QUIRKY WORLD ... Our daily look at some of the world's stranger stories
Lars Ohly, 56, former leader of Sweden’s Left Party and supporter of Liverpool Football Club, posted a picture of the liver bird tattooed on his leg. What he failed to notice was that his genitals were visible in the background.
Mr Ohly quickly removed the picture after posting it on Instagram but could not stop the avalanche of comments. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, of the rival Moderate Party, joked: “Congratulations — finally, after all these years you have made a genuine public breakthrough.”
ENGLAND: Video showing products from a shop levitating before crashing to the ground has sparked fears of a ghost wandering the aisles.
Shopkeeper Michelle Newbold said she is baffled after CCTV from the Whitstable Nutrition Centre in Kent captured two boxes of tea bags hover off the shelves while a customer browses unaware. The footage, uploaded to YouTube, then shows them drop to the floor and startle the man.
The shop has now become a viral sensation. Ms Newbold told Kent Online: “I was perplexed, I suppose. I just couldn’t believe it.
“I have no idea about how it has happened. It is just a complete mystery.”
ENGLAND: The pigeons of London’s Trafalgar Square were joined by a much larger bird today as the latest installation was unveiled on the Fourth Plinth.
A large blue rooster, which is 15.4ft (4.7m) in height, has been created by German artist Katharina Fritsch and will sit on the plinth for 18 months.
Among those on hand to see the artwork — called Hahn/Cock — unveiled, was London mayor Boris Johnson, who commissioned it.
USA: An alligator has been shot dead in North Carolina after it ate an 80lb husky that was walking with its owner.
Officials in Jacksonville said a woman was walking the dog at dusk when it ran to the edge of the water near a local shopping centre. Alligators usually feed around dusk.
The alligator was tracked down later by safety officers who decided that, in the interest of public safety, it had to be killed.
Police shoot, kill alligator after it ate 80-pound Husky that was walking with its owner: pic.twitter.com/JDRt37rtBz
— Pablo Pereira (@PabloWeather) July 25, 2013
MEXICO: A man who faked his death to beat a rape charge, then later got elected mayor of a village in southern Mexico, has been arrested.
The Oaxaca state prosecutors’ office says Leninguer Carballido was arrested on charges of using fake documents and making false statements. He was found hiding in a heavily fortified room at his family’s home on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. He was elected mayor of San Agustin Amatengo this month.
When authorities were looking for him in 2011 in connection with a 2004 rape case, his family submitted a death certificate saying he died of natural causes in 2010. The clerk who drew up the fake cert has also been arrested.
ENGLAND: Cockney speakers are now more likely to live in Essex than in the traditional heartlands of inner London’s East End, according to research.
Historically, the dialect was used by people from the central-eastern boroughs of the capital, but a new multi- cultural way of speaking has emerged there in recent years.
Sue Fox, a socio-linguistic expert from Queen Mary, University of London, found features of the dialect are now more likely to be heard in Basildon or Barking than within the sound of Bow Bells or modern-day Tower Hamlets — where it originated.
She said: “In the last five decades Cockney has probably undergone more rapid change than at any time in its long history.”
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