Anne-Sophie Goninet

Magnet Fisherman Finds Cartier And Bulgari Treasures At Bottom Of French Canal

Magnet fishing isn't what it might sound like. The pastime has nothing to do with pulling in big fish, but rather hooking treasures thanks to a long rope and a strong neodymium magnet cast into your local (polluted) body of water.

The usual catches are hardly shiny trophies: discarded bicycles, shopping carts, tools, old boots, nuts and bolts, and other debris that have been rusting at the bottom of a pond, river or lake for years. (Yes, the hobby is also ecological!)

But last month, a Frenchman was lucky enough to find the holy grail of magnet fishers in the canal of the northern town of Neuville-sur-Escaut: two small safes. And while one was empty, the other contained an actual treasure, reports local daily La Voix du Nord. And inside? Mud, rocks … and a 1982 Cartier watch and a Bulgari one that he later authenticated. There were also coins from the 1960s and a magnifying glass made out of "9 or 18 carats gold" that transforms into theater glasses.

The man authenticated two watches from his treasure — Photo: La Voix du Nord

The lucky magnet fisherman isn't interested in selling his treasure but instead plans on "conducting a search to find the owner" of the safes. The question for him or her will be the same for the launchers of the various bicycles and shopping carts too often pulled out of the local river: Why?

Society

Genevieve Mansfield

Coffee On The Road? French Motorists Loot Capsules After Nespresso Truck Spills Over

What else...?

Weary motorists between Basel and Mulhouse, in eastern France, were treated to something of a jolt last week when a truck transporting a load of Nespresso coffee pods crashed, sending hundreds of capsules into the road.

The accident took place on the eastern A35 highway during a traffic jam caused by the Tour d'Alsace cycling event, the local daily L'Est Républicain reports. Unaware, apparently, of the vehicles backed up ahead of him, the Nespresso driver slammed into two trucks, sending hundreds of coffee capsules flying across the highway. Perhaps he'd been running latté?

By the time police arrived on the scene, several drivers had already gotten out of their vehicles and begun helping themselves to the brand-name (and relatively expensive) coffee doses.

"People were stopping to pick up the capsules from the road," a local gendarmerie officer told reporters. "I think they saw that they were Nespresso capsules, and with the usual price per capsule, they thought: Let's help ourselves."

A video published on the Twitter account "Info Trafic Alsace" shows drivers stopped on the side of the road, collecting scattered pods, some even scoring several boxes worth. Luckily, no injuries were reported, and police opted against booking any of the coffee scavengers. No mug shots, in other words.

Society

Clémence Guimier

Asparagus Recipe Baked Into Belgian Legal Decree

"Preheat oven to 250 °C, add three teaspoons of salt into water, rinse and peel the asparagus and wait 30 minutes before cooking…" If you are craving asparagus au gratin after reading these lines, you can find the rest of the recipe online, on any number of cooking websites … Or, until a few days ago, smack in the middle of an official Belgian government decree.

An asparagus and Cantal cheese recipe was found, lost in the text of a new law on the price of medicine, published by the Federal Public Justice Service of Belgium. After further investigation, French daily La Voix du Nord found that the cooking recipe belongs to Marmiton, a popular cooking website in France and Belgium.

If asparagus lovers might be pleased, Belgian daily La Libre reports that lawyers had mixed feelings about the odd copy-and-paste incident. "Sometimes, we see errors or glitches in a text. But a cooking recipe… Never!," says the anonymous lawyer who first shared the news to radio channel RTL.

Belgian justice officials tried to downplay the situation, explaining that the document isn't the official publication of the legislative text, only a database and has no standing legal value. The mistake has been fixed since then, before the final version of the document was approved.

Government lawyers apparently get a second chance — no such luck in the kitchen!