‘I made it through the rain’

In an attempt to clear out protesters objecting to the nation’s pandemic restrictions, New Zealand authorities in February turned to Barry Manilow. On the fifth day of protests outside the nation’s Parliament in Wellington, government officials turned on sprinklers and blared Barry Manilow through loudspeakers. Protesters were able to mitigate some of the effects of the sprinklers by digging drainage ditches but had to bear the full force of Manilow until the crowd began blaring Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in return. Parliamentary Speaker Trevor Mallard took responsibility for soaking the crowd and blasting them with the maligned singer.

Morning and more edition

Mazda drivers in the Seattle area had better like public radio. According to Puget Sound public radio broadcaster KUOW, the station has been told by several owners of Mazdas made around 2016 that their cars’ radios have gotten stuck on the station’s 94.9 FM frequency. According to people interviewed by the station, the owners report their cars’ infotainment system fritzing out. “I realized I could hear [KUOW], but I can’t change the station, can’t use the navigation, can’t use the Bluetooth.” The station confirmed the problem with local Mazda dealers whose service managers say they’re flooded with complaints. The radio station said it was allowing outside firms to investigate their transmitters to resolve the problem.

Reindeer in the headlights

Unpredictable movements by a herd of reindeer scratched parts of a Swedish car race in February. Officials from the World Rally Championship said they’d need to cancel two stages of Rally Sweden, which kicked off Feb. 24, because grazing reindeer had moved too close to the proposed race course in Örträsk, Sweden. Rally Sweden CEO Glenn Olsson said reindeer farmers, who blamed changing local weather patterns for the animals’ movements, requested the change.

Shanghaied shack

State police in Michigan are looking for a rather large piece of stolen property. On Feb. 16, Michigan State Police investigator Matthew Scott announced that police were looking for a 12-foot-by-28-foot cabin stolen in its entirety from where it sat in Coldsprings Township, Mich. According to the cabin’s owner, who lives elsewhere full time, the 336-square-foot domicile was last seen in late 2021. “It’s kind of a weird situation,” Scott told the Detroit Free Press. “At this point, the cabin is definitely not where it’s supposed to be.”

Internet filtered

A French father faces a criminal charge after inadvertently shutting down his town’s internet. The unnamed man bought and deployed a signal scrambler to prevent his children from scrolling through social media at night. But the scrambler device not only blocked internet reception in his home between midnight and 3 a.m., but also throughout the small beach town of Messanges in southwestern France. Police say the device blocked both Wi-Fi and cellular telephone signals in the nearly 1,000-person town. If convicted, the man could face six months in jail and a $34,000 fine.

Mislaid molars

After 11 years a British man finally has his teeth back. Paul Bishop of Stalybridge, U.K., said he lost his false teeth after drinking too much cider at a Spanish resort in 2011. Bishop said he presumed the teeth were lost after he accidentally put them in a garbage can. When he came back later to find the teeth, they were gone. But this year, Bishop received a package in the mail containing his lost false teeth along with an explanation. The 63-year-old told the BBC that Spanish authorities found and retrieved the false teeth at a local landfill. He said Spanish authorities matched his dentures to his DNA records on file with the British government. “Next thing you know, they have found my DNA and address from British records and popped it in the post,” he told the broadcaster.

The Boris Johnson of toddlers

For one Georgia toddler, every day is a bad hair day. Not yet 2, Lock Samples has been diagnosed by doctors at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta with a rare condition known as uncombable hair syndrome. For Lock, that means his shock of ultra-fine blond hair resembles a fright wig on a daily basis. Doctors say that his hair might become more normal with the onset of puberty. But for now, besides bad hair days, there’s nothing to worry about because the condition only affects Lock’s looks. “We were at Waffle House on Thanksgiving and an older woman looked at us and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, that baby wakes up every day with a bad hair day,’” his mother told WAGA. “But kids are like, ‘That baby has the coolest hair!’”