out to pirates has led some Somali women to venture to the port town of Bosaso in hopes of finding a treasure map to their heart. Kaj Larsen, a former US Navy SEAL says, "One of the interesting demographic things that's happening right now is that single Somali women are flocking to the port town Bosaso where these pirates come out of in the hopes of marrying a pirate. So you can see that it really is — the root conditions of poverty, lawlessness and civil war on the ground in Somalia are really what are breeding this problem."

An Austrian man was forced to take his mom to court for stalking after she called him incessantly over a two-and-a-half year period. The 73-year-old woman, who would phone her son up to 49 times a day, was fined 360 euros ($478) by the court in the southern city of Klagenfurt. "I just wanted to talk to him. I can't talk to my son, nor my daughter. I've never seen my grandchild — who is already 15 years old," she told the court.

Shamanstvo, an online shamanist magazine, reports that Russia will stage the first ever 'Top Shaman' elections this year. 188 candidates from all over the country are in the running. Most are of course enhancement or elemental because even in real life going restoration is no fun. The elections will be held in two stages, with only 12 shortlisted shamans participating in the second stage. Each of the stages will last three months to allow the most far-off regions to cast their ballots.

Looks like someone took the business card scene in American Psycho to heart.

He spends his nights in a cement mixer; the tracks are just for afternoon naps.

Sweden's tax authorities are cracking down on unreported webcam stripper income. They estimate that hundreds of Swedish women are dodging the law, resulting in a tax loss of about 40m Swedish kronor (£3.3m) annually. The search involves tax officials examining stripper websites, hours upon hours, for completely legitimate purposes. A slightly disheveled project leader said 200 Swedish strippers had been investigated so far, adding the total could be as much as 500. "They are young girls, we can see from the photos. We think that perhaps they are not well informed about the rules," he said.

Police in Norfolk, England already have tracking units, The Automatic Vehicle Location System, installed in their cars that allow a control room to track their exact locations. Later this year a similar system will be attached to individual police radios to allow controllers to monitor the position of every frontline officer. Combined with equipment that can pinpoint the locations of 999 callers, the system will allow the force to home in on "shouts" to within yards. The system also lets operators filter a map showing the location of its vehicles and constables to reveal only those with the skills needed for a specific incident, like the closest officer with silver bullets during a werewolf attack.

A vegan driver has had her request for a vanity license plate, "ILVTOFU," turned down by the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles because the phrase could be construed as obscene. "We don't allow FU because some people could read that as street language for sex," Department of Revenue spokesman Mark Couch said. It would have been interesting to see the wide array of pale people that would have commented on her plate.