Funny Old World: The Week's Offbeat News

From thousands of little Ronaldos to the secret of skimming stones... Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

An English doctors' surgery has apologised after sending patients a Christmas message telling them they had cancer.

"Diagnosis -- Aggressive lung cancer with metastases. Thanks," said the missent text.

Red-faced staff tried to repair the damage with an apology 20 minutes later. "Our message should have read, 'We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.'"

But by then, the damage was done.

Chris Reed, 57, who had been waiting for lung cancer test results, said his partner burst into tears. With phone lines to the surgery jammed, he rushed there to hear his results were in fact negative.

Nearly 2,300 years after Aristotle, science has finally spoken the type of stones best for skimming on water.

Leave those thin, flat stones by the bank, researchers say, and go instead for bulkier, curvier ones.

While flat stones still give the best chance of the maximum number of skips, "you can get exciting dynamics" out of fatter ones with "huge leaps out of the water", mathematician Ryan Palmer of Britain's Bristol University told AFP.

His physics-based mathematical model found that a heavier rock gives a "super-elastic response" that produces an "almighty jump". Now you know.

Some Danish criminals are going out of business. The Scandinavian country has just recorded its first year without a bank robbery.

"It's nothing short of amazing," said Steen Lund Olsen of Denmark's finance workers union, whose members used to endure more than 200 a year.

People using cards rather than cash -- a change accelerated by Covid -- is helping make the heist history, he said.

Pele, the "king" of football, may be dead, but long live the 738 Peruvian Peles born last year.

Parents in the South American nation have a habit of naming their offspring after the rich and famous, which is why the Brazilian legend -- who was buried this week -- will live on, in name at least, on the other side of the Andes.

As will Britain's late queen, with 551 girls baptised either Elizabeth the Second, Queen Elizabeth or Elizabeth II, according to officials.

But Cristiano Ronaldo tops the lot, with 31,583 babies named after the Portuguese star, leaving Argentine World Cup winner Lionel Messi (371) and French striking sensation Kylian Mbappe (229) trailing in his wake.

One child was even christened "Qatar" in honour of the World Cup hosts, and one little boy will live with the name Elon Musk.

Good news for men, and even better news for pigs. Chinese scientists have given males everywhere a lift with talk of a bionic penis.

Half of men over 40 suffer some kind of erectile dysfunction and one in 20 have been struck down by that most deflating of infirmities, Peyronie's disease.

But tests on injured pigs show that artificial tissue can restore their pride, with the technique showing "promise for repairing penile injuries in humans".