Chess-playing robots, alien cats, kooky donut burglars, a crazy ex, and one “horrifically bad decision” came together to confuse and amuse us in last week’s weird and wacky news…

A SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM

A tech millionaire (Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian) offered to buy it. A US senator suggested that the government should force manufacturers to make it. But so far, Klondike isn’t budging from its plan to discontinue the Choco Taco, stating discontinuing products is sometimes, “necessary but unfortunate… even a beloved item like Choco Taco.” The news of its demise sent some Twitter users into a meltdown. “There are bad decisions, like getting a face tattoo or French kissing an alligator. Then there are horrifically bad, inexcusable decisions like discontinuing the Choco Taco,” one fan tweeted of the product, which was introduced in 1983.

BAD SPORT

A chess-playing robot grabbed the finger of its 7-year-old opponent and broke it during the recent Moscow Chess Open tournament. “Of course, this is bad,” Sergei Lazarev, President of the Moscow Chess Federation, told the Russian TASS agency. A video shared on social media shows the robot taking one of the boy’s pieces, and then grabbing his finger as he attempts to make a move. Four adults then rush in, struggling to free the boy before leading him away from the chessboard. Lazarev said the federation had rented the robot for many previous events without incident. He added that the boy was able to play again the next day and finished the tournament with his finger in a cast.

D’OH!

A Northern California burglar stole some petty cash from a donut company office in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as the keys to a bakery vehicle, though he didn’t steal the vehicle itself. “It was an unfortunate incident, but we’re glad no doughnuts or team members were harmed,” said Craig Blum, founder of Johnny Doughnuts, rationalizing that “Sometimes even the thought of a donut makes you do crazy things.”

YOU’RE JUST FIGURING THAT OUT NOW?
A respected Polish scientific institute has classified domestic cats as an “invasive alien species,” but some cat lovers have reacted emotionally to the decision putting the key scientist behind it on the defensive. Wojciech Solarz, a biologist at the state-run Polish Academy of Sciences, wasn’t prepared for the disapproving public response when he entered “Felis catus,” the scientific name for the common house cat, into a national database run by the academy’s Institute of Nature Conservation. Solarz described the growing scientific consensus that domestic cats have a harmful impact on biodiversity given the number of birds and mammals they hunt and kill, stating that the criteria for including the cat among alien invasive species “are 100% met by the cat.”.

CRAZY IS AS CRAZY DOES

A North Carolina woman apparently seeking revenge on her ex-boyfriend tried to set fire to a house owned by someone else. The Rowan County Sheriff’s Office said in a report that a homeowner in Gold Hill was awakened by a neighbour who saw a woman trying to set fire to the house. There were bundles of wood and a fire on the front porch and deputies found a jug of oil that they say was used to start the fire.

The homeowner went to get a garden hose, which didn’t work because the woman had apparently used a sealant to block the flow of water. The homeowner grabbed a rifle and confronted the woman, who was holding one of his dogs on a leash. With law enforcement and emergency personnel approaching, the woman drove off, but was later arrested.

WHALE OF A TALE

Boaters and whale watchers off Massachusetts got a surprize recently when a humpback whale breached and landed on the bow of a 6-metre vessel. The boat operator reported no injuries and no damage that affected the seaworthiness of the vessel, according to officials in Plymouth, on Cape Cod Bay. Several boats were around the when it made the jump and video footage shows it launching its body out of the water and its head slamming onto the front of a boat, tipping the rear of the vessel out of the water as it slid back into the ocean.

POINT ME IN THE DIRECTION OF ‘ALBUQUEQUE’

It made drivers on Route 66 and Interstate 40 in New Mexico do double takes: A newly upgraded state Department of Transportation sign that pointed drivers toward Albuquerque misspelled the city’s name, losing the ‘R.’ People called and emailed the department to point out the mistake and a corrected sign was soon put up.

It’s not the first time the city’s name lost an ‘R’. According to the city’s website, colonists were granted permission in 1706 by King Philip of Spain to establish a new community on the banks of the Rio Grande and the colony’s governor wrote a letter to Spain’s Duke of Alburquerque to report that it had been named La Villa de Alburquerque in his honour. However, the first “R” was dropped later, leaving Albuquerque with its current spelling.