Priest accidentally plays grime during mass
And other stories from the stranger side of life
A priest in Ireland accidentally incorporated the work of a grime artist into a mass live-streamed from Kincasslagh and Burtonport parish in County Donegal. In his opening blessing, Father Pat Ward played the song by the artist Black the Ripper. On realising his error he said: “Black the Ripper ... A wee bit of rap in the morning, wakes you up. I hope that didn’t do anybody’s blood pressure any difficulty there.”
Firm turns corpses into compost
A new business is transforming human bodies into compost before sending it to loved ones. The boss, Micah Truman, left his lucrative career in finance after discovering that it was legal to compost human bodies in Washington state. Return Home turns corpses into compost by mixing the remains with wood chips, water, heat, sawdust and alfalfa to rapidly increase decomposition.
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Sausage solves nine-year-old case
Police in Germany say they have solved a nine-year-old burglary case thanks to DNA found on a half-eaten piece of sausage. Officers in Schwelm said the suspect appeared to have helped himself to a bite during the break-in in Gevelsberg in March 2012. However, the statute of limitations on the burglary has expired, so the Albanian suspect is unlikely to be extradited to Germany.
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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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