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| - Our weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world: After the British parish council Zoom meeting that managed to make cage fighting look tame, a world condemned to eternal video meetings was lifted by a little animal magic this week. First, a Texan lawyer found he had been turned into an adorable kitten by a filter on his computer as he pleaded before a judge in an online hearing. The more Rod Ponton tried to explain his predicament to the court, the more panic-stricken his cat avatar looked. "I'm here live... I'm not a cat," he stammered, coining an instant worldwide catchphrase. Two days later US Republican congressman Tom Emmer found himself tweeting "I'm not a cat" after he appeared upside down in a virtual House of Representatives committee hearing. "Mr Emmer, are you OK?" Democrat chairwoman asked, barely suppressing her laughter. "You're upside down, Tom." "Going viral," another congressman quipped. And he did. Meanwhile, the canny farming folk of the Lancashire moors in northern England have begun pimping out their goats for video meetings. So far, Cronkshaw Fold Farm has made £50,000 from hiring out their cute kids to liven up Zoom calls, charging £5 (nearly $7, 6 euros) for a five-minute appearance. "This started as a joke -- putting goats on video calls to prank people in their work routines -- and it's just gone a bit crackers," farmer Dot McCarthy told AFP. But her caprine stars' very real paychecks have saved McCarthy from having to let go two of her workers. Sometimes stupidity pays, particularly on the internet and even more so in America. Step forward Tessica Brown from Louisiana who had the brainwave of using industrial-strength "Gorilla Glue" when she ran out of spray to keep her hair in place. "Bad bad bad idea," Brown later admitted in a TikTok video that went viral. Even advice from Beyonce's hair stylist Neal Farinah could not get her out of the sticky situation. But sympathy and dollars soon began to roll in, with Brown raising $15,000 so a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon could save her scalp after a four-hour procedure. Unfortunately, it was too late for her ponytail, which succumbed to one of the sure-fire homemade fixes online helpers had suggested. 83-year-old Yoshiro Mori's run as Tokyo 2020 chief is over a week after the gaffe-prone former PM declared the trouble with women is that... they talk too much. "When you increase the number of female executive members, if their speaking time isn't restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, which is annoying," he said. Mori apologised later but also offered what he seemed to think was a valid excuse: "I don't speak to women much." The thinnest house in London -- just 5ft 6ins (1.6 metres) at its narrowest point -- is up for sale at the fat sum of £950,000 ($1.3 million, 1.1 million euros). But estate agents believe they will no difficulty selling the five-storey sliver of prime real estate that was a built for a hatter when Londoners wore top hats and bowlers. It has already doubled in value in little over a decade. The zany Finns and their wacky sense of humour have struck again. No, seriously. Freezing Salla in Lapland, the country's coldest town, has made a bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics, with its residents stripping off in the snow to show how their frozen tundra could soon host beach volleyball. In a brilliant parody video to warn of the dangers of climate change, swimmers ate ice creams in frozen ponds, hairy half-naked men "waterskied" on ice pulled by a reindeer or surfed down a glacier. "I've never felt warmth before, but I'm sure it's coming," one local wearing a swimsuit deadpans. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, endangering wildlife as well as releasing carbon stored in the melting permafrost. "Save Salla, save the world," the video ends, with the reindeer mascot of its mock Olympic bid being driven mad by mosquitos migrating north. fg/spm
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