2005 World News

Top 20 Most Outrageous World Stories

Tabloid Column editors have reviewed more than 10,000 news articles from our archives to present the Top 20 most outrageous World stories of 2005.  If an article link has expires, search Google for addition references.  Take A Look At All 6 Categories!

Also See For 2005:

Crime |  Lawyers |  Politics |  Business |  World News

By Jake Easton Tabloid Column.com Posted: December 16, 2005

1 Three wives greet man after heart surgery.  Some people bring flowers, others bring balloons. When Melvyn Reed's three wives showed up to visit him at the hospital, they brought an unexpected curtain call to his years as a double bigamist.  British police confirmed that after Melvyn Reed woke from his triple bypass heart operation earlier this year, his complicated marital affairs took a turn for a worse. All three of his spouses had turned up at the same time, despite his efforts to stagger their visits. 

2 Man Dies After Winning Tequila Drinking Contest.  One person is dead and three are gravely ill following a tequila drinking competition.  Officials said Ricardo Ivan Garcia, 21, drank more than 50 shots of tequila Sunday night at a disco and won the drinking contest. He died shortly after the event. 

3 IKEA criticized for 'sexually biased' manuals.  Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA is guilty of sex discrimination by showing only men putting together furniture in its instruction manuals, Norway's prime minister says.  Ikea, which has more than 200 stores in 32 nations, fears it might offend Muslims by depicting women assembling everything from cupboards to beds. 

4 'Bragger' defense.  Canadian Superior Court judge Margaret Eberhard must decide whether to believe a 21-year-old accused rapist who says he could not have committed a sexual assault because his private part is too big.  The prosecutor scoffed at the defense, referencing his size as a "two-by-four" is an exaggeration.

5 Thieves dig into Brazil bank, take $68 million.  Thieves tunneled into a bank in northeastern Brazil and stole $68 million, the biggest bank heist in the nation’s history, police said Monday.  “It’s something you see in the movies... They dug a 650-foot tunnel that goes underneath two city blocks. They’ve been digging for three months,” police said. 

6 "My wife thought I was crazy to take this job."  Meet Omar Pimentel, the new police chief of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. This is a lawless Mexican frontier city where rival drug cartels are waging a murderous battle for control of the smuggling route into America using shoulder-mounted bazookas and machine guns. Nuevo Laredo is the bloody focus of gang wars that are raging along the US-Mexican border that have already claimed 600 lives this year. 

7 No more 'brainstorming' in Northern Ireland.  'Brainstorming', the buzzword used by executives to generate ideas among their staff, has been deemed politically incorrect by civil servants because it is thought to be offensive to people with epilepsy.  Instead staff at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) in Belfast will use the term 'thought-showers' when they get together to think creatively. 

8 Zimbabwe continues to purge remaining white farmers.  Zimbabwe has quietly continued evicting the few remaining white farmers several months after announcing it had completed its farm seizure program and would focus on rebuilding the crippled agricultural sector.  Food production has plummeted by 60% since the farmer evictions began five years ago and only food handouts from international relief agencies have saved Zimbabwe from famine. 

9 Stock trader makes $223 million mistake.  Fubon Securities Co., the brokerage arm of Taiwan's second-largest financial holding company, said a trader erroneously bought $223 million worth of shares yesterday.  "A nervous trader who was unfamiliar with our new trading system placed a wrong order to buy a basket of stocks," Victor Kung, a spokesman for Fubon said in a statement.  The trade caused the island's key Taiex index to surge 54.47 points. 

10 Saudi Woman Gets Pilot's License.  Saudi women cannot drive, but apparently they can fly. A Saudi woman who recently obtained her pilot's license in Jordan said Thursday she has been hired by a private aviation company to fly commercial planes.

11 Brazil soccer star robbed during interview.  Brazilian soccer star Roberto Carlos was in the back seat of his car and doing a live radio interview Friday when two gunmen on a motorcycle pulled over and demanded valuables, a radio station said. 

12 Piggy banks stopped because they may offend Muslims.  British banks are banning piggy banks because they may offend some Muslims.  Halifax and NatWest banks have led the move to scrap the time-honoured symbol of saving from being given to children or used in their advertising, the Daily Express/Daily Star group reports. 

13 Town offering women $9,600 to have 3rd child.  To combat a shrinking population, a small town in northern Japan has decided to give a cash award worth about $9,600 to each female resident who has a third child, an official said Friday. 

14 Man Found Not Guilty In Sex Assault Because He Was Asleep.  Rape crisis counselors and women's advocates are outraged after a man in Toronto, Canada was found not guilty of raping a woman because he was sleepwalking at the time. 

15 Toyota turns to smarter workers in Canada for next plant.  Toyota has dropped plans to build its next plant in the U.S., despite hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies, because Canadians are easier and cheaper to train.  The decision was based on Nissan and Honda's difficulties in getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to "an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce." In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment. 

16 British Airways saves $192,000 flying broken jumbo jet across Atlantic.  A British Airways 747 jumbo jet carrying 351 passengers made an emergency landing after a failed attempt to reach Heathrow airport.  One of the engines blew during take-off in Los Angeles, but the pilot declined all opportunities to land in the U.S. and instead continued on three engines for 5,000 miles to Britain to save £100,000 (about US $192,300) on delay and cancellation fees.

To make matters worse, the Boeing 747 was unable to climb to its cruising altitude of 36,000ft and had to cross the Atlantic at 29,000ft, where the remaining engines performed less efficiently. When the pilot realized he was running out of fuel and would never make it to Heathrow, he made an emergency landing at Manchester airport, where he was met by four fire engines and thirty firefighters on the runway. 

17 Red Faces Over Fire Crew's Emergency Pizza Run.  Embarrassed emergency officials are investigating reports a Sydney fire station was unable to respond to an alarm because a fireman had taken the station's only fire truck to pick up a pizza and give some friends a joyride. 

18 Radar Police Stumped by Parking Ticket.  An over-zealous policeman slapped a parking ticket on the windshield of a fellow officer's squad car while his colleagues were setting a radar trap to catch speeding motorists in a town in eastern Germany. 

19 Bank Robber Itemizes Cost of Gun.  Crime may not pay in the Netherlands, but it is deductible.  A bank robber in the southern Dutch town of Chaam was able to subtract the cost of his gun from his fine, the Daily Telegraph of London reported. 

20 Ironic: Supermodel Moss wins 'cocaine coma' libel case.  [July 26, 2005] Just a few months before being exposed on video, British supermodel Kate Moss won substantial libel damages over a London tabloid's claims that she had collapsed in a cocaine-fueled coma. 

Honorable Mention

From The Readers of Tabloid Column

· How to sell more newspapers.  They are calling it the Great Chinese Takeaway, but who ordered it is a mystery. On the day a local paper carried a front-page report that a Chinese restaurant had been fined $35,000 after a cockroach was found in the king prawns, every copy within 20 miles vanished from the shops. The buyers were two men who spent the afternoon visiting more than 40 newsagents buying up to 50 copies of the paper at a time. The mystery buyers snapped up 1,400 copies of the Bristol Evening Post at a cost of about $900. Cam and Kiem Mu, millionaire owners of the Sea Palace restaurant in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, denied being behind the buy-up.  

· Canadian professor gets $100,000 grant to research sex life of squirrels.  An assistant professor of biology at Laurentian University, Dr. Albrecht Shulte-Hostedde, is going to receive $100,000 in provincial research funding. Schulte-Hostedde said “My students and I will seek to identify and understand the factors - such as climate change - that influence the reproductive success and survival of animals, including the northern flying squirrels."  

· Binge-drink women may lose right to claim rape.  Women who are raped while drunk face losing the chance to bring their attackers to justice after a legal ruling on the eve of new licensing laws.  A British High Court judge yesterday threw out the case of a student who claimed that she was raped while drunk and unconscious on the basis that “drunken consent is still consent.” 

Also See:  Crime |  Lawyers |  Politics |  Business |  World Important Note: Some of the media reports provide details of arrests, charges and indictments, which are not convictions. It is important to keep an open mind and learn the facts of each case before coming to any conclusions of guilt.
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