StrangeSights

• If you’ve ever reached into your pocket to take out your wallet only to discover you’ve been the unwitting victim of a pick-pocket, you’ll know it’s not a pleasant feeling. More pleasant, however, is reaching in your pocket to find some money you didn’t put there. A group of former pickpockets have reportedly been recruited in London to do just that - slip anything from a £5 to a £20 note into the pocket or handbag of an unsuspecting tourist - as part of an initiative being funded by broadband provider TalkTalk. Known as ‘putpockets’, they’re visiting sites around London until the end of August, after which the initiative - all about helping people feel good in these times of financial cutbacks - will be rolled out countrywide. At least £100,000 is reportedly being given away.

• Don’t like Mondays? Apparently - despite all the songs - you are more unusual than you might think. Researchers at the University of Vermont in the US have reportedly studied 2.4 million blogs over the past four years, scoring each on it’s emotional content. Their conclusion was that Monday was the second happiest day of the week while people were feeling their worst by Wednesday.

• A new ‘kosher’ internet search engine was launched in Israel earlier this year. Known as ‘Koogle‘, it’s a Rabbi-approved Hebrew-language search engine which filters search results so that items deemed unsuitable for Orthodox Jews don’t appear. “There are lots of orthodox homes that don’t have computers but for business purposes, or for people who want to be part of the 21st century, if you’re going to have one the best way is to use one that filters the internet,” Amos Azizoff, who helped to set up Koogle, was quoted as saying in The Guardian in June.

• Australia’s COSMOS Magazine is calling for people to provide them with short messages which will be beamed out into space later this month to a planet located outside our Solar System known as Gliese 581d, which, according to the magazine, may support life (and hence, potentially, someone to read the messages). The ‘Hello From Earth’ initiative is aimed at celebrating National Science Week in Australia and the International Year of Astronomy. As well as NASA - who will beam out the messages via a radio signal emanating from the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Tidbinbilla - the project also has the support of Australia’s Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research and the CSIRO. The messages - which must be no more than 160 characters - can be left at the website www.HelloFromEarth.net - until 5pm on 24th August.

• Kirvat Yam, a town is Israel located on the Mediterranean Sea near Haifa, has reportedly offered a US$1 million reward for proof of a mermaid’s existence after dozens of sightings of the elusive creatures. A spokesman for the council has told Sky News that many people had reported seeing what appeared to be a mermaid. “They say it is a female figure, it looks like a young girl,” Natti Zilberman is quoted as saying. The town is apparently hoping the offer of a reward will help boost tourism in the region.

• So you’d like to pray at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall but can’t get there? Alon Nil has reportedly started new Twitter page for wall at which you can tweet your prayers which will then be printed out and taken to the wall. Mr Nil says he has been swamped by the response to the service since it commenced in July. See http://twitter.com/theKotel.

• Like an authentic Indian curry? Doubts have emerged over the origins of chicken tikka masala with claims it was invented in the Glasgow. Ahmed Aslam Ali, whose family owns the Shish Mahal restaurant, reportedly says the dish was invented in his restaurant when a customer suggested his chicken tikka was a bit dry and has local MPs now calling on the European Union to grant it “Protected Designation of Origin” status. Indian chefs, meanwhile, have called the claims ‘preposterous’.

• Pope Benedict XVI has reportedly signed a deal with a record company which will see him release an album of him singing litanies and chants backed by the Choir of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome in recordings made in St Peter’s Basilica. The album, due out in late November on the Geffen label, will also feature him reciting passages and prayers in several languages. He’s apparently not the first pope to release an album - Pope John Paul II released one in 1999.