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Some excellent ‘oddly enough’ stories:

• Giant dog-eating catfish dies: a story mourning the death of Kuno, a 5-foot-long catfish living in the lake at Volksgarten Park in Moenchengladbach, Germany. It’s presumed he died due to a local heatwave and the resulting low water level. ‘Kuno became a local celebrity in 2001 when he sprang from the waters of the lake to swallow a Dachshund puppy whole.’ I had a run-in with giant catfish before; mind you, a bit nearer to their natural habitat, and with less pet ingestion involved.

  Catfish are in the news it seems; this NYT editorial is relevant, if a bit depressing. ‘The next time a … delegation sets off to preach the dogma of free trade abroad, poor nations would be within their rights to thumb their noses.’

• Yahoo! India: Holding severed head in place, he defied death: van driver has road accident, then: ‘His head almost severed, blood oozing and eyes popping out, Balram was in a dazed state when the accident took place… He, however, kept his head attached to his body with some cloth. When no one came to help him, he drove his own vehicle for 30 km to reach a nursing home in Agra.’ Now that’s grit!

• More sex than splendour on academy’s Aztec holiday: ‘When Andrew Humphrey entered a competition run by the venerable Royal Academy to win a week experiencing Aztec culture first-hand, he might have expected a genteel tour of the ruins around Mexico City, perhaps taking in the famous floating gardens of Xochimilco. Instead, he found himself tasting contemporary Mexican culture at a notorious adults-only resort with nudity, a ‘sexy pool’ and ‘adult’ shows.’

(All picked up via the forteana mailing list BTW.)