QUIRKY WORLD ... Man gives new meaning to the words ‘tow truck’
The motorist removed the front wheels, doors and engine from the truck to lighten the load and hoisted it into the rear of his grey hatchback. He then lashed the two together with a single blue strap and set off along the road in Gloucester where police stopped him.
Gloucestershire Police officers tweeted a photo of the potentially-dangerous combination and added: “Photos of a stop by one of our units in Gloucester — car towing a car with a van strapped on the back. The van was quite literally strapped to the car. Driver reported for dangerous condition. No lights too.”
Army helps cows to chill
Cows sizzling under Switzerland’s summer sun are getting help from an unexpected ally — the Swiss army.
Soldiers have been ordered to help keep cows cool amid a week-long heatwave by installing eight artificial reservoirs in the Jura mountains to supply the animals with drinking water.
Super Puma helicopters will scoop water out of nearby lakes and fly it up to pastures. The army last took on similar missions during the 2003 European heatwave that killed thousands of people.
City to test driverless cars
A university in the US has opened a simulated city that will be used to test driverless vehicles.
The 32-acre site on the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus has building facades, a roundabout, brick and gravel roads, a motorway slip-road and other driving features. Researchers will be able to test how cars interact at a junction and how signals work in a tunnel.
The $10m site was several years in the making and it will be run by the Mobility Transformation Centre, a partnership between the university, state and federal governments and car companies.
Hybrid game set to score
A Detroit entrepreneur believes he has scored a touchdown with his new business idea.
The American football/bowling hybrid game of fowling, which inventor Chris Hutt says is “simple, yet difficult, infuriating, yet hilariously fun”, is the draw at a 34,000 square foot repurposed industrial site in Hamtramck, Michigan.
The Fowling Warehouse features 20 lanes, where players or teams try to be the first to knock down all 10 of their opponents’ bowling pins by tossing a football from a distance of up to 48ft.
Sex change fraud
An Oregon resident who transitioned to a woman more than three decades ago continued collecting social security disability checks under her male identity, fraudulently raking in $250,000.
Richelle McDonald was born Richard McDonald in 1945 and obtained a social security number under that name as a teenager. In 1974, she applied for and received Supplemental Security Income (SSI) after suffering a paralysed arm, when hit by a San Francisco bus while working as a transvestite prostitute. In the 1970s, McDonald also applied for a social security number under the name Richelle. She had sex reassignment surgery in 1981, and, despite the arm injury, performed janitorial work as Richelle from the 1980s until 2012.
She never alerted Social Security about the switch and kept collecting disability payments as Richard.
Tax collector arrested
A tax collector in northern New York has been arrested on allegations she falsified her own tax records to avoid paying up.
The state comptroller’s office says its audit and investigation led to nine charges of tampering with public records against Michelle Sheppard, the town clerk and tax collector in DePeyster.
As tax collector, Sheppard is responsible for recording, depositing and reporting property taxes. Authorities say the 43-year-old falsified her personal town and St Lawrence County tax payments of $4,303 since 2011. She pleaded not guilty.
The comptroller’s office says auditors noticed discrepancies in the town books and that Sheppard has since repaid the bulk of her tax bills. The office says its investigations have led to more than 90 arrests and $18m in restitution since 2011.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
