Each week, Ben Hopkinson looks back at a serious, crazy, and happy news story from the past week.
Serious News
Following in the rise of zombie knives within the capital, the Mayor of London has asked ministers to speed up introducing a law to crack down on the weapons.
The proposals were announced in August and allows officers more authority to seize and destroy the weapons not being used legally.
Sadiq Khan has detected loopholes allowing the online purchases of the large blades by anyone of any age.
He says that “this government has a responsibility to go further and faster”, and that the legislation should be introduced as soon as parliament returns from the party conferences.
Crazy News
A mummified man who has been on display in Pennsylvania for 128 years is set to finally be buried.
The man was unidentified, until now, and will have his name engraved on the tombstone on his grave.
Known as Tombstone Willie, the man died in a local jail in 1895 after being arrested for pickpocketing and then suffering from kidney failure.
He was then accidentally mummified by an undertaker at Auman’s Funeral Home who experimented with preserving the body following death and has been wearing a suit, red sash and bow tie within his coffin since, while his hair and teeth remain and skin is leathery in appearance.
Funeral director Kyle Blankenbiller says: “We don’t refer to him as a mummy, we refer to him as our friend. He has just been such an icon, such a storied part of not only Reading’s past but certainly its present”.
Happy News
Crocodiles are dangerous animals, and will snap and eat anything and everything that enters its water, but a dog had a lucky escape and could live another day.
A dog was being chased by a pack of feral dogs and entered the shallow water of the Savitri River in India, not seeing the three crocodiles within the water.
However they decided to push the dog to safety using their snouts, in a possible display of “emotional empathy”. They went a step further by taking the canine to an area of the riverbank that wasn’t taken over by the pack allowing a safe escape.
This has all been reported by the Journal of Threatened Taxa that suggests sentient behaviour suggestive of cross-species empathy, due to the uncharacteristic behaviour from the reptiles.
