If you are thinking of robbing a convenience store you would think that the first thing you need is a good disguise. One man, however, appears to think differently. He robbed a store using an ingenious beer box disguise which he had obviously made himself. Despite his unusual choice of headwear the man managed to get away with $50 of cigarettes.

Personally I’m not quite sure why you would want to visit Starbucks but that’s my opinion. Some people obviously do like the brand but other people like this man might be bordering on the obsessive. He has made it his mission to visit every Starbucks around the world. He has managed an impressive 9,100 and is now in England to visit the 400 outlets over here. After the UK he will move onto a tour of Europe, visiting Spain, Portugal, Germany and Romania. At every outlet he orders a regular cup of coffee and takes a picture and puts it on his website. So far he has spent around $100,000 on his project over a course of 12 years. He estimates that he still has 3,000 outlets worldwide still to visit.

Designer Paul Smith has created these rubbish bins in the shape of giant rabbits to try and reduce London’s litter. The bins have flashing ears which light up when rubbish is put into them. They will be tested for four months to see if they encourage more people to put their rubbish in the bin. The bins have been unveiled in Covent Garden, central London and Holland Park.

According to this article there is an increasing demand for squirrel pie. Apparently a pest controller who has been supplying top chefs with grey squirrels is finding it difficult to meet demand. He has culled around 22,000 grey squirrels in the North East but now has plans to work with landowners in the south of England in order to maintain supplies of squirrels and meet the increasing demand for squirrel meat. It seems the squirrels are so popular that as soon as he kills them they are sold. I haven't tried squirrel pie but it sounds as though I might be missing out.

I watched the program Big Chef Little Chef with interest when it was screened. For those who haven't seen it, it was a documentary about the efforts to revive the failing Little Chef brand. The managing director Ian Pegler had called in celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal to try and revamp the failing chain. They started by looking at one branch in Popham and overhauled the dated decoration and uninspiring menu. However, Heston’s changes failed to make a profit in the opening launch and it was unclear whether they would rolled out across the entire Little Chef brand. Ian Pegler, did, however, agree to trial the new menu in the Popham branch with the possibility of extending it across the chain if it proved successful. According to this article customers have been making dedicated trips to visit the Popham Little Chef and are using it as a dining experience rather than just a convenient stop off on their journey. Mr Pegler has now announced that the menu will be trialled in other parts of the country but will be eventually be rolled out across the entire brand. Unfortunately I do not have a Little Chef near me, but I would be interested to sample the new menu in comparison to the rather bland and uninspiring food I remember from my last Little Chef experience.

According to this article the cuckoo has featured of Britain’s list of endangered birds for the first time. The latest assessment of Britain’s native birds puts the cuckoo as one of 52 species which are now considered to be at risk. Numbers of the bird have fallen by as much as 37% in the last 15 years. Other birds on the list include the lapwing, tree pipit, wood warbler and yellow wagtail. Once common species such as the song thrush, house sparrow and starling have also seen a drastic decline mainly caused by loss of habitat.

Stinking Bishop has been voted Britain’s smelliest cheese. The cheese which is made by Charles Martell and Son in Gloucestershire has been described as smelling like a rugby club changing room. It was voted as the winner at the Britain’s Smelliest Cheese Championships beating Driftwood by Whitelake Cheeses which came second and St Oswald by Gorsehill Abbey which took third place. I haven't tried Stinking Bishop but I might have to get some to see what its like. Watch this space for the review.

This article is interesting it suggests that eating soup can help you lose weight. Apparently if you were to eat a meal of chicken of vegetables with a glass of water you would only feel full for a couple of hours but if you have the same meal blending the water with the food to make soup it fills you up for much longer. According to the article this is down to the fact that after you have eaten a meal the pyloric sphincter in your stomach holds back food so that digestive juices can work. Water passed through the sphincter to your intestines and therefore does not fill you up. However, when the water is mixed with food the mixture stays in the stomach making you feel fuller for longer. I quite like soup but I also like bread to dip in it which I think adds any extra calories that you might save by not snacking.

According to this article the recession has seen the number of millionaires in Britain halve. The decline has been put down to a number of factors but mainly the collapse in the property market, the fall in the value of shares and cuts in city bonuses. The number of millionaires in 2007 was estimated at 489,000 but this has now fallen to around 242,000. The rise in the number of millionaires from 2003 to 2007 was mainly attributed to a rise in house prices during that period. With property prices starting to level out I’m sure there will be people waiting to cash in and make their millions once the market improves.

It never fails to amaze me the strange places that images of Jesus appear. The latest one has been found on the lid of the jar of Marmite. As you can see from the image it clearly resembles an image of Jesus if you have a vivid imagination. If you don’t then its simply Marmite on a lid. I will let you decide.

This is interesting its a contact lens which can help blind people to see again. The treatment works by using the patients own cells to repair damage to the cornea. It is carried out under local anaesthetic and patients can go home just two hours after surgery. Under the treatment samples of stem cells are taken from a healthy eye. These are then grown on a contact lens for 10 days before the lens in inserted into the eye. After three weeks the stem cells heal damage to the cornea and vision begins to improve. So far three patients have been treated all of whom had poor vision caused by corneal disease, a form of blindness which affects around 10 million people worldwide.

This article is interesting it suggests that rooks are as intelligent as monkeys and that they are able to perform complex puzzles in order to source food. Four birds were given a puzzle with a small basket of worms inside a plastic tube. The worms were out of reach but the birds were also given a piece of straight wire. In each case the rooks bent the wire to make it into a tool and then used it to hook the basket of worms out of the tube. Unlike other animals which can learn how to solve a problem by using trial and error the rooks all solved the problem immediately despite never been shown how to do it. Researchers at Cambridge University believe that these results show that rooks have an intelligence to rival chimpanzees who are also able to craft tools using their hands.

According to this article £300,000 of taxpayers money was spent on research into finding out which kind of water ducks prefer. This hugely important and ground breaking research was carried out by Defra with the aim of making sure that ducks kept on farms are properly treated. During the three year study by Oxford University scientists offered the ducks different types of water including a trough, a pond, a shower and a nipple drinker. It was found that the ducks preferred standing under a shower and that they spent twice as long under the shower as they did in the other water.

According to this article numbers dormice and water voles are starting to recover thanks to some conservation programmes which have been set up to save them. The creatures which used to be common have been threatened by intensive farming techniques, pollution and climate change which have threatened to wipe them out. The decline of the dormouse is mainly due to the loss of hedgerows and meadows which have caused then to halve in numbers in the last 100 years. Water voles are also affected by loss of habitat as well as polluted rivers. These factors have caused a 90 per cent drop in their numbers in a ten year period between 1990 and 2000. As well as working on projects to improve the creatures habitat conservationists have been asking the public to monitor numbers of dormice and provide boxes for them to sleep in. There have also been successful reintroduction programmes of over 600 dormice to 12 counties over the past 16 years. It appears all of these measures combined mean that the furry creatures are starting to make a comeback.