Teenagers can ‘catch’ moods, study reveals
And other stories from the stranger side of life

A study by Oxford and Birmingham universities has found that teenagers can “catch” moods from their friends. Researchers investigated “emotional contagion” among teens, to see the impact of individuals’ moods within a shared social network and found that moods become similar to those of the people they spend time with. Dr Per Block, of Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, said: “Mood is contagious, and though both positive and negative moods are ‘caught’, bad moods are more potent.”
Shoppers caught in glue prank
A group of teenage boys have put superglue in a hand sanitiser bottle and offered free squirts to shoppers in Bradford. According to reports, the boys stood outside a Morrison’s supermarket approaching shoppers. A woman said she almost accepted but she stopped when one of the boys laughed and said the bottle contained “fucking superglue”.
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Couple ‘had sex on Ferris wheel’
A couple in the US who allegedly had sex on a 200-foot-tall Ferris wheel are facing public lewdness charges after footage of the encounter was uploaded to a porn site. Police in South Carolina say Eric and Lori Harmon had sex in a glass chamber on the Myrtle Beach SkyWheel landmark, in plain view of the public.
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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.
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