Ten things which raised an eyebrow this week
EP brings you a brief round-up of some of the news items which were perhaps as surprising as they were enlightening
- The bones of an animal species, hitherto undiscovered, have been unearthed in India. Believed to be a close relative to modern day horses, rhinos and tapirs it appears the creature would have roamed the Earth about 48 million years ago
- It fell to David Miliband to post this week's most alarming Tweet when he observed that, by raising $19 billion to buyout WhatsApp, Facebook had managed, in one business deal, to spend more than the entire amount spent on humanitarian aid around the world in a year
- China has been overrun by ghosts, or at least the Government payroll has been. More than 162,000 phantom employees have been "fired" as investigations have uncovered salaries being paid to people who don't exist
- In an effort to draw attention to the "crazy amounts of food wasted in the UK" the team at Skipchen Cafe in Bristol are serving up delicious dishes including pasta with chorizo, toasted bagels with avocado & tomato and lobster with roasted peppers ... the ingredients for which have all been "liberated" from the garbage bins of restaurants, pubs and supermarkets around the city
- Meanwhile, students at the University of East Anglia have started the #GoWithTheFlow campaign encouraging people to urinate in the shower. Saving up to 12 litres of water per flush, it's hoped that the initiative could save as much water as it takes to fill as 26 Olympic swimming pools
- Scientists at NASA are gearing up for an intergalactic almost-collision when the comet Siding Spring will pass within 87,000 miles of Mars on October 19th
- With more than 10.5 million mentions from users in 170 countries, the word "Ebola" has been geotagged on a Twitter map showing an unsurprising increase in mentions from an average 100 per minute before the outbreak to 6,000+ per minute
- Life's a beach, unless you're the President! Plans to rename a beach in Hawaii after it's most famous native have been pulled after Councillors met with resistance to name the shore-front President Barack Obama Sandy Beach Park
- "Share and share alike" is the mantra a 4 year old child in Delaware embraced wholeheartedly as she passed out bags of "sweets" to her fellow nursery-mates. Police were soon called, however, as it turns out the little girl had got her hands on 249 bags of heroin left in a backpack by her drug-dealing mother
- "Sorry I wasn't so trusting to a random stranger naked in the creek out in the middle of the woods who couldn't differ a dream from reality. I didn't exactly have a script in my head of 'this is what I will do when I find a naked man in a creek'" Casey Saunders, an American hunter, felt compelled to retaliate when video footage of him rescuing a naked & confused festival go-er sparked outrage with people commenting his 'good Samaritan' efforts to help the man fell short of being kind enough
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