And Finally...

The nod to Father Christmas unfolded Tuesday night when officers tried to execute a search warrant at a property in Fall River, Massachusetts, the City of Fall River Police Department said.

Bodycam footage, shared by police, captured the moment suspects Robert Langlais, 33, and Tanisha Ibay, 32, tried to escape via the building’s rooftop.

“Hey, he’s on the roof. Hey, get down here. Show your hands or I’m going to come up there and grab you,” one officer is heard shouting.

While Ibay leaped from the roof onto a car, Langlais hunkered down inside a chimney, police said.

His hiding place came to light when a passing dog walker told officers they heard someone screaming and spotted a man dive down the chimney.

“He went down the chimney!” they said.

The officers clambered onto the roof and looked inside the chimney to find Langlais stuck inside.

“Are you stuck?” one officer is heard asking.

The very officers the suspects were trying to flee from then set about freeing Langlais, dismantling the chimney brick by brick from inside the property.

...

Police described Langlais’s “Santa-like” antics as having “invoked the essence of the seasonal icon.”

A gravestone for Ebenezer Scrooge in Shrewsbury that was smashed to bits has been repaired for free, in what the vicar has described as a “really heartwarming” Christmas story.

The gravestone for Scrooge, a fictional character created by Charles Dickens in his 1843 A Christmas Carol, was used as a prop during filming for a 1984 adaptation of the novella.

But one Sunday in November this year, the vicar at St Chad’s church, the Rev Sam Mann, walked past and saw the grave had been shattered in a mystery act of destruction. Now it has been repaired in time for Christmas by a local stonemason.

...

Within about 48 hours, the vicar said, the stone was taken away for repair, after local firm Midland Masonry offered to fix it for free. The speedy timeline was remarkable, Mann said, because gravestone changes or repairs usually need diocese approval. In this case the Diocese of Lichfield granted emergency permission.

Local stonemason Ed Jones told BBC Radio Shropshire: “Basically, I spoke to my boss, and he was quite happy for us to do it free of charge.”

The repair, Jones added, involved removing the gravestone, digging out the grave, laying a concrete foundation, fixing the stone with stainless steel pins and resin, applying a mortar repair across the top to address cracks, then adding a cement base so it cannot be lifted.

“I just feel that it’s something we can do for society and for everyone who comes to see it, because it’s an heirloom of Shrewsbury, isn’t it,” Jones said. “People in the street will ask you, ‘Where’s Ebenezer?’ And you just say, ‘Well, it’s down there on the left, in St Chad’s church.’”

...

The gravestone, Mann said, “for us as a town came to represent our attitude towards welcoming visitors”. He added: “Local people were really hurt that this had happened.”

He praised the work of the Shrewsbury town council, town clerk Helen Ball, Lichfield diocese, and stonemasons Midland Masonry for the swift job.

“The message in the book is all about generosity, isn’t it,’” Mann said. “Actually, in a strange way, this whole episode ties into what Christmas is all about … It’s just really heartwarming that it’s been repaired so quickly and for free.”

And previously:

• Humbug: vandal smashes gravestone of Ebenezer Scrooge

Ahead of Christmas, a pro-Kremlin activist has pushed for Santa Claus to be branded as a "foreign agent" in Russia, according to the Russian outlet Meduza.

Vitaly Borodin, the leader of the Federal Project on Security and Combating Corruption, sent a letter to Russia's Prosecutor General imploring the iconic Christmas figure be designated a "foreign agent" due to his "popularity in 'unfriendly' countries," which use his image to "undermine traditional Christmas values," Meduza said, citing the letter.

Borodin is known for filing police reports against purported enemies of the state, including journalists, singers, songwriters, and even a chocolate manufacturer.

...

Borodin's concern is not that Santa Claus will overshadow Jesus, but Father Frost, a Russian New Year figure. He is also "outraged by the fact that the American is replacing the image of our traditional Santa Claus, since his recognition is close to 100 percent," according to the Russian outlet Life.

Borodin is not the only one calling for the end of Santa Claus' influence in Russia, as the deputy of the Bryansk regional parliament, Mikhail Ivanov, called for Santa Claus items to be removed from store shelves and replaced with Ded Moroz, also known as Father Frost, and Snegurochka, the daughter of Ded Moroz also known as the Snow Maiden, which are Russian festive cultural figures.

Regarding Santa Claus' growth in terms of popularity, in an interview with the Russian outlet Life, Ivanov said: "Santa Claus has become not so much a symbol of Christmas as a symbol of commerce and mass production. His omnipresence in shop windows is not an accident, but the result of a targeted marketing strategy, from which the true spirit of the holiday is leaving and our values are being destroyed."

He continued: "We need to support domestic manufacturers who create truly high-quality and beautiful holiday attributes that can give a real fairy tale. Let's cleanse the space of foreign symbols together to celebrate the holidays with a real Russian soul. It's time to bring Father Frost back to our homes and hearts! This is the only way we can preserve and pass on to our children the true values and traditions that make our people unique and strong."

Archeologists have recovered over 200 small, spoonlike objects next to warfare-related artifacts at Roman era dig sites across Europe. And while the accessories probably didn’t directly help defend against enemy combatants, the researchers have a theory about their purpose: According to the team, “barbarian” warriors across central Europe may have battled the Roman Empire with a little help from stimulants.

Researchers at Poland’s Maria Curie-Sklodowska University laid out their hypothesis in a study recently published in the journal Praehistorische Zeitschrift. Their paper details 241 small objects excavated from 116 archeological sites throughout the country, as well as from locations in Scandinavia and Germany. This region falls within a vast area of central and northern Europe often referred to as Barbaricum by the Roman empire, and was home to the ancient cultures often collectively referred to as “barbarians.”

...

As an accompanying announcement explains, archeologists have long known that Greek and Roman cultures widely used narcotics such as opium, but until now, many experts believed drug use in Germanic peoples almost exclusively extended only to alcohol. The number of spoons and the large area in which they were found, however, point to a potential need to revise the historical record.

After documenting each artifact, the researchers then surveyed the variety of stimulants that could have been available to barbarian tribes at the time. The list, while not exhaustive, is large enough to give Germanic warriors plenty of options—belladonna, multiple fungi varieties, poppy, hops, hemp, and henbane, among others. While some of these could be consumed after dissolving them in alcohol, many could be inhaled in dry, powdered form. Because of this, researchers theorize barbarians used their belt accessories to precisely portion out their stimulant of choice so as to avoid overdosing, either before or during combat.

Liliana Goodson travelled to Australia in 2023 to attend clown school with the gold-plated pistol, worth about $3,000, in her luggage

A Thai police officer dressed as a ‘BDSM sex wrestler’ named Big Bear to entrap a suspect wanted over alleged sex crimes.

Police captain Ponlawat Nakthomya and his colleagues had been hunting Su Xing Rui, 31, but were unable to pin him down in Bangkok, Thailand.

A female decoy was initially used but Su, from China, pulled out and said he would only meet if a bizarre fetish was fulfilled by a heavy-set wrestler.

Mr Ponlawat bravely agreed to the dangerous mission.

...

Hidden camera footage shows the dramatic moment Mr Ponlawat opened the door in a black singlet and a Satan mask – prompting an excited howl from the suspect.

But seconds later, armed police hiding in the wardrobe leapt out to bundle Su onto the bed and handcuff him.

Adding insult to injury, cops even frogmarched him out to the truck using a leather dog collar he had brought for the romp.

People in the Thai city of Samut Prakan are scratching their heads over a newly renovated bus stop where concrete was poured over the seating area, resulting in the seats being level with the ground.

Someone recently tried to name one of Earth's quasi-moons "Moony McMoonface," and, ironically, the lore behind that is quite a tale.

Not too long ago, Latif Nasser, host of the Radiolab podcast, went sort of viral because he accidentally named a quasi-moon "Zoozve." The short explanation is that he was looking at a poster on his son's wall that claimed Venus has a moon — a curious object named "Zoozve." That raised some alarms because, well, first of all, Venus doesn't have any moons — and second of all, what the hell is Zoozve? Turns out, Nasser was misreading the poster. In truth, it didn't say Zoozve. It said "2002VE," in reference to one of Venus' quasi-moons, space rocks that appear to orbit a planet like a moon, but are actually more like asteroids orbiting the sun. It's just an illusion.

Then, after a mini-saga, Nasser managed to get the International Astronomical Union (the organization in charge of officially naming objects in space) to literally name 2002VE "Zoozve" — and, in honor of that, opened a contest to allow people to try naming one of Earth's quasi-moons, 2004 GU9.

...

And, well, unsurprisingly, someone submitted the name Moony McMoonface — a nod to that time people were invited to name a boat and Boaty McBoatface actually … won. Nasser and his fellow naming-contest panelists, however, were nice enough to allow 2004 GU9 to have a chance at being a cool kid in our solar system.

"Off the top of my head, the top two submissions were probably Quasimoondo and Moony McMoonFace, which, don't get me wrong, I actually love!" Nasser said. "But, given that we are working with the official namers — the IAU — who are following a long tradition of naming things in our solar system after mythology, we had to rule them out."

...

The interesting thing about the mythology aspect, though, is that the mythological meaning could fall under any culture's mythology, per IAU rules. "To me, the most important thing about a name was that it had a good backstory that honored the culture it came from and that felt connected in some way to the quasi-moon itself," Nasser said.

On one hand, that preemptively gets rid of some clever contenders — I was a big fan of the name suggestion "Zooagug," which is what you'd get if you misread 2004GU9 on a poster the way Nasser misread Zoozve — but it certainly didn't prevent the team from getting some awesome submissions nonetheless.

The panelists, which ranged from Bill Nye the Science Guy and "Gossip Girl" actor Penn Badgley to theoretical physicist Sean Carroll and astrophysicist Wanda Diaz Merced, came up with a final seven options.

The first is "Bakunawa," in reference to a moon-eating, serpent-like dragon in Filipino mythology that's said to cause eclipses and earthquakes. The second is Cardea, who, in Roman mythology, is the goddess of the door hinge and protects homes from receiving evil intruders. The third is Ehaema, a nocturnal spirit in Estonian mythology. The fourth is Enkidu, a legendary figure and friend of the iconic Gilgamesh in Mesopotamian (Sumerian) mythology. The fifth is Ótr, who, in Norse mythology, could take any form but usually picked that of an otter. The sixth is Tarriaksuk, in reference to humanoid shadow beings that exist in another dimension, according to Inuit mythology — and the last is Tecciztecatl, a lunar deity representing the "man on the moon" in Aztec mythology.

Vote here

Babies in Europe have been developing hypertrichosis, more commonly known as werewolf syndrome, after their parents used an anti-baldness medication.

The Pharmacovigilance Center of Navarre (CFN) in Spain discovered that 11 babies recently developed werewolf syndrome, linked to a caregiver's use of minoxidil, Spanish newspaper El País reported.

Minoxidil is a medication approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that can be sold without a prescription to adults experiencing age-related hair loss.

Werewolf syndrome, or hypertrichosis, is a condition where excessive hair grows in unwanted places.

...

The CFN was informed of a case of werewolf syndrome in April 2023, in which a baby boy had gradually developed hair growth on his back, legs and thighs over the course of two months.

The scientists discovered that his father, who had been off work for a month looking after him, had been using a 5-percent minoxidil lotion on his scalp to treat baldness.

When the baby was no longer exposed to this drug, his excess hair went away and he was fine, the CFN said. However, very young babies exposed to minoxidil may be at risk of damage to their heart and kidneys.

...

After analyzing the April 2023 case, the CFN searched through the Spanish Pharmacovigilance System and the European Medicines Agency's EudraVigilance databases and found 10 other recent cases of werewolf syndrome linked to minoxidil in Europe.

In all of these cases, symptoms went away after the parent stopped taking minoxidil, but the CFN's information bulletin maintained that it was still a serious situation.

An unusual theft reportedly occurred in a Henrietta shopping plaza over the weekend.

the Klaasohm festival is a Saint Nicholas tradition celebrated every year on the night of December 5 on the North Sea island of Borkum, which has a population of more than 5,000.

The festival has come into the spotlight in Germany following a video report by public broadcaster NDR.

In the story, two male reporters attempt to film the 2023 festivities.

Using their cell phones, they easily film the daytime celebrations, when the community gathers around young, unmarried men dressed in the traditional costumes of the Klaasohms, made of masks with sheepskin and bird feathers.

Later on, the Klaasohms of different ages challenge each other to a type of wrestling match. This event is reserved for islanders, so tourists or reporters are not allowed to watch it.

The party continues into the night. The reporters secretly film a group of so-called "catchers" as they chase women, hold them while the Klaasohms hit them on the buttocks with a cow's horn. People around them, including children, cheer as one woman is being hit.

...

The NDR journalists point out in their report that it is possible to deal more openly with media criticism, showing the example of the Krampus run in Austria.

According to tradition, people dressed as the devilish figure whip the procession's spectators using a birch rod.

The runs, fueled by alcohol and anarchic collective energy, have made headlines in the past years for violent outbreaks and injured participants.

Now there is tightened security around the Austrian events, with safe spaces for those who don't want to be hit, and numbers assigned to each Krampus so they can be identified if needed. The Krampuses are now encouraged to only symbolically brush festival-goers, and not actually whip them.

A man has experienced a terrifying moment after almost dying when his pet hamster clamped down on his hand and would not let go.

Nathan Halliday, 34, from Kirkby, Merseyside, sat down peacefully with Mochi, his Syrian hamster, when she suddenly attacked him and left him for dead.

He then experienced a anaphylactic shock and moments after she bit him Nathan’s body swelled up, he couldn’t breathe and was covered in hives.

His partner Rebecca Kidd struggled to get Mochi off him but once she did she thought the worst was about to happen so called 999.

Mochi had been looking frail for the last few days before this incident and once she was taken off Nathan she took her last two breaths and died.

In the ambulance Nathan was on death’s door and was given two shots of adrenaline, an antihistamine and put on oxygen.

...

‘One of the paramedics asked me if I was Freddie Starr.

‘Mochi is now in a fancy cracker box in the garden – I don’t blame her.

‘We rescue hamsters from people who otherwise wouldn’t want them and I’d never say no to another one.’

When a would-be burglar broke in to a California church on Thanksgiving day, he encountered an unexpected obstacle: A pastor, trained in martial arts and determined to defend his house of worship.

Pastor Nick Neves came to First Family Church in Antioch early on Thursday morning after an alarm went off, he told CNN.

When he arrived, he discovered “a smashed window and a door propped open.” A man had used an axe to break a church window and access the building, the Antioch Police Department said in a Facebook post.

“As I was going into the door, the perpetrator came out with a handful of our goods, and I stopped him, and I told him he was essentially under citizen’s arrest, that the police would be there, and he needs to stop and wait for them,” Neves, who has been involved with the church since 2005, told CNN.

“And he wasn’t having that,” the pastor said. “So he tried to run, and I restrained him, and he began to fight with me. And so we tussled for quite a while before the cops were able to get there.”

Neves told CNN he has practiced martial arts, particularly Brazilian jiu-jitsu, since he was in high school. But he never expected he would have to use his skills in the real world.

A man who caused an online storm when he found a Mars bar without its signature ripple has received £2 in compensation.

Harry Seager’s picture of the confectionery generated interest from thousands of members on the Dull Men’s Club Facebook page, with one labelling it “hideous”.

The 34-year-old said while Mars Wrigley UK would not give him a reason for the imperfection, group members said the bar had escaped being blown by air.

Mars Wrigley UK said earlier this month the bar "slipped" through its production line and confirmed the swirl was being kept.

...

“The only reason I emailed [Mars] was because I was interested in what might have caused it to happen. That is all I wanted to know and they kept side-lining that question,” he said.

“I think £2 is great, it will be two free Mars bars. Maybe they could have sent me more but I’m not being ungrateful. I think it’s amazing after everything that’s happened that I got the £2 voucher.”

...

“A few people who used to work at Mars’ factories commented [on Facebook] and they said it goes through a machine called an enrober, which is like the waterfall the bars go through," Mr Seager said.

“Apparently they get blown with air along the top as it comes out of that waterfall. Apparently there’s meant to be somebody at the end who removes the ones which haven’t been hit by the air.

“I don’t know what happens to them then. I suppose they got put into products that have Mars bars in, like cakes and things.”

Last month, scientists and whale watchers spotted orcas (Orcinus orca) in South Puget Sound and off Point No Point in Washington State swimming with dead fish on their heads.

This is the first time they've donned the bizarre headgear since the summer of 1987, when a trendsetting female West Coast orca kickstarted the behavior for no apparent reason. Within a couple of weeks, the rest of the pod had jumped on the bandwagon and turned salmon corpses into must-have fashion accessories, according to the marine conservation charity ORCA — but it's unclear whether the same will happen this time around.

Researchers think the orcas sporting salmon hats now may be veterans of the trend when it first appeared nearly 40 years ago. "It does seem possible that some individuals that experienced [the behavior] the first time around may have started it again," Andrew Foote, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, told New Scientist.

The motivation for the salmon hat trend remains a mystery. "Honestly, your guess is as good as mine," Deborah Giles, an orca researcher at the University of Washington who also heads the science and research teams at the non-profit Wild Orca, told New Scientist.

UFC strawweight Luana Pinheiro is still recovering from her last fight, which took place earlier this month. Aside from the normal bumps and bruises associated with entering the octagon, she suffered what can safely be referred to as a unique injury.

The Brazilian lost her fight at UFC Vegas 100 on November 9 against Gillian Robertson by unanimous decision and limped out of the octagon. She caught several 12-6 elbows, which have up until recently been illegal in the UFC, on her butt, including one directly to her anus.

The "disrespectful" shots, as Pinheiro refers to them as, took place at the end of the first-round with one of them, quite possibly the devastating elbow to the anus, taking place after the bell.

The elbows didn't just leave the 31-year-old with a limp either. Pinheiro is still, weeks later, having trouble sitting down, and she's not at all happy about it.

...

"I’m on strong meds. Today’s the last day I’ll take them. I can’t sit without a cushion or bend my back. I can’t exert much force because I feel it there. At first, I couldn’t walk, cough, or laugh properly. Sneezing was agony, I felt like I was dying, you know?, Pinheiro added.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/20587575

Glass cases house beautifully displayed arm-candy at the latest new entry on a reviving Oxford Street in central London.

This is not a designer handbag purveyor but a store dedicated to Ikea’s signature bright blue Frakta carrier bag – a pop-up shop paving the way for the home furnishing retailer’s delayed move into a larger store on-site, which is due to open next year.

Filled with quirky social-media-friendly gimmicks including a service button to call up blue candy floss from a curtained window and a blue mirrored room intended to mimic entering a Frakta bag, the small shop has opened after construction issues prompted delays to the main store. Ikea had originally hoped to open the larger store last autumn, but building work was delayed by problems including water leaking into the basement.

A New Mexico man received what lawyers are calling the largest medical malpractice payout in history. A jury decided this week that he will receive more than $400 million in damages for botched penile injections.

The $412,005,149 verdict was against NuMale Medical Center on Wyoming and Paseo for what attorneys called fraud and unfair business practices. According to the lawsuit, the man in his 70s sought treatment for fatigue and weight loss at NuMale’s Albuquerque clinic in 2017.

Attorneys said the clinic misdiagnosed him and unnecessarily treated him with “invasive erectile dysfunction shots,” causing irreversible damage. “This corporate scheme manipulates and uses fear as a tactic to convince these men to do this,” Nick Rowley, a trial lawyer, told KRQE News 13.

The lawyers said their client went through multiple rounds of medication and procedures, and he underwent surgery by an unqualified physician assistant.

This ruse went up in smoke.

A New Jersey Uber Eats driver thought she was delivering a customer a burrito when a strong, unmistakable odor led her to discover she was actually muling marijuana, according to police.

The woman picked up what appeared to be a normal food order from a location in Lindenwold, Camden County, on Friday night — a burrito wrapped up in tin foil, a soup and a water bottle, according to Washington Township Police.

But as she was driving she recognized the odor coming from the bag of food — and it wasn’t carnitas.

...

She pulled over and called the police.

An officer arrived and “inspected the package curbside and determined that it was not a burrito meal,” said Gurcsik.

“There was no meat, or lettuce or beans or rice. It was actually an ounce of marijuana,” he said.

A unique hotel in the Philippines has set a new Guinness World Record for being the world’s largest building shaped like a chicken.

The 10-storey-high rooster hatched at the Campuestohan Highland Resort in Negros Occidental earlier this month.

Measuring 34.931m in height, 12.127m in width and 28.172m in length, the giant chicken hotel has been built to withstand the mountainous municipality’s storms and typhoons.

Guinness World Records officially declared the Campuestohan Highland Resort’s newest structure the “largest building in the shape of a chicken“ on 8 September.

Inside the big bird are 15 windowless hotel rooms featuring “comfortable beds”, TVs and showers, with rates starting at around £60 a night for travellers keen to get cooped up with a chick flick.

29-year-old Daisy Link was being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami-Dade County, Florida, when she met 24-year-old Joan Depaz, initially contacting him through the vents in their prison cells, according to WSVN7.

"You would knock on it and you can hear the people from the different floors. You would stand on the toilet actually to be able to talk to them," said Link. "Being in isolation for so long you begin to spend hours and hours talking to this person, you know, to the point where it's almost as if you're in the same room with them."

...

After Link and Depaz began a romantic relationship, Depaz shared his ambitions to have a child with Link, according to WSVN 7News.

"I always really wanted to have a baby. And I'm not gonna get to do that for a really long time," said Depaz, recounting what he told Link. "So if I had to choose somebody, you know, it would be you. And she was like, 'Yeah, we could do that.'"

Depaz and Link then hatched a plan to create a direct line between each other's cells using bedding. Once they had established this, Depaz began sending Link his own semen wrapped in saran wrap.

...

"I put the semen in Saran Wrap every day like five times a day for like a month straight" he continued.

Link described receiving the packages, which were rolled up "almost like a cigarette", administering them to herself using yeast infection applicators.

After a couple of attempts, Link became pregnant with "a miracle baby", conceiving "like the Virgin Mary," according to Depaz.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/20492674

A Buddhist monastery in Thailand is under investigation after authorities discovered more than 40 bodies on site which were allegedly used for meditation practices, police said Sunday.

Forty-one cadavers were found at Pa Nakhon Chaibovorn monastery in Thailand's Phichit province on Saturday, a senior police officer told AFP.

"The bodies were accompanied with death and body donation certificates," he said, adding that so far no charges have been filed.

He said police were reaching out to relatives of the deceased to confirm that the bodies were donated willingly.

...

The search came days after police discovered 12 bodies at another monastery in neighboring Kamphaeng Phet province on Wednesday, according to Thai local media.

The head of the Phichit province monastery, Phra Ajarn Saifon Phandito, told Thai PBS television channel that the use of corpses was part of a "meditation technique" he developed.

"Many of the people who come to learn are abbots and all these monks... pass on the knowledge," he said. "I don't know how many have adopted my technique."

He also told another local TV station that "practitioners meditate in pavilions that hold coffins with the human remains."

Kom Pattarakulprasert, director of the Phichit Office of Buddhism, told the Bangkok Post that the inclusion of bodies in meditation was unusual.

"I asked Phra Ajarn Saifon Phandito if there were any cadavers and was told that there were none," Kom told the outlet. "But when journalists discovered the 41 bodies, I was taken aback by the conflicting stories. I will discuss whether this practice is appropriate with the local head of the clergy."