BERLIN (AP) — Using giant tires from an industrial fertilizer spreader and scrap steel, a German man has built a bicycle weighing 940 kilograms (2,072 pounds) that he plans to pedal into the record books as the world’s heaviest rideable bike.
Frank Dose’s bike already outweighs the current Guinness World Record holder’s 860-kilogram (1,900-pound) contraption.
But the dpa news agency reported Monday that Dose plans to add weight to boost his creation to 1,200 kilograms (2,646 pounds) before attempting the 200-meter (656-foot) ride Saturday.
“I want (the weight) to be four digits,” the 49-year-old from Schleswig-Holstein told dpa.
Dose has been building his bike since March. It sports tires that are 1.53 meters (5 feet) in diameter. It’s reportedly proved surprisingly easy to ride.
“It’s a sensational bike,” says his wife, Astrid.
Driver playing ‘Pokemon
Go’ hits parked cruiser
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey police say a driver playing “Pokemon Go” on his cellphone crashed his SUV into a parked police cruiser.
The crash happened at around 3:40 a.m. Saturday in Jersey City.
Authorities say no one was in the cruiser at the time, and the 42-year-old SUV driver wasn’t injured. But the Jersey City man was cited for careless driving and other motor vehicle violations.
Pokemon, just go:
Francedoesn’t want
creatures in schools
PARIS (AP) — Attention, legendary Pokemon creatures: You may soon be expelled from the schools of France.
The education minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, said Monday that the makers of the popular “Pokemon Go” smartphone game should stop beaming their most avidly hunted Pokemon figures into real-life schools.
She has told a Paris news conference that she intends to meet representatives of California-based Niantic Inc. to explain that the game entices non-students to wander into children’s schools. She sees the quest for rare, or “legendary,” characters as posing the greatest security risk of unwanted walk-ins by strangers.
France remains in an official state of emergency following November attacks in Paris and last month’s Nice truck massacre.
She says principals already can apply online for Niantic to remove their school from the game’s global map.
$210 lobster bought
from fish market,
set free is found dead
CHATHAM, Mass. (AP) — A lobster bought from a Massachusetts fish market for $210 and set free by twin brothers who didn’t want it to become someone’s dinner has apparently died.
Chris and David Schmidt, of New Jersey, bought the 22-pound lobster and released it Thursday in the waters off Chatham. They dubbed the crustacean Big Lobi after Boston Red Sox star David Ortiz, whose nickname is Big Papi.
The Cape Cod Times reports that a local retiree found a dead 22-pound lobster in the same area on Saturday. Experts say it appears to be the same one.
The director of marine fisheries research at the Center for Coastal Studies says lobsters live in deep, cold water, and the shallows where Big Lobi was released were likely too warm.
Girl strikes gold by
finding stolen Olympic medal in trash
ATLANTA (AP) — An Olympic champion is thanking a 7-year-old Atlanta girl who found his gold medal in a pile of trash weeks after it got stolen.
Joe Jacobi won the medal in men’s canoe double slalom at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Jacobi says it was stolen when somebody broke into his car in June.
Weeks later, Chloe Smith was walking with her father when she spotted the gold medal discarded in a pile of garbage. Chloe returned the medal to Jacobi, who had posted about the theft on social media. The former Olympian then promised to visit Chloe’s school and let her classmates know about her good deed.
Jacobi spoke Monday to Chloe’s first-grade class at Woodson Park Academy. WSB-TV reports the Olympian brought his recovered gold medal with him.
Lightning strike kills
more than 300
reindeer in Norway
STOCKHOLM (AP) — More than 300 wild reindeer have been killed by lightning in central Norway.
The Norwegian Environment Agency has released eerie images showing a jumble of reindeer carcasses scattered across a small area on the Hardangervidda mountain plateau. The agency says 323 animals were killed, including 70 calves, in the lightning storm Friday.
Agency spokesman Kjartan Knutsen told The Associated Press it’s not uncommon for reindeer or other wildlife to be killed by lightning strikes but this was an unusually deadly event.
“We have not heard about such numbers before,” he said Monday.
He said reindeer tend to stay very close to each other in bad weather, which could explain how so many were killed at once.
“I don’t know if there were several lightning strikes,” he said. “But it happened in one moment.”
Knutsen said the agency is now discussing what to do with the dead animals. Normally, they are just left where they fall to let nature take its course, he said.
Thousands of reindeer migrate across the barren Hardangervidda plateau as the seasons change.
UK broadcaster shuts
down for hour, asks
viewers to exercise
LONDON (AP) — One of Britain’s leading broadcasters has blacked out its programs for an hour in hopes of spurring viewers to get some exercise.
ITV shut down broadcasts on several of its channels Saturday morning as part of its effort to entice UK citizens to sports clubs, which are being opened for free this weekend as part of a national event called “I Am Team GB.”
Many viewers lauded ITV’s challenge to couch potatoes, describing on social media the activities they’d been inspired to do.
Others, predictably, stuck to their sofas and poked fun at the gesture, describing the blank screens as the best entertainment they’d ever seen on ITV. One viewer said his remote-control thumb had a good workout.
ITV is sponsoring the weekend’s sports-promotion activities alongside the National Lottery.
Headstone of Civil
War soldier to be
fixed after 154 years
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Some mistakes are never too late to fix.
A Civil War soldier misidentified when he was buried at an Ohio cemetery more than 150 years ago is to get a new headstone.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that Confederate soldier Augustus Beckmann was fatally wounded in the Battle of Shiloh on April 7, 1862. But he was buried at the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery in Columbus under the wrong name, A. Bergman, and wrong company.
Beckmann’s brother’s great-great-grandson, Greg Beckman, discovered the error when he visited Camp Chase last Memorial Day. He put together the necessary documentation, asked the National Cemetery Administration to fix the headstone, and recently learned his request was approved.
An administration spokeswoman says approved stones are typically in place within 60 days.
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