Man fined $65 for letting pet python crawl around Holiday Inn hallway

by Scott Carmichael on

A 25 year old man from Mason City, IA has been fined $65 for letting his pet snake crawl uncontrolled through the hallways of the local Holiday Inn.

The man was a guest at the hotel, and apparently felt that his 5 year old pet python needed some exercise. What convinced him to let the snake loose in the hallway is a mystery, but the hotel manager says the man was apologetic about the incident.

Now, I’m not a pet owner myself, but I do understand people who love their pets a lot – but to let a python loose in a hotel hallway just boggles the mind.

The Holiday Inn manager did remind guests that the chain is pet friendly, but that their hospitality ends with cats and dogs. So, next time you take a trip, you may want to find a pet-sitter for your python.

Fake pilots try to smuggle cocaine through airport

by Sean McLachlan on

Spanish police have arrested two men who tried to smuggle cocaine through Madrid’s Barajas airport while dressed as pilots.

The two men boarded a flight from Bolivia and then changed into pilot uniforms. So far, so good, but once they landed in Madrid they joined the queue with the rest of the passengers. This struck the airport police as a wee bit suspicious. When asked for ID, they produced IDs from a different airline than the one they arrived on. Strike two. The cops then questioned the real crew of the plane and found out these folks were, in fact, passengers. Strike three. The daring duo then had their bags searched and were found to be in possession of 55 kilos (121 lbs) of Bolivian marching powder.

This video (in Spanish) shows just how good their disguises were. It is unclear at this point whether the uniforms are brilliant fakes or real ones they acquired somehow. Too bad for them they hadn’t thought out the rest of their plan as carefully. Perhaps they read how Gadling caught the cops at Barajas “allegedly” playing solitaire and figured it was an easy target.

Hop on the Stalin bus!

by Sean McLachlan on

A lot of visitors to Russia like seeing some Soviet-era nostalgia, but old monuments and ugly apartment blocs now have to compete with the latest kitsch–a bus painted with the likeness of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

The bus is the initiative of Stalinist blogger Viktor Loginov, who raised money for the project in order to celebrate the upcoming anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. The 65th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi forces is on May 9.

The bus may not make it to the celebration, however, as it has already been vandalized once.

Loginov says he only wants to celebrate Stalin’s role in defeating Hitler, but human rights activists are appalled at seeing the Soviet leader’s face on the streets of St. Petersburg. Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union during World War Two and was instrumental in destroying the German army. American war propaganda fondly referred to him as “Uncle Joe”. Stalin killed millions of his own people by sending them to gulags, torture chambers, or, in the case of a rebellious Ukraine, starving an entire province into submission. While the exact number of his victims will never be known, some historians say he killed more people than Hitler. The Stalin bus highlights how today’s Russia is of two minds about its tumultuous past.

Customs arrests man for flying with postage stamps

by Sean McLachlan on

Customs officers are generally our friends. They keep people from boarding the plane with stolen antiquities or live reptiles, but occasionally innocent people get caught in their net.

Stamp collector Markand Dave of India seems to be one of those people.

Mr. Dave tried to board a flight from Sardar Patel International Airport, Ahmedabad, to Frankfurt, Germany, on his way to attend a stamp collecting exhibition in London. In his luggage he had a collection of rare, early Indian stamps. While Mr. Dave is a well-known philatelist and had an invitation to participate in the exhibition, he had forgotten to ask permission from the government to take the stamps out of India and ran afoul of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, which considers rare stamps to be antiquities. He’s due to appear in court on charges of antiquities smuggling.

Mr. Dave is probably not an antiquities smuggler, but as a leading philatelist he should have known better. Collectors should understand the laws that cover their collections and fill out the proper paperwork before they travel.

Besides, he should be thankful he didn’t have his rare stamps stolen by a baggage thief.
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Air Canada passenger falls asleep on plane – wakes up in maintenance hangar

by Scott Carmichael on

We’ve probably all been there – you get on your flight, feeling so tired that you pass out before the plane takes off.

But in most cases, you’ll be awake right after you miss the drinks service. Air Canada passenger Kris Lines must have had the nap of his life, because he passed out right after taking off, and was awoken by a maintenance engineer inside a hangar at Vancouver airport.

Apparently none of the Air Canada flight crew members took the time to check whether they had left anyone on board, and simply got off the plane leaving Mr. Lines fast asleep.

When he complained to the airline, they offered him a “generous” 20% off voucher for a future flight. Mr. Lines is not satisfied with that offer, and calls it “absolute craziness”. I’m not entirely sure what else the airline could do for him, other than making sure their staff are retrained to check the plane for sleeping passengers. Still, if this happened to me, I too would probably fight for a little more than a useless discount voucher.

So, next time you feel like you are going to fall asleep on your flight, you may want to ask a seatmate to nudge you awake upon landing. Mr. Lines was lucky that the plane was moved to a hangar, at the end of the day, many planes are just parked for the night.