Picnickers had nowhere to run when a freak windstorm descended on a Colorado park, wreaking havoc on a nearby canopy tent and sending two Porta-Potties flying high into the air. The fierce winds pushed the portable toilets out of their enclosure, slamming them into parked cars before lifting off into the sky. No one appears to have been injured by the flying lavatories, though some may have been sprayed by their contents as they took flight.

BBC

A city in northern China has introduced a special pedestrian lane on one of its roads, exclusively for slow-walking smartphone users, it’s reported.

According to the Shaanxi Online News, the pavement along the Yanta Road in Xi’an has now got itself a special lane for “phubbers” – people who stare at their phones and ignore everything else around them.

The lane is painted red, green and blue, and is 80cm wide and 100m long. Pictures of smartphones along the route distinguish it from an ordinary pedestrian lane.

Shaanxi Online says that a large shopping mall, which looks onto the street, had been pushing to have the lane for a month.

It says that cars often come onto the pavement, which is a busy channel for pedestrians who might not be paying attention to their surroundings.

News website The Paper interviewed locals, who welcomed the introduction of the lane.

Wei Xiaowei said it was the first time he had seen such a thing and said he thought it was “pretty good”.

“Everybody walking along here thinks that it’s very safe; at the side of the road, there are cars, and the vehicles also come onto here, and sometimes only just avoid you.”

Another local, Hu Shuya, says: “Young people’s lives nowadays are fast, and they’re always looking at their phones. This puts our minds at rest – those of us who are often looking at our phones – as it’s a form of protection.”

However, users of the popular Sina Weibo microblog view the lane largely with bemusement. One user says that young people’s fascination with mobile phones nowadays “is as rife as smoking opium during the Qing Dynasty”.

Another says that smartphone users have become like “blind people”, and another user points out that phubbers using the lane may still risk bumping into each other.

What are the chances of running into a gaggle of nuns with a four foot inflatable cock?

A Russian woman is claiming to be the oldest person in the world, but says her upcoming 129th birthday is nothing but ‘punishment’.

Koku Istambulova, from Chechnya, says she has not had a single happy day in her entire life, and  has no idea how she has managed to live this long.

Istambulova, who shuns meat but loves fermented milk, believes it simply is ‘God’s will’ that she will live to see 129 next month.

The claim that Istambulova is about to turn 129 is made by the Russian government, and is based on her internal passport, which shows her date of birth as 1 June 1889.

If correct, Istambulova was already 27 when the Russian Revolution unseated Tsar Nicholas II, 55 when World War II ended, and 102 when the Soviet Union collapsed a generation ago.

During the war she recalls ‘scary’ Nazi German tanks passing her family home in a village in Chechnya.

She and her family were later deported along with the entire Chechen nation Kazakhstan and Siberia by Stalin who accused them of Nazi collaboration.

Asked how she lived so long, Istambulova told an interviewer: ‘It was God’s will. I did nothing to make it happen.

Daily Mail