funny news

[BehnazNaNaz]

Kentucky cops find no humor in funny Bush money

12:09 p.m. Jan. 31, 2001

DANVILLE, Ky. -- Talk about funny money.
Police in Kentucky are looking for a customer who succeeded in paying for a $2 order at a fast-food restaurant with a phony $200 bill featuring a picture of President Bush and a depiction of the White House with a lawn sign saying, "We like broccoli."

Authorities say the female cashier at a Dairy Queen in Danville even gave the culprit $198 in real money as change.

"Essentially, the story is that somebody at a drive-in ordered some food and passed a $200 novelty deal with George Bush on it," Danville Police Detective Bob Williamson said Tuesday.

"At a distance it looks like a real bill, it's got the green color," Williamson said when asked how the cashier possibly could mistake it for genuine money.

The cartoonish bill was accepted Sunday by the Dairy Queen cashier despite having Bush on one side and an oil well on the other. The phony bill also depicted the White House lawn with yard signs reading "U.S. deserves a tax cut," "No more scandals" and "We like broccoli," the last apparently referring to Bush's father's admitted dislike for the vegetable.

No U.S. currency has a picture of Bush, let alone a reference to liking broccoli.

Because there is no actual $200 currency, the culprit could face a charge of theft by deception but not counterfeiting, Williamson said.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Man, Aged 20, Marries 77-Year-Old Virgin

Wednesday January 17 11:42 AM ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A 20-year-old Iranian man has married a 77-year-old virgin in a village in the east of the country, newspapers said Wednesday.

They said the youthful groom, Hesam Khalili, had wed septuagenarian Fatemeh Jamshidi Khakhi in the village of Gonabad in Khorasan bordering Afghanistan.

Ali Pourhossein, a local civil servant responsible for registering marriages, approved the match between the young man and what newspapers called the ``happy girl,'' saying both were in perfect health and there was no legal barrier to their nuptials.

Weddings between aged grooms and youthful brides are relatively common in Iran, but seldom the other way round.

The official IRNA news agency speculated the groom had wed his aging bride so as to cut his two years of military service. Married men only serve half the term, it said.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Thief Bites Off More Than He Can Chew

Friday January 12 7:56 AM ET
EDINBURGH, Scotland (Reuters) - A suspected Scottish jewel thief was caught when doctors X-raying him for a broken hip discovered thousands of pounds worth of loot in his stomach, police sources said Friday.
The sources believe the bungling burglar swallowed the jewels after being disturbed while robbing a first-floor flat in the central Scotland town of Perth.
He then leapt to freedom from an icy window-ledge, but landed awkwardly in the street below and broke his hip.
Officers arriving at the flat to investigate a possible break-in discovered the injured man in the road and took him to hospital for X-rays.
``When we found him he was in agony and couldn't move and was right below the open window of the flat,'' the sources said.
``Staff at Perth Royal Infirmary were having a good laugh about the X-ray because it's pretty obvious what happened to the jewelry.''
Officers had mounted a 24-hour hospital guard over the suspect in a bid to retrieve the stolen goods.
``It's now a case of waiting by his bed with a bucket just in case things start to move,'' the sources said.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Man Operated on After Swallowing Cutlery

Thursday November 2 7:29 AM ET

BEKAA VALLEY, Lebanon (Reuters) - Doctors have operated on a Lebanese man to remove 39 metal and plastic knives, forks, spoons and even lighters which he swallowed over one year.
Doctor Jihad Disouqi, one of the medical team, said the 30-year-old man was rushed to Bekaa hospital in a state of suffocation after swallowing a piece of water pipe this week.
He said the man, who suffered a psychological problem, was now in stable condition.
``The weight of the metal and other things he swallowed was heavy, but it did not tear the stomach. He also did not suffer any serious illness before and no one discovered what he had been doing,'' said Disouqi.
Disouqi said the man broke the table spoons and knives into two pieces so that he could swallow them.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Enjoy Your Cow Gas

Thursday October 12 12:05 PM ET
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Puffing on a cigarette is a bit like inhaling from the back end of a cow, or being poisoned like a rat, according to a new ad campaign sponsored by Washington state health officials.
Cigarette smoke contains methane, a noxious gas ``which just happens to be the main ingredient in cow farts,'' and arsenic, ''the stuff they use to kill rats,'' according to radio ads run by the Washington State Department of Health.
Buoyed by millions of dollars Big Tobacco agreed to fork over to settle claims by U.S. states over tobacco-related health care costs, Washington this week began airing some of the most aggressive anti-smoking ads ever produced.
Some television spots feature graphic footage of a doctor squeezing fat from a 32-year-old smoker's clogged aorta and another smoker, a cancer victim, still puffing away through the breathing hole doctors carved in her throat.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Rower Loses Olympic Silver -- in a Taxi

Thursday September 28 8:07 AM ET
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian rower Rachael Taylor was up the creek without a paddle Thursday after losing her Olympic silver medal.
Taylor, second with Kate Slatter in last Saturday's women's coxless pairs, left her medal in the back of a taxi after a night on the town, the Australian Olympic Committee said.
It put out an appeal to Sydney taxi companies to hunt for the medal and hand it in to the nearest police station.

[BehnazNaNaz]

guivarc`h

STUPID BANK ROBBER
It seems a man, wanting to rob a downtown Bank of America, walked into the branch and wrote "This iz a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag."
While standing in line, waiting to give his note to the teller, he began to worry that someone had seen him write the note and might call the police before he reached the teller window. So he left the Bank of America and crossed the street to Wells Fargo.
After waiting a few minutes in line, he handed his note to the Wells Fargo teller. She read it and, surmising from his spelling errors that he was not the brightest light in the harbor, told him that she could not accept his stick up note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America.
Looking somewhat defeated, the man said "OK" and left the Wells Fargo. The Wells Fargo teller then called the police who arrested the man a few minutes later, as he was waiting in line back at the Bank of America.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Politician: Sydney Olympics More Sex Than Sport

Thursday September 21 9:10 AM ET
KUWAIT (Reuters) - An Islamist politician says Sydney's Olympic games contain more sex than sports and wants some events banned on Kuwait's state television.
``Some events, especially women's contests, have flagrant scenes which are unacceptable,'' parliamentarian Waleed al-Tabtabaie said in a complaint addressed to the information ministry and published in Kuwaiti newspapers Wednesday.
``Women's beach volleyball games, diving and synchronized swimming contests are not acceptable...they reflect Western norms that do not give a woman's body any of the respect, honor or protection which Islam and Sharia (Islamic law) have granted her,'' added Tabtabaie.
The controversial MP has in the past protested against the staging of music concerts in the conservative state as well as celebrating St. Valentine's Day.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Mayor on Lookout for Burning Underpants

Tuesday September 12 8:57 AM ET
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Sydney Lord Mayor Frank Sartor is hoping to receive the Olympic torch at the Town Hall on Thursday.
He would prefer that, given the choice, to a sawed-off broom handle attached to a silver-painted tin and containing a pair of burning underpants.
That is what was handed to Pat Hills, one of his predecessors, when the torch last came to the city on its way to the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
University student Barry Larkin pulled off the hoax, as a protest against the massive publicity surrounding the event.
Larkin, now a successful Sydney vet, recalls that he had set light to the kerosene-soaked Y fronts in his home-made torch and had been greeted by cheering crowds as he ran through the city just before the arrival of the real Olympic flame.
``I had a police escort with about six or seven motorcycles,'' he says.
``I finished up at Town Hall, went up the steps, gave the torch to Pat Hills and he was off into his speech.... A lot of people didn't realize it was a hoax. By the time the real torch turned up, half the crowd had gone.''
Sartor, meanwhile, will be on the look-out for bogus torchbearers and blazing boxer shorts Thursday, but added philosophically: ``We will take it in our stride if it happens.''

[BehnazNaNaz]

Iran Air Ex-Hijacker Becomes Shoe Salesman

Monday August 7 10:30 AM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Iranian airline steward who hijacked a plane to Israel in 1995 is now happily selling shoes in a sunny Israeli resort town after his release from jail.
``Excellent,'' Reza Jabbari, 34, told Reuters in broken Hebrew when asked how he liked his work in the Red Sea town of Eilat. ''It's a very free city.''
Jabbari hijacked an Iranian airliner destined for a Gulf holiday island in September 1995. Israel let the plane land at its southern air base of Ovda, later freeing the aircraft, its 176 passengers and crew to return to Iran but holding Jabbari.
A court sentenced him to eight years in prison for air piracy. He was freed five months ago after serving half the time and hopes Israel will recognize his request for asylum.
Jabbari, who is on probation now, said he had commandeered the plane to Israel because it was a democracy.
``I feel bad that I did it -- even when I planned the hijacking I felt bad -- but there was no other way.

[BehnazNaNaz]

There`s Something Fishy About the Weather

Monday August 7 10:30 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - It frequently rains ``cats and dogs'' in Britain, as any local will tell you, but Sunday was different -- it rained fish.
Britain's Meteorological Office said a shower of dead but still fresh sprats rained down on the fishing port of Great Yarmouth, in the east England county of Norfolk, after a thunderstorm.
Retired ambulance driver Fred Hodgkins said: ``I thought at first I might have had something wrong with my eyes. The whole of my back yard seemed to be covered in little slivers of silver.''
Meteorological Office spokesman Sean Clarke said the fish shower would have been caused by a small tornado out to sea, known as a waterspout, which trawls up water and any fish near the surface.
``When the tornado touches the land it begins to lose energy and its contents are thrown to the ground,'' he said. ``Area for area, the UK experiences far more tornadoes than the U.S., but in the UK they are less intense.''

[BehnazNaNaz]

Riot Erupts In Tehran After Grocer Arrested for `Flirting`

Monday July 31 11:13 AM ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) - The arrest of a shopkeeper accused by a judge of flirting with his wife has triggered riots in the Iranian town of Qir, officials and media said Monday.
Newspapers said the unrest had broken out Sunday after a local judge ordered the arrest of the grocer, accusing him of flirting with his wife while the couple were shopping at the local bazaar.
The daily Bahar said the grocer had been beaten up during several hours of detention.
Fellow shopkeepers closed down the bazaar in Qir, a small town in Fars province, in protest and young people burned cars and set fire to the local court house, a police station and the district government's office.
Local judiciary chief Hossein-Ali Amiri told reporters that a ``misunderstanding'' between the judge and the shopkeeper had led to the tensions.
Bahar said the grocer was cross-eyed, giving a false impression to the judge's wife that he was leering at her.
Like many provincial towns in Iran, Qir, 220 km (140 miles) south of the provincial capital Shiraz, has a conservative religious environment with strong family values.
Amiri said the riots came after the district government ignored a complaint from the public about the grocer's arrest. There were no reports of any injuries.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Burglar Fingered by His Own Finger

Thursday July 6 8:24 AM ET
MADRID (Reuters) - Police investigating a burglary in southeast Spain came up with more than just fingerprints to help identify the culprit -- they found one of his fingers.
The man accidentally severed a finger while trying to steal carpentry equipment from an industrial complex in the city of Alicante last week, El Mundo newspaper reported Wednesday.
Unable to staunch the bleeding, he went to the city's hospital. Hospital officials tipped off police, who had kept the missing finger as evidence, and the man was arrested.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Dont Fire, Just Say

Tuesday May 23 8:40 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - British Royal Navy recruits are being ordered not to fire live shells. Instead they are instructed to shout ``Bang.''
It is all part of a Ministry of Defense drive to save money but sailors say it makes a mockery of their training. ''It's like being a kid again, playing cowboys and Indians in the school ground,'' one recruit said, according to media reports of the novel instructions.
``It is a sad joke and sailors are disgusted. It makes you ask what the navy is coming to,'' he said.
The instructions were issued to sailors at the gunnery school in Plymouth, southwest England.
They check co-ordinates, line up a target and prepare to fire the shells, which cost 642 pounds each. Then they shout ''Bang.''
A Navy spokesman said the gunnery school was to close in April next year and it was felt that live firing was no longer necessary.
``This is part of the Armed Forces' continuing efforts to achieve the best possible value for money,'' a spokesman told Saturday's Daily Telegraph.

[BehnazNaNaz]

Hijacker Found Dead; Homemade Chute Failed

Friday May 26 1:10 PM ET
MANILA, Philippines (Reuters) - The body of a man who hijacked a Philippines passenger jet was found Friday buried deep in mud after his homemade parachute fell off when he jumped from the plane.
``The body was embedded in the ground with only the hands protruding,'' national police chief Panfilo Lacson told reporters after the body was discovered near a reservoir at Liabac, east of Manila.
A homemade, lavender-colored parachute was found nearby.
Liabac village chief Basilio Gesmundo told local radio he saw a parachute open after a person jumped from the Philippine Airlines Airbus A330 as it flew over his village Thursday.
``I saw the parachute separate from the person,'' he said.
The pilot of the hijacked airliner described the hijacker as a jilted husband. He wore a blue bonnet and threatened passengers and crew with a grenade and a gun after he hijacked the domestic flight en route from Davao city to Manila on Thursday.
After robbing the passengers and crew, he forced the pilot to take the plane down to 6,000 feet before jumping out. The plane later landed safely in Manila. It was the country's first hijacking since 1982. Senior superintendent Marcelo Ele, from the air force aviation security agency, said the man had never sky-dived before. ``I would say he's an adventurer or a man fantasizing about being a skydiver,'' he said. ``Using that kind of parachute would be plain and simple suicide.''