Weird News

“Borat” backlash

A delegation of Kazakhs is visiting the U.S. in a bid to clean up the country’s image. The spoof film “Borat” tarnished the reputation of Kazakhstan and its people.

The envoy spoke at Yale University, portraying themselves as a modern nation of well-educated professionals.

In the film, a fictional Kazakh TV reporter is depicted as anti-Semitic, misogynistic and engaging in incest, drinking urine and other questionable practices.

The Kazakh government briefly threatened a lawsuit last year because of the film.

“Borat” grossed $248 million worldwide and earned an Oscar nomination for best-adapted screenplay.

Dead man still cashing in

An Italian man is suspected of hiding the body of his dead father in the freezer for two years, so he could keep collecting his pension.

The man confessed to the crime, saying he needed the money. He stored the body in an underground garage.

He faces charges of fraud and concealing a body. He collected nearly $105,000 of his father’s pension money.

Cuckoo for cocaine

An Argentine woman was arrested by Chilean police for allegedly attempting to smuggle cocaine to Spain by hiding it in chocolate-covered cookies.

The woman was detained in the Santiago airport after police discovered 17.6 pounds of cocaine hidden in the foil-wrapped cookies.

Muslim love-spies

A Malaysian state is planning to recruit people to spy on the activities of unmarried lovers. The spies would have to report their observations to the Islamic religious authorities.

The Terengganu state government wants the part-time spies to look out for behaviors unacceptable for unmarried Islamics, like kissing or holding hands.

Religious police in a different part of the country caused a stir last October when they raided the apartment of a vacationing Christian American couple. Police mistakenly suspected they were an unmarried Muslim couple in “close proximity.”

Mummified body discovered

New York police responding to a burst water pipe call discovered the mummified remains of a 70-year-old man who’d been dead for more than a year. The man was sitting in front of a blaring television set.

The man was blind and diabetic, and had not been heard from since December 2005. Officials could not explain why his electricity was still on.

Nazi sugar

Sugar packets with the likeness of Adolf Hitler and Holocaust jokes on them found in cafes in Croatia have prompted a state investigation.

The local district attorney in Pozenga is currently looking into the matter. The packets were traced to a factory in that town.

The incident could embarrass the government, which has been eager to play down the country’s link to Nazism.