WEIRD, WEIRD

Plastic snake startles woman

An escaped king cobra that sparked an emergency call to the police and pet-control officials turned out to be a plastic toy.

A woman raised the alarm after spotting the 'killer' reptile on a chair in her garden in Cumbria, in north west England, last week.

Inspector Martyn Fletcher, a pet-control officer, said that the woman thought she saw the snake move but he soon realised that it wasn't actually real.

He told BBC News: "It didn't take me too long to realise that this king cobra was the plastic kind -- thankfully, too, as they are deadly venomous snakes.

"Obviously we are trained to be able to identify snakes but it is not so obvious to members of the public - so I understand they may have been spooked by the sighting."

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Eyebrows raised after costly haircut

A hairdresser has been slammed for charging a customer US$1,950 (approximately J$292,500) for a haircut.

Stylist Jasmine Policarpo posted a clip on her TikTok account where she talked about charging the high price for a cut and colour change.

Policarpo explained that the process took around 13 hours and that the woman was charged $150 per hour, meaning that the final bill was just shy of $2,000.

The price was savaged by many users on the social-media platform, who were outraged that Policarpo had decided to charge so much.

One user wrote: "The new iPhone cost less."

Others suggested that their hair stylists could do a better job in far less time.

A further comment read: "Could easily be done in 5-7 hours."

Another user remarked: "I got the same and even better for 300."

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Bodybuilder sets new world record

A female bodybuilder has broken a world record for crushing watermelons with her thighs.

Kortney Olson burst three watermelons in the space of 7.5 seconds, easily eclipsing the previous record of 14.65 seconds set by Ukrainian Olga Liashchuk back in 2014.

Olson also beat the male record of 10.88 seconds from Iranian athlete Rohollah Doshmanziari.

She performed the record-breaking stunt earlier this month to celebrate the opening of her athletic clothing store in Las Vegas.

Olson told the Times-Standard newspaper: "I just decided in correlation with our store opening because it's a community space and we really want to start utilising the space to teach things, to share this watermelon-crushing story with younger girls."

She also explained that it was a lengthy process trying to make sure her record attempt was valid.

Olson shared: "You've got to have two witness affidavits, you have to use two official stopwatches that are within a tenth of a second, and then you take the average of your two timekeepers.

"You go through quite an extensive application process and then go from there."