DStv Channel 403 Friday, 29 November 2024

Funny old world: The week's offbeat news

Not at all a diva: actress Eva Green
AFP or licensors
AFP | Bertrand GUAY

PARIS - From underwater bike parking for thousands of cyclists to what film stars really think... Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

 No peasants please 

Shame on the film producers who have been trying to portray Hollywood actress Eva Green as a "diva" as they try to wriggle out of paying her $1 million for a sci-fi movie that was never made.

A London court heard that "The Dreamers" and "Casino Royale" star described one of the producers as "pure vomit" and the other as a "devious psychopath" in texts.

Her lawyers did concede, however, that French-born Green's language may have been a tad "unguarded" as she complained that she would be "obliged to take shitty peasant crew members from Hampshire."

The production company, White Lantern Film, countersued with claims that the star had derailed the £4 million project with "unreasonable demands".

 Talking crepe 

A Brittany creperie... which apparently smells of crepes
AFP or licensors
AFP | FRED TANNEAU

A crepe restaurant in Brittany, the home of the delicious French pancakes, is being taken to court by a neighbour because it "smells of crepes".

The case has prompted comparisons with the notorious case of Maurice the French cockerel, whose owners were sued by their new townie neighbours because it crowed in the mornings.

Some 35,000 locals have signed a petition in support of the creperie's owners in the seaside village of Erquy, but their neighbour still insists they should close at seven at night.

 Let there be light 

A US high school has not been able to turn off its lights for a year and a half because of a computer glitch.

The 7,000 lights at the Minnechaug Regional High School in Massachusetts have been blazing day and night, with teachers forced to remove bulbs to try to reduce the mounting electricity bill. 

The first-world nightmare caught the attention of the satirical "Saturday Night Live" television show, which joked, "The students are doing fine but the classroom hamster has gone insane." 

 Put your bike in the canal 

Finding proper bicycle parking has long been a headache in Amsterdam
AFP or licensors
AFP | SEBASTIEN BOZON

Amsterdam believes it may be about to crack its chronic bicycle parking problem by putting bikes in the canals.

It has just opened the first of two giant underwater bike parks that can accommodate 7,000 cycles. A second underwater parking nearby, to open next month, can house an additional 4,000 bikes.

Conveyor belts take cyclists nine metres down into what its architects compared to an "imaginary oyster". Thankfully cyclists don't have to swim back up.

 

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