Don’t try the cat meat hot pot while eating with Agriculture official Huang Guang. That’s what Chinese lumber billionaire Long Liyuan found out the hard way after he was allegedly poisoned. Long died in the hospital a few days later and and Huang is now being detained on murder charges.

Huang allegedly dropped some toxic herbs into the stew, the BBC reported.

Long, who ran a forestry company, was taken to the hospital after feeling dizzy and sick and later suffered a cardiac arrest. Huang and the third diner were hospitalized as well, though both survived. According to the New York Times, Huang had apparently eaten some of the poisoned stew himself to avoid suspicion.

Police detained Huang on Dec. 30, after discovering evidence that Huang had embezzled money from Long.

Cat stew is a local delicacy in South China.

[The Blaze]

And so was birthed, the Mars-er.

In a shocking new revelation surely set to explode into the national conversation as our 2012 election draws closer, a man has claimed that a 19-year-old Barack Obama teleported to Mars twice as part of a top secret government program.

Mr. Stillings’ statement, released at the same time, read: “I can confirm that Andrew D. Basiago and Barack Obama (then using the name “Barry Soetoro”) were in my Mars training course in Summer 1980 and that during the time period 1981 to 1983, I encountered Andy, Courtney M. Hunt of the CIA, and other Americans on the surface of Mars after reaching Mars via the “jump room” in El Segundo, California.”

The claims have been made by Andrew D. Basiago, a lawyer in Washington state who claims to have also been beamed to Mars twice. Among the unit of four college students he trained with was Obama’s appointed DARPA chief Regina Dugan.

Together, they were called Project Pegasus.

Responding to comment by Wired’s Danger Room blog a White House spokesman denied the story.

Officially, the White House says Obama never went to Mars. “Only if you count watching Marvin the Martian,” Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, tells Danger Room. But that’s exactly what a secret chrononaut wants you to believe.

To be fair to the White House, Basiago claims that the CIA did their best to erase the memories of the expeditions from the minds of Project Pegasus’ participants. They might have done a better job with our future 44th president.

[Exopolitics via Danger Room]

Don’t do it. Seriously. Move that cannon out to the field. What are you doing? If you light that… oh well.

Thanks to Weird Things reader Mark Sissons for this.

[Live Leak]

You may not know that the 1963 Hitchcock masterpiece The Birds was inspired by real events. But two years prior, a swarm of the normally docile Sooty Shearwaters which rarely come to shore at all, began slamming into houses inexplicably.

Hitchcock, who frequented nearby Santa Cruz, thought the story was so compelling he crafted the suspense classic.

The film never explained why the birds went rogue, which echoed reality. Until now. Louisiana State University oceanic researchers now hypothesize that it could have been poison red algae that created the airborne attacks.

In a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Bargu argues that “toxin-making algae were present in 79 percent of the plankton” the birds ate. The toxins contained “a nerve-damaging acid, which causes confusion, seizures and death in birds.”

“All the symptoms were extremely similar to later bird poisoning events in the same area,” Bargu said.

Pretty terrifying stuff.

[Marquee Blog]

Weird Things reader Robin sends us this picture from a mall in Bangkok. It looks like an art installation. But is also attached to a t-shirt shop. Which conveniently sells shirts of Hitler Ronald McDonald.

Pretty bizarre.

The world’s first hybrid shark was discovered off the coast of Australia containing both common and Australian black tip DNA, with up to 20% percent of the population sampled being hybrids. Scientist speculate that the hybridization increases the range that the sharks can survive and could be a result of changing sea temperatures.

The mating of the local Australian black-tip shark with its global counterpart, the common black-tip, was an unprecedented discovery with implications for the entire shark world, said lead researcher Jess Morgan.

“It’s very surprising because no one’s ever seen shark hybrids before, this is not a common occurrence by any stretch of the imagination,” Morgan, from the University of Queensland, told AFP.

“This is evolution in action.”

[Yahoo! News]

Once again the town of Beebe, Arkansas is cleaning up dead blackbirds around New Years and the police are banning fireworks.

“It’s just got to be a pain in my career,” Beebe Police Chief Wayne Ballew said.

Prior to this New Year’s Eve, Ballew said he wouldn’t be surprised if people sit out on their front porches in case the winged creatures fall from the sky again.

“I guess we could have an annual blackbird watch,” he said with a laugh. “People can just bring their umbrellas, open them up and walk through the neighborhood and hope they don’t get hit.”

[ABC]