According to the Swedish news agency TT, the Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Kalmar, Sweden, has applied to the local government to buy equipment to link a crematorium furnace to the church. The new equipment would allow the church to save money by cutting down on heating bills. (According to the Sept. 14 Geraldo show on spontaneous combustion, the human body is incinerated to ashes at temperatures of 3000F over a period of 12 hours). Church Property Spokesman Tommy Eriksson said, "The environmental value of saving energy outweighs any eventual opposition this might arouse."
Stellar plan fails to alleviate debt
Approximately 1,500 people gathered in Shtraklevo, Bulgaria on Sept. 11 after mediums promised that eight spaceships from "distant galaxies" would land and, among other things, pay off Bulgaria's $12.9 billion foreign debt. At 11:30 a.m. (BST), 30 minutes after the scheduled arrival, the mediums said the aliens were being scared off by the Bulgarian Air Force which was flying planes in the area. At 12:30 p.m., the mediums said that the aliens had canceled their coming because President Zhelyu Zhelev had decided not to meet the them.
Cop catches corpse
Two traffic policemen in Bologna, Italy, are under investigation for negligence of duty. The two cops ticketed a truck parked on the sidewalk against the flow of traffic with its hazard lights on. According to authorities in Bologna, the two waited for one minute before placing a ticket in the windshield. The two policemen said they did not see the dead man sprawled across the seat inside the cab. An autopsy revealed that the driver died of a heart attack. Italian authorities have decided to cancel the ticket.
Nationalism causes soap dispute
After 500 Crimean Communists demonstrated in Simferopol, Crimea's largest city, parliamentary leaders in Ukraine's Russian-dominated Crimean peninsula have ordered that the American soap opera Santa Barbara be broadcast with Russian-dubbing instead of a Ukrainian voice-over. Officials at Ukraine's national television company had sought to compromise by offering to broadcast more episodes per week, but the region's ethnic Russian majority decided to put principle before compromise.
-- Michael Rubin
Copyright 1995, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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