Shower Power
We start the World Section of your April Gazette with the usual hard hitting journalistic news to which you’ve become accustomed. Naked women taking a shower near a busy road ended up causing a collision… hardly surprising!

The naked stunts/protests have taken place in cities throughout the world, and are being organised by Peta; a group that believes we should all adopt a vegan lifestyle and stop eating nice furry animals.

Apparently the two ladies were getting into their shower protest characters by soaping each other, which attracted quite a few onlookers, most of which were men, but unfortunately one man who was watching from a nearby road forgot he was actually driving a car and ploughed straight into the back of the stationary vehicle ahead of him. As it turned out, there were no injuries and very little damage to the vehicles involved.

A similar protest in London, during which two naked models shared a bath, passed without incident due to the British males managing to keep a stiff… upper lip.

Finally, just to keep you enlightened, the protests did have a reason and that is World Water Day, and the point was to demonstrate that if all Americans ate one pound less of meat per year, enough water would be saved to supply six months’ worth of showers.
Sorry, I still don’t understand it… I’ll have a think about it while I finish off this bacon sandwich.

Sign of the Times
Perhaps we shouldn’t be that surprised by this story, living as we do in such a technology lead society. But, strange as it may seem, in Colombia the number of households with mobile phones outnumber those that receive drinking water.

According to the National Statistics Department in Bogotá, 88.1% of homes have access to a mobile phone, compared with 87.6% that receive drinking water.

Between 2008 and 2010, even in the rural communities of Colombia, households with mobiles increased from 70.8% to 79.4%, while access to safe drinking water fell from 58.3% to 57.1% during the same period, according to the figures published.

As an aside, in 2010 homes in major cities with mobile phones stood at 90.5%, while landlines had dropped to an all time low of 39.8%.

Let’s face it, who cares if you are dying from dysentery, just as long as you can send that all important text message!

Language Barrier
Did you know that according to the UN, one language disappears from the world around every two weeks? Mexico knows better than most how easily and language can be lost, with more than 350 indigenous languages spoken within its borders.

Now, crazy as it may seem, two elderly men, who are the last known fluent speakers of the Zoque language in the village of Ayapan, appear to have fallen out and no longer converse.
The head of the Mexican Institute for Indigenous Languages, Dr. Fernando Nava, has tried to play down reports of a rift between the two men in their 70’s.

“These men are not enemies, they just have very little in common and have grown apart,” said Dr. Nava, “There are personal reasons that they don’t speak, but there is no war between them.”

The Zoque tribe are descendants of the Olmecas, who live in the south of Mexico. The institute is trying to encourage locals to learn and use this dying language, and is trying to urge the two men to pass it on to their families. They have also made recordings of the men speaking the language to ensure it is never completely lost.

Mexico’s rich diversity of languages has been under threat for some years… so let’s hope the old fellas find something interesting to chat about before it’s too late! (I was going to suggest young, naked women in showers, but apart from leaving them speechless, it would probably kill them off, to boot – Ed)

Polygamist Posts Pictures
When getting married for the second time, it’s always best to get a divorce from that rather tiresome first wife… especially if photos of your wedding are posted all over Facebook.
Richard Leon Barton, 34, got married in Grand Rapids, USA to a local woman, but failed to mention to her the minor inconvenience of another wife lurking in Rhode Island.

The Rhode Island wife thought there was something fishy going on when Richard (or shall we just call him Dick), removed her from his friend list on Facebook. She said they had discussed divorce after his release from a prison sentence in 2009, but they just never got round to it.

After some more Internet investigation, wife number one found her husband’s wedding snaps on the Facebook pages of Dick’s friends and family.

He has since been charged with polygamy and could face a potential 4-year jail sentence, which is probably the safest place for him as there is always the outside chance of the loss of one’s testicles when offending one’s wives so acutely. ‘A woman scorned…’

Bladder Control
Don’t know about you, but the need to have a pee very often arrives just at the wrong moment, just before a meeting or job interview, you suddenly get the urge.

Well new research from the Netherlands suggests that it might be a good idea not to dive into the nearest toilet, as it is now believed that a full bladder helps you make better decisions.

The study basically says that when people are forced to exert higher levels of bladder control, they make more controlled choices and are even better able to control impulsive desires.

Experiments performed by professor Mirjam Tuk of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, involved asking participants to drink five cups of water, whilst others were told to just take sips from five separate cups. It takes about 40 minutes for water to reach the bladder and after that time the participants were asked to make eight choices that would affect the type of reward they could receive, one being a small reward immediately, the other a larger but delayed reward.

“The full bladder participants mostly opted for the larger reward, which was 20 dollars in a couple of days rather than the 15 dollars tomorrow,” explained professor Tuk.

The research even showed that that simply thinking about urination had the same effect in a similarly run experiment.

So there you have it… next time you need to make an important financial decision, get ten pints of Guinness down your neck first!

Double Header
Magdalenas, in Spain, is a rather tasty bun cake that is very nice with a cup of coffee. However, if you mention the name Magdalena in Slovakia at the moment all you get is a two-headed tortoise.

The double-headed, shell wearer belongs to Roman Gresak from Zilina in Slovakia, “We call her Magdalena: one head is Magda and the second one is Lena,” thanks for clearing that up, Roman.

Zoologists have explained that this very unusual case is much like Siamese twins, where the embryos don’t separate in the correct way.

Unfortunately for poor little Magdalena, each head has its own nerve system which does cause some directional problems, “The second head sometimes doesn’t allow the tortoise to know where to go,” Mr. Gresak said. So… much like being married then.

Anyway, sticking with the old adage that two heads are better than one, the cranially challenged shell-top will be moving in the same circles as Paul the octopus, who predicted the Spanish world cup win, as she has been chosen to do the predictions for the Ice Hockey championships.

Horror Attack
Hugh Buckley, from Scotland, had his life shattered when he went to visit a ‘friend’ for dinner. Unfortunately, the friend suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and believed he was being watched and that his food was being poisoned.

During the meal, the friend got up from the table and left the room and for no apparent reason returned with a pitchfork and began to stab Hugh in the head with the tool.
Mr. Buckley lay in a pool of his own blood overnight and was found the next day with the implement still embedded in his head. Incredibly he was still alive and was rushed to hospital after the Fire Brigade had sawn through the prongs, which the surgeons removed in the operating theatre.

He then lay in a deep coma for three months, from which many believed he would never emerge.

He did eventually open his eyes but has only regained movement in his right arm and leg and remains unable to speak despite the best efforts of the hospitals speech therapists.
After pleading not guilty to charges of attempted murder, assault and causing permanent impairment, the jury acquitted him on a majority decision on the grounds of insanity, although the court did make a temporary order for him to be sent to hospital for mental health treatment and he will appear in court again for a decision on a permanent order.

It’s Raining Men!
Kaliegh Townsend has always lived a quiet life in Mississippi, USA. So she was more than a little miffed when a naked man fell through her ceiling and into her living room!

To make matters worse, he not only decided to hang out in her apartment, but also then asked her if he could borrow some shorts. Ms. Townsend explained to the naked man that he could not have anything from her, whilst grabbing her jacket and making a quick exit.
It turns out that the naked man was one Patrick Williams, who had crawled in the space under his floor in order to evade capture by the police, who were keen to speak to him about an outstanding warrant.

Ms. Townsend called the police, who were already in the parking area of the building having just been searching for the naughty naked narc.

“We were looking for him and I guess he hid in a crawlspace. We were still in the parking lot when she called,” said Lamar County Sheriff, Danny Rigel.

Williams was arrested, still sporting a rather offensive weapon, as he left the building and now faces felony charges for the damage caused during his fall from grace.

Boy Mauled
A 12-year-old boy had the unluckiest of falls whilst skiing in the Swedish resort of Fundsdalen, he landed right in a cave occupied by a hibernating Brown Bear. However, he then had the luckiest of escapes, because despite being bitten and clawed he managed to get out of the cave and run away.

The boy, who has not been named, suffered injuries to both legs and his back and was taken to a hospital in Ostersund where his injuries were described as ‘very serious,’ although a spokesman did say the boy was recovering well.

Despite describing the attack as ‘savage,’ local police did not destroy the animal, as they considered it not to be any further threat to the public and really just wanted to go back to sleep for a few months.

Fundsdalen is a very popular destination from British skiers and is the third-largest ski resort in Sweden, with the countryside well renowned for its wildlife that includes the said bears, wolves and even lynx.

Gazette advice if you should confront a wild bear: clench to avoid soiling, then run like the wind! (Sound advice, Mr Clenchlate! – Ed)

Sheep Dog?
Never in all my time writing the World Section have I come across such a ridiculous story. So it truly deserves to be included in this month’s edition.

Sheep farmer, Liu Naiying from China, is claiming that one of his sheep has given birth to a ‘lamb-puppy,’ saying that when he went to his flock one morning, he found a sheep licking the moisture from the animal.

“I was herding the sheep and saw a sheep licking her newborn lamb which was still wet,” he explained.

“When I went up close to check on the lamb I was shocked because it looked so strange, like a cross between a sheep and a dog,” lied Liu.

Get a grip man! The dew-covered puppy either wandered into your field or someone is laughing their butt off after planting it there!

All right, the little blighter does have vaguely woolly look about it, but it’s still a bloody dog, with doglike paws, nose, eyes and mouth.

Even local vets have pointed out that it is completely impossible for a sheep to give birth to a dog… but still there are crowds of people and reporters turning up to get quotes and take pictures at the farm in Fugu County, Shaanxi Province… The story has even made its way into a top-notch publication like The Seaside Gazette.

Homing Ostrich
Did you know that the ostrich has homing skills similar to that of the pigeon? Well, nor did I, and the bird has obviously not let a little thing like being flightless get in the way of this talent.

The reason we now know this is because an ostrich was stolen from a farm in Romania, but then managed to escape from her nasty captors and run home, probably doing about 50kph all the way.

These huge, flightless, African natives are not historically renowned for their homing skills and even her owner Florin Diaconsescu, 47, was shocked that she had managed to get back to him.

“I had given up hope of ever seeing her again,” he said, “But I saw a large cloud of dust heading towards the farm and she came running into the yard as fast as her legs would carry her.”

And after a gruelling journey like that, what a lean and tasty burger she will make!