Quick Takes

Rapid descent

In Australia, a man of the people guzzles beer, and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott isn’t above showing off while doing so. Goaded on by members of an Australian Rules football team inside a bar in Sydney, the leader of the center-right Liberal Party was caught on camera downing a pint of beer in just seven seconds on April 18. Abbott’s feat, however, did not approach the prowess of former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who once downed 2½ glasses of beer in 11 seconds.

Nine political lives?

When polls closed on April 9 for student government elections at North Dakota State University, it seemed that Professor X’s write-in campaign had succeeded. Professor X, a stray cat whose adopted owners pushed the feline for political office, garnered the seventh-most votes—good enough for one of the 11 Student Senate seats. Unfortunately for Professor X’s campaign team, the NDSU student government ruled X’s election invalid because the cat was not an enrolled student at the university.

Flying cargo

A tractor-trailer that overturned on Interstate 5 in Lynnwood, Wash., on April 17 shut down two lanes of traffic, but that wasn’t the biggest concern. The overturned truck unleashed a massive swarm of angry honeybees. The truck was carrying freight for Belleville Honey, a company that rents out its bee colonies for area farmers. According to the company, more than 22 million bees were on board at the time of the accident. Many of the bees died in the crash, and company officials spent much of the rest of the day trying to round up survivors.

Squirmy weather

Reports of earthworms raining down over parts of Norway like droplets of water have baffled scientists in the Scandinavian country. Biologist Karsten Erstad came upon thousands of earthworms lying motionless on the snow while skiing earlier in April. According to Erstad, the snowpack is too deep for the worms to have tunneled through. After garnering a bit of attention in the local news, corroborating reports of earthworm rain in Southern Norway have flooded in to Norwegian media. Some scientists speculate that the worms are being lifted into the air by strong gusts of wind and simply landing like rain.

Rowing scared

Freshmen rowers at Washington University in St. Louis found themselves under attack when hundreds of Asian carp began jumping and flailing near the students’ boats. “The freshmen were panicking,” said crew captain Benjamin Rosenbaum. And who could blame them? Easily frightened by passing boats, Asian carp can jump up to 10 feet out of the water. Rosenbaum said surviving a carp onslaught has been a rite of passage for members of the crew team since Creve Coeur Lake became infested with the highly invasive species about a decade ago.

Animal persons?

A New York trial court judge on April 20 granted human-style legal rights to a pair of chimpanzees kept by Stony Brook University. The judge, Barbara Jaffe, granted habeas corpus rights to the animals and required the university to provide the court with a legally sufficient reason to keep Hercules and Leo in custody. The Nonhuman Rights Project began the legal process on behalf of the animals and declared a preliminary victory with the judge’s ruling. The animal rights group has unsuccessfully argued for legal personhood for chimpanzees in three other courtrooms in New York before finally winning in Jaffe’s Manhattan courtroom.

Eating on the job

Faced with invasive plants like blackberries and thistles, authorities at Portland International Airport in April have called in the one brush-clearing crew guaranteed to work: goats. Numbering 40, the leased goats will enjoy clearing a five-acre area near the airport. The airport acquired the goats from Portland-area business Goat Power, which included one guard llama to help protect the goats from coyotes.

Territorial claim

On April 15 a 31-year-old Czech politician strode toward the banks of the Danube river, planted a flag, and proclaimed himself the president of a new micronation. Liberland, as founder Vit Jedlicka (second from right) calls it, occupies an uncommon area of terra nullius: land claimed by no nation. The 2.5-square-mile parcel lies along the banks of the Danube between Croatia and Serbia and represents an area claimed by neither state. In the days following the flag stunt, Jedlicka filed papers with nearby countries and the United Nations and then began a media campaign to attract potential settlers to his libertarian paradise. Hoping for 5,000 volunteers, Jedlicka received inquiries from more than 160,000. One possible roadblock: Potential Liberland residents may have to contend with Paraduin, another would-be micronation that claimed the land two weeks earlier.

Back to the bench

He was good enough to be chosen by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate, but Chief Justice John Roberts was rejected when he reported to jury duty on April 15 in Rockville, Md. The Supreme Court chief justice was part of a jury pool to resolve a 2013 car crash case. Roberts answered questions from Maryland Circuit Judge Ronald Rubin about connections he may have to the case. Six jurors were chosen for the case. Roberts, juror No. 49, was not one of them.