Swiss grocery chain Coop announced recently that it will start selling burger patties made from mealworms as an alternative to beef. Essento’s Insect Burgers and meatball-like Insect Balls also contain rice, carrots and spices. “Insects are the perfect complement to a modern diet,” said Christian Bartsch, co-founder of Essento. “They have a high culinary potential, their production saves resources and their nutritional profile is high-quality.”
Must See Eclipse At Any Cost!
Jocsan Feliciano Rosado, 22, was driving a stolen car when he stopped off at a Harbor Freight store in Kissimmee, Fla., to pick up a welder’s helmet for viewing the solar eclipse. As he dawdled next to the vehicle, looking up at the sun with his helmet on, members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office Auto Theft Unit interrupted his reverie and arrested him.
Never Box With A Horse
One reveler at a street festival in Worcester, Mass., caused a dust-up when he aggressively confronted a police horse. Donald Pagan, 59, was cutting through a column of mounted police when an officer asked him to stop. Instead, Pagan raised his fist “in an attempt to punch the horse in the face,” a police statement said. The horse jumped backward, away from Pagan, which officers noted could have injured Pagan, the horse or the mounted officer. Pagan was charged with assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest and interfering with a police horse.
Machines Taking Over
When Louise Kennedy, an equine veterinarian from Ireland who has worked in Australia for the past two years on a skilled worker visa, decided to stay in the country, she had to take the Pearson Test of English as part of her requirements for permanent residency. Imagine her surprise when, as a native English speaker with two university degrees, she flunked the oral component of the computer-based test. “There’s obviously a flaw in their computer software when a person with perfect oral fluency cannot get enough points,” Kennedy said. For its part, Pearson has denied that there is any problem with its test or scoring “engine.” Kennedy will pursue a spouse visa so she can remain with her Australian husband.
Ow! Ow! Ow!
On June 25, Doug Bergeson of Peshtigo, Wisc., was framing the fireplace of a home he was building when his nail gun slipped from his grasp and shot a 3 1/2-inch nail into his heart. Bergeson said it stung, but when he saw the nail “moving with my heart,” he realized he wasn’t going to get any more work done. So he washed up and drove himself to the hospital 12 miles away, where he alerted a security guard that he had a nail in his heart and said, “It’d be great if you can find somebody to help me out here.” Bergeson underwent surgery to remove the nail, which his doctors said barely missed a main artery.
New World Order
In Quebec, at Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, near Plattsburgh, N.Y., the Canadian military is building a refugee camp to house asylum-seekers coming from the United States, where recent migrants fear the current administration’s immigration crackdown. Montreal has already turned its Olympic Stadium into a shelter for refugees. The new camp would house 500 people in heated tents while they wait for refugee applications to be processed. More than 3,300 people crossed into Quebec from the U.S. between January and June 2017.
Weird Science
The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board is investigating in Navi Mumbai, India, after stray dogs started turning blue. An animal protection group there contends that dyes being dumped into the Kasadi River by nearby factories are causing the dogs’ fur to turn a bright shade of blue.
Model Parents
A school resource officer at Lexington Middle School in Lee County, Fla., caught a glimpse of something alarming on Aug. 15 as he looked out a second-floor window toward the parent pick-up lane. Christina Hester, 39, of Fort Myers was using her iPhone to cut and snort cocaine. After seeing Hester use a straw to inhale the substance, the SRO asked her to come inside the school. He retrieved her purse and found .5 gram of cocaine inside. She was charged with possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia.
Picky, Picky
The Ford Motor Co. has hired smell-testers for its research labs in China, where consumers don’t like the “new-car” smell that many Americans seek out. Ford calls the testers its “golden noses,” who sniff materials such as upholstery, steering wheels and carpet. Testers are subjected to a stringent selection process and must not smoke or drink alcohol. “In North America,” said Andy Pan, supervisor for material engineering at a Ford facility in China, “people want a new-car smell and will even buy a new car spray to make older cars feel new and fresh. In China, it’s the opposite.”
Ironies
— In Florida, Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority CEO Brad Miller and board chair Darden Rice helped Barbara Rygiel celebrate her 103rd birthday by presenting her with a lifetime bus pass. Rygiel rides the bus to church four times a week; she said the pass will help with the costs. “Look at how much I can save,” she said.
— Stephen DeWitt, 57, of Aptos, Calif., was “quite intoxicated,” according to an arresting officer, when he mowed down a Highway 1 road sign reading: “REPORT DRUNK DRIVERS. CALL 911.” His Jeep continued up an embankment and flipped, leaving DeWitt with serious injuries — and a DUI charge.
Drive-Thru Rage
Michael Delhomme couldn’t abide the fact that a Delray Beach, Fla., McDonald’s had run out of ice cream on Aug. 15. So while he and his friend, Jerry Henry, 19, waited in the drive-thru line, Delhomme asked Henry to get the “stick” out of the trunk. A McDonald’s employee watched on surveillance video as Henry went to the trunk and removed a replica AR-15 airsoft rifle, then got back in the car. The workers couldn’t tell that the weapon was not authentic and called 911, and Henry was charged with improper exhibition of a firearm.
Oh, Canada
In the wake of violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., a plaque commemorating Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865, was removed on Aug. 15 from the wall of a Hudson’s Bay department store in downtown Montreal. Apparently, Davis had lived in a house that formerly stood on that property in 1867, and the Daughters of the Confederacy placed the plaque there in 1967. Davis moved to Canada after he was released from prison following the Civil War.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
Police in Osnabruck, Germany, stopped a vehicle on Aug. 19 and found an unusual trove of drugs inside. Plastic bags were filled with 5,000 ecstasy pills, with a street value of about $46,000. All the pills were in the shape of Donald Trump’s head. The orange tablets depicted Trump’s signature sweep of hair and his rosebud mouth. An unnamed 51-year-old man and his son, age 17, also had a large sum of cash; they were taken into custody.
Cultural Diversity
— The Japanese funeral industry demonstrated its forward thinking on Aug. 23 when practitioners gathered for the Life Ending Industry Expo in Tokyo. Among the displays was a humanoid robot named Pepper who can conduct a Buddhist funeral, complete with chanting and a drum beat. Pepper is the result of a collaboration between SoftBank and Nissei Eco, which wrote the chanting software. Michio Inamura, Nissei’s executive adviser, said the robot could step in when priests aren’t available.
— Also at the Life Ending Industry Expo in Tokyo, four undertakers competed on stage as funeral music played to see who could best display the ancient skills of ritually dressing the dead. The Shinto religion in Japan believes that the dead are impure just after death and that dressing the body purifies the spirit. The contestants dressed live volunteers and were observed by three judges.
— In Iran, the education department has banned people who are considered ugly from being teachers. The list of conditions and features that prevent one from being a teacher includes facial moles, acne, eczema, scars and crossed eyes. Also on the list of unsavory conditions are cancer, bladder stones or color-blindness, none of which can be observed by others.
Latest Religious Messages
Sonogram photos are notoriously difficult to decipher. But one couple in Franklin County, Penn., are sure theirs shows a man watching over their unborn daughter. “When they gave it to us … Umm, to me, it’s Jesus. And it looks like Jesus,” said mom Alicia Zeek. She and father Zac Smith have two older children, both born with birth defects, and the image is putting them at ease about their third child. “Once … we looked at the picture, I was like — look, babe, we have nothing to worry about,” Smith said.
Least Competent Criminals
Adam Darrough, 29, of Little Rock, Ark., tried to elude officers who had arrived at his girlfriend’s house to arrest him by climbing out a back window. When that didn’t work, he hid in her attic. Things went south for Darrough when he fell through the attic floor. Little Rock police officers arrested him for a number of felonies, including hindering arrest.
Inexplicable
An Arkansas Highway Patrol officer spotted “an unusual sight” on Aug. 23 on I-30: a black Hummer with a casket strapped to the top of it. When the officer pulled over Kevin M. Cholousky, 39, of Van Buren, Ark., he took off and led police on a chase along I-530, where his vehicle was eventually stopped by road spikes. Although the casket was empty, Cholousky was charged in Pulaski County with fictitious tags, reckless driving and fleeing.
Bright Idea
U.S. Border Patrol agent Robert Rocheleau and Alburgh, Vt., resident Mark Johnson, 53, exchanged tense words when Johnson climbed down from his tractor and demanded to know why Rocheleau wasn’t doing more to apprehend illegal immigrants. Johnson said people working in the U.S. illegally were damaging his livelihood. (Alburgh is just south of the border with Canada.) After the exchange, Johnson got back in his tractor and, as Rocheleau reported, “while passing by my vehicle, Mr. Johnson … engaged the PTO shaft to his trailer and covered my vehicle in cow manure.” Johnson pleaded not guilty in Vermont Superior Court in North Hero, saying he didn’t know the car was nearby when he turned on his manure spreader.
Facebook To The Rescue!
Epping, N.H., resident Leslie Kahn, 61, found herself trapped in her swimming pool after the ladder broke. She wasn’t strong enough to pull herself out, so she used a pool pole to drag a nearby chair that had her iPad on it closer to her. On a community Facebook page, Kahn posted her situation under the heading “911.” She was rescued a short time later.
FAN-antic
Jeffrey Riegel, 56, of Port Republic, N.J., left ‘em laughing with his obituary’s parting shot at the Philadelphia Eagles. In it, Riegel asked that eight Eagles players act as pallbearers, “so the Eagles can let me down one last time.” Riegel owned season tickets for 30 years, during which the Eagles never won a Super Bowl.
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