Filing a transparency petition, Brazilian legislator Elias Vaz asked the country's defence ministry to explain the process behind its purchase of Viagra for the armed forces. The petition points out that health authorities nationwide often face shortages of such medicines as insulin. Amid swelling criticism, army officials replied that their 2,000 Viagra tablets will be used against high blood pressure, and the navy stated that their allocation of 28,320 is for treating pulmonary hypertension. The air force has not commented yet on its 2,000.
Rene Tactay Jaime, 56, drove into a self-service automated car wash while visiting Escondido, California. It is unclear why the Las Vegas man took the risk of exiting his vehicle before beginning the wash process, but we do know the result: his car rolled forward, pinning him against the machinery and leaving him caught in the mechanism. He was discovered after a collision/malfunction alarm had been sounding for about half an hour, and the emergency services lifted his car to free him. Jaime was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
A![[IMG: Entertainers at the auction]](images/blackface.png)
n Arizona State University teacher and librarian swept in to
castigate a local school's parent-teacher association for their
choice of deejay for a disco-themed charity auction. The two
diversity gurus, Prof. Stuart Rhoen and librarian Jill Lassen, took
the Hopi Elementary PTA to task via social media for performer Koko
Kim Hunter's appearance - not his '70s attire but his use of
racism-promoting blackface. After being informed that Hunter,
who has established nationally recognised teen-outreach programmes and
worked with the Harlem Globetrotters, is black, Lassen apologised,
stating: 'I cannot fathom the hurt, anger and frustration you felt
after you and others volunteered countless hours on your event.'
Rhoen, however, took a different tack. He wrote on Facebook that 'a
black man, apparently in black face, is an entirely different
discussion than a white person'; at the very least, Rhoen said, Hunter
was in darker make-up or 'it's the lighting of the patio'.
In the course of a child-pornography investigation, Arby's manager Stephen Sharp admitted to the police that he enjoyed urinating in his Washington-state restaurant's milkshake mix while on duty as a night manager. Officers found the video he'd captured of one of his urination exploits while they were executing a search warrant involving several dozen problematic videos and photos on his digital devices.
In other bodily-fluids news, a drill instructor with Thailand's navy may have taken military induction a bit far: Petty Officer Thaksin Nogokpilai forced conscripts to drink his semen on at least one occasion. Once a video of this began circulating, Royal Thai Marine Corps officials assigned him 30 days' detention for causing serious damage to the naval reputation, leading up to dismissal from service per regulations. Navy Vice Admiral Pokkrong Monthatphalin stressed that his two supervisors too face censure - they must undergo 1-2 weeks of shaming via the 'thamrong winai' punishment, which includes a shaven head, menial labour, and bearing heavy weights.
Two inmates at the all-female prison in Clifton, New Jersey,
have 'fallen pregnant' after consensual sex with transgender prisoners
there. Fellow inmates, variously claiming to have witnessed this
activity and faced harassment from some transgender prisoners, have
expressed discomfort with the state policy that since last year has
permitted pre-surgery individuals to be housed alongside
others of their preferred gender.
The Department of Corrections is investigating, according to spokesman Dan
Sperrazza, and has the right to adjust the housing situation for the 800-plus
prisoners at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, including its 27
transgender inmates who identify as female.
Nigerian seminarian Sule Ambrose was chosen to play the role of Peter in the Good Friday passion play at Claretian University Seminary. The drama of Christ's suffering and death does not normally feature Peter fainting after chopping off a servant's ear, but the audience didn't know that, and some cast members thought he was joking as 'part of the theatre'. When the 25-year-old Ambrose didn't rise for the curtain call and they noticed him bleeding, the audience and fellow seminarians brought him to medics. He completed his suffering and death at a nearby medical centre.
If visiting the dentist gives you jitters, you might want to skip this item. The Illinois dentist filling Tom Kozsi's tooth told him that he'd swallowed the drill bit. Not a big deal, perhaps, but then 'when they did the CT scan they realised "you didn't swallow it - you inhaled it"'. Rather than undertake surgery that could involve removing part of the lung, pulmonary specialist Abdul Alraiyes opted to try snagging it with a type of catheter that is entering use for early detection of cancer. Four days after getting his filling, the 60-year-old Kozsi was given the inch-long drill bit as a souvenir.
In video posted to Chinese social media, workers who transfer bodies
for cremation noticed a body bag wriggling while they were unloading a
hearse at a Shanghai nursing home. Unzipping the yellow body bag and
uncovering the pensioner's face, they demanded that the nursing-home
staff inspect the 'corpse' they'd packed for removal. Staff are seen
taking the man back into the care home on a stretcher.
After a hospital check-up, the pensioner was found to be in stable
condition, and the nursing home has apologised for his mishandling and
promised to establish a 'special unit' with the Putuo district
government to investigate the incident.
Coke or coffee? That was the choice facing workers unpacking a shipment from Brazil at a Nespresso plant in Romont, Switzerland. They found the content of some coffee sacks in five shipping containers unsuitable for coffee-machine capsules - namely, 500 kilos of white powder. Local police reported that all of the 80% pure cocaine was destined for the European market. Someone's supply chain simply became snarled.
Finding a bin-bag-wrapped corpse in a freshly dug hole, sheriff's officers in Edgefield County, South Carolina, uncovered a link with a body discovered in the same yard a short while earlier. The person in the mostly filled hole (60-year-old Patricia Ruth Dent) had been strangled to death, and the other body belonged to her boyfriend (Joseph Anthony McKinnon, 65), who died of a heart attack after setting his shovel down.
David Roberta, a 12-year veteran volunteer officer with the Polk
County, Florida, sheriff's department, was caught selling prescription
pills out of a patrol car for $10 each while in uniform. After
finding his Oxycodone stash in said vehicle, detectives obtained his
permission to search his home. Roberts, 69, claims that the marijuana
stored there belongs to his nephew. His two firearms are an issue
also: it turns out that Roberts has been a convicted felon ever since
committing a burglary as a teenager. Volunteers do not undergo the
same background checks as regular officers.
Sheriff Grady Judd said that, though Roberts has 'done a good
job except when he's selling Oxies out of the car, using it as cover',
the case 'makes me so crazy I want to pluck my eyeballs out one at a
time'. To assuage its pain, the office will not use pills but 'help
him get every day of that [15-year mandatory sentence] in prison'.
As many parents do, a couple in Uttarakhand, north India, put an awful
lot into raising their offspring. Sanjeev and Sadhana Prasad,
however, decided to do something when that investment didn't bear the
desired fruit: claiming to have suffered 'mental harassment',
according to the Times of India, they have sued their only son, and
his wife, for not having children of their own or even 'planning a
baby' in the six years since their lavish wedding. At the moment, the
son and his wife are working in separate cities.
In their court petition, the parents demand compensation worth more
than 500,000 euros (for the son's training as a pilot in the US, a
luxury car, etc., which they explain depleted their life savings)
should 'grandchildren to play with' not arrive within the next year.
![[IMG: The in-flight wedding]](images/milehigh.jpg)
Due to arrive in Las Vegas not long before their 9pm wedding-chapel
appointment, eloping couple Pam Patterson and Jeremy Salda boarded the
first leg of their flight in their wedding attire. Upon cancellation
of the connecting flight, the night's last, from Dallas Forth Worth,
they and another passenger booked the final seats on a flight from
Dallas Love Field Airport. In the ride-share vehicle, the third
passenger stated that, as an ordained minister, he'd be happy to
preside over their wedding in Las Vegas. He did not do so - because
their Southwest Airlines pilot noticed Patterson's wedding dress, one
thing led to another, and soon the flight crew were festooning the
cabin with toilet-paper streamers for an in-flight wedding. The
number of guests and the professional photographer aboard may well have
surpassed what the chapel would have provided.