From a wilting political career to New Zealand’s “fart tax”… Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.
- Britain’s limp salad –
Let us not be cruel about Liz Truss, the shortest serving prime minister in British history, whose fate was sealed when the Economist magazine predicted her hold on power would be no longer than “the shelf-life of a lettuce” after a disastrous mini-budget.
As it turned out, the lettuce lasted longer, her departure on Thursday further hastened by a newspaper livestream of a lettuce in a wig as her authority wilted.
“How long can wet lettuce Liz romaine?” mocked the Daily Star, the tabloid behind the stunt, setting off a flurry of salad patch puns.
“When a lettuce outlasts a Prime Minister, we have truly reached the endive days,” said journalist Jane Merrick. Even supermarkets got in on the act, with Lidl tweeting, “Lettuce at 58p — a good buy. Liz Truss at Number 10 — a goodbye.”
As Conservative MPs bicker over who will be Britain’s fourth premier in three years, let’s hope the country can turn over a new leaf.
- Loo rolled –
And you have to feel for the Japanese official in charge of perserving Kyoto’s architectural heritage who reversed his car into the country’s oldest toilet.
Having parked in front of the loo at the ancient Tofukuji Temple, the man from the Kyoto Heritage Preservation Association hit the gas to restart his car without realising he was still in reverse, police said.
The door to the 500-year-old latrine was destroyed.
“It is of course disappointing that part of this important cultural property has been damaged like this,” heritage official Norihiko Murata told AFP.
- Please arrest me! –
It’s been a rough week too for the Bangladeshi burglar who had to ring the police and plead with them to come and arrest him after an angry mob caught him in the act.
Yasin Khan, 40, was nabbed by passers by after breaking into a grocery store in the southern city of Barishal.
“I have never seen such an incident in my career,” the police chief Asad uz Zaman said.
- Bone of contention –
It always nice when people can rise above their differences. Like the divorced couple in Argentina who have just been given joint custody of their two dogs in a groundbreaking ruling there.
The court in San Isidro ruled that Popeye, 6, will live with “mummy” while the husband gets custody of Kiara, 9, although the dogs can sometimes swap homes.
Other details of the ruling were not divulged, including the wife’s objection to her ex-husband feeding Kiara empanadas.
- Wind of change –
The world’s first “burp and fart” tax to cut methane emissions is causing an awful stink in New Zealand, where there are six times more cows and sheep than people.
Methane — which windy ruminants produce in abundance — is blamed for roughly a third of global warming, and the government there argues that it is high time to put a cork in it.
But protesting farmers are having none of it, blocking roads in the country’s capital Wellington with their tractors and 4X4s.
- Sounds fishy –
An Istanbul chef thought he was being pranked when judges of the prestigious Michelin Guide rang him to congratulate him on winning a star, and hung up on them.
“I thought it was a trick,” said chef Nuri Soysal of the Rumelihisari Iskele fish restaurant on the Bosphorus.
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