Updated 23:35 with Kenyan man biting snake It’s the silly season for news again. Here are some of the latest shenanigans we human beings are up to, some worthy, some less so, some just plain intriguing. Switzerland looks relatively calm compared to the rest of the world.

  • A woman driving a convertible in Olten, Switzerland, was attacked by four women in a car behind her, when she braked abruptly because of a cat in the road. The driver of the second car whistled and shouted abuse at the 22-year-old convertible driver before the others jumped out and attacked the first driver, pulling her hair, then bashing her head against the car. Le Matin, Fre
  • Scotland’s Susan Boyle took a dream and ran with it: the 47-year-old unemployed charity worker fulfilled a promise to her mother and stood up on Britain’s Got Talent show, met derisive smiles head on and belted out a song that now has more than six million people watching her on YouTube (Ed. note: this is some voice!) (note just in from Evelyn Ralph and other fans from Scotland in Geneva: here is an even better YouTube version, this one viewed by 8 million – we do love a true winner)
  • In Norway, a man was arrested for driving while having sex – 133 kph in a 100 zone, with his companion’s back blocked his view of the road. Sydney Morning Herald, Australia

  • A Kenyan farm worker who was dragged up a tree by a four-metre python spent three hours struggling with the snake and managed to alert police by getting out his cell phone when the python momentarily loosened its grip. In the end he bit the snake’s tail. BBC
  • the first Iraq international flower festival is taking place in central Baghdad’s Al-Zawra park “with flower merchants from several Middle Eastern and European countries as well as India,” reports Australia’s The Age, which notes that the park re-opened in July 2008 after years of war. The flower festival is a tribute to the thousands of Iraqis who at the start of the war “bought flowers and small garden plants to be left as symbols of their life, were they to be killed.”
  • Rod Blagojevich, recently deposed governor of Illinois in the US, has been hired by NBC to star in a summer reality show called “I’m a celebrity . . . Get me out of here,” says Reuters. His attorneys have appealed to a federal court to remove his travel restrictions, part of the fallout from a federal  indictment on corruption charges, because the show is to be filmed in Costa Rica.
  • Thank goodness for dolphins, must have been the thought in the minds of Chinese sailors, as dolphins suddenly leaped out of the water in the Gulf of Aden, between the Chinese merchant fleet and a group of pirates who had appeared on the scene. “ The pirates could only lament their littleness befor the vast number of dolphins. The spectacular scene continued for a while,” before the pirates turned away, reports Xinhua.
  • Rufai Mohamed Salad’s volunteer ambulance service in danger-riddled and services-poor Mogadishu, Somalia, recently ran over a goat. The owner insisted the company pay until the drivers said they would once they delivered the patient to the hospital and the owner realized their service was free. The goat is her contribution to a service that a hospital director says has saved hundreds of lives, reports AllAfrica (Ed. note: dial 777 in Somalia)
  • Bedbugs are sleeping everywhere these days in the US, with a 71 percent increase in the past five years, reports National Public Radio, so worrisome that the US Environmental Protection Agency is hosting a national bedbug summit this week. The best solution for getting rid of them is reportedly heat treatment: steam the little buggers. (Ed. note: has anyone thought of listing them as toxic assets?)
Posted by Ellen Wallace on 15 April 2009 at 21:41 | permalink
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News story, GenevaLunch, 15 April 2009.

Filed under: Tech/media

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