This is not the news either

Last month I wrote about news stories that you do not read any more. I was thinking of plane crashes, Formula One drivers dying and ever younger children swimming the English Channel. Thinking about it, I might have included strikes too.

For a while this week it looked as if another of them was making a come back: Japanese soldiers emerging from the jungle not knowing that the Second World War was over. On Friday the BBC reported:

Japanese officials are investigating claims that two men living in jungle in the Philippines are Japanese soldiers left behind after World War II.

However, this morning's Australian Daily Telegraph (a paper whose readers presumably believe the country is going to the dingoes) says:

Security forces on the insurgency-wracked Philippine island of Mindanao are increasingly sceptical of reports that two elderly Japanese men have been hiding in the jungle since World War II.

While Japanese diplomats tried for a fourth day to establish the veracity of the reports, suspicion grew today that kidnapping gangs on the island might have invented the rumours as a scam to lure foreigners into the region.

Oh well, maybe someone will sight the Loch Ness Monster this summer.