QUIRKY WORLD: Boxing clever: How early-morning reading helps
Dubbing it the ‘Cornflakes test’, Tony Little said children, especially boys, can benefit from reading in many different forms including magazines and puzzle books.
Mr Little, whose book, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education, is serialised in The Times, said: “Even the ‘Cornflakes test’ can be revealing — does your bleary-eyed child read the text on the side of the cereal pack at breakfast? The reading habit is a muscle that needs to be exercised daily.”
Getting boared
A wild boar seriously injured an elderly man and his son after getting trapped in their garden in Berlin, police and media said.
The animal bit the 78-year-old and turned on his 48-year-old son as they tried to chase it away in the north of the city, police said.
“The wild boar apparently panicked and started biting when it couldn’t find its way out,” the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper reported.
Police called in a hunter who shot it dead.
An estimated 4,000 boars live alongside Berlin’s 3m human inhabitants, say officials. Increasing numbers have been coming in searching for food but rarely hurting anybody.
Cooking up a storm
Almost a third of today’s fathers take sole responsibility for cooking, compared with just 4% of their own fathers, a survey suggests.
Men are increasingly defining their status by their culinary ability and are taking on more responsibility for teaching their children to cook, the poll for BBC Good Food has revealed.
More than a third of men (36%) said cooking a restaurant-quality meal at home would make them feel most proud, trumping learning a foreign language and using it on holiday (33%), learning to play an instrument (27%), and driving a fast lap in a sports car (23%).
Pulling a sickie
Two South Korean women are in trouble with authorities after being caught lying about Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome) to get time off work.
Police charged a 20-year-old saleswoman at a department store for spreading a rumour online that it was hiding an outbreak of the virus among staff. The woman began the rumour hoping the store would close and she could take time off.
Another woman who was off work for two days told her employer she tested positive for Mers, prompting a call to authorities. Police and health workers visited her and found she was not exhibiting any symptoms. She told authorities she did not want to go to work.
Bursting their bubble
Two Texas girls whose lemonade stand was shut down because they lacked a permit will instead offer the drink for free.
Eight-year-old Andria Green and her seven-year-old sister Zoey will now only take donations for lemonade.
A police officer approached the stand, which offered lemonade for 50c and kettlecorn for $1.
In a patrol car video, the officer can be heard asking the girls’ mother Sandi Evans for a permit.
Bad judgment call
A south Florida woman is facing possession charges after she called the police to report she was getting stiffed in a drug deal.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office reports that 19-year-old Daneshia Heller told a police operator she went to a Fort Lauderdale home to buy marijuana, but a man there took her $5 without giving her the drugs.
Officials say a deputy checked a white substance in Heller’s pocket, which tested positive for alpha-PVP, a psychosis-inducing street drug known as flakka. She was charged with drug possession and misusing the 911 system.
Listen up
Scientists have discovered a new method for examining sex lives and migration patterns of fish — by looking in their ears.
By studying ear stones in fish, which act as tiny data recorders, scientists can now reveal what areas of the oceans the fish have been visiting and insights into their sexual behaviour.
Stunning move
An Arizona Coyotes fan got to take out her frustration on the mayor behind the decision to send the hockey team packing.
Disgruntled fan Ronda Pearson used a stun gun on Glendale mayor Jerry Weiers as part of a charity pledge.
Mr Weiers volunteered to be stunned with a Taser at the mall event if a $10,000 (€8,880) donation was made to an Arizona charity that supports first-responders.
Mr Weiers and the Glendale City Council voted to end an arena lease agreement with the Coyotes. A judge has temporarily halted its termination.
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