Funny old world: The week's offbeat news

From a man who really makes his own beer to the Japanese bears given paws for thought... your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

- Hippo who was really a she-ppo -

It's never a good idea to get up close and personal with a hippo. Which is why a Japanese zoo has only just discovered that one of its prize exhibits is a she rather than he.

For seven years Osaka Tennoji Zoo thought Gen-chan was a male despite her "unmanly" toilet habits.

Unlike other he hippos, she didn't spray her poo around with a propeller-like whip of her tail. Nor did she bellow at females during the courtship season.

With no one daring to take a look down under given how dangerous hippos can be, the zoo ordered a DNA test. "The result showed it was female," the zoo said, with the misgendering mistake apparently made in Mexico where Gen-chan was born.

- How unbeer-able -

Drink driving charges against a Belgian man have been dismissed because he has auto-brewery syndrome (ABS), a rare condition where his body produces its own alcohol.

The 40-year-old, who by an "unfortunate" coincidence works in a brewery, was more than four times over the drink drive limit when he was stopped by the police.

Only 20 people in the world have been diagnosed with the disorder, his lawyer Anse Ghesquiere told AFP. Carbohydrates in the stomach ferment making the person appear as if they have been drinking.

She said her client was unaware of his affliction and had lost his licence for drink driving in 2019 despite protesting that he had not touched a drop.

He is now following a low-carb diet in the hope of staying sober.

- Eat your words, Joe -

Papua New Guinea is having trouble swallowing US President Joe Biden's latest verbal gaffe.

Biden raised eyebrows when he told steel workers in Pittsburgh that his uncle Ambrose may have been eaten by cannibals in the Pacific nation during World War II.

"He got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals -- for real," Biden said.

But the country's leader James Marape dismissed the story -- a family legend that doesn't quite square with his uncle Ambrose Finnegan's official military record -- as a "blurry moment".

The premier, who has met Biden four times, said the 81-year-old had never mentioned the story to him.

"Sometimes you have loose moments," he said.

Papua New Guinea has tried for decades to shed such outdated tropes. Cannibalism was documented among a small number of tribes in remote corners of the country in the past.

- What a shower -

It never rains but it pours for Nigeria's neglected prisons.

Nearly 120 inmates escaped from a crumbling colonial-era jail in Suleja near the capital Abuja after torrential rain brought down the walls and a perimeter fence. Only 10 have so far been recaptured.

- Paws for thought -

A pair of bears picked the wrong Japanese tourists to mess with when they jumped out of the bushes as Masato Fukuda was hiking to see a waterfall in the northern island of Hokkaido.

Faced with the burly bruisers -- who can weigh half a tonne (1,100 pounds) and easily outrun humans -- Fukuda karate-kicked one twice in the face, hurting his leg but sending the bears scarpering.

"I thought I should make my move or else I will be killed," Fukuda told a local broadcaster.

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