A woman was hospitalised after her car fell into a sinkhole that opened up in a Pittsburgh-area parking lot, officials said.
News footage showed the sinkhole in Ross Township, Pennsylvania, was about three times the width of a car and filled with water.
Officials kill attack river otter
The river otter believed to be responsible for a rare attack on humans that left a Washington state boy and his grandmother badly hurt has been killed, state wildlife officials said.
The large male otter was trapped, captured and euthanised just yards from where the late July attack occurred in the Pilchuck River in Snohomish County, about 36 miles northeast of Seattle, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said.
Bridge for sale, if you have room
If you have somewhere to put it, local officials in Portland, Oregon, are offering a decrepit 335-metre-long steel bridge at a knock-down price.
The Sellwood Bridge comes with a paved road, sidewalks and railings, but none of the support beams that currently hold it aloft above the Willamette River, according to a for-sale notice that ran in newspapers.
200 accidentally declared dead
An Australian hospital has apologised after mistakenly sending out death notices for 200 of its – very much alive – patients.
Austin Hospital, in Australia’s second most populous city of Melbourne, erroneously killed off the patients when it faxed death notices to their family doctors.
Mother charged after son burned
A North Carolina woman is accused of helping record her teenage son set himself on fire after he doused his body with fingernail polish as part of a social media stunt, police said.
Janie Lachelle Talley, 41, watched as her 16-year-old son attempted to complete a “fire challenge” video for Facebook on July 29, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said on Monday. The boy suffered minor burns on his chest and neck.
Alaskan woman mauled by bear
A 57-year-old Alaskan hiker survived after being mauled by a brown bear on a wilderness trail, walking more than a mile to her truck and driving to hospital after the attack, state police reported.
Thea Thomas had been hiking on Tuesday along the Heney Ridge Trail in Cordova, a remote and sparsely populated coastal fishing community southeast of Anchorage, near a stream in which salmon were spawning when the attack happened.
New York superheroes fight back
After a spate of arrests and bad publicity, the costumed characters who pose for tourist photographs in New York’s Times Square in the hopes of a cash tip have formed an association to preserve a livelihood that has come under increasing scrutiny.
Dozens of people dressed as Spider-Man, Batman, Elmo, Mickey Mouse and other children’s favourites, roam the crowded sidewalks and pedestrian plazas around Times Square each day, beckoning toward passing kids and their camera-toting parents.