Villain
Nicole Richie’s birthday candles, which set fire to the reality star’s hair as she went to blow them out. Richie, who was turning 40, posted a video of the incident on Instagram, with the caption: “Well… so far 40 is 🔥”.
Heroes
Male giraffes, who fight one another honourably, say researchers. They tend to select opponents of the same size when they face off and respect each other’s preference for striking from the right or left with their necks. Older males also sometimes break up brawls between youngsters.
Villains
Two French monks who were caught trying to set fire to 5G antennae. The convent where their community is based apologised for their “youthful error”, adding: “The waves are very harmful to health and they wanted to act for the wellbeing of humanity.”
Heroes
A pair of snorkelers who discovered a hoard of Roman gold coins off the coast of Alicante. Luis Lens and brother-in-law César Gimeno found the 53 coins while picking litter off the seabed. Lens’s eye was caught by “what looked like a 10-cent coin” before cleaning revealed “a Greek or Roman face”. Experts believe they were tossed into the ocean in a chest, possibly to conceal them from advancing barbarians at the end of the Roman Empire 1,500 years ago.
Villains
The Great British Bake Off, which is rigging its competition against clueless Gen-Zs, says James Jackson in The Times. In this week’s opening episode, contestants had to make malt loaf from scratch. “Does anyone under 30 know what malt loaf is?” No, apparently. The one teenager in the competition had never heard of the cake. Meanwhile, all the oldies breezed through.
Villain
Sean Connery’s James Bond, who was a rapist according to the latest 007 director, Cary Joji Fukunaga. The American director responsible for No Time to Die takes a dim view of previous Bond films. “Is it Thunderball or Goldfinger where, like, basically Sean Connery’s character rapes a woman?” he asked The Hollywood Reporter. “She’s like, ‘No, no, no,’ and he’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ That wouldn’t fly today.”
Villains
New Zealand cops, who arrested two men trying to get into Auckland with a car boot full of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Aucklanders have spent a month in super-strict lockdown, with restrictions banning restaurants from opening and supplying takeaways, meaning many fast-food treats have become high-value illicit substances. Police found at least three buckets of chicken, 10 tubs of coleslaw and an undisclosed quantity of chips.