The Top Secret Comedy Club in London will no longer admit audience members who have undergone Botox injections, United Press International reported on March 10. “I’ve had numerous complaints from performers who find it increasingly challenging to gauge audience engagement,” said owner Mark Rothman. “Comedy thrives on connection, and facial expressions play a huge part. ... Frozen faces from Botox impact the entire atmosphere.” Show attendees will be submitted to an expression check at the door.
Irony
The COP30 climate summit scheduled for November in the Brazilian city of Belem is expected to bring more than 50,000 people to the area. With the goal of easing traffic to the city, the government is building a four-lane highway through the protected Amazon rainforest, the BBC reported on March 12. Not only are trees being felled, but the project is paving over wetlands. Claudio Verequete, who once harvested acai berries in the rainforest, said the project has destroyed everything. “Our harvest has already been cut down. We no longer have that income to support our family,” he said. “For those of us who live on the side of the highway, there will be no benefits,” he said, because the highway will not connect to adjacent communities.
Odd in-flight meal
An American Airlines flight from Savannah, Ga., to Miami was forced to turn back to the airport right after takeoff on March 10, the New York Times reported. Flight attendants first thought passenger Delange Augustin, 31, was having a seizure as he yelled and shook, but it turned out he believed a satanic spirit had invaded the cabin, and he was swallowing rosary beads to ward off the spirit. After landing, Augustin went to the front of the plane and started throwing punches at flight attendants. Other passengers wrestled him and his sister, who was flying with him, to the floor. The sister told law enforcement that they’d been traveling to Haiti to “flee religious attacks of a spiritual nature.” Augustin had told her that “Satan’s disciples had followed them onto the plane and the legion did not want the Augustins to make it to Haiti.” The swallowed beads were a “weapon of strength” against the persecution, he said. He was charged with misdemeanor battery and felony criminal property damage.
Wombat kidnapping
Instagram influencer and “outdoor enthusiast” Sam Jones may lose her visa for Australia after she posted a video of her grabbing a wild baby wombat from its mother, the BBC reported. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suggested she “take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there.” In the video, posted on March 11 and since deleted, Jones carries the hissing and struggling joey to a car, saying, “I caught a baby wombat!” as the mother chases her. She then puts the joey back down beside the road. But wombat experts are unamused. “Snatching a screaming baby wombat from their mother is not just appalling, it’s very possibly illegal under state or national laws,” said Suzanne Milthorpe of World Animal Protection Australia.
Just desserts
On March 6, the state of Texas charged Amber Paige Laudermilk, 34, with abuse of a corpse, the Austin American-Statesman reported. The court filing revealed that Laudermilk, an embalmer at Memorial Mortuary and Crematory in Houston, allegedly used a scalpel to castrate the decedent, Charles Roy Rodriguez, 58, a registered sex offender. She then stuffed his sex organ into his mouth and told an embalming student who witnessed the mutilation, “You didn’t see anything.” Laudermilk faces six months to two years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
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