Mobile phone owners lose more than 190,000 handsets in the back of London taxis each year, according to research.
Internet security firm ESET surveyed 300 cabbies and found that on average a driver finds around eight forgotten mobile phones in their taxi each year, with around half of them not being secured by any type of pin code or other means, leaving private data vulnerable.
Mark James, a security specialist, said: “Today we use our mobiles for a multitude of tasks, whether it’s our online banking or connecting to corporate e-mail systems, and we do not want our devices to fall into the wrong hands.”
A friendly thrashing – 22-0
A non-league football team secured a prestigious friendly against international opposition – then lost 22-0.
Cheadle Town were subjected to the thrashing by Russia’s Under-19 team on Sunday. The Cheshire-based team were 1-0 down within four minutes of the kick-off at Mottram Hall.
By half-time their Russian opponents were 9-0 ahead, but they enjoyed an even more productive second half, notching another 13 goals.
Women do an extra day’s work
Women devote well over the equivalent of a working day each week to household chores – double the amount undertaken by men.
A poll for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour suggests that women spend an average of 11-and-a-half hours doing housework by their own estimation, while men complete just six.
The survey, commissioned to launch a week of special programmes to launch the Woman’s Hour Chore Calculator, found the most popular bit of housework was cooking.
US city launches Cash trail
The US city of Folsom has completed the first section of the Johnny Cash Trail that will pay tribute to the country music singer and his 1968 album At Folsom Prison.
City officials unveiled the first section of the 2.5-mile trail on Saturday – a pedestrian and bike bridge designed to echo Folsom State Prison’s east gate guard towers, according to the Sacramento Bee.
The trail will cover prison property in California and link to other local trails. The newspaper reports that the city is planning a fundraising drive to pay for a two-acre park next to the bridge and art installations along the trail, including a 40-foot steel statue of Cash.
Plane passengers get crabby
If passengers on a delayed flight from New York to North Carolina in the US got a bit crabby, no one could say they were being shellfish. Their flight left LaGuardia Airport about half-an-hour late on Thursday evening because some live crabs got loose in the cargo hold.
A US Airways spokesman told Newsday it is unclear how the crustaceans got out of their container or what species they were but there were “a lot of them”. Workers had to sweep the crabs out of the hold before the flight could get on its way.
Okra mistaken for marijuana
A US man says officers looking for drugs mistook his okra plants for marijuana.
Dwayne Perry of Cartersville, Georgia, told WSB-TV he was woken by a helicopter flying low over his house before heavily-armed deputies and a dog unit showed up at his door. They were from the Governor’s Task Force for drug suppression and looking for marijuana plants.
What they had seen, apparently, were Perry’s okra plants and a shrub at the end of his house. He said the officers ended up apologising to him, while Patrol Captain Kermit Stokes said the plants had characteristics similar to marijuana.