Funny old world: Offbeat news
Lobster meatballs are displayed for
sale last week at a market in Hong Kong’s Wanchai area. Do the meatballs even
contain lobster?
Photo: AFP
Even wives are banned. Patrick Opio Obote of the Lira vendors
group said that some hussies even “take the drivers to bars and drink alcohol
and they end up causing accidents.”
Covering up is complicated by the fact that conservative
Ugandans do not like women wearing trousers. While women’s rights groups
denounced the lorry ban as more “male chauvinism,” some wondered if it would be
safer if women took the wheel.
LOCKED IN LOVE
Relations between the sexes are running much smoother in
China now after a woman stuck on a never-ending first date by a lockdown went
viral last week by complaining that her suitor was “as mute as a wooden dummy”
and a “mediocre” cook.
This week Zhao Xiaoqing, a 28-year-old woman from northern
China’s Shaanxi province, got engaged to her beau after they too were trapped
on a date. This time however love rather than boredom blossomed, although some
Chinese social media users were skeptical.
“After a year or two you’ll get tired of each other and
divorce... I’ve seen too many of these kinds of flash marriages,” one netizen
wrote.
BUT IS IT ART?
A Russian artist has been arrested for creating a snow statue
of a giant turd near a war memorial in central Saint Petersburg.
Ivan Volkov, 30, painted his five-meter-long creation brown
and drew a yellow puddle around it before posting pictures of it on Instagram
with the legend, Caca.
SHELL-SHOCKED
It may look like lobster and taste like lobster, but if you
are eating it in Hong Kong, it probably isn’t, the city’s Consumer Council
warned.
Gourmets in the food-obsessed city are more than a little
crabby at the results of DNA tests on one of its favorite foods, lobster
meatballs.
Crustacean DNA was not found in any of the 10 samples the
council tested, including one which listed lobster as an ingredient.
The mystery now is what are they made of. “We found some
other ingredients... that might be other seafood or even meat-type” things, the
council’s chairwoman said.
LETTUCE PRAY
America’s most famous rabbit is no more. Former US vice president
Mike Pence’s bunny Marlon Bundo became an unlikely gay hero after a parody book
about him falling in love with another buck rabbit topped bestseller lists,
satirizing his owner’s anti-LGBTQ stance.
Pence’s daughter, Charlotte, who authored the series of
children’s books told from Bundo’s point of view, broke the bad news about
Bundo’s death to Americans.
When the first Bundo book was released, British TV comedian
John Oliver published a parody version to support gay charities. Its sales
outpaced the original and at one point held the number one spot on Amazon.