DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
Boring. A train on the Boston subway in the pre-googly-eyes era. PICTURE: Ronan Furuta/Unsplash
• Subway trains in Boston have been given an upgrade with the addition of “googly eyes” to their front. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority General Manager Phillip Eng said the move came after a group of transit enthusiasts came to the MBTA and suggested the idea, even dropping off a package of the eyes. “When I saw it it made me laugh,” Eng told Associated Press. “I thought we could do something like that to have some fun.” Arielle Lok, one of those behind the idea, told NPR that the group had named the five trains bearing the eyes Frog, Forg, Gorf, Grof and Vilas (apparently in a reference to a Jim Henson sketch involving Kermit the Frog).
• Further to the recent removal of a steel monolith in the desert near Las Vegas, another one has been spotted in the state of Colorado. The 2.4 metre tall structure was spotted in a field near the community of Bellvue in the state’s north and Lori Graves, who owns the land on which it was constructed – as well as a nearby cafe – reportedly said she didn’t know who was behind it. “It was Sunday morning, when someone came into the cafe and said, ‘Where is the monolith? Where is the alien monolith?’” she told a local news station. The newly discovered monolith is rectangular in shape while the now demolished one in Nevada was triangular.
• A German police officer who was fired for stealing cheddar cheese from an overturned truck while attending a traffic accident has lost his appeal against dismissal, a court ruled. In his defence, he denied nibbling on any of the cheddar. The police officer, who had been called to secure the scene, instead drove up to the side of the truck and ordered a rescue worker to hand him nine 20-kilogram packages of cheese, which were worth around €554 in total. He took some of the parcels to his office, but the final whereabouts of the other parcels could not be conclusively clarified, the court in Koblenz said on Tuesday. It was assumed that the police officer had kept “four parcels for himself or his friends and relatives”, it added. The police officer, who said he did not even like cheddar, had appealed against his dismissal, saying the cheese had been worth practically nothing as it had not been kept chilled and would have gone to waste. – RACHEL MORE, Berlin, Germany/Reuters
