Man called Pineapple to become Queensland mayor
And other stories from the stranger side of life
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The Queensland government is seeking to prevent a climate change activist named Pineapple from becoming the new mayor of Rockhampton. The elected mayor, Margaret Strelow, resigned after a scandal, meaning the role passes to her runner-up in the election: Chris “Pineapple” Hooper. Pineapple is a local climate and peace activist who travels around town barefoot and sleeps in a CBD shopfront.
Couple find pigeon carrier message from 1910
A couple hiking in France have found a cylinder containing a carrier pigeon message dating from 110 years ago. “I dug it up and I cut it to see what was inside,” Jade Halaoui told the Les Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace newspaper. The message, dated July 16 1910, was written by a Prussian infantry officer to outline military drills in the Ingersheim area when Alsace was under German control.
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Aussie researchers find skull from Homo erectus cousin
Researchers in Australia say they have discovered a two-million-year-old skull in South Africa. The skull belonged to a male Paranthropus robustus, which the BBC describes as a “cousin species” to Homo erectus. “Most of the fossil record is just a single tooth here and there so to have something like this is very rare, very lucky,” said one of the team.
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A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
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.