Quick Takes: Road hazard?

Thankfully for dubious Floridians, the state’s proposed radioactive byway will have to be a road less traveled. Regulators with the Environmental Protection Agency signed off in late December on a plan for a Florida company to construct a private road in Polk County using radioactive material as a building component. Mosaic Fertilizer began seeking permission years ago to use phosphogypsum, a radioactive byproduct of the company’s fertilizer manufacturing, to construct a proof-of-concept road at a company facility. Typically stored in well-regulated stacks away from farms and waterways, phosphogypsum contains materials that decay into dangerous radon gas. Company officials hope to demonstrate the material can be safely used in road construction. While supporters laud the fertilizer company for seeking alternate uses for its waste material, some critics aren’t so certain rainy Florida is the best place to experiment. According to Washington State University civil and environmental engineer professor Xianming Shi, the waste material is ­susceptible to moisture. “Just because they’re reusing waste,” Shi told the Tampa Bay Times, “doesn’t make that project all of a sudden a ‘green’ project.”

Space junk objection

No one got hurt, but falling debris from space certainly caused confusion for some rural Kenyan villagers. A roughly 8-foot-wide ring weighing more than 1,000 pounds crashed into the village of Mukuku, a rural town in southeast Kenya, on Dec. 30. While the metal object avoided hitting any structures, it initially sparked fears that the village was under attack because it sounded like an explosion when it crashed. As concerns subsided, though, questions mounted. “Are there companies up there in the sky that made this thing fall on us?” one local asked the Kenyan news website Tuko. “We really need answers.” Officials with Kenya’s space agency identified the object as a separation ring from a rocket.

That’s no pothole

Drivers in Wharton, N.J., discovered one more thing to worry about during the first days of winter after a sinkhole opened on Interstate 80, swallowing up the right shoulder and encroaching on a lane of traffic during morning rush hour on Dec. 26. State officials blamed the 40-foot-by-40-foot sinkhole on a collapsed abandoned mineshaft in the area. The massive hole snarled eastbound traffic, but road crews sprang into action and were able to fix the hole and reopen the interstate by Dec. 30.

Anyone driving this thing?

Getting to the airport on time for a flight home from Scottsdale, Ariz., was stressful enough for Los Angeles resident Mike Johns. But then his driverless Waymo taxi glitched. Rather than driving Johns to the airport, the autonomous Waymo car started going in circles. “It’s circling around a parking lot. I’ve got my seatbelt on, I can’t get out of the car,” Johns told Waymo customer service in a phone call he documented for social media. “Has this been hacked? What’s going on?” After a few minutes Waymo officials were able to get the car pointed in the right direction, allowing Johns to overcome his dizziness and narrowly make his flight home.

Grandmaster’s move

After years of grinding out victories at tournaments, chess player Magnus Carlsen can’t be bothered to dress up anymore. On Dec. 27, the Norwegian grandmaster walked away from the World Rapid Chess Championship in New York when event organizers told him his jeans were not up to the tournament’s dress code. “I put on a shirt, jacket, and honestly like I didn’t even think about the jeans. I even changed my shoes,” he told chess outlet Take Take Take. After his request to continue playing in jeans was denied, Carlsen walked out. “It’s fine by me,” he later said. “I’ll probably head off to somewhere where the weather is a bit nicer than here.” Soon after the incident, however, organizers of the next tournament loosened the dress code and Carlsen returned to play.

A jolly post-holiday

As has become tradition, Christmas came a little later for elephants at Germany’s Berlin Zoo. On Jan. 3, zoo employees piled up surplus Christmas trees in the elephant enclosures to make a feast for the animals. Some pachyderms nibbled on the greenery while others grasped branches in their trunks and waved them around. “They don’t just serve as food,” zoo curator Florian Sicks said, “they are also used to keep the animals occupied.” The zoo obtains the Christmas trees from local vendors that were unable to sell their entire inventory.

Rooting around town

The hogs are hitting the suburbs. Once just a phenomenon in rural America, feral hogs are now causing problems in more populated parts of the country. Residents in Irving, a suburb of Dallas, say feral hogs are marauding through their neighborhoods and wreaking havoc. Homeowner Eric Mendez said he set up a video camera that recorded as many as 10 feral hogs ruining his lawn. While city officials have hired a wildlife contractor to root out the troublemakers, getting rid of the animals has proven difficult. Mendez told WFAA in a Jan. 3 interview that he thought about shooting the hogs, but said, “I’m in a neighborhood. I can’t just go out there and start blasting.” For now, he’s instead defending his turf with a slingshot.