DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
Tree planters French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump. PICTURE: Joyce N Boghosian/White House
• Mystery solved. An oak sapling planted by French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump to commemorate the relationship between the two countries sparked a mystery when it went missing from South Lawn of the White House soon after it was put in the ground. Questions followed and we can inform you that the missing tree – which came from Belleau Wood in France where some 2,000 Americans died in a battle in World War I – was apparently placed into quarantine to ensure it doesn’t carry any parasites. Expectations are that it will later be returned to its home on the lawn. “Don’t worry,” one French official was quoted as saying by Reuters, “the tree is doing very well.”
• A police department in suburban Detroit has created a new rank – that of ‘pawfficer’ – for a cat which has joined the force’s ‘feline unit’. The cat, which was one of five from the Michigan Humane Society that auditioned for the job, was named Badges after the Troy Police Department ran a poll on Twitter. Badges (narrowing beating ‘Donut’), will live with an officer and have duties including community policing, supervising the K9 unit and offering ‘cuddles’.
• We join in celebration with Spain’s Pedro Duran who has won the European stone-stacking championship for the second year in a row. More than 30 stackers from Europe and the US reportedly recently took part in the two day contest at Dunbar near Edinburgh to create complex and gravity-defying sculptures from rocks on the town’s beach. Mr Duran will now compete in the World Stone Balance Championship in Texas later this year.
