IT MUST BE TRUE…

I read it in the tabloids

A highway in Wisconsin turned bright red last week, after a truck carrying a leaking box left a thick trail of red Skittles in its wake. Dodge County Sheriff’s Office reassured motorists that the bizarre sight was caused by a cascade of the fruitflavoured chewy sweets, which “were intended to be feed for cattle, as they did not make the cut for packaging at the company”. Feeding discarded confectionary to livestock has been common practice in America since 2012, when corn prices surged and farmers began looking for cheaper alternatives.

A Chinese shopkeeper “tied up and shamed” a thieving rat. Lai Tiancai, who runs a convenience store in Heyuan city, in Guangdong Province, had caught the rodent taking rice. He strung it up by its limbs and photographed it with a placard round its neck admitting its crime and saying: “I dare not do it again!” Lai brushed off accusations of animal cruelty, saying: “It was just a rat.”

A reluctant hitman squirted ketchup on his intended victim’s head to make it look as if he was dead. A German court heard last week that the accused, known as Yusuf S, was hired by a grocer near Leipzig to “whack” his business partner, Huseyin D, but couldn’t pull the trigger. “We will pretend I killed you and then split the money, OK?” he allegedly told Huseyin D. He then used make-up to give his “victim” a deathly pallor, squeezed ketchup over his head and took photos of him lying on the floor. He sent these to the grocer, saying: “Job done.” The case continues.