Monday 11/2/09

Human Interest News   —   Posted on November 2, 2009

 By The Editors of WorldMag.com

Crispy critter
The Texas State Fair, long known for its fry-everything cuisine, may have a new challenger. The Arizona State Fair opened Oct. 16 with a number of fried delicacies on its menu. But one may take the cake for most disgusting: fried scorpion. Officials with the fair say the deep fried and chocolate-coated scorpions are something of a Chinese delicacy that–you guessed it–tastes a bit like chicken. The State Fair of Texas featured no desert animals but did debut a curious dish called “Fried Butter.”

Cold case
Shoppers and employees at Marketplace Foods in Hayward, Wis., had an unusual companion on Oct. 16: a 125-pound black bear. Video cameras captured the footage as the bear walked through the store’s automatic doors and made its way to the liquor department, stopping to rest in a beer cooler. The bear spent an hour in the cooler as workers evacuated customers and called wildlife officials. The officials then tranquilized the bear and removed it from the store.

Royal prerogative
The United Kingdom’s Royal Mail has taken aim at a website that allowed users to look up British postal codes easily. Officials with Earnest Marples Postcodes say they received a letter from the government service saying the company was infringing on the Royal Mail’s intellectual property. The company, which has disabled the service, says it was simply providing the same information that existed on the Royal Mail website.