Wee Wee Arrests
The police in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, made a total of 887 arrests during the famous carnivals in the city, all of them for urinating in the street.
“Between the 20th and the 24th of January our officers detained 887 people for urinating in our streets,” said the Municipal Secretary for Public Order. This amount is up by 14% on last year, according to the same Secretary, and of the total 105 were women.
Arresting these people sounds a little drastic, however, urinating in the street has become a very real hygiene problem in past years, which is why the police decided to launch a special operation to discourage the persistent pee-pee perpetrators.
The problem falls into perspective when we look at the amount of carnival visitors each year… around five million of them, which includes about 850,000 tourists, all participating in the drinking, dancing and general festivities in the street. Makes you want a wee just thinking about it!
Monster Lobster
Now a story about a hugely overweight, crusty beast… no, not the Ed, but a 12kg lobster, caught off the coast of Maine, USA.
The giant beastie was caught by a chap by the name of Robert Malone, who hails from a town called Cushing in the US, and even as a trawler fisherman, he was shocked at the size of lobster and immediately name it Rocky, after the fictitious boxer played by Sylvester Stallone.
Mr. Malone handed the lobster over to a local aquarium, where it spent a pleasant week as a celebrity guest, before being released back into the Atlantic.
As always when dealing with the US, there was an expert on hand to tell us all we need to know about a large crustacean, Elaine Jones from the US Department of Marine Resources said, “All its weight is in the claws. It would break your arm.”
Well, that’s nice to know. Mind you, I suppose a broken arm is better than crabs.
Shark Treasure
We’re off to Malaysia now, and a housewife who was preparing a baby shark for the pot, when she noticed something in the stomach of the fish. It turned out to be a medieval medallion, quite possibly from the 11th century.
The medallion was engraved with the profile of a woman on one side and a crucifix with the inscription ANTONII on the other. Experts believe it is the type of thing worn by Portuguese soldiers for divine protection when they were colonizing Malaysia in 1511.
The housewife who made the find, Suseela Menon, 47, is a resident of Klebang town in Malacca state, which is to the south of Kuala Lumpur, said that her husband decided not to eat the fish since he believed that the medallion may well have some religious significance.
The medallion was examined by a local historian who believes that the profile could be that of Queen Elizabeth, who was the wife of King Denis I of Portugal, reigning from 1271 to 1325.
Anyway, after that history lesson the only thing left to do is quote our publisher, Martin, who read this and said, “Every shark has a silver lining…”