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| - Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world: Scottish distillers Grant's have trained a cocker spaniel called Rocco to sniff out imperfections in the oak barrels in which their whisky is aged. Rocco got the ulti-mutt job after keeping his head through six months of sniffing samples from the distillery. Where is Joe Exotic when you need him? In prison unfortunately. They could have done with the star/villain/innocent victim of the hit Netflix documentary series in Houston, where a Bengal tiger has been roaming suburban gardens for a week. Its owner's wife eventually picked the animal up in her car and handed it over to an animal sanctuary. In much of Texas laws on keeping wild man-eating beasts are as lax as its gun controls. Which means more tigers are now kept as pets in the US that live in the wild. Meanwhile, in news sure to cheer Joe in jail, police this week seized 68 big cats from an Oklahoma animal park owned by his nemesis Jeff Lowe. China has taken to heart the old line that football is "war minus the shooting". It is putting its national team -- currently ranked 77th in the world behind the Caribbean island of Curacoa (population 158,000) -- through "patriotic history" training in the hope that they might qualify for the next World Cup in 2022. China has only ever got to the finals once, 20 years ago, but soccer-mad President Xi Jinping wants to win it one day, and is convinced that "patriotic education gives positive energy". Rather than stirring speeches, China is employing more conventional means to convince its sceptical public to take its vaccines. One might have thought the prospect of dying gasping for air was incentive enough but authorities have found themselves having to offer free eggs and money-off tokens for people to get the shots. Now the southern province of Sichuan has released a rap song extolling the virtues of Chinese vaccines claiming "people in other countries are queueing day and night to get them." China may be fast catching them in every other way, but no one does mindless consumer fads like the Americans. US supermarket giant Target had to pull Pokemon and other trading cards after collectors ripped boxes of cereal open on the shelves, threatened staff and even attacked each other to get their hands on them. One 45-year-old shopper had to pull a gun to fend off four people who tried to jump him for his cards in a Target car park in Wisconsin. The chain had already limited sales to one pack per customer per day. You've blubbed through the film, now you can stay on a near-exact replica of the ship at China's "Titanicland". Being 1,000 kilometres from the sea, there's no danger the 260-metre-long copy of the ill-fated liner will follow it to the bottom of the ocean. Investor Su Shaojun told AFP he has sunk one billion yuan ($153.5 million) into the theme park, which he hopes to get back by charging $150 a night to stay in the ship's luxury cabins once it opens next year. The Hollywood blockbuster film "Titanic" was massive in China and a new documentary about the Chinese survivors, "The Six", has also been a huge hit. Never one to think small, Su has even invited "Titanic" stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio to the grand opening as well as director James Cameron. Our award for the unluckiest/most irresponsible person of the week goes to the driver of the Japanese bullet train who left the controls of his 320km (198mph) Shinkansen to go to the toilet. His illicit tinkle on the Tokaido express would not have been discovered had the train not been a minute late, thus sparking an investigation by Japan's railway inspectors, who are sticklers for punctuality. bur-fg/eab/yad
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