Paris – From the adventures of a set of dentures to conspiracy theory “Nazi soup”, your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.
By gum!
Briton Paul Bishop was left slack-jawed when the false teeth he lost on a boozy night out in Benidorm 11 years ago turned up in the post from Spain.
The tourist lost his gnashers after he vomited into a bin during a pub crawl in the seaside resort of Benidorm.
“When we headed to the next bar, my friend asked where my teeth were,” Bishop, from Stalybridge, near Manchester, recalled.
But more than a decade later the teeth were found in a landfill site, and Spanish authorities traced their owner through his DNA.
Naturally, Bishop was “gobsmacked” when the errant dentures turned up in the post.
Soup-icious mind
Even for such a notorious conspiracy theorist, US Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene got herself in one hell of a froth after confusing gazpacho, the refreshing Spanish summer soup, with Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo.
In a television rant, the far-right lawmaker, an ardent anti-vaxxer and Donald Trump fan, accused Democrat House Speaker “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police (of) spying on members of Congress.”
As you can imagine, social media wags made minestrone of her claims of a consomme-based deep state reign of terror.
“Stop by for a glass anytime,” tweeted top Spanish chef Jose Andres. And “don’t forget your mask and vaccination card!”
Taylor Greene is not alone in letting her conspiratorial fury make a fool of her this week.
A fellow US anti-masker taking part in a campaign to flood the Canadian capital with prank emergency calls to distract police from the truckers’ “Freedom Convoy”, telephoned police in Ottawa, Ohio, to claim that he had been shot.
“Wait, wait, I’m not shot,'” he pleaded after he realising he’d got the wrong Ottawa, Canadian media reported.
He now faces charges.
A question of Truss
We all make mistakes. Just ask British Foreign Secretary and Instagram star Liz Truss who turned up in Moscow to read the riot act to the Russians over Ukraine in fur hat worthy of “Dr Zhivago”.
The chapka was a nod to Margaret Thatcher who wore a similar beast when she stared down the Kremlin during a Cold War visit in 1987.
Truss – touted as embattled Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s likely successor – has previously posed in the turret of a tank to prompt comparisons with the Iron Lady.
But those hoping she might restore British credibility in the world were sorely disappointed. Her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov described his talks with her as a conversation between the “mute and the deaf”.
Russian media also claimed Truss told Lavrov that Britain would never recognise Moscow’s sovereignty over Voronezh and Rostov until her ambassador was forced to correct her with the news that both regions were actually part of Russia and not Ukraine… Oops.
Change the channel
Dozens of Mazda drivers in the US found their car’s entertainment systems stuck on the Seattle affiliate of National Public Radio. And they had better get to like the station since the global supply chain crunch means it may be some time before the bug gets fixed.
Unwanted prize
Congratulations to Bruce Willis who scalped all comers to rack up a record eight nominations at the Razzies, the ugly sister of the Oscars that rewards the worst films of the year.
The “Die Hard” star’s recent output was so out there the judges of Hollywood’s least sought after prize felt obliged to create a whole new section, “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie”.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Unsplash
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