From a miniature deer showing off a rhino boss, to an app that asks you if you’re dead…a weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.
– Luga –
In one of the most unlikely showdowns since David defeated Goliath, a fawn appears to have triumphed over a full-grown rhino at a Polish zoo.
A video of a young muntjac stag facing off against a 1.7-ton rhino and seemingly winning has gone viral.
“Someone may have forgotten to look in the mirror this morning,” the Wroclaw Zoo joked on its Facebook page about the deer that had become territorial with a thick-skinned neighbor nearly 120 times his size.
At first, the female rhino, named Maruska, seemed amused by the deer’s cheeks as he jousted with her.
But by the end of the video, the muntjac is chasing her in their shared enclosure.
Zookeeper Maciej Okupnik told local media that although muntjacs are “very territorial,” the two species got along well and lived happily together for many years.
“This time, daddy deer was a little bit overwhelmed with hormones,” he said, adding that the zoo praised the female rhino for the way it handled his comically delusional machismo.
– He didn’t foresee this –
A Malian witch doctor has been arrested after earning nearly $39,000 for promising that the West African country would win the Africa Cup of Nations.
The man, a former political activist, “made a fortune” overnight after declaring himself a faith healer. He was saved by police after an angry mob turned up at his home after the Eagles were beaten 1-0 by neighbors Senegal in the quarter-finals.
He was later detained by the cybercrime unit in the capital Bamako on fraud charges.
The belief in faith healers and fortune tellers is common in the region but “charlatans are punished by law in Mali”, a ministry official told AFP.
– Killer App –
In China, it pays to get straight to the point.
A new alert app for people living alone called “Are You Dead?” has quickly become the most downloaded app in the country.
As marriage rates fall and the number of empty-nesters rises, more and more Chinese are living alone.
The app’s straightforward name and ghost icon clearly didn’t put them off. “Are you dead?” will send an email to emergency contacts if you don’t check in every two days.
But for IT worker Song Yaya, this is really too difficult. “If I wanted my grandparents to download this app, I probably wouldn’t be able to bring myself to say the name,” she said.
And she’s not alone. With the name making headlines around the world, the app’s developers decided to ditch the catchy name in favor of the duller “Demumu” in the next version.
-no more “okay”, man-
Matthew McConaughey, the famously laid-back Hollywood star, is trying to patent his voice and image to protect himself from artificial intelligence, including his famous catchphrase “Okay, okay, okay” from the iconic slacker movie “The Young and the Restless.”
So unauthorized use of his Texas drawl will officially stop being cool soon, man.
bools-fg/gil
