Ten Things of Farce and Fuss

Is the Canadian PM being cold-shouldered in India?/Ayeshea Perera

1. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's first official visit to India has not been the headline-grabbing love fest he must be accustomed to on his overseas trips, because he sympathises with Sikh separatists who want to partition the Punjab.
2. Fast-food chain KFC has closed a number of outlets across the UK after they ran out of chicken.
3. A 26-year-old woman has been arrested after an abusive note was left telling an ambulance dealing with an emergency to move.
4. These days many women keep their own name when they marry, and couples are increasingly opting for a double-barrelled or merged name. But men who take their wife's surname are still quite rare - and a lot of fuss is made when they do.
5. Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sánchez Loriga were lesbian pioneers who fooled Spain's Catholic Church. Their union in 1901 remains the only known same-sex marriage in the Spanish Church's history.
6. Political campaigners have taken the concept of the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and used it to help their causes - such as this week's stunt where three billboards demanding justice following the Grenfell Tower fire were driven through London.
7. The Whitney Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan became embroiled in a race row in 2017. The painting Open Casket re-imagined the body of 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African-American boy who was murdered in the 1950s in a notorious racist attack. Crucially, the painting was the work of Dana Shutz, a white artist. As a result, an open letter, shared multiple times online, called the painting offensive.
8. Rolling Stone writer Greil Marcus (his pseudonym was a reference to the novel The Magic Christian, by Terry Southern) wrote a spoof article review about the greatest, most star-heavy supergroup ever assembled, The Masked Marauders, which combined the musical talents of Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, among others. Despite it being an obvious hoax, people began to contact the magazine asking where they could get a copy of the fake group's non-existent album.
9. Ed Sheeran wrote Supermarket Flowers for his mum, because her mother - his grandmother - was ill in hospital while he was recording the album that would become Divide.
10. Recent studies suggest that the average UK adult spends around two hours on social media per day.

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