Following is a summary of current odd news briefs.
Berlin yodel school revamping alpine sound of music
BERLIN (Reuters) – The distinctive warble of yodeling
strikes a dissonant note in the middle of a gritty Berlin
district that is home to a thriving Turkish population and
peppered with trendy bars. But if you walk down the street from
the kebab shops and anarchist graffiti scrawled on the
pavement, you will catch the mellifluous sounds usually heard
in Swiss Alps — a noise that grows louder when you enter
Doreen Kutze’s hairdressing salon.
Bomb-sniffing dogs enlisted to stem Florida python invasion
ORLANDO (Reuters) – Some bomb-sniffing dogs trained to help
fight terrorism are turning their olfactory attention toward a
different scourge: Burmese pythons in Florida’s Everglades
National Park. The dogs are members of ”EcoDogs,” a
three-year-old collaboration at Alabama’s Auburn University
between the science departments and the school’s Canine
Detection Research Institute, which trains dogs to detect
explosives.
Australia billionaire to launch ”unsinkable” Titanic
CANBERRA (Reuters) – An Australian billionaire announced
plans on Monday to build an ”unsinkable” version of the
Titanic, 100 years after the original sank after hitting an
iceberg. Titanic II is expected to make its maiden voyage from
England to North America, the old Titanic route, in late 2016.
Artist Lucian Freud leaves $156 million in will: paper
LONDON (Reuters) – Portrait painter Lucian Freud left a
record 96 million pounds ($156 million) in his will, the
largest sum bequeathed by a British artist, the Mail on Sunday
newspaper reported. Freud died in July last year aged 88, by
which time his uncompromising, fleshy portraits had made him
one of the world’s most revered and coveted artists, whose
subjects ranged from England’s Queen Elizabeth II to the
supermodel Kate Moss.
