An airport worker hardly setting the gold standard for his profession, Henry the rhino made history, and a helpful dream sequence highlight this week’s oddball news:
YOU DIDN’T THINK THEY’D MISS THEM?
Two cargo handlers were charged with stealing gold bars from a shipment at LAX. The two men allegedly pilfered four gold bars from a shipment of 2,000 bars that was being sent from Australia to New York by a Canadian bank. Each bar weighed 1 kg. and was worth about $56,000. The bars were offloaded during a stopover at the airport, but an evening inventory found the quartet of bars missing. One of the accused thieves reportedly buried two bars in his backyard and gave a third to a relative. If convicted, the men face up to 15 years in federal prison.
DOUBLE BLOW
Meanwhile, staff at a logistics company in Germany threw cocaine with a street value of up to $1.48 million in the trash, not realizing that the packages they’d found inside banana crates were drugs, customs officials said.
THAT’S REALLY OFF-ROAD
General Motors is teaming up with Lockheed Martin to produce the ultimate off-road, self-driving, electric vehicles — for the moon. The project is still in the early stages and has yet to score any NASA money, but the goal is to design light yet rugged vehicles that will travel farther and faster than the lunar rovers that carried NASA’s Apollo astronauts in the early 1970s, the companies said.
THE GODS SAID I’M CRAZY
A record-holding Sherpa climber halted his attempt to scale Mount Everest for a 26th time because of a bad dream but plans to try again next year. Kami Rita already reached the summit of the world’s highest mountain for a record 25th time earlier this month but stopped his most recent climb more than halfway to the top.
“I was making (the 26th) attempt and had reached up to Camp Three, but the weather turned bad and I had a really bad dream,” Rita said on return to Kathmandu. “The gods were telling me not to go and because I really believe in God, I decided to return.”
Sherpas believe Everest to be a goddess and have a religious ceremony before stepping on the mountain to make their climbs.
IT’S A DOG’S LIFE
Angel, Bobby, and Bravo are among six Labrador retrievers trained by researchers at the veterinary faculty of Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University to sniff out a unique odor that people with coronavirus produce in their sweat, the researchers say. Since May 10, the three have tested more than 1,000 samples from college staff, students and people outside the university and the results so far are impressive. After a few seconds of sniffing sweat samples placed in metal containers, the dogs can tell which people have the virus. If there’s no trace of infection, the dog will walk pass the sample. If it is positive, it will sit in front of it.
… YOU LIVE IN A ZOO!
If handlers were to trot out the old rhyme, “Happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo?” Henry the rhinoceros could hardly complain. After all, the 2,100-kg resident of the Carson Springs Wildlife facility in Florida was gifted a fresh lettuce and watermelon “cake” and a cold hose drizzle in celebration of his 40th birthday, marking a milestone for US’s oldest Indian rhinoceros in captivity and only one of a handful of his species to reach the age of 40.
“History was made today,” said Barry Janks, the co-founder of Carson Springs and Henry’s closest human friend. He thinks Henry even knew it was his big day.
“This morning I told him, ‘happy birthday,’ and he kind of looked up at me from sleeping,” Janks said. Meanwhile, Piper Babka, a volunteer at Carson Springs, confirmed that watermelon is Henry’s favourite treat. “He’s a really cool guy,” Babka said.
VAX AND SCRATCH
In a bid to boost slowing vaccination rates, New York was offering a lottery scratch ticket to anyone who got vaccinated at a state-run vaccination site. The pilot program has prizes from $20 up to $5 million. “It’s a situation where everyone wins,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. Ohio announced the first million-dollar and school scholarships winners in its vaccination motivation campaign.