Egyptians go to France to recover stolen mummy hairs!

I guess they really like their ancient hairs:

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt sent an archaeological team to France on Thursday to retrieve 3,200-year-old strands of hair from the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II, who presided over an era of great military expansion in Egypt, state media said.

The existence of the hair came to light last year when some of the strands were offered for sale on the Internet for between 2,000 and 2,500 euros ($2,668 and $3,336), in addition to tiny pieces of resin and embalmed cloth taken from the mummy.

The seller had said he obtained the relics from his deceased father, who had worked in a French laboratory entrusted with analysing and restoring the body of Ramses in the 1970s. He had offered to provide certificates of authenticity to buyers.

 

French archaeologists had reacted with horror to news that the hairs were on sale and French authorities arrested the suspected seller in November.

Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass praised the efforts of French authorities to stop the sale of the hair, and said that the “theft of the mummy’s hair was not appropriate behavior”, state news agency MENA said.

Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great, was born around 1304 BC and ruled Egypt for more than 60 years during the 19th dynasty of pharaohs. He is a popular feature on Egyptian postcards and is traditionally believed to be the pharaoh mentioned in the biblical story of Moses.

Ramses’s mummy was discovered in 1881 and shortly afterwards moved to Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. In the early 1970s authorities noticed his body was deteriorating and sent it to Paris, where it was treated for a fungal infection.

 

Don’t they know about the ancient Egyptian mummy hair curse? If you take a mummy’s hair you will wind up growing very hairy palms, which would make life (and other things) a lot harder.

 

I can already hear what my girlfriend would say. “If he still has hair after thousands of years, I have to know what kind of shampoo and conditioner he used!” =P

 

Mark

 

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Swiss man jailed for Thai insult.

I thought the Swiss were supposed to be neutral?

 

Swiss man jailed for Thai insult

Oliver Jufer has lived in Thailand for more than a decade

A Swiss man has been jailed for 10 years after pleading guilty to charges of insulting the Thai king.

Oliver Jufer, 57, was arrested last December after drunkenly spray-painting posters of King Bhumibol Adulyadej in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

Earlier this month he pleaded guilty to five charges under Thailand’s draconian lese majeste law.

Judge Phitsanu Tanbukalee said that Jufer received a reduced sentence because he had admitted his guilt.

“This is a serious crime, and he was sentenced to four years for each of five counts, for a total of 20 years,” he said.

“Because he confessed, the court has reduced his sentence to 10 years.”

Jufer is believed to be the first foreigner ever imprisoned for the offence.

Others have been charged in the past, but later expelled from the country rather than jailed.

Sensitive issue

Jufer, who had faced a maximum sentence of 75 years, has lived in Thailand for more than 10 years.

KING BHUMIBOL ADULYADEJ   Born in 1927, ascended throne in 1946 World’s longest-serving current head of state Official powers are limited, but wields enormous influence because of popular backing Widely believed to have given backing to 2006 military coup Sensitive regimes

He was recorded on surveillance cameras defacing the portraits on the king’s 79th birthday.

Earlier he had tried to buy alcohol but been refused, since such sales are sometimes banned on important days. King Bhumibol, the world’s longest-serving current head of state, is a very popular figure in Thailand.

The case has highlighted strict laws in Thailand which forbid any criticism of the monarchy.

Such is the sensitivity of the issue, says the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Bangkok, that it is receiving little attention in the Thai media.

Most Thais feel a deep reverence for their monarch. But they also fear discussing the institution because of the severe penalties for criticising members of the royal family.

Jufer has a month to lodge an appeal against the sentence, our correspondent adds, but his best hope now is probably a royal pardon.

Now this isn’t in itself funny (it’s pretty fucked up for the Swiss dude) but what IS funny is the picture of their leader. Look at that guy!  He looks like a Jewish lawyer pansey.  I would be jailed within a day if I lived under those laws and had a leader so ripe for jokes!

Poor country though, they will never have comedians like Jay Leno.

Mark

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Hooters in the “Holy Land”

I love this restaurant.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. restaurant chain Hooters, known for waitresses in low-cut blouses and short skirts, will open its first branch in Israel this summer, in the Mediterranean seaside city of Tel Aviv.

“I strongly believe that the Hooters concept is something that Israelis are looking for,” Ofer Ahiraz, who bought the Hooters franchise for Israel, told Reuters Monday. “Hooters can suit the Israeli entertainment culture.”

At Hooters, waitresses the company calls Hooters Girls serve spicy chicken wings, sandwiches, seafood and drinks.

Ahiraz said a specific location in Tel Aviv, Israel’s most cosmopolitan city, had yet to be chosen, but he said it would not open restaurants near large religious populations, and they would not be kosher.

He said his plan was to open as many as five Hooters restaurants in the next few years, including one in the southern resort city of Eilat.

The Tel Aviv version of Hooters is expected to mimic most of the chain’s other 430 restaurants in the United States and in 23 countries including China, Switzerland, Australia and Brazil.

Ahiraz said, however, he expected some minor modifications to meet Israeli tastes since U.S. chains have had a mixed response in Israel.

Food chains such as Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Hard Rock Cafe failed, Kentucky Fried Chicken closed many locations, while others such as Burger King and McDonalds have thrived by altering their offerings to suit the Israeli market.

“It shows that if you are flexible and listen to your customers you can be a success story,” Ahiraz said.

The opening of Hooters in Israel is part of the chain’s global expansion. Privately held Hooters said it planned to open 17 restaurants in Colombia, Dubai, Guam, New Zealand and India in the next two years.

“International expansion is a major focus for our company, and we are very excited to add Israel to our family,” John Weber, executive vice president of franchise operations for Hooters of America, said in a statement.

This is just one example of how advanced Israel is becoming, though I’m not sure if the religions out there will appreciate this kind of thing… If any terrorists blow themselves up inside a Hooters I say that’s ground for turning counties into glass parking lots.

Random bombings is a terrible atrocity, but targeting babes is punishable by divine retribution. =P

Mark

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Taliban leader captured in women’s clothing!

The article is fairly long, but the actual concept is very amusing.

An amusing excerpt:

NATO, meanwhile, announced the capture of a senior Taliban fighter who had eluded authorities by wearing a woman’s burqa. Mullah Mahmood, who is accused of helping Taliban fighters rig suicide bomb attacks, was seized by Afghan soldiers at a checkpoint near Kandahar, the alliance said.

I love the implications in this. This Taliban leader wearing women’s clothing, it’s such a mockery of their own belief systems and so damn embarrassing for them.

Or maybe I’m the only one who finds this funny.

Mark

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Fairies stop construction workers!

Wasn’t there a Disney movie like this?

VILLAGERS who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again.

Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, estimates that the small colony of fairies believed to live beneath a rock in St Fillans, Perthshire, has cost him £15,000. His first notice of the residential sensibilities of the netherworld came as his diggers moved on to a site on the outskirts of the village, which crowns the easterly shore of Loch Earn.

He said: “A neighbour came over shouting, ‘Don’t move that rock. You’ll kill the fairies’.” The rock protruded from the centre of a gently shelving field, edged by the steep slopes of Dundurn mountain, where in the sixth century the Celtic missionary St Fillan set up camp and attempted to convert the Picts from the pagan darkness of superstition.

“Then we got a series of phone calls, saying we were disturbing the fairies. I thought they were joking. It didn’t go down very well,” Mr Salter said.

In fact, even as his firm attempted to work around the rock, they received complaints that the fairies would be “upset”. Mr Salter still believed he was dealing with a vocal minority, but the gears of Perthshire’s planning process were about to be clogged by something that looked suspiciously like fairy dust.

“I went to a meeting of the community council and the concerns cropped up there,” he said. The council was considering lodging a complaint with the planning authority, likely to be the kiss of death for a housing development in a national park. Jeannie Fox, council chairman, said: “I do believe in fairies but I can’t be sure that they live under that rock. I had been told that the rock had historic importance, that kings were crowned upon it.” Her main objection to moving the rock was based on the fact that it had stood on the hillside for so long: a sort of MacFeng Shui that many in the village subscribe to.

“There are a lot of superstitions going about up here and people do believe that things like standing stones and large rocks should never be moved,” she said.

Half a mile into Loch Earn is Neish Island. From there the Neish clan set forth to plunder the surrounding country, retreating each time to their island. Early in the 17th century, the MacNabs retaliated from the next valley, carrying a boat over the mountains, storming the island and slaughtering most of the Neishes.

This summer Betty Neish McInnes, the last of that line in St Fillans, went to her grave — but not before she had imparted the ancient Pict significance of the rock to many of her neighbours.

“A lot of people think the rock had some Pictish meaning,” Mrs Fox said. “It would be extremely unlucky to move it.”

Mr Salter did not just want to move the rock. He wanted to dig it up, cart it to the roadside and brand it with the name of his new neighbourhood.

The Planning Inspectorate has no specific guidelines on fairies but a spokesman said: “Planning guidance states that local customs and beliefs must be taken into account when a developer applies for planning permission.” Mr Salter said: “We had to redesign the entire thing from scratch.”

The new estate will now centre on a small park, in the middle of which stands a curious rock. Work begins next month, if the fairies allow.

I just love the part where he says, “We thought they were joking. It didn’t go down very well.”

Of course you’d think sane, rational people wouldn’t believe in fairies… but hey there are people who believe in Unicorns! Yes, Unicorns are mentioned twice in the bible – which a lot of people believe.

Or who am I to judge? Maybe there are fairies in the rocks and they’ll turn the construction workers into goats. =P

Mark

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Woman marries corpse!

I suppose that’s a pretty touching devotion.

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) – An Indian woman, despairing over her lover’s accidental death when he fell down a well soon after their engagement, insisted on ceremonially marrying his corpse just minutes before the cremation.

“It was for just few minutes the girl was dressed as a bride and then as a widow,” K.M. Kapadia, a police officer in the town of Anand in western Gujarat state, said on Saturday.

Wedding attendees sat the corpse up by a fire, the traditional center of Hindu wedding ceremonies, and chanted some marriage prayers before cremating the body, police said.

“The girl refused to give away the body of her lover for the cremation till she tied the knot with him,” Kapadia said.

The bride’s parents opposed the marriage but later attended the wedding ceremony and gave their 22-year-old daughter Tulsi Devipujak clothes and utensils as gifts, according to the Hindu tradition.

I suggest we refer to her from now on as the Corpse Bride! =P

I wonder if she did this just to get free utensils and clothes or if she was really that devoted. Maybe both.

Mark

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Swiss accidentally invade Liechtenstein!

Crazy Swiss and their invading smaller countries…

ZURICH, Switzerland – What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

“We’ve spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it’s not a problem,” Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

Interior ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. “It’s not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something,” he said.

Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington DC, doesn’t have an army.

I think the best thing is that those 170 ammo-less soldiers could have conquered the country if they had wanted to.

Mark

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