The Lighter Side

by Mike

To the Lighter Side we go again with stories to take the seriousness out of the week.

Firstly we go to Macedonia where a bear has been convicted of theft and criminal damage. The bear has been stealing honey from beekeeper Zoran Kiseloski, who had to fight off the attacks with loud music.
Mr Kiseloski bought a generator, lit up the area and put on songs of (Serbian ‘turbo-folk’ star) Ceca. This kept the bear away for a few weeks, but when the generator ran out of power; it came back to the sound of silence.

A court in the city of Bitola found the bear guilty, and since it had no owner and belonged to a protected species, ordered the state to pay the 140,000 denars (€2,243) damage it caused to the hives.

Amazingly this case took a year to decide and as of now the whereabouts of the bear remain unknown.

Moving on to Finland and a library-goer moved to avoid 100 years of ten-pennies-a-week fines when they quietly returned a book that was on loan for more than a century.

The bound copy of a 1902 volume was thought to be long since lost by the library in Vantaa in southern Finland.

‘We are unclear when exactly it was borrowed and who returned it. There weren’t any documents with it,’ librarian Minna Saastamoinen said.’There is an old note attached to the book which says there is a fine of 10 pennies a week for late returns,’ she added

And finally an Italian Archbishop has become a star on Youtube, by answering questions from his flock every week.

Archbishop Dionigi Tettamanzi has used the season of Lent to post videos on the site of up to ten minutes at a time, answering theological dilemmas.

“The first video, put on line four weeks ago, was viewed more than 65,000 times, mainly by Italian Internet surfers but also in Austria and Spain,” Tettamanzi’s spokesman said.

The spokesman said the initiative had been “very favourably” received by the Italian Catholic Church, especially priests in the Milan diocese.

The last video of the series was posted on Friday.

Saturday, March 15th, 2008 and is filed under Views on News.