What's in the News

Looks like Raoul will need to take those fake plates off his bike.


Rash of fake military vehicles on Chinese roads: report
Fri Apr 11, 12:11 PM ET

BEIJING (AFP) - On-road privileges for China's legendary People's Liberation Army are leading to a rash of fake military vehicles and bogus number plates, state press said Friday.

Since launching a campaign to rid the roads of fake military vehicles in July 2006, police have uncovered more than 4,100 bogus vehicles and nearly 6,400 fake military number plates, Xinhua news agency said.

More than 5,000 people have been apprehended in the crackdown, it said.

In China, cars with military plates, which are a different colour from ordinary number plates, are legally entitled to privileges including exemption from road tolls and parking fees, Xinhua said.

Traffic police are also reluctant to pull over drivers of military vehicles even if they are breaking laws, it added.

They periodically have crack-downs on fake plates. It's not new. A lot of cars also have the military sirens, and use them to blast their way through traffic.

If you can do it (and get away with it) it's a great way to go!

The military plates entitle the driver to absolute sovereignty on the road. The Police cannot do anything about them or to them - even if they suspect they are fake. The military police are the only ones with any authority.

I want some!

Boy, there's the perfect case study for China's biggest problem: enforcing the law.  They have laws against all the things the West does, but try to give them teeth among 1.3 billion souls!  The solution will be mammoth:

1. Train enforcement officials to crack down on people without mercy;
2. pay them enough to resist taking red envelopes;
3. send them to jurisdictions far from home so their friends and families don't pressure them to make exceptions;
4. set up counter-intelligence so noone gets any notice of their presence;
5. conduct followup inspections so people don't just bribe locals to declare them "clean again";
6. randomize the crackdowns so that crystal balls won't predict their arrival.

 
Wow, glad it's not my department.

Fine not only the offenders, but the officials who helped issue them and the manufacturers.  Remove drivers license - permanently for the 3rd offence for all involved.

The Onion

BEIJING—Known among schoolmates for his spirited antics and ability to make light of almost any situation, classroom jokester Wei Xiang, 11, was put to death by the Chinese government for drawing a mustache on an image of Education Minister Zhou Ji in one of his textbooks, sources reported Monday. "An enemy of the state has been dealt with accordingly," government spokesman Xu Qi said following Wei's execution by firing squad. "Let this be a lesson to other children considering wising off or otherwise wasting valuable class time." The fifth-grader previously served a six-month term in solitary confinement at Qincheng Prison after referring to the Tang Dynasty as "the Stank Dynasty" during a history lesson in 2007.

Words fail me.

There are times when 'satire' doesn't work. 

Glebe Morgue buys forklift to move obese

Sydney's Glebe Morgue has been forced to buy a forklift truck to cope with obese corpses.

The proportion of obese patients requiring coronial autopsies has doubled from 15 per cent in 1986 to 30 per cent, according to a study by forensic pathologist Professor Roger Byard.

The proportion of morbidly obese corpses has increased from one to five per cent.

Glebe Morgue forensic pathologist Matthew Orde said the larger bodies were putting workers at risk of injury because they were difficult to lift, move and store.

He told The Sun-Herald that putrefaction - the degradation of soft tissue - was speeded up in morbidly obese patients, making handling difficult.

"A fat person will go off more quickly than a skinny person," Dr Orde said.

Dr Byard agrees obese patients are problematic for pathologists.

"Autopsies have been performed on floors, or with a pathologist leaning from a ladder, or actually standing on the trolley over a body," he wrote in an article in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine.

Dr Orde said the problems facing Glebe Morgue reflected the growing incidence of obesity in the greater community.

Almost half of the NSW population was classified overweight or obese in 2005.

The state government has been forced to buy three extra-large $150,000 ambulances fitted with hydraulic lifts capable of carrying loads of up to one tonne.

They don't show this on "Bones".

I was quite shocked when I read that Australia was catching up with us and the Yanks in the obesity stakes.  I thought you lot were much more 'active'...

I love the bit where he says 'A fat person will go off more quickly than a skinny person".  That had me pleased I wasn't drinking my tea.

It's also quite gross when you think about it...

It's also quite gross when you think about it...

Yeah. It is.

I think I misread your other post as meaning "It's a good thing I wasn't drinking my tea as it would have made me spit my tea everywhere with laughter" as opposed to "It would have put me off my tea..."

they did show it on CSI though, much better than Bones IMHO