Martin World News

ITEM:  Let's kick things off with what's really wrong with the world, as told by an expert in what's really wrong with the world:

Did you feel the earth move?

A Pakistani politician says women wearing jeans can be blamed for earthquakes, inflation and natural disasters.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the chief of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami Fazl political party, made the comments during a press conference Saturday and called for Pakistani armed forces to launch a military operation against the women, The New Indian Express reports.

Rehman reportedly said women who are not covered like a “sack of flour” are weapons of mass destruction to Pakistan, and that the country has an abundance of such ‘missiles’ in all its major cities. He blamed their appearance for Pakistan’s troubles.

Rehman suggested that if women were kept inside homes and Shariah law was in place, the Taliban would not be attacking Pakistan, according to the newspaper.  From Fox News


Now this women-at-fault-for- (fill in your natural disaster) isn't new in the Muslim world.  It's not even alone this week.  A six-point quake in Malaysia killed some tourists, and this time, it wasn't the CLOTHES that did it...


KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - A government official blamed the recent deadly earthquake in Malaysia on a group of 10 foreigners who "showed disrespect to the sacred" Mount Kinabalu by posing naked at the peak last week.

Sabah Deputy Chief Minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan said a special ritual would be conducted later to "appease the mountain spirit."

The foreigners, who included two Canadians, two Dutch and a German national, broke away from their entourage and stripped naked before taking photos at the mountain peak on May 30, officials have said.

Five of the tourists are believed to still be in Malaysia and will be barred from leaving on the offense of gross indecency, according to police.

Here they are, in the process.

Okay, I'm not sure which one deserves my attention more- "nude hikers cause quake", "nude selfies on top of mountain", or "appease the Mountain Spirit".

Remember this one, Bob?  When the native tried to toss the Scarlet Witch into the volcano?

ITEM:  Speaking of disasters...

'Asteroid impact will destroy civilisation this September' claim conspiracy theorists
16:08, 7 JUNE 2015
BY CHRIS GEE
Doomsday theorists predict 'Rapture' like disaster for civilisation between September 22-28, with many saying a giant space rock will crash to Earth


Conspiracy theorists are predicting a cataclysmic climate event which will destroy civilisation - in just three months' time.


End-of-time predictors on various blogs and websites have come up with the period between September 22-28 as the likely time frame for the impending catastrophe.

Now we just went through this with Harold Camping and his Wecanknow.com (which now gives harmless parallel verses rather than apocolyptic warnings) who thought the rapture was coming in May of 2011, not to mention the Mayan calendar and December 2012.  Now, an asteroid will destroy everything at the beginning of football season.


The date most often quoted for the Rapture event in September 24, with others saying a few days either side.

Some have even predicted the events will be started by CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

One blogger, said: "The CERN logo is 666, the sign of the beast in a circle.

"The CERN collider looks like the all seeing eye or stargate we see so much of."

Looks more like three hurricanes from The Day After Tomorrow to me.

ITEM:  I guess our next stop ought to be traffic incidents.  Number one:

Apparently for Logan Shaulis, it's not a party until you're demanding to see license and registration from passing drivers. Police say the 19-year-old Pennsylvanian set up his own DUI checkpoint early Saturday, complete with flares, a BB gun, handcuffs, and a portable scanner, reports the Tribune-Democrat. The slight problems with this scenario are that 1) police say Shaulis was under the influence himself at the time, and 2) well, police caught on to his little ruse. When they arrived, they say Shaulis tried to hand the BB gun to a passenger, saying, "I can’t get caught with this."

One driver who was stopped said Shaulis told him "he was setting up road blocks and that they should have read about it in the newspaper." Adds a neighbor, per WTAJ: "We saw cop cars, we saw flares, we couldn't figure out what was going on. It was about 3 o'clock in the morning." Shaulis faces a litany of charges:
Carrying a firearm without a license, driving under the influence of alcohol, unlawful restraint, possessing an instrument of crime, official oppression, criminal coercion, reckless endangerment, impersonating a public servant, harassment, disorderly conduct, and public drunkenness.

Number two....

MISSOULA, Mont., June 2 (UPI) -- The Montana Highway Patrol a reported reckless driver was found to be driving with thousands of bees flying free in the car.

The MHP said troopers responded May 22 to a road near Missoula on a report of "a vehicle driving all over the road" and they found the motorist was transporting five hives of bees that were being allowed to move freely around the inside of the car.

Of course, since they were "harmless Russian honeybees", that made it all right.


Man, there's got to be a Putin joke in that somewhere...


Number Three...

AUGUSTDORF, Germany, June 2 (UPI) -- German police said a student driver narrowly escaped being flattened by a British tank, but her Toyota wasn't quite as lucky.

Lippe police said the 18-year-old student driver pulled out in front of a British military procession Monday in the town of Augustdorf and the tank driver, a 24-year-old member of the British armed services, was unable to stop the military vehicle before it crushed the front end of the Toyota hatchback.

Can't say I've ever witnessed THAT on Coliseum Boulevard....

Number Four...  and a tasty one at that...

A Chicago-bound Amtrak train collided with a tractor-trailer carrying 70,000 pounds of bacon Friday, spewing meat all over the tracks in Wilmington, Ill.  The collision split the truck in two, its cab landing on one side of the tracks and its trailer on the other. NBC Chicago reported the quantity of spilled bacon.

"It felt like someone punched me in the jaw," passenger Oscar Machado told ABC7. He said he was thrown from his seat.

Wilmington Police and the Union Pacific Railroad, which owns the tracks, are investigating the cause of the crash, including why the truck was on the tracks.

Too bad Amtrak doesn't haul maple syrup tankers....

And last but not least, Number Five...

CAPE CORAL, Fla., June 4 (UPI) -- Authorities in Florida shared video of a man dancing on a marked sheriff's office sport-utility vehicle in an incident he blamed on vampires.

The Lee County Sheriff's Office shared video on YouTube and Facebook showing Christian Radecki climbing atop a marked sheriff's office SUV and performing a dance routine to songs including Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl" and Supertramp's "Goodbye Stranger."  Radecki, who was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace and criminal mischief, told deputies a "woman with fangs" came to his door and told him a human sacrifice involving vampires was imminent.

"Therefore, Radecki made the conscious decision to get the Sheriff of Nottingham to help him stop the slaughter of small children," the Cape Coral police report of the April 7 incident states.

You can view the video here if you like.



ITEM:  Animalpocolypse, part one:

Turkey's vets have poked fun at the country's authorities by jokingly warning cats not to disrupt this Sunday's parliamentary election.
Istanbul's Chamber of Veterinary Surgeons issued a tongue-in-cheek statement asking the animals not to get up to any mischief that might affect the results, the Hurriyet Daily News reports. It's a reference to remarks in 2014 by energy minister Taner Yildiz blaming power cuts during local elections on a cat walking into a transformer unit - a claim widely mocked on social media.
The vets' playful letter warns cats that there will be consequences if they are implicated in any trouble this time around. "We warn our cat friends: stay away from power distribution units. Otherwise we will reconsider our friendly relationship with you," the statement reads. It goes on to urge the felines to avoid doing anything which might "cause the authorities difficulty" or disappoint the millions of people who will be going to the polls.
The 2014 power cuts occurred during vote counting, leading some people to allege election fraud. 


Guess they don't have squirrels in Turkey.

Part Two:

BENGALURU, India, June 1 (UPI) -- A mother elephant in India reached into the car of a pair of selfie-taking tourists and snatched a handbag that became an abortive snack.

Witnesses said the elephant and her calf were at the side of a road in Karnataka when the tourists on the road toward Ooty stopped to take selfies with the elephants in the background. The witnesses said the mother seemed angered by the camera flashes and reached into the couple's car, pulled out a handbag and put it in her mouth.

The elephant, which apparently found the bag unappetizing, spit the fashion accessory and its contents onto the ground as the car drove away.

The mother then made a meal from some of the bag's leaked contents, including fruit, cash and credit cards. 

If you have been following MWN long enough, you'd know that elephants prefer to take their own selfies.


Wow, I have enough more stuff for a post tomorrow!  Tune in then when we'll hear Scrappy say...

This stuff's funnier than a blizzard!