Mixed Shots

A Birth In 90 Years

A  woman has given birth to a baby on Little Cranberry Island, Maine, USA, for the first time in more than nine decades. Azalea Belle Gray is the sixth child for Aaron Gray and Erin Fernald Gray on Islesford, which is also known as Little Cranberry Island. Ellen said she didn’t set out to be the first woman to have a home birth in Islesford since Calvin Coolidge was president. She didn’t realise how long it’d been since the last island birth: her own grandfather, Warren Fernald, in 1927. The lifelong lobsterman who died in 2005 had previously been the most recent birth on Islesford.

Rs 6.5-Lakh Message In A Massage

If there’s a message in this massage: Don’t. A 40-year-old Indian in Dubai meets a Nigerian woman on a dating app, she gives him her contact number, offers him a massage for 500 dirhams. He falls for it. He goes to a hotel (as agreed on), a woman invites him in, locks the door, more men and women, all Africans, appear, pounce on him and holds his hostage. They take away his credit cards, coerce him to give up the PIN, withdraw about Rs 6.5 lakh. It’s a familiar honey-trap story, but there’s always a prey.

Dead No More

From the middle of its circular concrete footing by a temple, the Madhuca diplostemon rises—its twisted twin trunks slanting and forming a V. It’s a victory indeed. This threatened tree species of the Western Ghats was previously sighted more than 180 years ago, and considered extinct. It’s found again, a single mature tree, in Kerala’s Kollam district and scientists identified it from specimen dating back to 1835.

Con In The Call

A  person claiming to be Belarusian opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya joined a confidential virtual meeting of the Danish Parliament’s foreign policy committee, where political unrest in Belarus was being discussed, before its members suspected something was wrong. They later contacted Tsikhanouskaya’s staff and found out that they had been talking and listening to an impostor. The Baltic nation of Lithuania has granted shelter to Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus after challenging President Alexander Lukashenko in the country’s August 9 presidential vote.

The Stone Turned, Vanished

There’s a piece of the new Rohtang Tunnel that has, like Alice, fallen down the rabbit’s hole, and left people wondering—why? The missing piece is the foundation stone that UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had laid for the tunnel in June 2010 at Dhoondi, Manali, along the southern portal. Two Congress leaders have alleged that the stone vanished after PM Narendra Modi inaugurated this piece of engineering marvel, the world’s longest tunnel at an altitude above 10,000 feet, this October. Is it an attempt to erase Sonia’s name from the project that took 18 years to complete since Vajpayee approved it in 2002 and successive governments pitched in? The Congress leaders asked and sought an investigation. 

Brevis

Illustrations: Saahil, Text curated by Alka Gupta, Ashwani Sharma