Fan who dresses like Fidel Castro meets his idol

All that’s missing is the beard. An eight-year-old Cuban boy who likes to dress up as Fidel Castro got to meet his idol after Cuba’s 88-year-old retired leader invited him and his family to his Havana home for a chat. “I felt a lot of emotion upon seeing Fidel,” Marlon Mendez told Reuters last week from his home near Havana. “The whole family hugged him. It was my dream to meet Fidel, and I did it. ... My mother was shaking.”

Marlon and his family went to visit Castro on August 16, upon the invitation of the retired leader who is revered by some and detested by others for leading the Cuban revolution of 1959 and remaining in power for 49 years.

The boy likes to dress in green fatigues, army boots and cap as Castro once did. Marlon wore the costume to his meeting with Castro, but without Castro’s trademark beard and cigar. Castro was frequently seen puffing on a Havana until he quit smoking in 1985.

Marlon was first featured on Cuban television on August 12, a day before Castro turned 88. His bedroom wall is decorated with dozens of pictures of Fidel, in contrast to the bed made with Snoopy sheets.After Marlon appeared in the media in his Fidel costume, first on Cuban television and later in Reuters photographs, his family received the invitation.

Marlon showed off pictures of his meeting with Castro and a handwritten note in which the aging revolutionary referred to “my great friend Marlon Mendez”. The boy’s grandmother, Maria Elvira Hernandez, said they talked about agriculture and Venezuela, Cuba’s close socialist ally.

(Reuters)

14-year-old girl catches rare blue lobster off maine coast

A 14-year-old girl in Maine caught an extremely rare blue lobster while out to sea with her father.last week, Jay laPlante of the Miss Meghan lobster Catch company was retrieving lobster traps off the coast of Pine Point, Maine, with his daughter and company namesake Meghan when the 14-year-old retrieved a trap with a rare blue lobster.

“It definitely stood out,” laPlante told the Portland Press Herald. As it should have — researchers estimate only one in every two million lobsters are born with blue colouring.Meghan named the crustacean Skyler and plans to donate it to the Maine State Aquarium in West Boothbay Harbor.

Her student lobstering license allows her to set 150 traps per year, a number that will double when she obtains her commercial license next year.

(UPI)

Plane Crash-lands After Old Passenger Seizes Controls

An Australian pilot made an emergency landing after wresting back the controls of his light aircraft from an 82-year-old passenger who grabbed them midflight, the aircraft’s charter company said.Police said the elderly man chartered the small four-seater Beechcraft Duchess plane last week for a business trip from the Sydney suburb of Bankstown to Cowra, a distance of about 186 km.

But he began acting erratically midway through the flight, moving to shut down the plane’s engines and seizing the control stick, a spokesman for charter company Australia by Air told reporters. The 23-year-old pilot restrained the passenger and made a distress call before safely landing the plane in a field, police said.

“The pilot displayed excellent airmanship and skill during the landing, and we thank him for his professionalism,” the company said in a statement.Police Inspector Mark Wall said the man was in stable condition in hospital in Sydney, with injuries to his face. The pilot was treated for shock and discharged. It was not immediately clear what caused the elderly man to attempt to seize the plane. Police say they are investigating the incident.

(Reuters)

Stolen life-Size Statue of Obama returned to owner

Police have returned a life-size statue of US President Barack Obama that went missing from its owner’s northeastern Pennsylvania porch and was found a few days later reclining on a nearby park bench with a six-pack of Twisted Tea.The owner, Tiffany Bruce, says she was relieved to get it back last week.

The statue, purchased at a furniture store last year, depicts Obama smiling and sitting casually, his legs crossed and his right arm flung out. Bruce decorated the statue as Santa Claus on Christmas and arranged pumpkins around him on Thanksgiving. She says her five children love the statue, and she was startled enough by the theft to be hospitalised for a panic attack. The furniture store’s employees had been planning to replace it with another statue for free.

(ABC News)