QUIRKY WORLD ... A daily look at some of the world’s stranger stories
It turns out that using emergency warning tones in a US TV advert with images of the White House blowing up and the flashing words “THIS IS NOT A TEST” is frowned upon by the government.
The Federal Communications Commission said it was fining three media giants $1.9 million (€1.4m) for using the official warning tones in an ad for the film Olympus Has Fallen which had some complainants jumping out of bathtubs and racing to the TV screen.
People can be made less racist by simply moving to live in ethnically-mixed areas, new research shows.
An Oxford University-led international study found that white people develop “passive tolerance” of minorities in mixed areas, even if they have no direct contact with them.
Professor Miles Hewstone, director of the Oxford Centre for the Study of Intergroup Conflict, said governments could create more “harmonious neighbourhoods” by doing more to encourage different ethnic groups to mix. “The size of this ’passive tolerance’ effect on people’s prejudice is of the same order as the effect of passive smoking on lung cancer risk.” he added. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.
Fraudsters are stealing around £7 million (€8.5m) a year from holidaymakers, according to a police report.
One couple were left more than £1,000 out of pocket after being conned into booking a holiday at Loch Ness at a romantic lodge that did not exist.
Scams include travellers receiving fake airline tickets, with flights to West Africa a particular target.
The report, from the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, showed that during a 12-month period more than 4,500 cases of holiday booking fraud were reported.
A farmer in the US state of Minnesota has created a towering tribute to winter’s excess.
Greg Novak says he has invested hundreds of hours to build a 50ft (15m) snowman named Granddaddy, which he hopes will wake onlookers from their winter doldrums.
The mammoth snowman began to take shape earlier this winter when the Gilman farmer needed to move mounting snow piles away from his greenhouses.
A lawyer threw ink at a businessman as he arrived at India’s highest court to face charges that his company failed to return billions of dollars to investors.
Tycoon Subrata Roy, along with scores of police and security guards, was entering the Supreme Court building when the lawyer threw black ink at him. Roy’s Sahara conglomerate is a co-owner of a Formula One team and sponsored the Indian cricket team until recently.
India’s securities regulator has accused Roy’s group of raising nearly 200 billion rupees (€2.35bn) through bonds which were later found to be illegal.
A Kentucky Fried Chicken Christmas campaign has been cleared following complaints that it mocked Christian worship.
The two television ads and a video on demand ad featured a group of carol singers outside a house singing the lyrics: “We showed up at your house again singing all our stupid songs”, with the male homeowner replying: “Normally I’d hose you down, but now it just seems wrong.”
Thirty viewers complained that the lyrics “all our stupid songs” were likely to cause serious and widespread offence because they “mocked an element of Christian worship”.
The company said the campaign was a tongue-in-cheek look at the “commercialised hype” around Christmas.
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