It wasn’t all bad

Bike thieves be warned: an American inventor – frustrated by the ineffectiveness of most bicycle locks – has created one that makes people throw up if they cut into it. When a wouldbe thief tries to break through the Skunklock, it releases a noxious, smelly gas, inducing vomiting. The inventors, who say the chemical is legal and has passed compliance tests, are currently trying to crowdfund the lock online; if they’re successful, it should be available from next summer.

A baby who was briefly extracted from her mother’s womb for lifesaving surgery was born for the second time in June – and is now four months old, and doing well. When the mother – Margaret Hawkins Boemer, from Texas – was 16 weeks pregnant, doctors spotted a tumour on her foetus’s spine; it was threatening the supply of blood to the baby’s heart – putting her life at risk. So surgeons cut the baby out of the womb, removed the tumour, then returned her to her mother’s body 20 minutes later. Lynlee (pictured) was born at almost full term, and having had surgery to remove the last remnants of the tumour, she is now healthy.

Mathematicians have devised the world’s longest pub crawl – taking in all 24,727 of Britain’s pubs on Pubsgalore.co.uk. The Canadian team created the route as part of an investigation into the “travelling salesman problem”, which is about finding the shortest course between any number of locations before returning to the starting point. They spent two years plotting a circular route which begins at The Green Shutters in Portland, Dorset, then covers 28,270 miles, before ending up at The Rodwell in Weymouth, four miles down the coast.