NEW ZEALAND – PBS reported that the  rapper Tupac Shakur was sighted in New Zealand this weekend. 

PBS is reporting that  Tupac Shakur was sighted and photographed having drinks at a bar in Auckland, New Zealand.  Soon thereafter the internet was ablaze with speculation if this was real and Tupac was really alive.

Tupac Shakur was allegedly gunned down September 7th 1996 after leaving a boxing match.  However reporters have discovered that Tupac actually survived the shooting, but he and record label executives paid off medical examiners to claim he had died.  His apparent death allowed him to escape his assailants and his constant legal battles.

Since then Tupac had lived in hiding under an assumed name in rural Pennsylvania.  Weekly World News reporters tracked down the beloved rap star to his new home.

With regards to going into hiding he said, “At first it was life or death.  I’d just been shot at and I knew it wasn’t going to stop.  Once I was out of the game, a fresh start looked too good.  All the baggage from the old life, I could let it go and walk away.”

Since then, “I mostly keep my head low.  Don’t draw attention.  Staying out of trouble.”

When asked about how he spends his time, he said, “Ya know, same old same old.  Shop at the Farmer’s Market.  Keep my bees, get some honey.  Flirt with the girls at Dairy Queen.  Nothin’ big.”

For creative exploits, Tupac says, “I like to knit.”  His house was covered with hand knit pieces celebrating his former celebrity and sweaters with ‘Thug Life’ stitched on them.   Above the couch was a large tapestry depicting a scene from his California Love video.  He went on: “I do a lot of writing.  Jewel’s book of poetry, that was mine.  I also ghost wrote the screenplay for ‘The Lake House’.”

Tupac said he has no plans to return to the public eye.  “I’m a keep it straight chillin’ here.  Keep them bees, work the strawberry patch.  End of the day, play on with some World of Warcraft.  It’s a good life.”

The use of street drugs known as “bath salts” are the source of an outbreak of a rare flesh-eating disease.

Numerous cases of necrotizing fasciitis caused by an intramuscular injection of bath salts are being reported across the United States.

So-called “bath salts” are sold as synthetic powders that “often contain various amphetamine-like chemicals,” according to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, which warned that injections can cause the ravaging skin condition.

It was first noticed when  doctors in New Orleans treated a 34-year-old woman who developed forearm pain and redness after she attended a party. She didn’t have any other symptoms but did have a small red puncture wound on her arm. The woman eventually admitted that she injected bath salts two days before her symptoms began.

The doctors reexamined her and determined that she had necrotizing fasciitis. The disease progressed so rapidly that the doctors had to amputate the woman’s arm, shoulder and collarbone and perform a radical mastectomy.

The woman later underwent skin grafting and rehabilitation.

“Despite the drug’s legal status, it must be treated as illicit, and one must be suspicious when examining a patient with this clinical history because the diagnosis of flesh-eating bacteria can masquerade as abscesses and cellulitis,” said doctors who spoke with WWN.

Bath Salt users are running scared.  Not only can you get the flesh-eating disease from injecting the bath salts, but if you come in contact with someone who used bath salts, you may get the disease as well.

One woman reported that her boyfriend injected salts and two days later SHE developed symptoms. When the patient was reexamined, she had rapidly progressing redness, skin sloughing, and drainage. Necrotizing fasciitis was suspected and she immediately underwent emergent surgical debridement and exploration, and more antibiotics were added.

The infection moved so fast that pink, healthy tissue was literally dying before the surgeons’ eyes. They had to keep removing tissue until they reached clear margins of healthy tissue to stop the progression of disease.

In another case, a Mississippi woman’s experiment with the illicit drugs dubbed “bath salts” cost her both legs — and nearly her life — after she was ravaged by flesh-eating bacteria that invaded an injection site.

The 29-year-old woman showed up at a Mississippi hospital complaining of pain and redness on her right leg, where there was a puncture wound the woman admitted was a needle stick. She said the symptoms started two days after she injected bath salts at party.

Fearing for the woman’s life, doctors removed her right arm and shoulder and stripped away the dead muscle. They amputated her legs and cut away more unhealthy skin.  Why did the doctors do this?  Nobody knows, but major medical malpractice lawsuits have already been filed.  Tragedy added to tragedy.

Notwithstanding doctors error, the final diagnosis for the woman was “necrotizing fasciitis caused by streptococcus bacteria.” Such flesh-eating infections can kill quickly, with victims requiring surgery within an average of 25 hours of admission in order to survive.

Bath Salts are powerful synthetic stimulants and became popular in Western Europe in 2009 and showed up in the U.S. in Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky in August 2010. They’ve been smoked, snorted, taken orally and, now, injected.

In 2010, the American Association of Poison Control centers received about 3,000 calls about bath salts. Last year, the number climbed to more than 60,000, records show.

At least 16 states have enacted emergency bans on bath salts and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency banned three chemicals used to make them last fall. But Russo and his colleagues are warning other emergency department health workers to be vigilant when patients show up with skin infections after injections

The Center for Disease Control says that this bath salt epidemic is completely avoidable.  “The best treatment is prevention with public, street-based education and early detection,” said Dr. Ruskin from the CDC.  ”Don’t inject yourself with bath salts!”

NEW ORLEANS, LA – One Saints fan went to an extreme to show her love for her team!

New Orleans resident, Florellan Rickard, was rushed to the ER last week for a rather peculiar reason. Rickard, 42, had a fleur de lis earring stuck in her throat. The fleur de lis is the Saints logo.

Every night, before bed, Rickard puts her favorite earrings in her jewelry box and takes six vitamins kept on her night stand. Last Monday, her routine didn’t go according to plan. While in the dark, she reached for her vitamins and water. “I swallowed and something really hurt – then I looked down and saw one fleur de lis,” said Rickard.

At the ER, doctors quickly pushed the earring into her esophagus and then pumped her stomach to recover the piece. When looking at x-rays, doctors noticed the distinction in the earring and couldn’t help but laugh. Rickard was a “Saints fan, inside and out” one of the doctors said.

Any complications were avoided and Florellan Rickard and her husband were able to enjoy the Saints 31-17 upset victory over the Colts. Rickard was of course wearing her lucky pair of earrings.

NEW ORLEANS, LA – Conservative icon James O’Keefe was arrested while trying to tap a Democrat Senator’s phone.

O’Keefe and company were caught mid way through a caper police described as “almost crazy enough to work.”

James O’Keefe rose to national prominence for his expose on ACORN.  Using several hidden cameras O’Keefe, a clean shaven young white man from an upper class family in New Jersey, dressed as a 1970′s pimp and entered several ACORN offices asking for help starting his “business.”  Even more impressive than the fact he was never assaulted for wearing such racist attire in public is that the people at ACORN couldn’t tell it was a costume and actually gave him advice.

On Monday O’Keefe and three of his cohorts were arrested at the offices of Senator Mary Landrieu.  O’Keefe was dressed as a “typical liberal” and two of his friends as telephone repairmen.  Office workers became suspicious and alerted authorities based on their incredibly fake mustaches.

According to witnesses O’Keefe scheduled an appointment with the Senator on Monday under an alias.  He walked into the office claiming to be “a typical liberal, wanting to help my fraudulently elected representative push forward the liberal agenda.”  He wore khaki’s, Birkenstocks, a sport coat with several liberal pins that read “Have you Hugged a Terrorist today?,” and a t-shirt that said “I (heart) Abortions.”

O’Keefe had just arrived in Landrieu’s office when two men walked in claiming to be telephone repairmen.  Said one of Landrieu’s staff,  “They looked more like repairmen out of a porno movie, with their bad costumes and cheesy mustaches.  My husband works in phone repair, I know they don’t look like that.”

O’Keefe kept talking loudly about his desire to start handing out condoms in elementary schools to distract the Senator while the two other men inspected her phone.  Police soon arrived on the scene to ask the young men what was going on.  In the panic that followed their fourth accomplice, a Mr. Robert Flanagan, then fell through the ceiling from an air duct wearing all black and carrying surveillance equipment.  He had been attempting to land on the police officers to provide a means of escape, but missed them by 10 feet and gave himself a bloody lip.  O’Keefe then took something from his pocket and threw it on the ground, yelling “Smoke Bomb!” which produced only two light puffs of smoke before fizzling out.  Police arrested the four men on site.

Evidence shows that the men tried to set up an illegal wiretap on the Senator’s phone lines, which is a felony.  Their lawyers insist that nothing they did was in any way wrong.  “It was poor judgement,” said Flanagan’s lawyer, Garrison Jordan.  “I don’t think there was any intent or motive to commit a crime.”  Critics applaud this as a brave legal defense, considering the defendants were caught while performing a crime.

O’Keefe himself issued a statement “These ‘Felony’ charges,” he said, making air quotes as well as he could in handcuffs,  “are just being trumped up by the media to discredit another conservative voice.  The only thing we are guilty of is trying to make America a better place.  We went into the Senator’s office to prove her corruption with wiretaps and surveillance equipment.  Since when is that wrong?  In the end it serves the greater good.  Every citizen should make it their responsibility to rent costumes and invade the offices of liberal officials.  It’s the sort of values this country was founded on!  Veritas!  Veritas!  Oh how the truth will set me free!”

Prosecutors would expect an open and shut case, but the families of all four defendants are rich so the case could go either way.

NEW ORLEANS, LA – After an altercation with police Monday night, the half-man half-alligator mutant Manigator has been banned from Tuesday’s Mardi Gras celebrations.

Police were called in Monday when Manigator became belligerent, disputing the results of a Wet T-Shirt contest.  When authorities arrived the clearly inebriated cryptid was standing on the bar shouting, “Those judges were in the tank, ‘n I declare a mistrial!”  Witnesses saw him be carried into the back of a cruiser still slurring loudly, “I demands a recount!  S’in the Consi’tushun!  Recount!”

In court this morning a judge ordered Manigator be banned from all celebrations, and will remain in a jail cell until Thursday.

Native to the Florida Everglades, Manigator visits Mardi Gras religiously. Due to his imprisonment, this will mark the first year since he was discovered that the mutant will not be arrested during the festivities.

Over the years, Manigator has been taken into custody for outstanding drunkenness and public indecency, harassing tourists, having an unregistered float in the parade (him on a red wagon), holding unlicensed séances for tourists, throwing a ‘pre-game cockfight’ which failed due to using hens, and stealing bead necklaces off of children.

When the judge asked Manigator if he had any final words before sentence was carried out, he said “Yer ‘Oner, I hold true to mah beliefs: number six should have won it and fer that blonde girl to get all the money is a miscarriage of justice.”

Court was closed and sentence carried out.  Upon leaving Manigator said he will be contacting the ACLU and the United Cryptid Defense Fund to file an appeal.

NEW ORLEANS, LA – In an attempt to further diversify her brood, Angelina Jolie has made a bold choice.

Jolie recently stated on the Today Show, “I want to create a rainbow family. That’s children of different religions and cultures, from different countries. And Bat Boy is the perfect example of that.”

Jolie took a moment to dab her welling eyes and then continued, “I have saved all of my children from loneliness and neglect in those orphanages. Bat Boy is out all on his own. It is my duty to be photographed while rescuing him and give him a better life in front of millions of people.”

According to eye witnesses, Jolie used mosquitoes as bait to lure and trap him. With Brad Pitt’s assistance, she dragged him kicking and screaming to the local courthouse to have the adoption finalized.

But Bat Boy had other plans. He nipped Pitt on the cheek, who dropped him and began screaming, “My face! My beautiful face!”. Our young hero took off out the back door and has not been seen since.

Jolie and Pitt are now in the process of adopting a Tibetan yeti to supplement Jolie’s new interest in Buddhism.