Following is a summary of current odd news briefs.
HSBC swings to victory at Hong Kong’s hedge fund fight
night
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Adam Gazal trained for six months to
stand in the ring for six minutes of live boxing. He remembers
the noise, and not much else, and said he’d like to try it
again, though he realizes that the time in the gym took time
away from home. “I think my wife will divorce me if I go
through another six months of training,” Gazal said after the
fight.
New York police officer charged with plan to cook, eat
women
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York City police officer was
charged on Thursday with conspiring to kidnap, torture, cook
and eat women whose names he listed in his computer. In a
criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court,
Gilberto Valle III, 28, of Forest Hills, Queens, was charged
with conspiring to cross state lines to kidnap the women and
with illegally accessing a federal database.
China’s Ai Weiwei bemoans block on his “Gangnam” parody
BEIJING (Reuters) – Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei
criticized the government on Thursday for removing from Chinese
websites his parody of Korean pop sensation Psy’s Gangnam Style
video. Ai, a world-renowned artist and China’s most prominent
dissident, and staff of his company performed Psy’s famous
horse dance in his Beijing studio and posted the video late on
Wednesday to Chinese sites such as “Tudou”, the equivalent of
the blocked YouTube site.
Suit filed to block deer shoot in Washington park
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Animal rights activists filed a
lawsuit on Thursday to try to stop a plan to cull deer in a
Washington park, saying it would create a “killing field” in
the heart of the U.S. capital. The deer population in Rock
Creek Park has soared in recent years, creating a threat to
plant life, and the National Park Service said in May that it
would launch a program to trim numbers to 15 to 20 per square
mile (six to eight per square km), from 67 (26) recorded in a
2009 census.
Rare “headless” ladybug discovered in Montana
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – Sleepy Hollow has its headless
horseman and now Montana has a headless ladybug. The newly
discovered insect tucks its head into its throat – making it
not only a new species but an entirely new genus, or larger
classification of plants and animals.
Oops: Harvard affiliate apologizes for promotion of “weak”
study
CHICAGO (Reuters) – A Harvard-affiliated hospital is
backing away from its decision earlier this week to promote a
paper linking the artificial sweetener aspartame and cancer,
now saying the evidence was “weak.” Brigham and Women’s
Hospital said in an e-mail to reporters that data in the paper,
which was published Wednesday in the Journal of Clinical
Nutrition, “is weak, and that Brigham and Women’s Hospital
media relations was premature in the promotion of this work.”
Brazil car washer turns up alive at own wake
BRASILIA (Reuters) – A 41-year-old car washer from
northeastern Brazil shocked his family by turning up at his own
wake after his family mistakenly identified a murdered local
man at the morgue as him, local media reported on Tuesday.
Family and friends in the town of Alagoinhas in Bahia state
were gathered around the body of another car washer resembling
Gilberto Araujo when he showed up after being told of his
“death” by a friend who had spotted him in the street.
South African in toenail campaign to clip rhino deaths
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A South African film production
designer armed with a nail cutter is trying to help stamp out
rhino poaching by sending toenail clippings to the Chinese
embassy in Pretoria. Mark Wilby said he wants to make the point
that rhino horn, which sells for prices higher than gold as a
traditional Chinese medicine, is made up of keratin – a protein
which is a component in human nails and hair.
