News you can lose: Family in shock as 'dead' son visits Mum

A round up of some of this week's quirkiest stories.

A car washer from Sao Paolo, Brazil, shocked his family by walking into his mother's home - where they were having a wake for him.

The brother of Gilberto Araujo, 41, identified him at the city morgue as a murder victim. However, the body was that of Genivaldo Santos Gama, also a car washer and who looked like Gilberto. The brother brought the body to his mother's home for the wake.

Meanwhile, Gilberto had been seen by a friend who told him his family thought he was dead. When he arrived, "some people fainted and others were so scared they ran away. It was a big shock," said Maria Menezes, a family friend.

Shark falls out of sky

Normally, the biggest dangers for golfers are errant balls falling on their heads. But at a course in California, they also must contend with sharks falling out of the sky.

A golf marshal at the San Juan Hills golf club in San Juan Capistrano, which is four kilometres from the nearest coast, found a live leopard shark thrashing about on the grass by the 12th tee. The half-metre-long shark is believed to have been plucked from the sea by a predatory bird and dropped over the course.

The marshal put it in a bucket of water, then drove it out to the ocean, where it swam away.

Accent accident

The Dalai Lama's accent has been blamed for making people believe he used a swear word during a speech at a Brown University event.

A transcriber used the alleged profanity in text for captions put on a screen in front of the audience.

The exiled Tibetan leader had told the crowd at the Rhode Island Convention Centre in the US that they should share their thoughts with others who found them interesting. If they did not, they could "forget" it.

A Brown spokeswoman said he used the word "forget" and not an expletive.

Fighting tooth and nail

A film production designer in South Africa wants to save rhinos from poachers by sending his fingernail and toenail clippings to the Chinese embassy in Pretoria.

Mark Wilby is highlighting the fact that rhino horns, which can cost more than gold when used in traditional Chinese medicines, are made of the same material as human nails - keratin.

"I am not doing it out of disrespect to the Chinese authorities, but how else do you get their attention?" Wilby said. He has put a clip on YouTube urging others to do the same.

Clark Kent quits

Superman's alter ego has had it with newspapers.

In the latest issue of the comic book, Clark Kent has quit The Daily Planet, the newspaper he has worked for since his character was created in 1938.

Kent, fed up with being asked to file showbusiness stories, is expected to become a blogger.

"I don't think he's going to be filling out an application anywhere," writer Scott Lobdell told USA Today. "He is more likely to start the next Huffington Post or the next Drudge Report."

* Neil Vorano