The cast and crew of TV’s Top Gear had to abandon their cars at the roadside and flee Argentina after being pelted with stones by an angry crowd.
The attack happened after it emerged they were using a vehicle with a number plate apparently referring to the Falklands War.
That vehicle – a Porsche with the registration number H982 FKL which some people suggested could refer to the Falklands conflict of 1982 – was among those abandoned.
Picture above shows Top Gear presenters James May, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond.
Sorry for ‘tongue in cheek’ remark
The managing director of retailer John Lewis has issued an unreserved apology for what he said were “tongue in cheek” remarks about France – in which he said the country was “finished”.
Andy Street told an audience of entrepreneurs in London that France was “sclerotic, hopeless and downbeat” and advised those with investments there to “get them out quickly”, the Times reported.
He added: “I have never been to a country more ill at ease… nothing works and worse, nobody cares about it.”
But after the remarks were publicised, Street was forced to backtrack in a statement issued by John Lewis.
Horse meat in pork sausages
A food import company in Britain has been fined £5,000 after a pork sausage product was found to contain almost 50 per cent horse meat, trading standards officials said.
A test purchase was carried out at a shop in Dartford, Kent, by Kent County Council’s trading standards department in October last year.
Tests by Kent Scientific Services on the vacuum-packed Lukanka Chumerna product, which was on sale labelled as containing pork sausage meat, found it was 46 per cent horse meat.
2,500 body bags in online auction
The Dutch government is selling off 2,500 body bags in an online auction.
Rob Meijer, commercial director of BVA Auctions, said his company sells plenty of strange stuff, but this one is “special”. He said there has not been a great deal of interest – except from the media – in the unusual offer. The bags are being sold in a single lot, which has a minimum price of €4,000.
The auction closes on October 6.
Meijer thinks an organisation such as a relief agency could be interested in buying the bags. The bags are being sold by a national agency that sells off surplus government equipment and property.
Birthplace of modern blue jeans
Tourism officials are planning a three-day festival in Reno, Nevada, next autumn to celebrate and promote the city as the birthplace of what became modern blue jeans.
Reno tailor Jacob Davis created riveted denim jeans in 1871 in a city centre shop. Two years later, he and Levi Strauss & Co patented the trousers with the rivets to the corners and pockets that made them the sturdy favourites of miners, loggers and cowboys who helped tame the West.
The Blue Genes Jam next October 2-4 will celebrate the iconic trousers’ impact on popular culture with concerts, fashion shows, a retail marketplace and a mini-festival of films that were milestones in the history of blue jeans, such as James Dean’s Rebel Without A Cause. It will also include scholarly presentations on the “Jeaneology” of the trousers.