Brewery takes chance in Muslim country

Pakistani Muslims were banned from drinking alcohol in 1977. That's not stopping the Murree Brewery from domestically producing 20-year-old single malt whisky.

Muslims make up the majority of Pakistan's more than 150 million people. Non-Muslims are issued permits to buy alcohol. The brewery says they don't expect a large amount of sales and are only producing the whisky in limited quantities.

The company says it doesn't want to upset anyone's sensitivities. Exporting alcohol was also banned, so the whisky will only be sold in Pakistan.

(Wink.)
 

Flaming massage chairs

Two massage chairs caught fire after the power cords in their motors gave off sparks. They were demo chairs at Japan's Matsushita Electric Works. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., the maker of the Panasonic-brand item, is issuing a recall of thousands of the chairs.

No one was injured in the two incidents. The malfunction is being blamed on repeated customer use.

The high-end chairs sell for between $1,645 and $3,290. Which is why they got so much repeated customer use.
 

China jumps on the pole

Hard-up college students did it, then celebrities and housewives in Europe and the U.S., now China is jumping on the bandwagon. Pole dancing recently became the latest trend in Western fitness. Now the pastime has reached the conservative masses in China.

The first pole dancing school was opened recently in Beijing. The school is trying to sell the activity as fun, not morally bankrupt. The school says the sell was tough at first, but the more people hear about how it is just for fitness, the more keen they are to try it out.

Sex is still a taboo subject in China, and most people associate pole dancing with seedy moral character.

In a related story, the Chinese government declared "fitness" to be a four-letter word.
 

Town says "no" to public stoning

Stoning to death in public, circumcision, burning alive or throwing acid on them: just a few of the things spelled out by the local council in Herouxville, Quebec that you can't do to women.

The town is making sure none of its increasing immigrant population will carry out such heinous crimes. How to tolerate immigrants' traditions and customs is a source of tension in the mostly French-speaking Quebec.

The town says the declaration of rules is not racist against immigrants. They think it is part of a larger debate over how to accommodate immigrants without offending them, or compromising their own rules.

Why do governments always ban the really good spectator sports?
 

Cop on top

A 16-year-old girl performed topless jumping jacks, after a policeman suggested she do so to avoid arrest. The officer found the girl and a 19-year-old man in a car with few clothes on. He threatened to arrest them for lewd and lascivious behavior if she did not comply with his demands.

Pensacola, Fla. City Council recently agreed to pay the girl $35,000 in damages for the incident, which occurred in April 2003. The officer was forced to resign and is serving a two-year probation sentence for extortion.

This story failed to mention that Officer Chang, trained in China, thought this was a "fitness arrest." Moreover, his additional training in Quebec eliminated other reasonable alternatives such as stoning, circumcision, burning the girl alive, or throwing acid on her.

"I thought I showed a great deal of restraint," stated Officer Chang.

(Note to Pensacola City Council: I will do topless jumping jacks for $35,00!)