Watermelons could become the latest source of biofuel according to a report in the Telegraph online.

The report claims that scientists in the United States have discovered that around 50 percent of the fruit contained enough natural sugar for distilling into ethanol, which could provide valuable biofuel.

Retailers in the United States alone reject some 360,000 tonnes of ‘substandard’ fruit each year – fruit that is misshapen or blemished – which researchers suggest could produce nearly two million gallons of biofuel each year.

Currently, imperfect watermelons are ploughed back into the soil but a study into the potential of the fruit’s juice as a source of potential fuel by the US Department of Agriculture suggested the fruit could overtake chip fat, rapeseed oil and other sources of biofuel. Almost one fifth of the United States’ annual watermelon crop is left in the field due to imperfections and around twenty gallons of fuel could be produced per acre of fruit, according to the report published in the Biotechnology for Biofuels journal.

“We’ve shown that the juice of these melons is a source of readily fermentable sugars, representing a heretofore untapped feedstock for ethanol biofuel production,” said Dr Wayne Fish, the leader of the research team.

The riots of Birmingham UK in the last few days have become some of the most watched videos on YouTube. The videos show the tension between the crowds and the police.

The following videos are from YouTube user jabbott376 who’s done a good job moderation or disabling comments once/if the videos have become a platform for hate speech. Jabbott376’s also disabled embedding on some videos and so apologies in advance if these embeds are disabled retroactively on us.

Do you know anyone who was at the anti-BNP protests in Birminghan. You? What was it like?

They admit it themselves; “Bad at singing, good at money”. Since the Co-op bank makes the effort not to invest in unethical companies we thought we’d return the favour by giving their new YouTube effort some Al Write Now space (even if they’ve not enabled the small YouTube embeds which fit our theme).

What do you think? Good enough to go viral? Bad enough to go viral? It’s only had a few hundred watches so far.