Amsterdam authorities find captain's blood-alcohol level four
times the legal driving limit.
He was on a movable passageway when security officers at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport spotted him: a Moroccan man in a pilot’s uniform, who appeared to be having trouble walking. They stopped him, and he indicated that he was heading for the departure lounge and his Royal Air Maroc flight back to Morocco.
Since he was to be the plane’s captain, military police at the airport asked him to take a breath test. The pilot objected, but when the cops refused to let him go, he eventually agreed. His blood-alcohol level measured four times the legal driving limit for Holland, according to a BBC report.
The pilot’s response? Slurring, he asked to be allowed to return to his plane. Luckily for the 125 passengers waiting on board for him to fly them to Tangiers, Schiphol’s officials declined and slapped him with a 2,500-guilder fine ($1,150 U.S.).
The passengers were transferred to hotels for the night, and the following day, the plane, with the now sober — and hopefully, sobered — pilot at the controls, took off. The pilot’s name has not been released.
Post-it to pilot: Virtually all airlines have strict regulations prohibiting pilots from having alcohol and drugs — including even many prescription drugs — in their systems when they fly.
Some Aussie surfers are attacking tourist "kooks" for stealing their breaks.
When traveling in the USA, the land of the automobile, one must be wary of road rage. Down Under, in the land of surfing, one must be careful of wave rage. According to a recent BBC report, several of Australia’s most popular surfing breaks have become battlegrounds between locals and tourists. And the locals are winning.
Here’s the scoop: Young travelers, usually male, show up, take one look at those long, beautiful breaks and, before you can say “Don’t forget your rash guard,” they’re in the water, paddling to catch the wave of their dreams.
Now, here’s where things turn sour. As anybody who has ever surfed knows, paddling is a lot of work. Then there’s the timing — it has to be perfect or you’ll miss the wave. And then there’s the wave itself; it may peter out, or it may be the wave everybody’s looking for. If it’s the one, it’s guaranteed that a lot of people are going to want to ride it.
But the unlucky visitor who drops in on a wave and cuts off a local is headed for trouble. Grant Walton, a Sydney surfer, told the BBC what happened to a foreigner who made this very mistake. “They beat him pretty badly,” he said. “It was brutal stuff. The bloke got smashed.”
On Sydney’s Bondi and Manly beaches, things have gotten so out of control that the Surfrider Foundation of Australia has begun distributing pamphlets and posters with surfing rules written in English, Japanese, Hebrew and German to nearby hostels and cafes.
Apparently, most Aussie surfers are placing the blame on “grommets” or “kooks” — young or inexperienced surfers — who don’t know the rules. That, however, can’t explain what happened to Nat Young, Australia’s former world surfing champion. After a shouting match over a wave at Angourie Beach in New South Wales, Young was attacked, and ended up in surgery with two broken eye sockets, cracked cheekbones and sinuses that no longer work the way they used to.
And I thought the whole point of the sport was to have fun.
Outraged by a classmate's death, hundreds go on a "drunken rampage."
It all started with a pencil. On Monday, a 9-year-old student of the James Gichuru School in Dandora, a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, dropped his pencil on the road near his school. When he bent down to pick it up, the speeding driver of a matatu — a public minibus — hit and killed the boy.
The child’s classmates, incensed by their friend’s death and the lack of speed bumps in the area, banded together with kids from other area schools and went on a “drunken rampage,” according to a Reuters report.
The children, some as young as 5, looted shops, drank the contents of a beer wagon and set fire to the matatu that killed their peer. A schoolteacher told Reuters, “They just ran out of the classroom like crazy demons … We managed to hold back some of the little ones, but the others, they went hitting people — pah! — and hitting cars — pah!”
The prepubescent uprising went on for eight long hours, during which the furious kids barricaded roadways, hurled rocks at vehicles and effectively took over their town.
The teacher interviewed explained that the kids “really, really want speed bumps. That is why they got drunk and smashed things, to make a point. But nonetheless they are serious hooligans. They are like English football fans.”
Though the report stated that details on injuries were not yet available, it did say that the driver and conductor of the matatu managed to escape the melee unscathed.
A court sentences a United Arab Emirates woman to four months in jail for casting a spell.
In the United Arab Emirates, a teacher and former housewife is spending four months in jail for putting a bad mojo on her former husband and his sister, according to a recent Reuters report.
The woman, angry with her ex-spouse for divorcing her, went to the country next door, Oman, where she hired a magician to conjure up a nasty spell for her former beloved and his sibling.
Apparently, the spell worked. At least psychologically. The man and his sister soon came down with a number of undiagnosed illnesses, which they attributed to the ex-wife’s black magic. Believing they were possessed by demons, they sought retribution in court — and won. The ex-wife was promptly whisked off to jail.
Recently, however, she was granted an appeal from a court in Sharjah, which informed the Gulf News that the “physical and psychological ailments” of the man and his sibling had no correlation with the ex-wife’s visit to the magician.
The newspaper also said that it is common for Arab women to visit magicians in times of need — as in “I need that Mercedes” or “I need you to come down with a rare and unsightly skin disease.” Hey, maybe they’ve got something there.
Spanish villages plan to burn giant veggies for electricity.
In two years, the northern Spanish towns of Villabilla de Burgos and Alcala de Gurrea will be running on artichokes. No kidding!
According to a Reuters report, the towns plan to burn giant, 10-foot-high artichokes at their twin power stations to convert the thorny vegetables to electricity.
Ten-foot-high artichokes? Yup. Spanish farmers, with a little financial help from European Union subsidies and the towns’ electricity generator, have been raising genetically modified “monster vegetables” with 23-foot-long roots. These larger-than-life artichokes may be unfit for human consumption, but once burned, they will provide the power to supply Villabilla de Burgos’ and Alcala de Gurrea’s 60,000 residents with electricity.
The idea of burning plants for energy has been around for quite a while, but nobody paid it much attention until the environment began to crumble and decay before our very eyes. Now that our resources are running out, governments are turning to plant life. Last year, a project was proposed in Ireland to burn the wonderfully diverse cannabis plant for electricity, but it was dropped, alas, because, reported Reuters, “it was considered too expensive compared with wind power projects.”
Now, finally, somebody is going to use plants for power — and not a moment too soon. Long live the artichoke!
Thieves in New Delhi, India, use snakes to hold up victims.
That money belt tucked under your shirt isn’t going to do much good if you happen to be held up by a certain type of thief in India’s capital.
According to a BBC report, a group of New Delhi muggers have taken up an ingenious new weapon — snakes. Yes, snakes.
The scheme works like this: A criminal approaches an unsuspecting citizen and places a python around her neck. The python begins to squeeze, and voil` — the victim gives up her money in return for breath and life.
In another popular ruse, a man is approached by a “snake charmer” who threatens him with a hissing asp: Give up the jewelry or risk a poisonous snake bite. Guess which wins.
Many of these robberies have occurred in the light of day, prompting Delhi police to warn the public to “stay clear of snake charmers and people carrying serpents.”
Aye, aye.
Demi’s last night out 
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Pitch and catch 
Whip-it 
My debate with Charles Murray 
More tips for literary lovers 
U.S., China need a green peace, not a trade war 
Santorum mangles the Founding Fathers 
Chris Christie’s gay marriage headache 
