Pastor says world will end next week

And other stories from the stranger side of life

IN SPACE - JULY 17: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) In this handout photo provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) on July 17, 2014, German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst took this image of the Earth
(Image credit: 2014 Alexander Gerst / ESA/NASA)

A conspiracy theorist has predicted that the world will end next week, when two planets align. Evangelical pastor and Youtuber Paul Begley said Jupiter and Saturn’s respective orbits will mean they form a deadly “double planet” phenomenon in the sky on 21 December - the first “conjunction” of the two since 1623. However, he previously predicted the world would end in 2012.

Sex robots ‘should be marketed at elderly’

A professor has argued that older people should use sex robots. Professor Nancy Jecker of the University of Washington School of Medicine believes the dishy droids could be used by the elderly to fight “impaired sexual functioning”. Speaking to the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business, she said: “I'm calling on industry to market themselves to an older clientele, a clientele that has age-related impairment of sexual function.”

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Couple find message in bottle from 1,000 miles away

A couple in North Carolina say they found a message in a bottle that traveled over 1,000 miles from Prince Edward Island, Canada. Ann and Roy Huntley said they were walking on the beach in Ocracoke when they found a glass bottle with a note inside. Earlier this month, another message in a bottle launched from Canada was found on a beach in Ireland.

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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.