Quick Takes: Stay safe, be aloof

Canadians are known for being nice. But an Edmonton, Alberta, police official is warning people to beware of strangers being too nice. Constable Shiva Shunmugam said law enforcement in the nation has received some 63 reports of so-called hugging bandits since May. According to authorities, an organized band of thieves is preying upon Canadians across the country by employing distraction tactics. In a typical encounter, the bandits strike up a conversation with the victim and then steal valuables when they move in for a hug. “Don’t let people in your personal space,” Shunmugam told reporters during his Aug. 19 press conference. That may be hard advice for Canadians to follow. The country’s reputation for amiability is buttressed by its No. 1 position in U.S. News & World Report’s friendliest country rankings. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the distraction schemes tend to target the elderly and have a particular penchant for lifting jewelry. The best defense: Doubt the intentions of strangers. “If somebody is … overtly friendly to you and trying to enter and breach your personal space by confusing you,” Shunmugam said, “tell them to stop and [that] you will call police.”

Unexpected delivery

Nevada’s infamously debauched Burning Man festival is no place to give birth. And the Thompsons of Salt Lake City wouldn’t have gone—had they known Kayla Thompson was 36 weeks pregnant. On Aug. 27, flummoxed by what she thought was appendicitis, the 37-year-old woman gave birth to the couple’s first child on the floor of their camper. Moments after, husband Kasey Thompson ventured out into the rain-soaked playa seeking help. He quickly found an obstetrician and a neonatal nurse from among the thousands of revelers. “I don’t know where they all came from, they just came,” Kasey Thompson told the New York Post. An emergency helicopter flew the 3-pound, 9.6 ounce baby girl, named Aurora, to a hospital NICU. Both mother and child are reportedly doing well.

Overcooking the cargo

This was not the way these steaks were meant to flame broil. A tractor trailer traversing Missouri’s Route 174 on Aug. 18 broke down, ignited, and prematurely cooked 20 tons of rib-eye steaks aboard the semi-truck. Firefighters said flames engulfed the entire trailer near Doolittle, Mo., and turned the approximately 40,000 pounds of rib-eyes into a total loss. In August, Walmart advertised its cheapest rib-eye steaks at $14.97 per pound, giving the lost meat an estimated market value of at least $600,000.

Lawn service proscription

Voters in one Switzerland city have the chance to do something that others in the developed world can only dream about. On Sept. 28, the citizens of Zurich will head to the polls to vote on a measure to prohibit gas-powered leaf blowers. The noisy lawn care machines have drawn the ire of Zurich residents. In 2022, the city parliament moved to ban the equipment. Opponents of the ban successfully delayed the prohibition by calling for the September plebiscite. If successful, the measure would ban gas-powered blowers and permit electric blowers only in the fall season.

Couple gets a grilling

The phone calls began in January. Owing to a typo on Google and Apple directory listings, home grill owners seeking customer service from grill manufacturer Napoleon began calling the phone number of Canadian couple Jim Klassen and Mirjana Komljenovic. Rather than hang up or change their number, the British Columbia pair went to work dispensing grilling tips and troubleshooting for customers as best they could. Komljenovic said her husband was just trying to be helpful and didn’t mind talking to customers on the phone. Eventually, Napoleon discovered the mistake and changed the listing. In August, the company awarded the couple with a new barbecue grill and named them honorary customer service ambassadors.

Staying for the season?

There will be no Friday Night Lights in the Twin Cities suburb of Apple Valley, Minn. That is, not until the ospreys move out. Back in June, school officials noticed a pair of ospreys building a nest atop one of the football field’s floodlights. And because the birds are a federally protected species, the school can’t risk turning on the high-powered lights, since the heat might ignite the flammable nest or overheat the birds and their chicks. To compensate, school officials decided to reschedule the team’s initial September home games and hold them during the day to avoid the need for the lights. In the meantime, officials are periodically checking the nest with a drone to see when the birds move out.

Jellyfish invaders

Sometimes it’s the soft and spineless that cause safety engineers to sit up and take notice. On Aug. 10, a trio of nuclear reactors at a facility in France shut down automatically after safety systems detected a problem in the plant’s cooling system. The culprit: A massive number of jellyfish found their way into the plant’s water intake system and clogged the entire apparatus. Owners of the coastal plant said the jellyfish posed more of a nuisance than a real safety hazard. In a similar incident in 2021, a swarm of jellyfish shut down a Scottish nuclear plant for a week.