Russia’s finance minister publicly urged citizens to step up their smoking and drinking, in that the government’s new “sin” taxes mean more revenue.
“If you smoke a pack of cigarettes,” he said, “that means you are giving more to help solve social problems.”
Alcohol abuse is already said to kill 500,000 Russians a year and to significantly lower life expectancy.
Way to go
you Wombats!
Executive Brigitte Stevens announced that her perpetually underappreciated advocacy institution, Wombat Awareness Organization, had just been pledged $8 million by a single donor.
According to Stevens, the $1 million annually she will receive in each of the next eight years is about 13 times the previous annual budget for the Mannum, South Australia, organization.
The U.S. donor, who demanded anonymity, became interested in 2008 when, on an onsite visit, he was enthralled with “southern hairy-nosed” wombats.
Maybe they
should make
a sport model
A 24-year-old Muslim woman was strangled in Newcastle, Australia, when the bottom of her burqa became tangled in the wheels as she was driving at a go-cart track.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)