Quirky world: This week’s offbeat news

From Christmas coming early for Venezuelans to why Americans are not taking home the bacon… your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

Christmas comes early in Venezuela

What with the food shortages, people fleeing the country in droves and protests over him allegedly stealing the election (again), President Nicolas Maduro felt Venezuelans needed cheering up. So he has declared that Christmas will come early this year.

“In gratitude to you, I am going to decree that Christmas be brought forward to October 1,” he said, adding that “it already smells like Christmas”.

That might be the tear gas, critics quipped, claiming he is trying to buy time by bringing the holidays forward.

Doping drama with dead legends

When dope testers turned up at the Norwegian football team’s training base, they had a list of stars they wanted samples from… Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, Leipzig’s Antonia Nusa as well as Einar Gundersen and Jorgen Juve.

Gundersen and Juve are Norwegian legends, but both have been dead for decades — Juve scoring the goal that beat Germany in front of Adolf Hitler in 1936.

Coach Stale Solbakken thought he was being pranked, asking, “Is this a hidden camera or what?”

Anti-Doping Norway struggled to explain their mistake. “It’s hard to say what happened,” a spokesman said.

The kitten will REPORT to Larry the Cat. https://t.co/MD0gF3BYqM

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) September 2, 2024

Larry the cat faces competition

Larry the Downing Street cat’s place as the British government’s chief mouser is being challenged by a cute “Russian” kitten.

New prime minister Keir Starmer brought his family’s cat JoJo with him to Number 10. Jojo is his children’s new “Siberian kitten”.

Having seen off five PMs, Britain’s top cat knows when to show his claws.

“The kitten will REPORT to Larry the Cat,” he said on X, via the human running his social media.

Trump’s windy bacon woes

As a big fan of pork, Donald Trump has been wondering why Americans are eating less bacon. And he’s found the culprit — wind turbines.

“You know this was caused by their horrible energy. Wind — they want wind all over the place,” the former US president told supporters on the campaign trail in Wisconsin.

Milei’s giant ego

He may be barely five foot eight (1.73 metres), but Argentina’s President Javier Milei regards himself as a giant. He said he and Donald Trump “are the two most important politicians in the world”.

His “Lilliputian” political opponents in Argentina are “invisible rats”, declared the self-styled anarcho-capitalist, who has taken his famous chainsaw to public spending.

“What vision can a rat have of a giant?” he asked. “Nothing!”

Kennedy’s roadkill feast

Another week, another bizarre animal tale about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a big fan of roadkill cuisine.

The former independent US presidential hopeful, who has now endorsed Trump, reportedly sawed the head off a dead whale and then drove it five hours home on his roof.

Sometimes though it is Kennedy himself who is dinner. Remember the parasitic worm which he said “got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”? Which begs the question, was it something it ate?

NOW READ: UK government moves to ban ‘zombie drug’ xylazine