"Gift rage" lands worker in court?

A disgruntled Japanese worker smashed up his employer's office in a fit of pique after his boss ignored his gift of jelly desserts, a national paper said on Thursday. An Osaka court heard that the 31-year-old man, who worked for an online clothing sales company, had given the company president a box of jellies in the summer as a mark of gratitude after landing the job, the English-language Asahi Shimbun said. Many Japanese maintain a tradition of sending gifts to important business contacts in summer and winter. When the employee realized that his boss had left the box of jellies unopened under his desk, he smashed 22 computers in the office with a truncheon, the paper said. No one was injured in the incident. The man pleaded guilty to charges of obstructing business with force, the paper said. "I wish the company president had cared a little more," the paper quoted the employee's lawyer as saying. Prosecutors said the employer had been too busy to open the gift, the paper said.

Cops go out on a limb for ampu

A man whose amputated, embalmed leg was sold at a North Carolina auction will get the limb back over the objections of the buyer, who wanted to include it in a macabre, money-making Halloween display, police said on Thursday. The dispute over the leg John Wood lost in an airplane crash three years ago was apparently resolved when police decided the buyer, Shannon Whisnant, had given up ownership by calling authorities and asking them to take it away. "The simple fact is that he said he didn't want it," said Capt. Tracy Ledford of the Maiden Police Department, who chuckled his way through an interview about the case that has made for lively gossip in the small North Carolina town. "The guy don't have a leg to stand on," Ledford said. "He's not getting the leg back." Wood, 42, kept the embalmed leg because he wanted it to be cremated with him when he dies. He stored it in a small barbecue smoker in a Maiden storage unit, but failed to keep up the unit's rent, police said. The storage company auctioned the smoker on September 25 and Whisnant was the buyer. When he found the leg, he called police and said he "wanted to get rid of it," but later decided to make some money from it, Ledford said. "He wanted to show this thing at Halloween and charge money to see it," he said. Whisnant told local media he was willing to go to court to keep the leg and planned to charge admission to see it -- $3 for adults and $1 for children. "It's a hell of a conversation piece," he told the Greenville News. "I bought it. It's mine."

Bar gossip leads to nasty surprise for couple

A Czech couple who decided to take a DNA test to squash persistent pub gossip and prove that their 10-month-old baby was their own got a nasty surprise. The couple, from the southeastern town of Trebic, had some doubts about the child as her hair was blonde and they both had dark hair. Fellow drinkers' suspicions got on their nerves. But the test showed neither of the parents had the same DNA as the baby, Czech news agency CTK reported Wednesday, suggesting a mix-up at the hospital. Authorities were looking into the case.