The Lighter Side
To the lighter side we go again and the first stop is Japan where a letter was finally delivered 15 years after it was first sent.
The letter sent into the sky in a balloon was found on a fish hauled from 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) below the Pacific.
A fisherman found the still legible piece of paper sitting on a sticky flatfish and opened it to reveal a note from a six year old girl at an elementary school in Kawasaki, almost 100 miles away from where the fish was found.
It turns out that, in 1993, Natsumi Shirahige, and her friends released letters as part of events to mark the school’s 120th anniversary which said “Our school is 120 years old… If you pick up this letter, please write to me,”
The now 21-year-old university student, said: “I can’t get over the wonder of how the letter survived 15 years. I never expected I’d get a reply this way.”
Meanwhile it seems that sexism is alive and well, in Finnish politics at least.
An internal report on sexual harassment in the country’s political assembly published on Thursday revealed that in three female employees in the parliament, said they had received inappropriate comments from male colleagues, while 15 percent had been subjected to improper advances and seven percent had received proposals to have sex.
“I hope that all of the MPs are aware of their responsibility and understand that such behaviour is unacceptable,” the speaker of parliament, Sauli Niinistoe, told public broadcaster Yle.
“The situation is neither better nor worse than in other workplaces, but zero tolerance will be the rule,” he said.
There is a strong female presence in Finnish politics and in March 2007’s legislative elections, 84 women were elected to the 200 seats, representing 42 percent of MPs. The parliament is expected to announce measures to combat this problem.
And finally 81-year old man in the small Chilean village of Angol shocked his loved ones by waking up in his coffin at his own wake.
In a somewhat bizarre move, Feliberto Carrasco’s family members discovered his body limp and cold and convinced that his time had come, called the funeral director instead of a doctor.
Carrasco was dressed in his finest suit for the wake, and his relatives gathered to bid him a final farewell. However once he awoke, he stated he was not in any pain and simply asked for a glass of water.
Sunday, January 27th, 2008 and is filed under Views on News.
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