Funny old world: The week's offbeat news

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Paris, France | AFP 

From a celestial racket to the app every cat wants you to have...Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

- Keep it down up there -

If you have been driven demented by a hum that you could never find, you were not going mad. It was the universe, man.

Astronomers say they have found evidence of a constant celestial "background hum" first theorised by Albert Einstein a century ago, calling it a "really a magical moment" in our understanding of space.

Daniel Reardon, a member of Australia's Parkes Pulsar Timing Array project, told AFP that -- if confirmed -- the noise is the waves from "the sum of all of the supermassive black hole systems whirling around each other at the cores of galaxies everywhere in the universe."

Michael Keith of Europe's equivalent said the interstellar hubbub was "like sitting in a noisy restaurant and hearing all these people talking".

- It's raining meth -

A panicked drug smuggler rained bags of crystal meth down on southern France after his plane was intercepted by a jet fighter for straying into a restricted airspace.

The pilot showered the Ardeche region -- the home to many seeking to live alternative lifestyles -- in at least 30 kilos of methamphetamine after the fighter was scrambled when the light aircraft was spotted close to a nuclear plant.

Police recovered 15 packages of the drug on the ground and found 45,000 euros ($49,000) in cash in the cockpit. The Polish pilot -- who had been flying from Germany -- was later jailed for five years and banned from France for life.

- What's that puss about? -

Japan has cracked one of the world's great mysteries -- how do you know if your cat is down?

Scientists in the land of Hello Kitty have come up with an app which can tell if felines are feeling poorly.

The "Cat Pain Detector" developed by Nihon University's College of Bioresource Sciences is able to detect if moggies are sick or off-form with "more than 90 percent" accuracy, its creators told AFP.

Vets are now using it in the cat-mad country, they claim, vaunting its AI technology trained on hundreds of thousands of cat photos.

The next frontier is knowing exactly what a cat actually wants so it can at last order a dry martini with an anchovy chaser.

- Turkmenistan's shining city -

To Turkmenistan, where a whole new city has been built to honour our old friend and semi-retired dentist/strongman Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.

Arkadag -- named after Berdymukhamedov's official title, "Hero Protector" -- is adorned with a 43-metre (141-foot) golden statue of the Turkmen leader rearing his favourite horse on its hind legs like the Lone Ranger, while pointing the nation towards a glorious future.

Too modest to be at the inauguration to hear underlings praise the "valuable recommendations" he gave them, Berdymuhamedov was off making the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

But his people can draw comfort from his new book, "The Meaning of Life", which authorities say is already a "national treasure". While its wisdom has yet to leak out of the secretive Central Asian nation, you can be sure it includes brushing your teeth thoroughly.

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© Agence France-Presse