I haven’t taken note of a bear-related news story in a coupla years. The Denver Post has a great one with a don’t-miss photo of the bear during the actual caper.
… as the bear shuffled around the car looking for a way out, he bumped into the gear shift and put the automatic transmission into neutral, sending the car rolling 125 feet back down a hill …
Interesting: On Bay Area Newspaper Group sites, this story has been retitled as “Bear gets into car for peanut butter and jelly sandwich, honks horn, goes on short joyride.” After a headline like that, what’s the fun of reading the story?
It seems that in Macedonia, you can sue an animal. So when a bear ransacked a beekeeper’s hives, said beekeeper took the bear to court, suing for damages. And won. You may ask: Uh, who will pay? Don’t you worry, Macedonian courts think of everything:
A court in the city of Bitola found the bear guilty, and since it had no owner and belonged to a protected species, ordered the state to pay the 140,000 denars (1,726 pounds) [roughly US$3500] damage it caused to the hives.
I’m a bit late picking this one up, but the pictures alone make it worth circling back to: A black bear recently escaped from oncoming highway traffic near Donner Summit by jumping over the side of a bridge. The poor creature spent the night trapped beneath the roadway, on the bridge’s superstructure, and was hanging on for dear life by the next day. A rescue effort was mounted; a tranq dart was employed; all’s well that ends well.
Colorado Division of Wildlife officers were called to a school near Boulder on Tuesday to deal with a drunk and disorderly, bear. The wobbly bear was spotted in a neighborhood in Lyons, near Boulder, and she was having a hard time walking. Officers said the bear was probably drunk from eating fermented apples.
This one reminds me a bit of those 90s-era feel-good Chevron commercials: Do people delay their plans to construct new power lines just so a mama bear and her cubs can sleep peacefully through the bitter Wisconsin winter? People do.
I love it when there’s a bear in the news! This time we’ve got a 600 pound black bear up in Pennsylvania who decided he’d hibernate under some poor family’s porch this winter. There’s only one way this can go:
On Sunday, Sainvil sent his two children, ages 8 and 9, outside to play in the snow. “After 15 or 20 minutes, they came back screaming, ‘Dad, Dad! There’s a bear under the house!’” Sainvil said.
Earlier today, the bear was relocated without incident.
The English translation offered at this Russian news site ain’t exactly perfect. Excellent.
Drunk man has tried to scuffle with a bear in a zoo in Ukraine and has been heavily hit… . [The man] decided to show his force, jumped over the gate and started to pretend a trainer. In response, the bear weighing 270 kilograms [595 pounds] seriously hit the man. more…
[Spotted at Fark. Blurry bear photo from PDPhoto.org. Thank you for visiting mahnamahna.net, where we do the wacky measurement conversions for you.]
Animal experts in Croatia say a bear has learned how to trick people to let him in by knocking at the door. They believe the 35-stone [490-pound] brown bear probably learned the trick while nudging a door to get it to open. more…
“When state wildlife agents recently found a black bear passed out on the lawn of Baker Lake Resort, there were some clues scattered nearby—dozens of empty beer cans.” The full details reveal that this bear has some taste: “Fish and Wildlife enforcement Sgt. Bill Heinck said the bear did try one can of Busch, but ignored the rest. The beast then consumed about 36 cans of Rainier.”
This smells like a hoax to me (where’d the picture come from?) but I don’t care. I love bears. And here we’ve got one that came across a U.S. Navy submarine and decided to try to make a snack of it.
It seems that in Macedonia, you can sue an animal. So when a bear ransacked a beekeeper’s hives, said beekeeper took the bear to court, suing for damages. 
The English translation offered at this Russian news site ain’t exactly perfect. Excellent.