False King Charles death tape in offbeat news roundup

A radio station volunteer accidentally broadcasting a prepared announcement saying Britain’s King Charles III had died was among a set of offbeat stories that also included drone drug deliveries to a French prison and jellyfish stopping French nuclear reactors.

Radio Caroline told the UK regulator Ofcom that a volunteer doing maintenance played the pre-recorded tape “out of curiosity,” not realising it would go on air. The station then went silent for 16 minutes before an apology followed later.

French police said criminals made more than 1,800 drug deliveries by drone to Villefranche-sur-Saone prison north of Lyon before suspects were caught outside the jail.

In northern France, swarms of jellyfish clogged cooling-water pumps and shut three reactors at the Gravelines nuclear power station near Dunkirk.

Other items included North Korean state media recommending hot dog soup during record temperatures, Brazilian footballer Jacy Maranhao falling into a tunnel after a goal celebration before the goal was disallowed, Germany’s new transport minister changing train carriages after an air-conditioning failure, a person in Svalbard being fined $5,255 for waking a polar bear with a foghorn, and Australian police determining that a suitcase thought to contain human remains held a lifelike sex doll.