QUIRKY WORLD ... There’s no monkey business in taking a selfie
US district judge William Orrick said in federal court in San Francisco that “while Congress and the president can extend the protection of law to animals as well as humans, there is no indication that they did so in the Copyright Act”.
The lawsuit filed last year by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sought a court order allowing PETA to represent the monkey and let it to administer all proceeds from the photos for the benefit of the monkey, which it identified as six-year-old Naruto, and other crested macaques living in a reserve on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
The photos were taken during a 2011 trip to Sulawesi with an unattended camera owned by British nature photographer David Slater, who asked the court to dismiss the case. Slater says the British copyright obtained for the photos by his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd, should be honoured worldwide.
PETA sued Slater and his San Francisco-based self-publishing company Blurb, which published a book called “Wildlife Personalities” that includes the “monkey selfie” photos.
The photos have been widely distributed elsewhere by outlets, including Wikipedia, which contend that no one owns the copyright to the images because they were taken by an animal, not a person.
Slater described himself as a nature photographer who is deeply concerned about animal welfare in court documents and said it should be up to the US Congress and not a federal court to decide whether copyright law applies to non-human animals.
A puddle that gripped the nation has been drained by two council workers unaware of its celebrity status.
Hundreds of thousands of Britons watched a livestream on the internet of people trying to negotiate their way around the puddle just off Jesmond Road West in Newcastle.
It was broadcast on the video app Periscope by staff at marketing company Drummond Central Ltd and quickly began trending on Twitter with the hashtag Drummondpuddlewatch.
But now it is no more as two engineers from Newcastle City Council, who were inspecting for flood damage, drained it away to clear the path.
An American violinist who left her $2.6m (€2.4m) 1727 Stradivarius in the luggage rack on a regional train in western Germany was “more than relieved”, police said, when officers retrieved it one minute before it left the station.
The woman, who police described as being in her 20s, left the “General Dupont Grumiaux” edition of the famous violin brand on a train travelling on Tuesday from Mannheim to Saarbruecken in western Germany, where she alighted.
Realising her error after leaving the train, she alerted the police. One minute before the train heading back to Mannheim departed, police found the violin and returned it to the woman.
A northwest Missouri man held on to a secret for three weeks to give his wife the Christmas surprise of a lifetime.
Robert Bowlin, of Platte City, won a Missouri Lotto jackpot in early December, splitting a $4m prize with another person who matched all six numbers.
Bowlin is a retired operating engineer from Platte City. He discovered he had won on December 3. He notified a financial adviser and a CPA, but otherwise didn’t tell anyone until Christmas, when he told his wife. He collected his winnings on December 29.
A Detroit artist is suing to protect an enormous multicolour mural that’s been described as a “bleeding rainbow” on a building that could be developed into apartments.
Katherine Craig says a federal law gives her the right to protect the mural from changes or destruction.
The mural was created in 2009 with more than 100 gallons of paint poured from the roof of the brick building. The paint was spread with a variety of tools, including fire extinguishers and salad dressing bottles.
Craig fears the mural will be ruined if windows are installed on the building.
The new owner says it disagrees with Craig’s interpretation of law as well as the “facts” of the dispute.
A lost episode of Dad’s Army will be seen for the first time since it was aired almost half a century ago — but only in animated form.
The recently discovered high-quality audio recording of the episode, titled ‘A Stripe For Frazer’, will be used to create an animated version.
The sitcom about the British Home Guard during the Second World War was originally broadcast on the BBC from 1968 to 1977. But many tapes of programmes from this era were either recorded over or discarded, meaning that this episode — which aired on March 29, 1969 — was lost, seemingly for good.
