Quick Takes: Target acquired

Hit it with a rocket or blow it up with a nuke. Those are the options presented by a group of concerned scientists in a September report about a looming asteroid threat. The authors say asteroid 2024 YR4 could be as large as 220 feet across—roughly equivalent to the wingspan of a 747. Scientists project the object will come closest to Earth in 2032. Skywatchers first started paying attention to the object in 2024, initially calculating its chance of hitting Earth at about 3%. Subsequent calculations have led scientists to believe the space rock won’t hit our planet. However, they gave it about a 4% chance of striking the moon, creating a debris field that could endanger spacecraft and Earth-orbiting satellites. The authors, including NASA and university scientists, say there may be only two ways to deal with an asteroid that size. One option would be to launch a projectile big enough to break it into smaller chunks. The scientists’ other option conjures up the plot of the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon, with authors suggesting that a 1-megaton nuclear warhead detonated near the asteroid should be enough to take care of the problem.

No one to pin it on

Police conducting a traffic stop in Northern California during the early morning hours of Sept. 27 found something missing when they approached the white sedan: a driver. San Bruno police officers stopped the Waymo self-driving taxi when the vehicle made an illegal U-turn. “Since there was no human driver, a ticket couldn’t be issued,” a San Bruno police official wrote on social media. “Our citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot.’” Police said they contacted the company to fix the glitch.

Costly cover-up

Socks draped over the license plate may have fooled the toll cameras, but a Jersey City, N.J., scofflaw found himself behind bars in September after Port Authority police officers caught him driving with deliberately obscured plates. Police arrested the 51-year-old driver of the white Mercedes-Benz when they spotted socks stretched across his license plate as he drove through the Holland Tunnel that connects Manhattan to New Jersey. Eventually Port Authority officials determined the man owed more than $18,000 in unpaid tolls. He was charged with theft of service and improperly displaying his license plate.

Balloon brigade stunt

Civil authorities in Lithuania shut down a major airport Oct. 4 when radar networks began picking up strange objects in its airspace. Officials quickly discovered it was not a repeat of a July incident when a Russian attack drone entered Lithuania from nearby Belarus. Instead, the objects were balloons rigged by smugglers to transport contraband cigarettes across the border. Authorities said they recovered 11 balloons and about 18,000 packs of cigarettes before allowing the airport to reopen the next day. So far this year, Lithuanian officials have identified 544 smuggling balloons crossing the border.

Due for a good scrub

At long last, residents of a remote Canadian town can wash their cars again. Responding to alarmingly low water levels in a local reservoir, city councilors in Iqaluit, Nunavut, voted to enact strict water rationing rules in 2018 that included a ban on washing cars. Seven years later, with water levels replenished, city officials voted to remove the ban Sept. 23. “Honestly it is just the talk of the town this morning,” Iqaluit resident Anne Crawford told the CBC. “Everyone is talking about ‘I can wash my car!’ It’s wonderful.” But the 7,740 residents of the Nunavut provincial capital may want to hurry: October typically marks the beginning of eight straight months of freezing temperatures for the town located south of the Arctic Circle.

Deceptively stinky

Complaints about a strong gas smell spurred a utility worker to go looking for a gas leak Sept. 16 in Lytham St Annes, a town north of Liverpool, U.K. When the utility worker’s nose directed him toward a fruit shop, the owner suspected the odor might be emanating from a durian fruit. The foot-long spiky tree fruit has a reputation in its native Southeast Asia for a smell so pungent it’s been banned on some public transportation. “He didn’t believe me at first,” the shop owner told The Straits Times. “It was only when I took him outside and gave one to him that he realized.” The shop’s owner told the paper he knew the smell was bad, but “didn’t think it would bring the gas board out.”

Next time, call a taxi

The mobility carts at grocery stores are there for the convenience of disabled customers—not for getting around town. That was the opinion of Publix grocery store employees in Punta Gorda, Fla., who phoned police after a customer slowly pulled away from the grocery store in a $2,500 powered cart Sept. 29. Police apprehended the 42-year-old female suspect a mile away at a gas station. According to police, the suspect said she was merely borrowing the cart to go to a doctor’s appointment down the street and planned to return the expensive machinery later. Charlotte County Sheriff’s deputies charged the woman with grand theft.