Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- A open air news conference in Queensland, Australia, was interrupted when sign language interpreter Mike Webb, standing under a tree, was pooped on by an owl. ● Scientists at the University of Copenhagen
in Denmark have used an AI trained on thousands of audio recordings of pigs at all stages of life to create a system to translate their grunts into emoticons. It is hoped that the algorithm could be developed into
an app to help farmers improve their pigs' welfare. ● Arachnophobes beware... A team of researchers in French Guiana have found out how packs of spiders, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, coordinate their
attacks on prey up to several hundred times their individual size. There are about 20 species of spider which live and hunt in groups. The team hope that their research could be used to develop robot swarms that need
to move quickly and in coordination. ● A screening of the latest Batman film, The Batman, in a cinema in Austin, Texas, had to be paused after a live bat was seeing flying around the auditorium. It is not
known if it was released by someone or had got in by itself. ● Tess Robinson, from South Shields, has credited her chihuahua Lola with alerting her to a medical condition that led to a diagnosis of a stage 3 low-grade
ovarian carcinoma. Lola would stare at her, smell her breath and jump on her stomach, days before a lump developed on the same location.
- NASA is preparing to open a container holding specimens of moon rock from the Taurus-Littrow Valley gathered by Apollo 16 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt that has been sealed since the samples were
collected in 1972, fifty years ago. They hope that studying them will lead to the development of better tools to collect further samples when manned lunar missions restart in 2025. ● The hunt is on to locate the
impact crater on the Moon caused by the rocket stage that crashed on the satellite's far side at the end of last week. As reported in an earlier TFIr the stage was initially thought to be from a SpaceX Falcon
rocket, then from the Chinese Chang'e 5-T1 mission.
- Archaeologists at Xiamabei in China have found evidence of what is being described as a "unique" and "innovative" Stone Age culture, including the earliest known evidence of ochre processing in
east Asia, dating to around 40,000 years ago. ● Archaeologists surveying a new hiking trail in Georgia have discovered an unexploded bomb from the American Civil War. ● Paleontologists in Montana have
found the oldest known ancestor of octopuses. The 4.7" (12cm) fossil has ten limbs, two more than its modern descendents, and lived around 330 millions years ago, before the dinosaurs. ● Sotheby's is to
auction 27 classic cars from the Oscar Davis collection in August. Together the cars have an estimated value of $100m (£132m). ● For years the presence of grooves on ancient human teeth was taken as
evidence of the use of tools used as toothpicks to remove stuck food or relieve pain, but now the discovery of identical markings on the teeth of non-tool-using macaque monkeys has suggested that they might instead
be caused by the accidental eating of sand or marine shell fragments.
- Two boys in Florida have been accused of battery after spraying two other youngsters with "silly string" at an ice cream shop. The victims were unharmed but their parents told police they wanted to press
charges and the two will have to appear in court. ● A man has been arrested at a border crossing between Mexico and California after he was found to have 52 live snakes and lizards held in small bags hidden in
his "jacket, pants pockets and groin area." Some of the animals were from endangered species. ● A Florida man has been charged with shoplifting after leaving a store with a crossbow shoved down the
front of his trousers. He had used a crutch to disguise his gait, but when the bow was found to be missing staff reviewed CCTV footage, from which the man was identified.
- Researchers are warning that the Amazon rainforest could only be a matter of decades away from possibly losing over half of its trees to become savannah, releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide and drastically
cutting the Earth's ability to absorb and recycle the greenhouse gas, which would accelerate climate change. ● An offshoot of the Extinction Rebellion group, infamous for protesting climate change by gluing
themselves to roads and blocking emergency vehicles, calling themselves The Tyre Extinguishers, have adopted a new tactic. In the dead of night in citites across Britain they are letting down the tyres on SUVs and leaving
notices on their windscreens to protest against the petrol-hungry pollution-heavy vehicles.
- A man adrift in an inflatable dinghy in the Solent has been filmed by a ferry passenger as he jumped into the water to avoid a 200,000-ton cargo ship bearing down on him. The ferry stopped and put man overboard
procedures in place but the man was rescued by a patrol dinghy before he was pulled into the ship's wake, and he was later treated for shock in Southampton. ● A New York City resident has warned people to pay
more attention to weather forecasts after having to be rescued twice in two days while hiking a mountain trail near Flagstaff, Arizona.
IN BRIEF: A worker at an Amazon warehouse has posted a video on TikTok of the company's robotic shelves trapping him in place for what he described as "like 15 minutes" [And so it begins... -Ed].
● A reported gas leak in a block of flats on the Isle of Man turned out to be a ripe durian fruit. ● It is one thing to ask your pregnant girlfriend to allow a paternity test after her baby is born, but a
man is being ridiculed online for asking his "visibly pregnant" girlfriend to take a maternity test "to make sure the baby is hers"... ● The Glasgow premiere of a documentary film about a man
who has lived as a hermit in the Scottish Highlands for 40 years had an unexpected attendee; 74-year-old Ken Smith, the feature's subject, left his remote cabin in Lochaber to see it. ● The Women's Institute
are hiding knitted corgis around London to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. ● With production company Fremantle confirming that the 37-year-old Australian soap opera Neighbours will end production
later this year a superfan who owns two houses on Pin Oak Court, Melbourne - used as the exterior filming location for Ramsay Street - is hoping the site could receive heritage protection because of its "international
cultural significance". ● Somebody is creating a henge in a field in Lincoln, Massachusetts, made of rocking horses. Nobody - apart from the creator(s) - knows where the "Ponyhenge" ponies are coming from
or who is collecting them. ● Tennis champion Serena Williams has criticised the New York Times after they published an article about her, but used a photograph of her sister Venus to illustrate it.
UKRAINE: Having previously hacked Russian government networks earlier in the war, Anonymous has now hacked Russian TV news channels and streaming services to broadcast footage of the Russian military in
Ukraine to counter the Russian government's public statements. ● After the Russian embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, tweeted that "Russia, like 80 years ago, is fighting Nazism in Ukraine" the
German embassy responded "What Russia is doing in Ukraine is slaughtering innocent children, women and men for its own gain. It's definitely not 'fighting Nazism'. Shame on anyone who's falling for this. (Sadly,
we're kinda experts on Nazism.)" ● A man who tried to take advantage of the war to loot a petrol station in Kyiv was tied to a lamppost in front of the pumps with his trousers pulled down. ● Russian
businessman Alex Konanykhin has placed a $1m (£760,000) bounty on the head of Vladimir Putin. ● After a lorry was driven into the gates of the Russian embassy in Dublin, staff complained, without any
trace of irony, of a "senseless and barbaric attack" and a "violation of [the embassy's] territory"... ● The twice-indicted and self-described "very stable genius" former US president
has suggested that US F-22 warplanes should have Chinese flags painted on them then "bomb the shit out of Russia" and leave Russia and China to destroy each other... F-22's have very different profiles to
Chinese military aircraft and such an attack would be in violation of the Geneva Convention's ban on the use of a foreign power's flag, uniform or insignia during armed conflict. ● After video of a young girl
singing "Let It Go" from the film Frozen in a Ukranian bomb shelter went viral online Idina Menzel, who sang it in the original film and its composer, Kristen Anderson-Lopez both reached out to praise her.
Anderson-Lopez commented that "My husband and I wrote this song as part of a story about healing a family in pain. The way you sing it is like a magic trick that spreads the light in your heart and heals everyone
who hears it. Keep singing! We are listening!"
UPDATES: Amelia Earhart's leather flying cap was bought by an anonymous bidder for $825,000 (£627,000). ● Aaron Sanderson, 33, an electrical team leader at BAE Systems' submarine plant in Barrow has
been named as the preferred candidate to take over the Ship Inn and Piel Island half a mile off the Furness coast. If approved he will be crowned King of Piel in a ceremony where alcohol will be poured over his head.
● The somewhat battered first edition copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone bought for 50p (66c) from a charity shop has sold at auction for £15,500 ($20,400) ● The expedition
searching for Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance have located and filmed it using an autonomous underwater robot. The ship, remarkably intact and preserved in the freezing Antarctic waters, will be left in
peace. There are no plans to dive to it or recover artifacts.
Little Jennifer's father had collected her from school after attending a lunchtime leaving party for a co-worker. As they were driving home a police officer flagged them down. "The speed camera
up the road clocked you doing 50mph on a 30mph road," he said.
"I was doing 30," Little Jennifer's father said.
"No, sir," the officer replied, calmly, "I have the data from the camera here. You were doing 50."
"I tell you I was doing 30!"
At that point a small voice piped up from the back seat, "Mummy says it's no use arguing with Daddy after he's had a few drinks!"
