Britain’s first roller-coaster restaurant

A restaurant at Alton Towers brings a new meaning to fast food — the meals travel to diners via a 400m roller-coaster.

As UK’s first roller-coaster restaurant, it allows customers at the theme park to watch their dinner tackle two gravity-defying loop-the-loops, before dropping eight metres down to their table.

Each dish is placed at the top of the ride by chefs, and travels a whopping 400m, at speeds faster than Mo Farah when he won his Olympic Gold medal.

To ensure the dishes are up to the task, they have been tested extensively in order to check they can withstand the force.

Gill Riley at Alton Towers said: “Each diner will enjoy a full 360 dining experience at one of the 13 tables … we believe that the new restaurant will be a top attraction for both theme park guests and those staying with us as part of a short break.”

This grandma plays even more computer games than a kid

The next time your friend boasts about his gaming habits, tell him about Bridget Odlin, a 72-year-old retired debt recovery officer, is completely nuts about video games. Bridget says she first became addicted to gaming when she bought her son a Nintendo Entertainment System 30 years ago. She soon found herself spending all her spare time playing Super Mario and now plays up to eight hours a day on her Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Wii.

“Ever since Super Mario came out, I’ve just loved playing them,” says Bridget. The grandmother of nine has recently undergone corrective eye surgery to help improve her gaming skills.

“Before I had my eyes done, I couldn’t see the instructions on the screen properly but they’re brilliant now.”

And although her husband Phil doesn’t share her passion for gaming, Bridget maintains that a lot of older people are into it.

Adorable brown panda is bullied by other pandas for his light fur

This is Qizai, he’s thought to be the only living panda with brown and white fur.

Sadly, his own kind doesn’t seem to think so. Qizai, who is seven-years-old, was abandoned by his mother and often picked on by his playmates at Foping Panda Valley in the Shaanxi province of China. The panda’s keeper, He Zin, describes the animal as ‘gentle, funny and adorable’.

“He’s slower than other pandas, but he is also cuter. All the pandas here have names. When I call their names, the black and white pandas would react and come to me quickly, but for Qizai, it usually takes some time [for] him to realise,’ he told.

The keeper added that when Qizai was a cub, he’d be bullied by other pandas who used to steal his food. Despite getting his grub pinched, the bear now weighs around 220lbs and can eat around 44lbs of bamboo everyday — both of which are pretty standard for a panda of his age.

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 29th, 2016