Amid a global pandemic, disastrous heatwaves, political crises and other bleak news, light-hearted stories are as necessary as ever. Here is a pick of the week's best funny, silly and quirky news from around the world.

A sticky situation

Two Albanian men found themselves in a sticky situation when they were arrested this week in Greece on drug trafficking charges. Greek police had found a white substance in the trunk of their car and believed it to be cocaine.

Sent to a lab for analysis however, the white powder turned out to be in fact wood glue powder that had crystallized due to the heat.

The two men spent two days in detention in Thessaloniki and had their car, mobile phones and close to $4,000 confiscated "as alleged profits from drug trafficking," AP reported. 

After appearing in court on Wednesday however, the public prosecutor dropped the charges against them.

Their possessions were returned to them upon their release, police said. The story did not say whether that included the glue.

A series of fortunate events

As if the prospect of sitting for your "Bac," the French end-of-high-school exam, wasn't nerve-wracking enough: a French teenager found himself stranded almost 200 kilometers from his exam center last week after failing to get off the train at the right station.

Thankfully, a series of Good Samaritans stepped in to help him make it on time.

Having missed his stop at Reims and hurtling on a high-speed train towards Nancy in northeastern France, the panicked teenager contacted the controller on the train who immediately alerted the next station to arrange for a taxi, local media reported. 

The taxi driver then stepped on the gas. "My mission was for him to get to his exam on time," said the driver. "I totally ignored the traffic laws."

So much so that about 50 kilometers from its destination, the taxi was stopped by French gendarmes.

Still, the adventure did not end here. After the driver explained the situation to the officers, they decided to give the teenager a lift to his exam themselves. The taxi driver said they even phoned him afterwards to tell him the student had made it.

Perhaps as astonishing as the story itself is the fact that France's SNCF rail service was prepared for such eventualities: the taxi bill amounted to 450 euros ($532), but "it falls under the SNCF-Exam plan, whereby during the first two days of the 'Bac,' we are especially attentive to young passengers," the SNCF's press office said.  

New York, Ukraine

A small town in eastern Ukraine voted this week to change its name to New York. This was not a mere gimmick: the move actually restored the town's 19th-century name.

Why it was named after the Big Apple is unclear: some have theorized that the name came from the American wife of one of the town's first German settlers. In 1951, while Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, the town was then renamed Novgorodske for political reasons.

In a vote last Thursday in the Ukrainian parliament, more than 300 MPs supported changing the name of the small town of about 12,000 near Donetsk, in the country's disputed eastern region.

The U.S. embassy in Kyiv welcomed the move, tweeting: "Congrats to the people of New York, Donetsk Oblast, on the return to their town's historical name… We're big fans of your new/old name!" It even adapted the famous "I love New York" logo for the occasion, using Cyrillic script. 

The Life Aquatic

Before you buy a plot of land in Canada, you might want to check it actually includes land.

A 19-acre (7.7-hectare) lot was recently put up for sale in Shrewsbury, a village in Ontario, for the affordable price of 99,000 Canadian dollars ($80,292), but there's a catch: the entire lot is under water.

This did not deter the real estate agency listing the piece of land. "This property is presently under water but could have endless possibilities in the future. Be creative," the listing said, without however suggesting what these possibilities might be.

Water lots can be used for mooring boats or as fish farms, Reuters reported. But even then, they are not common in Canada. And such use would require some access to land which this property does not have.

Time perhaps to invest in a submarine. 

Read more:

ICYMI: The week's quirky news from around the world – June 11, 2021

ICYMI: The week's quirky news from around the world – May 21, 2021