Couple Stranded On The Eiffel Tower Makes Spur-Of-The-Moment Decision

PARIS (AP) — Police arrested a man climbing Thursday on the Eiffel Tower, leading to visitors being temporarily stranded at the summit — including a reporter for The Associated Press and a Washington, D.C., couple who decided during the wait to get married.

Amir Khan had been planning to propose to Kat Warren later Thursday in a Paris garden away from the crowds, with a romantic dinner on the River Seine also on the menu.

But when the lifts were temporarily shut down because of the climber, stranding the couple and others at the top, Khan decided to spring his surprise.

Pat Eaton-Robb, an AP newsman from Connecticut who was also stuck up there, got their story.

“I figured we might be here longer than I imagined,” Khan told the AP reporter. “So I didn’t want to miss dinner and she always wanted to be proposed to on or under the Eiffel Tower. So I figured, ‘This is it, this is the moment.’”

And the answer?

“Yes,” of course.

“He had a pretty good chance of me saying ‘Yes’ all along,” Warren said, laughing.

Besides, when trapped at the top of a 1,083-foot (330-meter) tower, how can anyone say “No?”

Had that happened, “somebody else would be climbing the Eiffel Tower today possibly,” she joked.

The climber was found between the tower’s second and third floors, said Alice Beunardeau, communications director for the Paris landmark. A specialist team of climbing firefighters led the man down and police arrested him, she said.

Beunardeau said she’d been subsequently informed that the man was carrying a banner about American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish.

“I think it was ‘Free Billie Eilish,’” she said. “I’m not certain of that at this moment but on the face of it, that was the message.”

AP’s Eaton-Robb and his wife Kathleen have had a mis-adventurous weeklong visit to Paris: On Tuesday, they were also in a crowd that was evacuated from the Palace of Versailles because of a security scare.

___

John Leicester contributed from Le Pecq, France.

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Listen To The Cat With The ‘World’s Loudest Purr’

Make a little noise for Bella!

A cat in the United Kingdom has earned the Guinness World Record for having the loudest purr of any living domestic cat.

“If there’s food around, or cuddles, she always purrs,” Bella’s owner, Nicole Spink, said in a news release from Guinness.

The 14-year-old feline’s purr was measured at 54.59 decibels, which Guinness described as similar to the sound of a kettle boiling.

Listen for yourself in the video below. Bella’s rumbling purr can really be heard clearly starting at about 1:29.

Spink said in the video that she and her husband often have to turn the sound on the TV up so they can hear it over the cat’s thunderous purring.

Purring is usually associated with contentment and relaxation. But cats sometimes also purr when feeling stress, which experts believe is a self-soothing mechanism. Anecdotally, veterinarians have also observed cats lying next to injured companions and purring, in a phenomenon dubbed “purr therapy,” according to Wired.

While Bella won the record for the loudest purr of any living domestic cat, the record for the loudest purr by a domestic cat ever is still held by two other felines, Smokey and Merlin, whose purrs clocked in at 67.8. Smokey set the record in 2011, and Merlin matched it four years later.

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Utah Officials Tell Resident To Strip Naughty Halloween Display From City Property

Officials in a Utah community weren’t fans of a skeleton pole-dancing on city property last week.

The city of Grantsville, in a since-deleted Facebook post, demanded that a Halloween display be stripped from a street sign. The display featured a skeleton working city property like a pole while other skeletons tossed money and watched from nearby folding chairs.

“Displays like this are not acceptable as it is against city code to attach anything to a street sign,” read the post, which noted that city officials would remove the display if the “person responsible” didn’t take it down by 9 p.m. on Wednesday.

The person behind the display moved it before the city’s deadline ― and reportedly used it as an opportunity to step up their decoration game, too.

The display, now moved into a front yard, features a new pole for the dancing skeleton along with more skeletons, lights in the shape of a stage and a tip jar, according to Salt Lake City’s Fox 13.

The Halloween display has “split the community,” the outlet reported, with some deeming it inappropriate while others have brought their own decorations and left “money in the tip jar.”

“We’re going to go tip them when we leave. We know what its like to work for tips,” Carrie Sly, a server at Grantsville’s The Outpost, said during a segment on the controversy posted to YouTube by Fox 32.

A man who told the station he put up the pole-dancing display said he looked forward to keeping it “going and getting a little more elaborate as we go.”

“Maybe a little risqué for some people but it’s all in the name of fun,” he said.

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Worker At Chinese Brewery Filmed Peeing In Tank

The China-based Tsingtao Brewery is facing a brouhaha thanks to a now-viral video that reportedly shows a worker at one of the company’s factories peeing into a tank.

The video, which was posted Thursday on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, shows a man in a worker’s uniform urinating in the tank, according to the BBC.

Tsingtao has not confirmed whether the culprit worked at the factory.

A Chinese language business publication quoted by the BBC claims neither the person who urinated in the tank nor the person who took the video were “direct employees” of Tsingtao.

Tsingtao released a statement saying that the batch of malt in the tank had been sealed off from use and that the urination had been reported at the “first opportunity,” according to CNBC.

“The company places high importance on the media reports and has reported the matter to the public security authorities at the first opportunity. The public security authorities are presently involved in the investigation,” according to the statement.

Of course, there were jokes on social media, with one person commenting, “I’ve always said the beer here is like horse pee. Turns out I was wrong,” and another quipping, “Thanks, I think I’ll have wine instead,” per the South China Morning Post.

The incident may have been great fodder for cheap laughs, but not for beer sales.

Tsingtao Brewery shares fell sharply on Monday when the Shanghai Stock Exchange opened, but recovered by the afternoon, CNBC reported.

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Bobi, The World's Oldest Dog Ever, Dies In Portugal At The Age Of 31

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — A 31-year-old dog in Portugal that had been ranked as the world’s oldest dog ever has died, his owner said Monday.

The guard dog, called Bobi, died over the weekend in a veterinary hospital, Leonel Costa told The Associated Press.

Bobi lived on a farm in the village of Conqueiros in Portugal with Costa and four cats. He was born on May 11, 1992, when his owner was just 8 years old.

In an interview earlier this year, Costa told the Associated Press that Bobi’s secret to a long life was good food, fresh air and lots of love.

“Bobi eats what we eat,” said Costa. What’s more, Bobi had never been put on a leash.

Bobi claimed the Guinness World Record from Bluey, an Australian cattle dog, who died in 1939 aged 29 and had held the record for almost a century.

Officials at the Guinness World Records on Monday said they were “saddened to learn of the death of Bobi, the world’s oldest dog ever.” In a statement on their website, they said Bobi lived to be 31 years and 165 days old and died on Saturday.

Bobi was a purebred Rafeiro do Alentejo, a breed of Portuguese dog that has an average life expectancy of some 10 to 14 years.

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South Carolina Pepper Expert Scorches His Own Guinness Book Heat Record

FORT MILL, S.C. (AP) — Ed Currie, the South Carolina hot pepper expert who crossbred and grew the Carolina Reaper that’s hotter than most pepper sprays police use to subdue unruly criminals, has broken his own world record with a pepper that’s three times hotter.

Pepper X was publicly named the hottest pepper in the world on Oct. 9 by the Guinness Book of World Records, beating out the Reaper in Currie’s decadelong hunt to perfect a pepper that he says provides “immediate, brutal heat.”

Currie said when he first tried Pepper X, it did more than warm his heart.

“I was feeling the heat for three-and-a-half hours. Then the cramps came,” said Currie, one of only five people so far to eat a entire Pepper X. “Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain.”

Heat in peppers is measured in Scoville Heat Units. Zero is bland, and a regular jalapeno pepper registers about 5,000 units. A habanero, the record-holder about 25 years ago, typically tops 100,000. The Guinness Book of World Records lists the Carolina Reaper at 1.64 million units.

Pepper X’s record is an average of 2.69 million units. By comparison, pepper spray commonly holstered by police is around 1.6 million units. Bear spray advertises at 2.2 million units.

Pepper X has been in the works since Currie last set the hottest pepper record in 2013 with the Carolina Reaper, a bright red knobby fruit with what aficionados call a scorpion tail. The goal was to offer an extremely hot pepper flavored with sweetness.

Pepper X is greenish-yellow, doesn’t have the same shelf appeal and carries an earthy flavor once its heat is delivered. It’s a crossbreed of a Carolina Reaper and what Currie mysteriously classifies as a “pepper that a friend of mine sent me from Michigan that was brutally hot.”

The chemical in peppers that causes the burn is called capsaicin and not dangerous unless pounds of it are consumed. Even so, the minds of humans and other mammals perceive capsaicin as a threat and send a strong burning signal to the body. Because birds don’t have the same reaction, they are able spread pepper seeds while sparing the plant.

The burning sensation spurred in humans also releases endorphins and dopamine into the body. Currie, who went all in to growing peppers after kicking drug and alcohol addictions, considers that kick a natural high. He shares his peppers with medical researchers, hoping they can use them to cure disease and help people who suffer chronic pain or discomfort.

For Currie, having the hottest pepper in the world has been a two-decade obsession. It took 10 years to get Pepper X from the first crossbreed experiment to the record, including five years of testing to prove it was a different plant with a different fruit and documenting its average heat over different plants and generations.

“We covered the genetics, we covered the chemistry, we covered the botany,” he said.

Currie, who is trying to build an empire of hot pepper sauces through his PuckerButt company, said he also learned plenty of business lessons during the past decade. While the Carolina Reaper drew much attention, much of it was not proper — or profitable.

Currie allowed people to grow the peppers without protecting his ideas. His lawyers have counted more than 10,000 products that use the Carolina Reaper name, or its other intellectual property, without permission.

Currie is protecting Pepper X. He said no seeds will be released until he is sure his children, his workers — many of whom are on their second chances like him — and their families can fully earn the rewards of his work.

“Everybody else made their money off the Reaper. It’s time for us to reap the benefits of the hard work I do,” Currie said.

That work includes dozens of fields across York County, secret greenhouses where Currie works on peppers to prevent them from being stolen and a PuckerButt store in Fort Mill where Currie works on dozens of sauce ideas that range from mild to blazing hot. He also sells his peppers to companies worldwide.

Challenges involving extremely spicy foods have made headlines after a chipmaker pulled its products following a teen’s death.

Currie wants people to eat peppers and thinks they can benefit from the rush that comes after the burn. He calls most hot pepper challenges stupid and cautions pepper peekers against being overly ambitious and reaching too quickly for a Carolina Reaper or Pepper X.

“You build up a tolerance,” Currie said, later hinting that more pepper heat may be bubbling up from the fields, labs and chillers that he won’t let fans, reporters or even the bankers helping his business expand see.

“Is this the pinnacle?” Currie said of Pepper X, a mischievous smile warming his face. “No, it’s not the pinnacle.”

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Giraffe Feces Seized By US Customs Officials At Minnesota Airport

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal customs agents pooh-poohed the plans of an Iowa woman who wanted to make jewelry from giraffe feces she picked up on a trip to Kenya and brought back to the U.S. in her luggage.

The woman declared the small box of feces when she was selected to have her belongings inspected upon arriving at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport on Sept. 29, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The woman, who was not identified, told officials she planned to use the waste to make a necklace, as she had done in the past with moose poop.

Giraffe poop can be brought back to the U.S. with the proper permits and inspections, according to Minnesota Public Radio. The station reported that the woman won’t face sanctions because she declared the feces and gave it to Customs.

The agency’s agriculture specialists destroyed the giraffe poop.

“There is a real danger with bringing fecal matter into the U.S.,” Customs and Border Protection’s Chicago field Director LaFonda D. Sutton-Burke said in a statement. “If this person had entered the U.S. and had not declared these items, there is high possibility a person could have contracted a disease from this jewelry and developed serious health issues.”

African swine fever, classical swine fever, Newcastle disease, foot-and-mouth disease and swine vesicular disease are among ailments in Kenya that Customs cited as risks.

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Large Pig Named Fred Captured After Days Of Low-Level Crimes

A sizable and mischievous pig is on track for a new life after spending days disrupting traffic and damaging property in Aurora, Colorado.

Fred, as he’s now named, was first spotted on the streets on Sept. 24, when the city received “its first call about a pig in traffic,” city spokesperson Michael Brannen told HuffPost in an email.

But Fred evaded animal control officers that afternoon, and over the next few days the city received multiple sightings of the pig, mostly “trotting near traffic and digging up landscaping.”

At some point, Fred gained a rope lasso seen trailing around his neck, indicating that someone had tried and failed to catch him. It’s unclear who the attempted captor was, since Brannen clarified the lasso was not the doing of animal services.

But on Sept. 27, Fred’s troublemaking ― dubbed a “multi-day crime spree” by local news outlet Denver7 ― came to a close.

But the pig didn’t give himself up easily.

“He was being loud and a little dramatic,” animal field supervisor Augusta Allen told Sentinel Colorado.

It ultimately took five animal services employees, three parks employees and “at least” two employees to successfully capture him, which involved creating a makeshift alley out of wooden panels and corralling Fred into a trailer.

Since his capture, Fred “has been living the comfortable life in the Aurora Animal Shelter,” Brannen said. His shelter digs include a trough ― which the shelter had to buy, since they aren’t used to housing pigs ― and a children’s swimming pool where he can wallow, according to the Sentinel.

Though he’s been described in the media as weighing 400-600 pounds, nobody knows his weight for sure, since the shelter does not have a scale big enough to weigh him.

What they do know is that he has a delightful personality.

“He’s been very very friendly,” Allen told CBS News Colorado. “He’s such a sweet guy. If he were a dog, I would take him home.”

Since no one has come forward to claim the delinquent pig and he had no microchip or other ID, the shelter is working to find a “safe, permanent home for Fred so he can live a happy life,” Brannen said. And while Fred is not available for public adoption, the animal shelter still has numerous dogs, cats and other small animals looking for homes.

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It's No Trick! These Are 2023's Weirdest Halloween Costumes

Halloween is the perfect holiday for weirdos. Actions and behaviors that are normally not allowed are given a one-night pass on Oct. 31.

But the freedom to dress up however you want has a price: People who are weird the other 364 days of the year may feel pressure to top themselves ― especially to show to those normal people how it’s done.

Don’t worry: HuffPost Weird News can help.

Once again, we’ve compiled a guide to the year’s weirdest costumes, and because there is strength in numbers, we’ve included a few couples costumes as well.

Just imagine the look on the other partygoers’ faces when you and your partner show up dressed as utility poles, a toilet paper roll and poop, or even Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce (now that’s really weird!).

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Absolute Monster Of A Pumpkin Sets New World Record

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. (AP) — A Minnesota horticulture teacher set a world record in California on Monday for the heaviest pumpkin after growing a giant jack-o’-lantern gourd weighing 2,749 pounds (1,247 kilograms).

Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota, won the 50th World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California, with an enormous, lumpy, orange pumpkin that could produce at least 687 pies.

“I was not expecting that. It was quite the feeling,” said Gienger, 43, who has been growing pumpkins for nearly 30 years and last year set a new U.S. record for growing a giant gourd.

The previous world record for heaviest pumpkin was set by a grower in Italy who produced a 2,702-pound (1,226-kilogram) squash in 2021, according to Guinness World Records.

Gienger grows his gourds in the pumpkin patch in his backyard. He said this year he decided to give his plants extra care, watering them up to 12 times a day and feeding and fertilizing them a bit more than usual.

Gienger, a landscape and horticulture teacher at Anoka Technical College, has been growing pumpkins since he was a teenager, inspired by his father who also grew them. He first competed in Half Moon Bay’s annual weigh-off in 2020 and has won three of the city’s last four giant pumpkin contests.

“I put in the work so that I can put a smile on people’s faces and it’s just so nice coming out here to see everyone in this town,” he said.

The pumpkin champ won a $30,000 prize for growing the biggest pumpkin and setting a world record.

The gargantuan pumpkin will be on display in Half Moon Bay along with the three runner-ups through next weekend when visitors to the city’s Art and Pumpkin Festival will be able to take photos with Gienger and the enormous gourd.

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You Gotta Be Kitten Me! Missing Cat Gives Owners An Absolute Shock... 12 Years Later

The owners of a missing cat in California thought their feline friend was long gone until they were surprised to learn he was alive earlier this month.

Angelo and Shelley Castellino told Los Angeles’ KABC-TV that their tabby cat, Butters, went missing over 12 years ago after the “very adventurous” feline learned how to use the dog door.

The family, who adopted him when they lived in San Diego, said one day, Butters never returned to their home.

“We went looking for him, and our assumption was the coyotes got him because there’s a canyon nearby, and we didn’t much think about it after that except that we were sad he was gone,” said Angelo Castellino, who also told the station that he thought the family cat was dead and “someone’s meal.”

But their cat had been alive for over a decade and was spotted on Oct. 1 when Dalton Churchwell, an animal control officer in Riverside County, saw the tabby lurking in his backyard in Blythe, California.

Churchwell caught the cat and ― after a scan for a microchip ― found that he went missing from his San Diego family’s home in 2011, according to a press release from the Riverside County Department of Animal Services. San Diego is over 200 miles away from Blythe, according to Google Maps.

The Castellinos, who now live with their cat Barnacles in Stanwood, Washington, told KABC-TV they couldn’t believe the call they got with an update on Butters.

“At first, we didn’t pick it up because we thought it was one of these scam calls, but when they called back again, my wife picked up. He told her they had Butters,” said Angelo Castellino, who got the call on the couple’s 29th wedding anniversary.

“I thought it was a prank call because the cat was gone for 12 years, but how did he know our cat’s name?”

Butters returned to the Castellinos when Larry Rudolph, who has volunteered for 10 years at the county’s animal services department, met with the pair in Seattle after the Animal Solutions Konnection (ASK) Foundation non-profit paid for the flight out on Saturday.

Carolyn Badger, president of the ASK Foundation, said that the non-profit is “thrilled” to work with the department in making the reunion possible.

“It was such a wonderful story, and we are very happy to know that Butters is home and safe with his family,” Badger said in a press release.

Shelley told KABC-TV that the family’s “prodigal kitty has come home.”

Shelley added, “I cannot stress enough how important it is to get your kitty cats and your doggies chipped.”

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