Getting your tongue around Welsh place name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a tough task for Britons let alone for potential visitors from overseas.
But the Chinese have come out with their own way of describing Llanfair PG (to give its short name) by referring to it as Healthy-lung Village (or Jian Feu Cun), in that you need a lot of puff to pronounce it. The Anglesey village is one of 101 famous points of interest in the UK provided with names by the Chinese public as part of a campaign by VisitBritain.
Other UK names given Chinese monikers include Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset – the huge figure in an excitable state has been dubbed Big White Streaker (Bai Se Da Luo Ben) – and Potteries area Stoke-on-Trent, which has been called Diverse Ceramics (Wan Bo Tao Ci).
Shocking suppers ‘traumatic’
Poor food and rude waiters can create a restaurant experience that is literally traumatic, scientists have discovered.
A US study of almost a million restaurant ratings by diners found that the language of “bad” reviews was strikingly similar to that used by people recalling terrorist attacks or horrific accidents. In fact, survivors of awful restaurant visits appeared to be mildly traumatised.
Professor Dan Jurafsky, language and computer scientist from Stanford University, who led the research based on downloads from the Yelp review website, said: “We found that the language of one-star reviews was very specific language. It was in the past tense rather than the present, it was a lot of pronouns and mentions of other people, a lot of negative words like ‘terrible and awful’, and, unusually, a lot of first-person plural pronouns, words like ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’.”
Facebook fugitive re-arrested
A wanted criminal who taunted police on their own Facebook page with “Catch me if you can” has been arrested.
Logan Rhys James, of Caerphilly, South Wales, had been on the run for a week after being recalled to jail for breaching his licence. Gwent Police posted the 19-year-old’s mugshot on social media with an appeal for information on his whereabouts.
Just hours later a comment appeared, from James’s profile, on the forces’ Facebook page saying: “Haha catch me if you can wont (sic) see me slipping”. However, the teenager failed to live up to the cocky boast – and was arrested in his home town.
Camouflage pants on their heads
Two men were arrested after a raid at a southern Oregon convenience store in which the robbers’ “hoods” were actually boxer-style underwear in a camouflage pattern.
Lieutenant Josh Brooks, of Oregon State Police, said a trooper acting on a tip determined that one suspect in the robbery of an AM/PM store in Eagle Point on September 19 last year was in custody in Florence, Oregon, on unrelated matters. Lt Brooks said that, while interviewing that man, the trooper obtained information that led to the second suspect.
A spokesman said both 21-year-old Gage Miller and 22-year-old Timothy Raybould were arrested and taken to the Jackson County Jail in Medford for investigation of robbery. Both are from Florence, on the Oregon coast.
Wild boar shuts airport runways
Spain’s airport authority said a wild boar which broke through a perimeter fence at Madrid’s international airport caused runways to be shut briefly and two landings to be delayed.
The beast set off security alarms late on Friday and, when cameras focused on the spot, operators observed it turning around and loping off through the hole it had made.
The incident happened 100m from the nearest stretch of runway. It delayed an incoming flight from London for 20 minutes and a domestic flight from A Coruna for 10 minutes, the airport authority said. Newspaper El Pais reported that the captain on board Iberia flight 3179 inbound from London told passengers an animal had “surprisingly” forced him to abort a landing approach.