The Book of the Year Read online

  A pigeon in Kuwait was caught carrying drugs across the Iraqi border in its backpack. One hundred and seventy-eight pills of what is thought to have been ketamine were found in a fabric pouch strapped to the pigeon’s back. Officials said they knew pigeons had been used to smuggle drugs across the border before, but this was the first time they’d caught one in the act.

  IRELAND▶

  For accidental sexy phone calls, see Cock-ups; for alcoholic eggs, see Easter; for a mysterious beach, see Lost and Found; for what’s injuring so many people in Galway, see Selfies; and for what not to wear in parliament, see Ties.

  IRONY▶

  A Nottingham brewery failed to organise a piss-up in itself.

  This year, a brewery in Nottingham failed to organise an event they had called ‘Piss Up in a Brewery’. The co-owner of the Black Iris Brewery, Alex Wilson, announced that ‘due to a cock-up’ they had been unable to get the proper licence. Consequently, they had to move it to a nearby pub. Wilson told punters, ‘We’ll just have to call it “Piss Up near a Brewery”.’

  In other irony news:

  ▶ The UK’s Government Digital Service, which is responsible for improving government IT, found itself unable to pay staff because of technical problems.

  ▶ A 46-year-old worker at the National Rifle Association accidentally shot himself at the NRA headquarters. (He suffered only a ‘minor wound’.)

  ▶ In announcing the US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, Donald Trump said, ‘I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.’ He then decided to hold a ‘Pittsburgh, not Paris’ rally in Lafayette Square, Washington DC, which is named after the French general who gave crucial help to the USA in the War of Independence.

  ▶ And in downtown Albuquerque, a news crew had their truck stolen while they were off gathering footage for a story about the problem of urban crime in downtown Albuquerque.

  ISIS▶

  For wild pigs taking on Islamists see Boar; for the war against referees, see Iraq; for tasteless toys, see LEGO; for the mother of all bombs, see MOAB; and for the former editor of the ISIS magazine, see Osborne, George.

  ISLANDS▶

  China blew up islands in one place, while simultaneously building them in another.

  China’s demolition of its own islands forms part of the country’s ambitious ‘Silk Road’ project launched this year, which aims to establish new trade routes through Asia and Europe. The hope is that by removing some of the small islands that dot the Mekong River, which runs through China, Burma, Thailand and Laos, the route can be opened up for large boats and ships. China describes this rather destructive process as a ‘gentling out’ of the river.

  Environmentalists take a less relaxed view, arguing that such extensive changes threaten the richness of the world’s second most biodiverse river (after the Amazon), and that endangered species such as the Mekong catfish, which relies on the islands for feeding and shelter, will suffer.

  At the same time as blowing up islands in the Mekong, China is building new ones in the South China Sea in a bid to increase the scope of its territorial waters. This isn’t something that’s going down well with the country’s neighbours. Six Asian governments lay claim to various overlapping parts of the South China Sea, and America is none too happy either.* One island, called appropriately enough Mischief Island, has proved a particular bone of contention. Having built on to a natural reef there, China erected large concrete structures that look suspiciously like missile silos. America for its part then carried out military exercises within 12 miles of the artificial island, arguing that it lies in international waters.

  Indonesia made a renewed attempt to count its islands. It registered 13,466 with the UN in 2012 but has already counted another 1,700 since. The government now wants to work out how many it has once and for all – which is difficult because many keep sinking and then re-appearing due to sea level fluctuations.

  JAMS, TRAFFIC▶

  An epidemic of traffic jams was caused by amorous animals.

  Drivers in Melbourne had their way blocked by a pair of kinky kangaroos; turned-on turkeys caused a number of accidents in Indiana; and a road was closed in Delaware to stop salamanders from being squashed as they had sex. A huge traffic jam was caused in Dubai by a pair of mating camels. In fairness to them, they only took up one lane; the tailbacks were mostly caused by motorists honking their horns and taking photographs. ‘It’s undoubtedly the best thing I’ve seen since I moved to the Middle East,’ said one eyewitness.

  Camels in Iran are being fitted with reflective collars and licence plates in an attempt to tackle road accidents.

  JAPAN▶

  The Battle of the Giant Robots was held up by health and safety concerns.

  In September, the USA and Japan organised a robot duel – between a 13-foot Japanese robot called Kuratas and America’s 16-foot Eagle Prime, both piloted by humans sitting inside. The contest came about after a group of American roboticists called MegaBots challenged a Japanese group, Suidobashi Heavy Industry, to a fight, but it initially had to be delayed due to various logistical challenges: namely finding a venue where the floor wouldn’t collapse under the weight of huge robots falling over; getting large power supplies into the venue; and no end of health and safety concerns, including learning how the pilots inside the robots could ‘figure out how not to die’. The American bot’s weapons included a massive paintball gun, grappling claw, a chainsaw and a very large drill.

  The human Japanese army, founded in 1958, has never fired a shot (or a paintball) in battle, due to constitutional restraints on Japanese military activity. It’s not even called an ‘army’ – it’s technically the ‘Self-Defence Force’. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzoē Abe, and his right-wing Liberal Democratic Party are hoping to change this in the next three years with a new constitution that takes a less pacifist approach. That said, Abe probably didn’t realise how aggressive his speech on the subject would sound when translated into English, notably the remark, ‘2020 is the year when a new Japan will kick off.’

  Not everyone in Japan shares Mr Abe’s hawkish views. One man, Masaki Tomiyama, announced he was suing the Japanese government on the grounds that when his son joined the army, they started training him to kill people. He said, ‘I will never allow him to go to war – that’s not why he signed up.’

  Elderly people in Japan were offered discounts on their funeral if they gave up their driving licence. A company in the Aichi district offered a 15 per cent discount to any drivers who can prove they’ve handed their licence in at a local police station.

  JEANS▶

  An Egyptian politician tried to ban kids from wearing ripped jeans.

  Egyptian MP Abdul Karim Zakaria announced he was planning to introduce a motion that, if passed, would impose a dress code on schools and universities. He said recent fashion crazes ‘left many of us flabbergasted …most noticeable is the “ripped or torn jeans” fad.’ Those supporting him included the dean of Cairo University, who said that women have the right to wear whatever they like, but stressed in a separate statement that parliament must ban the ‘socially unacceptable craze’ of ripped jeans.

  American shop Nordstrom took the craze for tatty trousers one step further by launching $425 jeans covered in artificial mud. The mud doesn’t wash out because it’s impregnated into the fabric – mostly on the knees, pockets and crotch. The move prompted an angry response from Mike Rowe, the host of TV programme Dirty Jobs, who said Nordstrom’s jeans ‘aren’t pants. They’re not even fashion. They’re a costume for wealthy people who see work as ironic.’

  Perhaps the most exciting jeans innovations came from the H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award, which offers grants to clothing designers. One prizewinner found a way of recycling the colour from old jeans to dye new ones, which promises to make future jeans manufacturing much more environmentally friendly. Another winner was a firm that came up with a revolutionary new fabric made of cow dung, dubbed ‘manu
re couture’. The poo-fabric, called Mestic, is made by converting the cellulose in cowpats into a tough, biodegradable material (the firm stresses that the resulting jeans don’t smell). H&M gave the company a 150,000-euro grant, so turd-derived clothing could soon be arriving on a catwalk near you.

  JESUS▶

  Jesus’s tomb got a $4 million facelift.

  Christ is believed to be buried inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which has been damaged by pilgrims’ footfall over the years. The six denominations that share guardianship of the church therefore agreed to restore the site and split the cost. The fact that they reached any agreement with each other was an impressive achievement. The groups are such bitter rivals that they don’t trust each other with the keys, and have had to leave them with a Muslim family since the 12th century. Even this safeguard hasn’t prevented violence breaking out. In 2002, a Coptic monk at the church moved his chair from its agreed spot to get some shade, which was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopian denomination. Eleven monks were hospitalised after the resulting fisticuffs.

  The chapel Jesus rests in, known as the Edicule, is considered the most sacred monument in Christianity. As part of the restoration, a small window has been carved into its wall, through which you can see the original rock burial bed on which it is thought Jesus’s body rested.

  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is also the site of the Immovable Ladder. This is a ladder that’s been leaning up against a wall since at least 1728. No one knows who it belongs to, and so no one is allowed to move it, for fear of angering one of the other sects.

  A statue of a homeless Jesus has been genuinely homeless for over a year. The bronze sculpture of Jesus sleeping rough on a park bench was given to the Australian city of Townsville in 2016, but the council can’t choose where to put it. They finally commissioned a report to make the decision, but in the meantime Jesus is camping out at the Sacred Heart Cathedral.

  JET PACKS▶

  Firefighters in Dubai started using jet packs to reach fires.

  Dubai’s incredibly heavy traffic poses real challenges to any emergency service trying to reach a fire. So the Dubai government has introduced the firefighting jet pack, designed to allow firefighters to arrive at the scene of the incident by jet ski and attack fires from the city’s shoreline. The jet pack uses the water pressure from the jet ski to propel the firefighters into the air.*

  In Norway, a company has launched a horizontal jet pack for skiers named ‘ThrustMe’. It’s intended to help power skiers who are travelling horizontally or uphill, potentially eliminating the need for chairlifts. Skiers strap four small jet engines to either side of their waist, helping them to reach speeds of up to 50mph.

  These jet packs weren’t the only one-person flying machines to launch this year. In late March, inventor Richard Browning announced his latest innovation – a real-life Iron Man suit that can fly its owner at a theoretical top speed of 280mph (though so far, he has only hovered in it). Unfortunately, the announcement didn’t attract much interest. He launched it so close to April Fool’s Day that almost everyone thought it was a hoax.

  JOBS▶

  Some of the most desirable jobs advertised in 2017 included:

  ▶ Job Title: Cat-cuddler

  Job Description: A cat-lover was required to provide petting at Just Cats Veterinary Clinic in Dublin. Applicants needed to have ‘gentle hands capable of petting and stroking cats for long periods of time’ and an ‘ability to understand different types of purring’.

  ▶ Job Title: Minister of Rum

  Job Description: Bacardi advertised for a rum aficionado to spread the word about the greatness of rum and ‘revolutionise the rum category’. Trinidadian DJ and music producer Jillionaire was selected for the role.

  ▶ Job Title: Chief adventure officer

  Job Description: National Rail employed a 19-year-old to travel around Britain and visit all its most exciting and iconic sites, and then to vlog about them in order to encourage people to buy a 16–25 Railcard.

  ▶ Job Title: Chocolate taster

  Job Description: The role was advertised by Mondeleēz International (the parent company of Cadbury, Oreo and Milka), and required someone to taste their chocolate products and give honest and objective opinions about them.

  … and a less desirable-sounding one:

  ▶ Job Title: Cold-blooded and spineless officer

  Job Description: The person who got this job had to coordinate the delivery of a project that aimed to record and celebrate invertebrates in the North Pennines.

  For other odd jobs, see Goalkeepers; Hermits; and Osborne, George.

  JOURNALISTS▶

  Newsreaders in Georgia read the news with bags on their heads.

  Dissident Azerbaijani reporter Afqan Muxtarli was living in Georgia when, according to his account, he was attacked, abducted, carried back to Azerbaijan and had 10,000 euros stuffed into his pockets so that he could be charged with smuggling cash over the border. The Georgian government denied any involvement in the alleged abduction, but as an act of solidarity several presenters wore bags on their heads on TV shows and at a parliamentary committee session. One wore a bag to interview the deputy interior minister, which annoyed him so much that he walked out.

  One journalist who definitely didn’t wear a bag on her head was the Grimsby Telegraph’s Laura Gooderham. She was sent to interview contestants at the auditions for the Miss Great Grimsby and District beauty pageant, was persuaded to enter by a former title-holder and ended up winning.

  In Tajikistan, a new rule came into force requiring journalists to refer to the president by his full official title of ‘the Founder of Peace and National Unity, Leader of the Nation, President of the Republic of Tajikistan, His Excellency Emomali Rahmon’. And in Slovakia journalists faced hefty fines for referring to Britain as ‘Britain’. A new law states that they have to use official country names in news reports, and so when discussing Brexit they are supposed say ‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, and presumably also ‘the-United-Kingdom-of-Great-Britain-and-Northern-Irexit’.

  A journalist in Belarus promised he would eat his own newspaper if his local hockey team made it to the play-offs. They did, so reporter Vyacheslav Fedorenkov ate his paper, dipped in soup. He only got through half of it.

  KANGAROOS▶

  Volvo admitted that its driverless cars are confused by kangaroos.

  The cars can’t work out if the marsupials are near or far away, because they use the ground as a reference point to detect the shape and size of objects. Since kangaroos hop up and down, they look smaller when they’re in the air and larger when they’re on the ground. As far as the car is concerned, this makes them look as though they’re getting closer, then further away, then closer, then further away.

  Between June and July this year, South Australia’s Department of Environment did its annual count of all the kangaroos in the state. The survey is conducted from low-flying planes by observers who literally sit in the passenger seat, looking out of the window, and counting all the kangaroos they can see below.

  One ‘kangaroo’ that won’t be included in the census is a rooster which, according to its owners, thinks it’s a kangaroo. Ross David West, who lives in Australia’s Northern Territory, adopted the cockerel when he found it wandering in the road, and put it in an enclosure with rescued kangaroos. It now imitates the roos’ behaviour, kicking like them, biting like them and eating their food. Its owners have named it Cluck Norris.

  KAZAKHSTAN▶

  See Qazaqstan.

  KENYA▶

  Political logos in the Kenyan election included a milk packet, an electricity pylon and a robot.

  Kenya’s overall literacy rate is 78 per cent, but in rural areas it’s much lower. This means political parties need an easily recognisable symbol on their leaflets and posters if they are to have a chance of success. The problem is that all the best ones have already been taken, and so for
this year’s election independent candidates were forced to adopt objects like baskets, batteries, termites and trowels. One candidate, Sammy Ruwa, had a symbol almost identical to that of the American football team the Miami Dolphins.

  Despite the large number of parties, the election was essentially a straight choice between Uhuru and NASA, that is, between the incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta and the coalition National Super Alliance Party (known by the abbreviation NASA).* Uhuru won it, but Kenya’s supreme court ruled the result invalid a month later due to ‘irregularities and illegalities’. It’s the first time a court has ever overturned an election result in Africa. Kenyatta gave a speech in English saying that the judges’ decision must be respected, and then another in Swahili to his supporters, denouncing them as ‘crooks’ and saying the whole thing was the fault of ‘whites’ and ‘homosexuals’.

  KIDS▶

  For Chinese child spies, see Espionage; for English schoolboys in skirts, see Heatwaves; for Finnish teenagers on hobbyhorses, see Horse Racing; for a three-year-old politician, see Iran; for a 12-year-old bassist, see Music; for head-louse sharing, see Phones; for footwear shaming, see Schools; and for various children not allowed into the US, see Visas.

  KIM JONG-NAM, ASSASSINATION OF▶

  Kim Jong-un’s brother was killed by two women, one of whom was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word ‘LOL’.

  The incident occurred in Kuala Lumpur airport in February. The women involved claimed they hadn’t known they were carrying the deadly VX nerve agent,* believing instead that it was baby oil. They also claimed they’d been paid $90 each to spray the substance on Kim Jong-nam’s face as part of a TV-show prank. If the VX had been applied to his face directly the fumes would probably have killed the people applying it. So experts believe the two attackers sprayed separate ingredients that mixed together on his skin.