J.A. Getzlaff

Thousands of Brazilians and foreign tourists flocked to Rio de Janeiro last week to hear the beat of the samba, to see nearly naked bodies clad with strategically placed sequins and to drink an endless flow of caipirinhas.

They didn’t come to smell dead fish. Too bad, because those who ventured near the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, between downtown Rio and the crowded beaches of Ipanema and Leblon, were quickly enveloped in an upchuck-inducing stench.

The view wasn’t so nice, either: The lagoon was completely covered with 30 tons of dead fish lying belly up, fin to fin.

According to a BBC report, the fish were poisoned by human waste that leaked from a ruptured sewage line that runs under the lagoon and empties out at sea. The lagoon’s natural resources manager, Mario Moscatelli, told the news service that the poisonous dreck was from nearby homes and businesses. Jair Otero, director of the Urban Cleaning Operations unit, blamed the carnage on government officials who ignored an incident in December, in which 4 tons of fish died in the lagoon because of the same leak.

Brazilian officials have now promised to fix the faulty waste system, but greed may be their motivation rather than concern for the environment. Coveted tourist dollars were lost during the city’s Carnival, when the smell had motorists speeding through the area as fast as they could, steering clear of the numerous local cafes, restaurants and shops.

As Rio engineer Alexandre Simoes remarked to the BBC, “The smell was insufferable.”

When traveling in the USA, the land of the automobile, one must be wary of road rage. Down Under, in the land of surfing, one must be careful of wave rage. According to a recent BBC report, several of Australia’s most popular surfing breaks have become battlegrounds between locals and tourists. And the locals are winning.

Here’s the scoop: Young travelers, usually male, show up, take one look at those long, beautiful breaks and, before you can say “Don’t forget your rash guard,” they’re in the water, paddling to catch the wave of their dreams.

It all started with a pencil. On Monday, a 9-year-old student of the James Gichuru School in Dandora, a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, dropped his pencil on the road near his school. When he bent down to pick it up, the speeding driver of a matatu — a public minibus — hit and killed the boy.

The child’s classmates, incensed by their friend’s death and the lack of speed bumps in the area, banded together with kids from other area schools and went on a “drunken rampage,” according to a Reuters report.

In the United Arab Emirates, a teacher and former housewife is spending four months in jail for putting a bad mojo on her former husband and his sister, according to a recent Reuters report.

The woman, angry with her ex-spouse for divorcing her, went to the country next door, Oman, where she hired a magician to conjure up a nasty spell for her former beloved and his sibling.

Apparently, the spell worked. At least psychologically. The man and his sister soon came down with a number of undiagnosed illnesses, which they attributed to the ex-wife’s black magic. Believing they were possessed by demons, they sought retribution in court — and won. The ex-wife was promptly whisked off to jail.

Recently, however, she was granted an appeal from a court in Sharjah, which informed the Gulf News that the “physical and psychological ailments” of the man and his sibling had no correlation with the ex-wife’s visit to the magician.

The newspaper also said that it is common for Arab women to visit magicians in times of need — as in “I need that Mercedes” or “I need you to come down with a rare and unsightly skin disease.” Hey, maybe they’ve got something there.

In two years, the northern Spanish towns of Villabilla de Burgos and Alcala de Gurrea will be running on artichokes. No kidding!

According to a Reuters report, the towns plan to burn giant, 10-foot-high artichokes at their twin power stations to convert the thorny vegetables to electricity.

Ten-foot-high artichokes? Yup. Spanish farmers, with a little financial help from European Union subsidies and the towns’ electricity generator, have been raising genetically modified “monster vegetables” with 23-foot-long roots. These larger-than-life artichokes may be unfit for human consumption, but once burned, they will provide the power to supply Villabilla de Burgos’ and Alcala de Gurrea’s 60,000 residents with electricity.

That money belt tucked under your shirt isn’t going to do much good if you happen to be held up by a certain type of thief in India’s capital.

According to a BBC report, a group of New Delhi muggers have taken up an ingenious new weapon — snakes. Yes, snakes.

The scheme works like this: A criminal approaches an unsuspecting citizen and places a python around her neck. The python begins to squeeze, and voil` — the victim gives up her money in return for breath and life.

In another popular ruse, a man is approached by a “snake charmer” who threatens him with a hissing asp: Give up the jewelry or risk a poisonous snake bite. Guess which wins.

Many of these robberies have occurred in the light of day, prompting Delhi police to warn the public to “stay clear of snake charmers and people carrying serpents.”

Aye, aye.