A veteran British sailor hopes to smash the world record for circumnavigating the globe in a powerboat by taking to the waves in an environmentally-friendly vessel shaped like a torpedo.
Alan Priddy, 61, plans to shave about 10 days off the current powerboat record of 60 days, 23 hours and 49 minutes, held by Pete Bethune from New Zealand.
After securing £2.9 million of funding, the project team, named Team Britannia, hope to begin construction of the 80ft boat early next year so they can set off from Gibraltar on their 24,000 mile voyage in November 2015.
Neighbour gunning for trouble
A man accused of firing a bullet through a neighbour’s window told a judge it was the only way he knew how to unload the gun.
The Bucks County Courier Times said George Byrd, 31, of Penndel, at first denied being behind the shooting in Middletown, a suburb of Philadelphia, but admitted during his arraignment that he fired the weapon to clear the chamber because he was unfamiliar with guns.
No-one was injured. A preliminary court hearing will take place on October 8.
Athletes suffer from Kim longing
North Korea’s athletes at the Asian Games, reportedly feeling homesick while competing in South Korea, have held a special “longing for the leader” gathering to express how much they miss their homeland.
The gathering featured songs and poems praising leader Kim Jong Un, according to the North’s Korean Central News Agency.
The report said that at the gathering, called an “Evening longing for respected Marshal Kim Jong Un Kim,” sports minister Kim Yong Hun said that while they have only been away from the leader for about a week, “the minds of all members of the delegation and players are running to him, whom they long to see, awake or asleep”.
Cleese labels his mother ‘tyrant’
Comedian John Cleese, 74, has suggested his difficult relationship with his “tyrant” late mother was to blame for his years of therapy and problems with women.
The Monty Python star, who married his fourth wife Jennifer Wade in 2012, said his mother Muriel had “utterly egotistical impulses” and he lacked any affection for her during his childhood.
He told the Sunday Times magazine: “It is said you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but it seems to me an ideal opportunity. I don’t want to get too dark and depressing but she was emotionally difficult. She was a tyrant.”
Times a-changing again in Egypt
Egypt has rolled clocks back one hour for the end of daylight savings time – the fourth time change in less than five months.
Egypt is now two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time and six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
The country stopped switching between summer and winter time after the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in the 2011 uprising. In May the government moved clocks ahead one hour as a power-saving measure. It then switched clocks for the start and end of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, which this year fell in the scorching months of June and July.