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| - Our weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world: Courtney Wilson liked a Florida mansion on the market for $5.7 million so much he thought he would hold his wedding reception there. Except he didn't tell the owner. Instead he and bride Shenita Jones -- who called themselves "the Royal Couple" -- booked a viewing and then invited their guests to a red-carpet cocktail there and breakfast the next morning. Frantic owner Nathan Finkel, who lives elsewhere on the estate, rang the police when Wilson arrived to set the party up. "I have people trespassing on my property," he told officers. "They keep saying they're having a wedding here and it's God's message." Wilson's cheek is nothing on the Taiwanese bank clerk who married four times in a month so he could max out the country's statutory holidays for newlyweds. Companies have to give eight days of paid leave to people getting married. So the canny clerk claimed 32 days off by tying the knot four times in 37 days, with three divorces in between. When his bosses said no, he appealed to the Taipei labour department which fined the bank Tw$20,000 ($670) for breaking work regulations. The man has since left the bank, AFP discovered, but is taking it on again for the 24 days in leave he says it still owes him. Taiwan was already reeling from last month's "salmon chaos" when more than 100 people changed their names to monikers such as "Salmon Prince", "Salmon Fried Rice" and "Explosive Good Looking Salmon" to take advantage of a restaurant chain's free food offer. In space no one can hear you fart -- until now. New Zealand is launching a satellite to sniff out climate-threatening levels of flatulence. Methane makes up 43 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions, most from its giant sheep and cow herds. Sheep once outnumbered people in New Zealnd more than 20 to one. That raised quite a stink internationally, so the country has since slashed numbers by three quarters. It has also pioneered the push towards if not fart-free sheep then at least "lower methane-emitting ovines". The Earth shook when a New Hampshire family set off a huge explosion at a gender reveal party, prompting quake reports across two US states. The guilty father-to-be later turned himself in. Still he has quite a way to go to match the dumbness of a US border guard who set 19,000 hectares (47,000 acres) of Arizona forest alight when he shot at a target full of blue-coloured explosive to announce the gender of his son in 2017. In a stunt that has bamboozled anti-vaxers, New Yorkers who got a Covid jab were offered a free joint. Activists celebrating the legalisation of recreational marijuana there handed out spliffs to anyone who could prove they had got a vaccine. Sarah Overholt got two joints after showing her and her 70-year-old mother's vaccination cards. "I am a better person if I smoke, trust me," she told AFP. Management has finally caught with Italy's "king of the absentees" who has been skipping work on full pay for the last 15 years. The Calabrian hospital worker is far from alone, with the wives of others who haven't turned up for years caught clocking on for them in a recent crackdown on workshy civil servants. The rise and fall of the European Super League in less than 48 hours sadly overshadowed the drama in the dying minutes of a match in Ecuador's top flight. Macara goalkeeper Joaquin Pucheta kept a clean sheet against Orense until he could hold on no longer and ran behind an advertising hoarding for a pee. He was promptly sent off and told to wash his hands. Pucheta faces a six-month suspension for "unsporting behaviour". A fluffy white cat was nabbed smuggling a medley of drugs into a Panamanian prison. The feline felon was stopped outside the wonderfully named New Hope jail carrying what is thought to be cocaine, crack and marijuana around her neck. This is not the first time inmates have enticed critters into crime, previously luring animals laden with drugs inside with food. Homing pigeons and even drones have also been used. Unlike her partners in crime, the cat has come out of it rather well, starting a new life with a respectable owner. bur-fg/jmy/jz
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