Funny Old World: The Week's Offbeat News

From a baby Putin to the Suriname vice president's Pele complex ... Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Sep, 2021 ) :From a baby Putin to the Suriname vice president's Pele complex ... Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

- Catch them young - Racism may raising its ulgy head all over, but few have gone as far as the well-known Chinese fashion label JNBY.

Its new line of children's tops carries the slogan, "The whole place is full of Indians. I will take this gun and blow them to pieces." But the range is not just about promoting love and understanding.

Their kids' T-shirts also feature legends like, "Let me touch you." JNBY was forced to apologise.

One dumbfounded parent said older family members bought the clothes for their child without understanding what was written on them.

- The beautiful game - To Suriname where dumbfounding is something of a national sport. So much so that football's global body Fifa, no stranger to jiggery pokery itself, has been shocked by the antics of the South American country's vice-president Ronnie Brunswijk.

The politician who owns the Inter Moengotapoe club picked himself for his side's CONCACAF League match against Olimpia of Honduras, setting an international record by making his professional debut at 60.

He played up front with his son, Damien, and naturally was also captain.

Later video emerged of Brunswijk appearing to hand cash to Olimpia's players after the game.

With admirable understatement, Fifa say they are extremely concerned at "potential integrity issues".

Brunswijk, a convicted drug trafficker who is wanted both in France and the Netherlands, won't be in the squad for the second leg in Honduras, where he would risk arrest and extradition.

- Hell fire preachers - Justice was swift for two French monks who were caught setting fire to 5G mobile network masts, claiming the technologies affected people's health.

While the friars from an ultra-conservative Capuchin monastery quickly confessed their crimes, their superior seemed to support their cause -- a favourite of internet conspiracy theorists -- if not their actions.

The arson was "an isolated act and an error of youth," he said.

The pair are 39 and 40 years old.

- sad Vlad - An appalling piece of Russophobia in Sweden where officials stopped a couple naming their baby son Vladimir Putin.

The Russian leader -- who looks more like Baby Boss every day -- shared the shocking story on social media, clearly upset for the parents.

Names in Sweden "cannot cause offence, or be assumed to cause distress" to the children themselves.

Instead officials suggested the parents come up with another name. All of us here at AFP would like to wish young Stalin a wonderful life...

- Not even a vine leaf - Another terrible unforeseen consequence of global warning emerged this week when the grape harvest began in Portugal.

With temperatures still high in the Alentejo region, grape pickers at the Herdade Canal Caveira vineyard turned up wearing nothing but sunhats and shoes.

The country's naturist federation cheered their cheek, saying it was best to work in nature au naturel.

And to think people once complained about builder's bum.