Weird News: Dude, Where’s My Seafood?
It Takes a Village
It’s not a baby boom, but it’s a start: Lara Bussi Trabucco is the first baby to have been born in the tiny rural Italian town of Pagliara dei Marsi in almost 30 years, The Guardian reported on Dec. 26. Lara’s arrival bumped the village’s population to roughly 20. “Pagliara dei Marsi has been suffering from drastic depopulation, exacerbated by the loss of many elderly people, without any generational turnover,” said Mayor Giuseppina Perozzi. Lara’s mother, Cinzia Trabucco, 42, lived in Rome for years before moving to her grandfather’s hometown for a quieter lifestyle. Birth rates in Italy have been falling for 16 years, reaching a record low in 2024, per the country’s statistics agency. Government incentives and “baby bonuses” can only do so much, leaving parents and communities struggling as nurseries, schools and even maternity wards close down. In this landscape, little Lara has become a symbol of hope -- and a tourist attraction, says her mom: “People who didn’t even know Pagliara dei Marsi existed have come, only because they had heard about Lara. At just 9 months old, she’s famous.”
News to Bear
Ken Johnson has been living with a 550-pound black bear under his home in Altadena, California, since November, reported Fox 12 Oregon on Dec. 22. After weeks of attempting to scare the ursine squatter off with loud noises and fake dog barks, Johnson got a little help from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which set up a cage trap near the crawl space and sprayed it with caramel and cherry scents to lure the bear inside. In a classic case of “good news, bad news,” the cage was successful, in that it captured a bear, but unsuccessful, in that it was not THE bear, but rather a different bear that had wandered onto Johnson’s property. That bear was relocated and released, but Johnson’s unwanted guest remains. “I thought this would be over by now,” Johnson said. “It’s still going on, and there’s no sign of him leaving.”
Dude, Where’s My Seafood?
The FBI is on the case of a $400,000 shipment of lobsters that has gone missing, Boston.com reported on Dec. 30. The truck and its valuable cargo disappeared somewhere between its departure point at a warehouse in Taunton, Massachusetts, and its destinations at Costco stores in Illinois and Minnesota. “It followed a pattern we’re seeing more and more,” said Dylan Rexing, president and CEO of Rexing Companies, “where criminals impersonate legitimate carriers using spoofed emails and burner phones to hijack high-value freight while it’s in transit.” U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement estimates that the U.S. economy loses $15-35 billion annually to cargo theft, with high-value items like pharmaceuticals, electronics and alcohol among the most frequent targets.