Stranger than non-fiction
A Polish crime novelist has been sentenced to 25 years
in jail because police discovered he’d committed one of the
murders described in his books.
The detailed description of a Polish businessman’s brutal
murder appears in the man’s 2003 novel “Amok.” Authorities
were alarmed by the crime’s similarities with an unsolved
2000 murder case.
The victim was having an affair with the writer’s wife.
Prosecutors said the writer humiliated, tortured, starved and
killed him.
As a defense, the writer told authorities he got details about
the case from newspaper reports and made the rest up.
College bores child
After his first day of college, Hong Kong’s youngest undergraduate, age 9, said classes were too easy. The mathematics prodigy told reporters he’d already learned the subject matter a year or two ago.
The Indonesian-Chinese boy was accepted into Hong Kong’s Baptist University to study for a master’s degree. He received straight As on the college entrance exams, usually taken by students ages 17 or 18.
The university has created a special five-year program
for the boy, but some education experts fear his excelled
educational development might harm his personal and social
development.
Goats for gods
After experiencing aircraft problems, officials at Nepal’s
state-run airline sacrificed two goats in an effort to appease
the Hindu sky god, Akah Bhairab. Nepal Airlines had to
suspend some of its services after problems with one of its
two Boeing 757 planes.
The goats were sacrificed in front of the problem plane at
the international airport at Kathmandu, in accordance with
Hindu tradition.
The plane has since been fixed and is resuming its regular
flights to five cities in Asia.
Taxi fashion fines
The fashion police are cracking down on taxi drivers in
Malaysia. Drivers are being fined for un-tucked shirts or
wrongly colored shoes.
Drivers in Malaysia are supposed to wear white shirts, dark
pants and black shoes. The chairman of the Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board said drivers need to present a professional image. Taxi drivers have been fined as much as three days’ wages for going without socks or wearing an off-white shirt.
Drivers are very low paid, and the reality is that passengers
are lucky if they can persuade them to use the meter. Fined
taxi drivers have been witnessed crying as they turn over the
ridiculous sums to the licensing board.
Rove “punked”
White House pranksters have “punked” Karl Rove’s car.
Rove recently left his car in the White House driveway while
he accompanied President Bush to Texas.
Pranksters put two stuffed-animal eagles on his trunk and
a stuffed-animal elephant on his hood. His car was wrapped
in plastic and an “I love Barack Obama” bumper sticker
placed on it.