Heard in the Hive #2

My column on homely mostly funny news. Any type of news should help us lead a better life if we learn something from it or simply enjoy it or get a laugh from it. I wish to put it on record that the stories I am producing are true NEWS items, taken from various newspapers, although not always reproduced word for word and normally with some comment of mine added to them. --Victor Buhagiar

###A Curry a Day Keeps Crime at Bay

It has become a highly sought after job for London's police officers, going undercover and dining at top restaurants in case any waiters are racially abused by customers. Instead of pounding the streets on a cold wintry night, up to 20 officers settled down to eat at 10 Indian, Chinese, Thai and Yugoslav restaurants in London's West End at the weekend.

"We have had a lot of volunteers," a Detective Chief Inspector, head of a hate-crime prevention unit, was quoted as saying. "My officers are working in partnership with local restaurant owners and their staff to ensure that a pleasant evening out remains just that for all involved. This means it is bad news for the racists.

"Our officers are keen on spending the night in a nice warm restaurant at this time of year with a meal and a soft drink -- no alcohol allowed, of course." One good reason to join the force.

###Russian Roulette Fears

Russians were trembling in fear of everything to do with animals. Consider in one swift decision, Russia has closed for import of Danish beef, pork - and FISH because of foot-and-mouth disease... Apart from the fact that the disease has not been found in Denmark what in the name of all that's holy, has fish got to do with it?

Someone must have drunk a vodka too many.

###And in Holland....

A young mother was prevented from taking two bottles of her own breast milk on to an airplane because of an European Union ban on exporting dairy products. The Dutch woman had prepared the bottles because she did not want to feed her newborn son in front of other passengers on the Tanzania-bound jet. But customs officers told the woman, there were strict bans on exporting dairy products and made her pour the milk down the sink.

The brave husband has since complained to Dutch authorities who apologized for the inconvenience and said there was a strict ban on the export or import of dairy products under European law. But they added that in future they would make an exception for mother's breast milk.

What next?

###Disaster in China

Hailstorm over China: It is estimated that 40 kilo hailstones fell in a region in China and even completely demolished a house. So don't grumble if a little pigeon's poo-poo falls on your head-- better than a 40-kilo hailstone!

###Wartime sweetheart replies 56 years later

A Dutch woman's wartime sweetheart has replied to a letter 56 years later. Jo Meulemeester wrote to English soldier Geoffrey Litherland in 1945 after his company stayed on her family's farm in Boekel. He forgot to write back - until he found the faded note more than half a century later while cleaning out his attic.

The young soldier stayed with his twin brother and ten other English soldiers on the Meulemeester's farm during World War II. After the war ended and Geoffrey returned to England, Jo wrote him a letter but never got a reply - until Geoffrey cleaned out his attic. When Geoffrey found the letter, he sent off a reply - and amazingly it reached Jo.

They are now planning to write to each other a little more often. Mrs. Meulemeester, now aged 83, says she'll be able to tell Geoffrey about how she married a Dutchman and had 10 children.

Now isn't that nice?

###Mother nearly drowns trying to save rabbit

A Dutch woman nearly drowned when she jumped into a ditch to save her daughter's pet rabbit. The animal had gone into the water to escape from a cat. It was floating about 20 meters from the side of the ditch when the woman leapt in. She managed to catch the rabbit but then had to be rescued herself because she was numb from the cold. A neighbor dragged the 44-year-old - and the rabbit- to safety in the village of Amersfoort.

A medal for a brave mother.

###Man Serves 29 Years for Breaking Window

A Jamaican man has been released from prison after spending 29 years behind bars for smashing a pane of glass. Jamaican officials said Ivan Boroughs, 76, had not been forgotten but a court had been slow to act on his case. Boroughs was charged with malicious destruction of property in December 1972 when he broke a pane of glass at a bank -- a charge which carries a maximum sentence of three years. He had been deemed mentally ill by court officials and thus unfit to stand trial.

Finally, Boroughs has been released. Court incompetence, police bureaucracy, and human supposed justice to name a few. Of course, it did not concern any of their relatives; otherwise they would have found some efficiency.

###Unlucky fisherman loses best catch after otter bum bite

A Romanian angler who'd just caught his biggest ever fish lost his catch when an otter bit his bottom. The otter attacked 36-year-old Razvan Abulboacei from behind as he was fishing in a local river. The fish escaped and Mr. Abulboacei is recovering in hospital. The otter also escaped after the attack.  And they continue to talk about the one that got away.....

###Man Stops Own Funeral

A 58-year-old Nicaraguan man stepped in to stop his own funeral, appearing to his wife and family as they prepared to bury the wrong corpse. Cesar Aguilera, who found his demise being mourned when he returned to his house in Tipitapa, just east of the capital Managua, was interviewed by a local television station on Wednesday.

"Are you from this life or the other, one kid screamed at me when I showed up," Aguilera said.

He had disappeared from home a week earlier to care for a rural property. His relatives, fearing the worst, went to the morgue in search of his body. They found the cadaver of a man who had been run over by a car and took it to be that of their loved one. Aguilera helped return the body to the morgue.

###WORKER DEAD AT DESK FOR 5 DAYS

Bosses of a publishing firm are trying to work out why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his desk for FIVE DAYS before anyone asked if he was feeling okay. George Turklebaum, 51, who had been employed as a proofreader at a New York firm for 30 years, had a heart attack in the open-plan office he shared with 23 other workers. He quietly passed away on Monday, but nobody noticed until Saturday morning when an office cleaner asked why he was still working during the weekend.

His boss said: "George was always the first guy in each morning and the last to leave at night, so no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn't say anything. He was always absorbed in his work and kept much to himself."

A postmortem examination revealed that he had been dead for five days after suffering a coronary. Ironically, George was proofreading manuscripts of medical textbooks when he died. You may want to give your co-workers a nudge occasionally. And the moral of the story: Don't work too hard. Nobody notices anyway.

###And What about Aliens?

a) Aliens from space will NOT use death rays or supersonic fighters to conquer the Earth, as they did in the hit movie Independence Day. Instead, they'll use TV to take over our minds! That is the unsettling conclusion of astrophysicist Dr. Roger Hupewell, a leading UFO expert.

b) Twisted aliens are running a shocking interplanetary white-slavery ring, says a top UFO investigator, who charges that the E.T.s routinely whisk female abductees off to far-flung planets and space stations to serve as hookers!

c) Paleontologists reconstructing the bones of a newly discovered giant dinosaur were flabbergasted when they found the remains of what appears to be a space alien in its belly! The man-like skeleton found among the bones of the 60-foot-tall Sauroposeidon is that of a slightly built creature with a disproportionately large, bulbous skull and almond-shaped eye sockets.

d) A whopping 12,000 years ago -- long before the famous Roswell UFO wreck made headlines in America -- an alien spaceship crashed in China. And pint-size descendants of the occupants are still living in a remote Chinese village today!

e) Baffled scientists can't explain why, but tests showed an astonishing 1 in 4 babies conceived after April 9, 1999 and due to be born in the year 2,000 appear to be human-alien hybrids! That's up from just 1 in 100,000 last year-- a sharp rise some experts in the field call frightening.