People who dislike or fear clowns can log on to the website www.ihateclowns.com or a related site for mimes, www.ihatemimes.com.
One of the postings on the mimes site: "The difference between clowns and mimes is also striking... clowns being at least to some extent obese, while mimes are universally rail-thin, anorexic. The reason for this remains unclear... but it has
been posed by some of our members that mimes are
vegetarians and clowns are almost pure carnivores."
- www.globeandmail.com
WEIRD NEWS
Using umbrella as a makeshift parachute
A man in Chonqing, western China, ended up in hospital when he tried to use an umbrella as a makeshift parachute, says West China City News. The jumper, who is reported to have suffered two broken legs, told police he leaped out of the window because he thought his microwave oven was about to explode. He had thought the umbrella would enable him to alight safely
like Mary Poppins in the Disney children's film.
- www.globeandmail.com
Muslims flock to
see 'Messiah' after German Web hoax
BERLIN (Reuters):
Hundreds of Muslims flocked to a German hospital where an Internet site said the Messiah was being breastfed by its resurrected mother, a hospital spokesman said on Thursday.
Spokesman Burkhard Buescher said large groups of women with children were among those who had travelled across Germany and from the nearby Netherlands in the last fortnight asking porters at the Essen university clinic to let them visit the 'Messiah'.
"The story ended up being that there was a woman in the clinic who had given birth to the Messiah and who had died. She was later dug up and was still alive but her whole body was burned just her two breasts were unharmed," said Buescher.
"Allah ordered the woman to feed the child for 40 days and then die again. This crazy story was seen by people on a Turkish Internet site," he said.
On the Internet portal Turkdunya.de, chatterers discussed the story and one contributor claimed to have seen the woman.
Hospital guards had told visitors there was no such woman in the maternity clinic, and the number of visitors had dwindled since German media reported the story was an Internet hoax, Buescher said.
"But some people just wanted to believe it."
Italians see vision of monk's face in statue
ROME (Reuters):
Thousands of faithful and curious Italians have visited a statue of Christ after a woman said she saw the face of mystic monk Padre Pio appear on the bronze figure in the northwestern city of Genoa.
"The Cardinal of Genoa came to see it last night and he agreed that there was a face but said
that further investigations were needed," Mauro Boccaccio, spokesman for the regional government of Liguria, said yesterday.
Boccaccio said a woman was first to notice the face appear Wednesday when she came to view the Christ of the Deep, a bronze figure of Christ that artist Guido Galletti designed in the 1950s to be submersed under the sea.
Padre Pio was said to have the power to be in two places at once and to display the stigmata -- bleeding wounds in the hands and feet similar to those of Christ. He died in 1968 and was made a saint in 2002. Some eight million pilgrims visit the town where he is buried each year.
The Christ of the Deep statue has been undergoing restoration work for the past eight months and is due to be returned to the sea on June 26.
Pair shot and beaten for taking a leak
PHNOM PENH (Reuters):
A little late night relief proved costly for two drunk Cambodians who were shot and beaten by security guards for urinating against a garage wall.
Police said Sun Sophat, 23, the son of a provincial governor, and Mao Visalvan, 31, incurred the wrath of the guards when they mistook the garage for a public toilet on the way home from a party on Monday night.
Phnom Penh district police chief Yim Simony said the guards probably feared the pair might damage some of the
luxury cars in the garage. But he thought they had over-reacted.
"They should not have sprayed bullets at them just because
they have bad morality," he
told Reuters.
Sun Sophat, who was shot in the leg, sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries. His friend Mao Visalvan is recovering after being beaten around the head, the police chief said.
Urinating in public is common in the deeply impoverished Southeast Asian nation because it lacks amenities.
