Quirky World: Motorist on a high after putting officer in the picture
Gilbert Phelps, 20, of Iowa City, was arrested last week after being pulled over for speeding. The officer wrote in a police complaint that, after taking Phelps in for alcohol and marijuana intoxication tests, Phelps “requested to take a Snapchat selfie with me, to which I happily obliged”.
This dude took a #selfie with police after being busted for marijuana #YOLO http://t.co/G2wx2029DS pic.twitter.com/JKYyjC730D
— WPXI (@WPXI) August 13, 2015
Phelps has been charged with operating under the influence. Iowa City police captain Troy Kelsay said Officer Ben Hektoen did not violate any department policy in agreeing to be part of the picture.
Humans have been found guilty of wiping out extinct beasts such as the woolly mammoth and giant armadillo, despite earlier seeming to be in the clear, scientists say.
Only last month research published in the journal Science claimed the human race had been unjustly accused of megafauna genocide. Instead, climate change was said to be chiefly to blame for the loss of large mammals in the last 80,000 years.
From flutes to fossils - 13 facts about mammoths http://t.co/5isH3Y4vNX via @BBCRadio4 pic.twitter.com/FmqGtFYmV0
— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) August 13, 2015
Now another team of experts claims to have settled the debate by showing that, with a few exceptions, wherever prehistoric humans went megafauna died out. Lewis Bartlett, from the University of Exeter, said that “as far as we are concerned, this research is the nail in the coffin of this 50-year debate — humans were the dominant cause of the extinction of megafauna”. The study is published in the journal Ecography.
A Florida woman’s love for her cat is leading her to extend her holiday in Alaska.
Robin Wiesneth and her husband Charles were involved in a crash on August 5 in the remote US state, when a pick-up truck crashed into their motorhome. The two people in the truck died and the Wiesneths suffered minor injuries.
Ms Wiesneth’s black and white male cat Tucker was reportedly on her lap and disappeared after the crash. Mr Wiesneth is returning to Florida, while Ms Wiesneth says she will stay until Tucker is found and is offering a €500 reward for his return.
The mystery of a baby baboon abducted from a zoo in Skopje, Macedonia, had a bittersweet resolution — a mother says she stole it as a gift for her deaf son.
The woman said that she lifted Luka, an 18-month-old crowd favourite, as a belated birthday present for her seven-year-old son. The woman said frequent visits to the zoo had left her boy “in love with the monkey”.
Police said Luka was taken by two people who cut nets at his enclosure and rescued about four hours later.
The UK’s only male giant panda has celebrated his 12th birthday.
Yang Guang (Sunshine) feasted on a two-tiered cake made from ice and bamboo in his enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo. He was also given plenty of his preferred species of bamboo, as well as his favourite treat honey.
German chancellor Angela Merkel has a new namesake — a refugee baby from Ghana.
The six-month-old girl — Angela Merkel Ade — lives with her mother and 730 other asylum seekers in a refugee shelter in the city of Hanover. Angela’s 26-year-old mother Ophelya Ade was quoted as saying she chose the name because the German premier “is a very good woman, I like her”.
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