AM Prep-Kickers

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YAZOO CITY, Miss. (AP) — A group of hunters have captured the longest alligator ever to be recorded in Mississippi. The state Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks says four state residents harvested a male alligator Saturday in west Mississippi’s Sunflower River. The alligator weighed 802.5 pounds and measured 14 feet, 3 inches long. That breaks the previous record by more than 2 inches. The area is located in a designated alligator hunting zone. Mississippi’s alligator hunting season opens on the last Friday in August each year. The 2023 season ends Sept. 4.

WEST POINT, N.Y. (AP) — A lead box believed to have been placed in the base of a West Point monument by cadets almost two centuries ago yielded no bombshells when unsealed during a livestreamed event, just silt. An audience at the U.S. Military Academy was primed to see military relics or historical documents while watching on Monday. But instead, experts pried open the top and announced there was just a layer of silt on the bottom. They said it appeared that moisture seeped in from a damaged seam on the box. That could have disintegrated any organic matter inside, like paper or wood. It’s also possible that sediment seeped into the box.

BUÑOL, Spain (AP) — Some 15,000 people, including many tourists, have pasted each other with tomatoes in Spain’s annual “Tomatina” street battle in the eastern town of Buñol. Workers on trucks tipped 120 tons of overripe tomatoes into the main street for participants to throw Wednesday. The street fight leaves both the street, houses and participants drenched in red pulp. The town hoses down the area and the revelers shower off within minutes of the hour-long noon battle finishing. The festival was inspired by a food fight between local children in 1945 in the town, located in a tomato-producing region.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A neurosurgeon investigating a woman’s mystery symptoms in an Australian hospital has plucked a 3-inch wriggling worm from the patient’s brain. Hari Priya Bandi was performing a biopsy through a hole in the 64-year-old patient’s skull at Canberra Hospital last year when she pulled the parasite out with forceps. Bandi told Tuesday’s The Canberra Times newspaper that the find made her feel “a bit sick.” It was the larva of an Australian native roundworm not previously known to be a human parasite named Ophidascaris robertsi. The worms are commonly found in carpet pythons. Bandi is an author of an article about the extraordinary medical case published in the latest edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Disease.