From Lady Gaga hanging out with Julian Assange to Tupac Shakur’s Coachella performance, here’s our shortlist of the stranger celebrity and political encounters of the year.
Queen Elizabeth II will be joined by Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker on the legal tender of a Pacific island nation. Will these be the weirdest coins in the world?
OVER 500 PEOPLE have been attacked by a colony of rabid vampire bats in Peru’s Amazon. At least  four children died as a result of contracting rabies in the attacks.
Medial supplies have been sent to the village of Urakusa, in the north-east of Peru, to the Aguajun tribe. Peru’s government has dispatched emergency teams to battle the rabies outbreak.
Vampire bats feed on the blood of mammals while they sleep, but generally feed on livestock and wildlife. Experts have suggested that deforestation of the bats’ natural habitat has forced them to turn to humans for food.
Last year, National Geographic reported that the bats were increasingly biting people and have caused rabies outbreaks in Peru before.
This extract from a National Geographic documentary shows the bats feeding on a sleeping pig (not for the faint-hearted):
Rabies, according to the World Health Organisation, kills more than 55,000 people each year. The first symptoms of infection include fever, fatigue and headaches. The illness then spreads to the respiratory system and the nervous system. Death occurs within seven days without medical treatment.
AN ITALIAN MAN has been arrested at Belfast International Airport as he attempted to smuggle £10,000 out of the country in his underwear. The man was attempted to board a flight to Rome last Friday when he was detained by security.
He was unable to provide a reasonable explanation for the sterling and euro notes discovered in his pants.
The cash has been detained, but will be returned to the man if he can prove that it was sourced legitimately.
IT WAS A CASE of not quite so gentle Ben, but there’s nothing funny about a crashed car, unless that car was crashed by a joyriding bear of course.
17-year-old Denver teen, Ben was shocked to find that his car was no longer parked in the driveway, where he had left it. Instead the car was at the bottom of the hill, having rolled down a slope and crashed into some trees.
Trapped inside was the culprit – a giant bear with teeth bared and claws, who was tearing through the Toyota’s interior.
Reuters is reporting that the bear was trapped for two hours before Police managed to release the animal, who ran off into an nearby wood.
RUSSIAN TANKS REALLY got into the spirit of things at the Russian Arms Expo recently by taking part in a ballet exhibition.
The choreographed display came at the start of the international exhibition to showcase Russian-made arms.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) places Russia behind the US as the world’s second-largest arms exporter.
Russian exported over €4 billion worth of arms in the first six months of the year, and plans to have sold over €7.3 billion by the end of the year. Last year, the country exported around €6.5 billion in weapons and weapons-related products.
It’s not all one-way traffic, though. The country expects to have paid nearly €10 billion on foreign weapons by 2016.
The arms expo these tanks ‘danced’ at is just one of three supported by the Russian government.
TWO OCTOGENARIAN NUNS have become fugitives in France.
Sister Marie-Daniel, 86, and Sister Saint-Denis, 82 fled their convent in the French Riviera when they received news that they’d be forced to move into a retirement home.
It may have just been the first time the sisters ever revolted but the move, some 250miles away from their coastal retreat.
For two weeks the nuns have hiding out in a flat owned by a Christian charity resisting all pleas that they return to their convent, the Sisters of Saint-Joseph in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.
A third nun had wanted to flee but broke her leg beforehand.
[caption id="attachment_4850" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Roquebrune_Cap-Martin - would you leave?"][/caption]
A convent insider had told France’s Soir newspaper that the nuns were furious at being “put out to grass” in a retirement home after 50 years at the nunnery.
They said: “They decided they wanted to jump before they were pushed.
“They would rather take their chances out in the world than have to live out their days in some far away rest home.”
Sister Colette Philibert, the region’s chief nun, said: “All we want is for our two dear sisters to make contact with us and return to the convent.”
The nun’s run is reminiscent of the 1990 film of the same name that saw two fugitives pose as nuns.
BANK CLERKS in upstate New York had a strange brush with science fiction yesterday when a man robbed their bank… dressed as Darth Vader.
It’s not just any old Darth Vader, though – it’s a special loungewear edition of Darth Vader, who was seen wearing camouflage pants underneath a blue cape.
Though police were called to the scene immediately, The Force must have been with the oddball criminal: the 6’2″ Star Wars baddie made away with an undisclosed amount of cash but was last seen fleeing the scene through a nearby car park.
Strange and all as a movie-themed robbery is, it’s not even the first odd one in the state this week – on Monday, a man robbed a NYC bank with a bouquet of flowers in one hand.
POLICE IN THE south of Russia have launched an investigation after a donkey was forced to paraglide over the sea to promote a leisure resort. The terrified animal was suspended in the air for thirty minutes, according to Russia Today, before it landed in the sea and was subsequently pulled to dry land.
Police said the stunt was part of a paragliding promotion, and officials are considering bringing animal cruelty charges against the organises. The charges carry a possible jail sentence of two years.
DOCTORS IN Ghaziabad, New Delhi, India, were following procedure after they declared an accident victim dead, by placing him in the mortuary until his family could take his remains. When his relatives arrived, though, they found the 21-year-old alive and conscious in the hospital’s morgue.
The young man had been struck by a motorbike on Sunday evening and was rushed to the hospital by police. However, doctors at the hospital declared him dead and contacted his relatives. The hospital’s chief medical officer has ordered an inquiry into the incident.
The young man has since been transferred to a different hospital.
A HUGE POSTER bearing a Nazi symbol and a naked woman with Mickey Mouse’s head is generating huge controversy in Poznan, Poland. The poster was erected on a building in the city centre just steps from a synagogue by Italian artist, Max Papeschi.
Mr Papeschi said the picture is his view on the horrors of the American lifestyle, according to The Huffington Post. An exhibition of the artist’s work, including this picture, is due to be held in an art exhibition in the city in the autumn. The poster has been vandalised and pulled down, but the gallery’s director said she will put it back up.
She said, “Art should be provocative and controversial.” Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and millions of Poles were killed before the war ended. The country’s Jewish population of 3.5 million was nearly wiped out in the war.
“It is a shock for people who still scarred by the hell of the Holocaust,” said the head of Poznan’s Jewish community, Alicja Kobus.
[caption id="attachment_1255" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="A woman stands in front of a artwork by Italian artist Max Papeschi at the exhibition 'Abnormal Nudes' at the alternative art house Tacheles in Berlin on Tuesday, July 13, 2010. Photo: PA"][/caption]
A NEW STUDY has claimed that the number of deaths caused by smoking in the home could be comparable to the number of road deaths recorded in Ireland.
According to the NUI Galway-led research, the concentration of particulate pollution in the homes of smokers (who smoke indoors) is six-times higher than the World Health Organisation’s recommendation for general outdoor air quality, 10 times the allowable level for healthy breathing in homes and up to 17 times greater than levels actually found outdoors.
Smoking at home causes greater levels of air pollutants than using solid fuels such as coal, wood, peat and gas, says Dr Marie Coggins.
Since the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland, many people have found it easier to stop people smoking in their own homes. So, in today’s poll we ask: Do you allow smoking in your home?
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Mostly cloudy, showers around; cooler
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