Community ClicksIncompetent criminals
Two partners in crime were sentenced to four years in jail between them by England’s Manchester Crown Court in December.
Ali Abdullah, 28, and Muqtar Nuren, 22, had offered to take driver’s license tests for people (both driving test and written test), but on contingency payment only for passing.
Between them, they had 35 clients, took 43 tests and failed 33 (passing only seven driving tests and three written).
Although they did not charge for their failures, it is of course illegal to take a driver’s license test for another person.
>>> Brandon Stepp, 27, and two companions were arrested in Parkersburg, W.Va., in December after they became the most recent alleged drug runners to hide their marijuana unsuccessfully in their car’s engine compartment.
The engine got hot; the dope caught fire.
>>> A man fled without money from a Taco Bell in Haverstraw, N.Y., in October after being the most recent robber to conduct his transactions out of order.
He first announced the robbery, but before the cashier could gather money for him, he asked the store manager for a job application.
When the manager refused, the man walked out, empty-handed.
>>> Shane Williams-Allen, 19, was arrested in Tavares, Fla., in January and charged with burglarizing an unmarked police car and stealing several items, including handcuffs and a Taser gun.
Eventually, Williams-Allen called the police for help after he accidentally cuffed himself, and officers believe he also accidentally Tasered himself.
>>> Police in Oakland, Calif., called off their manhunt for fleeing home-invasion suspects in January when officers encountered four of the men wedged between two buildings they had tried to squeeze through.
Questionable judgements
In Thailand, the endangered status of crocodiles and elephants is largely ignored by the public, who are instead enthralled with the giant pandas and their cub on loan from China.
There is even a 24-hour cable TV “panda channel.”
At several of the country’s zoos, officials now regularly paint their crocodiles and elephants in panda colors (with harmlessly washable paint) to call attention to their plight.
Even though the paint must be reapplied daily, “It’s impossible not to do it now,” said one croc handler for a December Wall Street Journal dispatch.
“People expect it.”
>>> Only four days after the January earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, two Royal Caribbean cruise ships made a port call at a private enclave about 60 miles up Haiti’s coastline from ground zero, turning loose hundreds of frolickers for “jet ski rides, parasailing and rum cocktails delivered to their hammocks,” according to a report in London’s The Guardian.
Haitian guards employed by the cruise line manned the resort’s 12-foot-high fences, but about a third of the passengers still declined to leave the ships, too upset by the unfolding disaster nearby to enjoy themselves.
Royal Caribbean said it had made a large donation to the rescue effort and promised, also, to send proceeds from the port’s thriving craft stores.
Update
President Obama’s figurine was expected to lead in sales for the second straight year in the traditional “caganer” craft industry in Spain’s Catalonia region.
As News of the Weird reported in 2008, the popular statuettes are typically modeled on famous people, each with pants down, squatting to answer a call of nature.
They are ubiquitous in Nativity scenes, playfully hidden to encourage children’s where’s-waldo-type guessing, and believed to symbolize “equality” through the universality of bodily functions.
Another figurine expected to do well this season is the brand-new Queen Elizabeth.
