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Stuart Kennedy, a 24-year-old student working as a strip-o-gram in Aberdeen, Scotland, never thought his act would cause him any trouble. But today, he’s facing a trial for waving a baton during his performance.

“I do not believe this is in the public interest,” Kennedy told BBC Scotland.

In March, two female police officers saw Kennedy in costume. They followed him into the club where he performs and after watching his show, asked him to accompany them to the local police station.

“It was all quite friendly. When I went back later they said they were going to charge me,” Kennedy told the BBC. Kennedy was charged with wearing a police uniform and equipment.

Earlier this month, the  charges were revised. Kennedy is now facing allegations of having offensive weapons, including a police-style baton, in a public place. The other charges are no longer being pursued.

Jim Craigen, the principal fiscal despute in the case confirmed: “Stuart Kennedy has been cited to appear at Aberdeen Sheriff Court in relation to three charges of possession of offensive weapons.”

A plea of not guilty was lodged at the court on Mr Kennedy’s behalf yesterday and trial dates have been set for later in the year.

80-year-old Miko Vukovic thought that his fight for life was over when he woke up in intensive care after heart surgery. That was before a poisonous snake found it’s way into his room at a hospital in Ogulin, central Croatia.

Vukovic noticed the snake on the floor of his hospital room. Vukovic was sharing the intensive care room with three other recovering cardiology patients when he spotted the poisonous Vipera Berus snake near his bed.

Though Vukovic was on a strict bed-rest regime following his surgery, he felt he had no choice but to shoo the snake away. So he struck out at the reptile with his walking stick.

“I was fighting for 10 minutes before I managed to kill it with my walking stick,” Vukovic told reporters. “The bugger almost bit me in the leg but then I let it have it - right between the eyes.”

Staff believe the snake was inadvertently delivered to the hospital in a giant flower arrangement. When the flowers were discarded, a snake skin was found. Once inside, the snake was free to roam around the hospital, making it’s way to the intensive care ward.

No official statement was released by the hospital’s management.

London-based performance artist Mark McGowan ate a dog during a radio broadcast yesterday. This is just one in a string of bizarre stunts McGowan has performed to protest everything from people being rude during the holidays to student debt.

The dog, a corgi which died of natural causes at a breeding cause, was chosen specifically. The Queen’s favorite breed was dished up for McGowan’s dinner as a protest against what he considers animal cruelty doled out by the Royal Family.

McGowan is a vegetarian - but he once ate a swan as part of a performance. While eating, he told Resonance FM listeners that the dog was, “Disgusting, it’s really, really, really disgusting.”

DJ Bob Smith said he wasn’t convinced the meat was actually dog - “It’s stinky, white-looking. It’s not like any meat I’ve ever seen,” he said.

McGowan said he had the utmost faith in the women who’d prepared his corgi meal. The dog meat was minced, and mixed with apples, onions and spices - the resulting meatballs were served up with pita bread and a side salad.

After the show, McGowan seemed pleased with his ‘performance’. “To me it was, as an art piece, exhilarating,” he said.

German auto mechanic Klaus “Shorty” Meuller was trying to help a customer and ended up causing a full-scale police chase.

Meuller, who voluntarily climbed into the trunk of a customer’s car in an effort to diagnose a rattling noise, was mistaken for a child by a woman in a nearby apartment. She thought she’d witnessed a kidnapping in progress and called the Bremen police as the car drove away from the scene.

“A major investigation and manhunt was immediately launched and the car and its driver were apprehended,” said a police spokesperson.

Upon opening the trunk, police discovered that the “kidnapped boy” was Meuller. Meuller explained he’d asked to be driven around in the trunk to get to the bottom of the customer’s noise issue.

Meuller had used the same technique to solve a number of other strange noise issues for his customers without incident.

Lewis Pugh, a British explorer and endurance swimmer, is about to attempt a swim in the ice-cold water surrounding the North Pole. Why? To draw attention to the issues surrounding climate change.

Pugh, a 37-year-old originally from Cape Town, plans to swim for one kilometer in nothing but a swim cap, trunks and goggles. He expects the journey will take around 21 minutes and plans to do the swim on July 15. He hopes the swim and surrounding attention will add to mounting pressure on leaders at the forthcoming G8 summit, encouraging a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions.

“Most people have no idea that you can find patches of open sea at the North Pole in summer,” said Pugh in a press statement. “I can’t think of a better way to show that climate change is a reality than by swimming in a place that should be totally frozen over.”

Just 10 years ago, swimming in the area would’ve been impossible, according to Pugh. Last year, he set a new world record for swimming in ice water - covering 1.2 kilometers in a Norwegian fjord during a swim 10 seconds shy of 24 minutes.

According to experts, an average person would’ve hyperventilated and probably drown from extreme shock within minutes of diving into water so cold. Pugh, however, has an astonishing ability to resist the effects of the freezing cold water - it’s this resistance to cold that’s gained him the nickname Polar Bear.

As part of Pugh’s preparation for his July dip in the sea, he’s increased his body weight by nearly 20 kilograms and trained in a specially-designed ice pool. The next month of his training will be done in a glacial lake in Norway with Jorgen Amundsen.

Amundsen, a relative of the first man to reach the South Pole, will ski to the North Pole with Pugh before his swim. “This expedition represents the end of an era of Arctic exploration as we know it,” he said. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to walk to the North Pole and many expeditions fail each year when they encounter big stretches of open sea.”

A wildlife guide in Israel found an unwelcome visitor in his bed at night - a leopard that’d been trying to catch the family’s pet cat.

Arthur du Mosch grabbed the big cat’s neck, pinned it down and held it there until help from Israel’s Nature and Parks department arrived nearly 20 minutes later.

“This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day,” he told the BBC. “I wasn’t thinking, I just acted.”

49-year-old du Mosch was able to shake the experience off, “But the kids were excited,” he said.

A group of leopards was spotted near the du Mosch home in the Negev desert, according to department spokesperson Raviv Shapira. “But we have never heard of a leopard coming into a private home,” he said.

The intruding leopard was taken to Beit Dagan veterinary hospital near Tel Aviv for evaluation and is expected to be released back into the wild after being electronically tagged.

If nine kids, 22 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren weren’t enough to seal the deal, Ted Towle didn’t know what was. He’d been proposing to long-time love Hilda Clark since 1958 with no success.

It seems that when one of their grandchildren was seriously ill last November, everything changed for Hilda. “I had always been skeptical of marriage after getting wed when I was very young - one divorce is enough for anyone.”

The couple, from Nottinham in England, were married over the weekend - much to the delight of their family. “Ours must be one of the longest courtships ever,” said Hilda. “But now I’m so happy I wonder why I waited so long to marry. I’m so proud to call Ted my husband after all this time.”

“When Hilda said, ‘I do’, I said ‘about time!’,” Ted added. “Hilda won’t be rushed into anything, but I’m thrilled that she’s finally made an honest man of me.”

Ted, who is 83, gave up on proposing last November and was stunned when Hilda, 73, popped the question herself about six months ago.

Police responding to a complaint about animal noises coming from inside a neighbor’s house found three 200lb pigs trapped inside. And the outside wasn’t such a pretty picture either.

Detective Jim Strovnik of the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office told reporters that Shane Lovett of Eagle Creek had been upset about losing his home in foreclosure. Lovett apparently joked with his neighbors that he’d locked the pigs inside without any food or water in hopes they’d trash the place.

To be sure the property wasn’t an easy resale for his bank, it appears Lovett also damaged the house’s exterior. Large pieces of the house dotted the landscape, along with household garbage and abandoned cars. There was significant damage to the foundation and walls, windows were smashed and a mound of dirt was dumped on the roof. Lovett is a heavy equipment operator by trade, and went so far as to sign his “work” by carving his name into the siding in three-foot-high letters.

The pigs, who had done a fair job of destroying everything inside the house, were hungry and dehydrated but otherwise no worse for their ordeal.

Lovett will most likely face charges of animal cruelty for abandoning the pigs. The police investigation continues, and as yet, no one has been able to reach Lovett for comment or questioning.

After over a month of living without gas, heating or hot water, residents in two Cleveland apartment buildings will be pleased to know their landlord can really feel their pain.

Richard Naumann, who owes his local gas company over $100,000, has been ordered to serve an indefinite period of house arrest in one of his substandard apartments by Lakewood Municipal Judge Patrick Carroll.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Naumann will have to live in one of the apartments, alongside his disgruntled tenants, until the buildings are brought back up to code.

Naumann’s sentence includes wearing an electronic tagging device so his whereabouts can be tracked 24/7 - he’s only allowed to leave the apartment to go to work between 8am and 6pm.

Gas service to the properties was cut off over a month ago due to Naumann’s outstanding account balance.

Just when you thought the bottomless chum bucket of reality TV couldn’t get any fuller, the creators of Big Brother have started filming The Big Donor Show for BNN.

That’s right, it’s a game show. The contest centers around three critically ill patients waiting for a kidney and a terminally ill woman known as Lisa who’ll be donating the organ to the winner.

As with most reality TV shows, viewers are encouraged to participate, sending Lisa text messages related to which of the critically ill youths should win her kidney.

Scores of transplant patient organizations and politicians have voiced objections to the show. “This is a scandal, it is no better than selling organs,” said Reiner Hofmann, a spokesperson for the Dutch Transplant Foundation. “They are taking advantage of people in a desperate situation for entertainment.”

The network has hit back, stating that the show is working to highlight the serious shortage of donor organs available in the Netherlands.

The show’s three contestants are undergoing daily dialysis treatment until such time as a kidney becomes available - whether that’s by winning the show or not.