QUIRKY WORLD ... Singapore’s anti-gambling ad backfires after Germany strikes World Cup gold
In the ad, a boy named Andy tells his friends in the playground that his father has used all of his savings to bet on Germany to win. Sad piano music plays and a message says: “Often, the people who suffer from problem gambling aren’t the gamblers.” But as the Germans kept winning, the mocking of the ad intensified, with many wondering if Andy and his father were going to make a killing on the bet.
After Germany’s 1-0 win in the final, Facebook pages were full of congratulatory messages for Andy and his father, with a few suggesting the two were off to Germany for a holiday.
Conservationists have built miniature “thatched cottages” to save a rare beetle.
The scarlet malachite beetle is thought to use the thatch of real country cottages to lay eggs and hatch out its pink grub-like young, but exactly how it uses the thatch is still a mystery, wildlife experts said.
The thatched cottages need to be close to meadows with flowering grasses and good supplies of pollen.
A charity worker has been fined £70 (€87) by a council after parking for seven seconds on zig-zag lines outside a school.
Joyce Sale was dropping off charity concert leaflets at the primary school when she was captured by a parking camera car operated by Birmingham City Council.
She then received a council letter in the post with details of the penalty notice, working out at £10 for every second her car was stopped.
Nearly 500 divers and snorkellers submerged in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary for a “concert” beneath the sea broadcast by a local radio station.
The 30th annual Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival, held at Looe Key Reef along the continental United States’s only living coral barrier reef, featured four hours of ad-free music piped below the surface via a series of underwater speakers.
“We started this as an arts and cultural event 30 years ago (and) thought it would be a one-time thing,” said event co-founder Bill Becker. “It’s the only place we know of where music is put underwater for divers, snorkellers and the marine life.”
The water-themed playlist included such tunes as the Beatles’ Octopus’s Garden and the themes from Disney’s The Little Mermaid and television classic Flipper about a dolphin at a marine preserve in southern Florida.
ROAD KILL
Some car owners raised a stink after driving on a road littered with meat in upstate New York. Dozens of chunks of meat were on the road in front of a shopping centre in Queensbury, about 85km north of Albany, the Post-Star of Glens Falls reported.
Police believe the meat fell off a truck that might have been heading from a farm or slaughterhouse to a rendering plant, but no one has come forward to claim it. State workers cleaned up the meat, but some motorists were still dealing with the aftermath.
Driver James Teele said he immediately got his car washed after driving through the mess but his vehicle still smelled like rotting meat the next day and flies were swarming around it.
The co-founder of Rodeo Alaska is recovering after he was gored — but still managed to win a prize — at his own event.
The Anchorage Daily News reports 43-year-old Frank Koloski was competing in the “double mugging” event on Saturday. In that contest, one cowboy on a horse ropes a steer while another on foot tries to wrestle the animal to the ground.
Koloski says the bull’s horn punctured his stomach and went in 4.5 inches.
He says he tried to trot out of the arena afterward, but got lightheaded and fell. An ambulance took him to a hospital.
Koloski says he has been gored before, but never at his own rodeo. He underwent surgery and is recovering.
He won the event, which gave him a $1,000 cash prize and a belt buckle.
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