Monkeys Lurking To Attack Trump During Trump India Visit

HuffPost won the headline war last week with this header for a story they ran:

Who will survive Trump's trip to India? Trump himself, or hostile
rhesus monkeys. Stay tuned!

"India Doesn't Want Monkeys Attacking Trump During Taj Mahal Visit."

President Trump is indeed in India this week on a state visit, and he is scheduled to visit Taj Majal.

Officials in India naturally want the visit to go smoothly, but rhesus macaques might ruin the plan.  There's probably 600 or so monkeys living near Taj Mahal.

As HuffPost reports, "The rhesus macaques have a reputation for being very aggressive toward the 25,000 tourists who visit the Taj on a typical day."

The monkeys aren't the usual terrorist threat.  Apparently, the best way to ward them off is with slingshots. Says HuffPost:

"'We found that monkeys get scared by just seeing us brandishing these slingshots,' Brij Bhushan, head of the Taj Mahal security force, told Reuters last year.'"

Here's the problem:  Slingshots are pretty effective at discouraging lone monkeys or small groups of them. But if there's a big pack of them, slingshots don't work.

I'm quite sure there are at least a few people in the United States who would say that India should just leave the monkeys alone and let them have their way with Trump.  It probably would be fun to see how the macaques react to Trump's, um, colorful orange hair and makeup.

Social media, of course, reacted predictably and humorously to this situation.

"But why? @POTUS @realDonaldTrump surrounds himself with monkeys everyday. Why would he object to a few more," wonderedr Mike Murdock (@theMagicalMrE).

Other people made remarks like "Get him monkeys!" or "I'm Team Monkey."

Anyway, let's hope peace continues between the mercurial Trump and his equally mercurial contestants, those damn monkeys.  Trump is headed home today. I guess crisis averted?

Why You REALLY Shouldn't Get In A Car Wreck In India

Piyush Tewari is trying to change the culture of India
that discourages people from helping accident victims. 

Almost always, if people see a nasty car wreck, people run to help. Somebody calls 911, people run over to comfort or give first aid to the injured, others direct traffic away from the crash so it doesn't get even worse.

In India, if you get in car wreck, you're really screwed. Because nobody will help you.   

The system there turns people into indifferent jerks, says a recent article in the BBC.

Everything's stacked against you if you try to help an accident victim in India.

It arriving police see you rendering aid, they'll assume you're doing it out of guilt and charge you with causing the crash and you'll face criminal charges. Basically, you're a criminal for being a nice person.

It takes forever for ambulances to arrive at accident scenes in India, so it makes more sense to drive the victims to the hospital yourself. But if you do, the hospital will relentlessly hit you up for the victim's medical bills.

Even if you avoid criminal charges and hospital bills, you might be a witness in court proceedings involving the accident case.

Trials take forever to go forward, so you're stuck in limbo. You miss going to work, running your life.

BBC says there is a safety campaigner named Piyush Tewari whose cousin was once hit by a car and nobody helped.

He managed the Indian Supreme Court to issue guidelines that allow people to call emergency services and remain anonymous, provide them with immunity from criminal liability and forbidding hospitals from demanding payment from bystanders who take people to the hospitals.

Now he's working to get all jurisdictions in India to adopt these guidelines, and enshrine them in a Good Samaritan law. (Such laws are widespread in the United States.)

Let's hope Tewari's efforts work, because a lot of people are dying needlessly in India due to their system.

And thank goodness we in the U.S. live in a country in which, almost always, people run to help eery time they see a crash.

Now HERE'S A Strange Plane Crash

A little clumsy when it came to moving this plane
with a crane.  

Plane crashes are always bad. People get hurt and killed, and there's a lot of destruction.

As plane crashes go this one in India wasn't so bad, and - Bonus! - nobody was killed or injured.

This time, a crane was moving an abandoned Air India Airbus A320 from a airport to a nearby flight training center.

The crane was hoisting the plane over a wall to move it. As you'll see in this video, things didn't go so great:

Indian Bus Driver Suffers World's Most Unlikely Death Or Maybe Not

Crater reportedly left by a meteor in India. The Times of
India said the meteor's explosion killed one person. Many scientist
 are saying now this crater was not actually caused by a meteorite. 

UPDATE: 

More doubt is being cast on this story of a man being killed by a meteorite in India.

Indian scientists say there were not meteor showers at the time of the bus driver's death, so it was unlikely this was caused by a meteor, says the New York Times.

Moreover, NASA scientists are saying the blast that killed the bus driver have all the hallmarks of an earth-based explosion, and appears to be not related to anything that came from outer space, reports the New York Times. 

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION: 

If this report from the Times of India is confirmed, it appears a bus driver there died when a meteorite landed on or near him.

If this is true, it's a very, very rare case of someone dying in a meteor strike.

Indian authorities said a mysterious explosion happened on the campus of an engineering college. Investigation later indicated the cause was a meteorite.

In addition to the bus driver, two gardeners and a student were injured, but are expected to recover, says the Times of India.

Obviously, the people involved here were extremely unlucky. Deaths by meteorites are almost unheard of.

Confirmed reports of previous meteorite deaths are hard to come by. The Huffington Post says a meteorite struck a wedding party in Yugoslavia in 1929, killing one person, according to reports.

There were several unconfirmed reports of people dying after being struck by meteorites in the 1800s, but several of those proved to be hoaxes.

Supposedly in 1951, a meteor shower in Iran destroyed 62 houses and killed 12 people, according to Iranian media reports at the time.

 A meteor explodes over Russia in 2013. The concussion
from the explosion shattered many windows,
injuring 1,200 people. 

Again, the above incidents have not been truly confirmed as having actually happened. I

There is a confirmed report of an Alabama woman being injured by a meteorite crashing through her roof in 1954.

And of course there was that famous meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013. The concussion from the blast was so strong that countless windows blew out and about 1,200 people were injured, mostly by flying glass.

I don't expect to ever get hit by a meteor, but I'm going to be looking up so I can get out of the way, just in case.







The odds of a person being killed by a meteorite are as high as one in 250 million. You're obvious in much greater danger if you drive to work tomorrow morning.

I'm Greatly Relieved That Raju The Elephant Won't Have To Go Back To The Awful Guy Who Tortured Her

Raju the rescued elephant recovering at a wildlife refuge this
summer. An Indian court ruled he won't have to go back
to his abusive former "owner."  

I've never met him, but I've been terribly worried about Raju over the past several months.

Raju is an elephant living in India who was treated with terrible cruelty by his "owner" over the course of nearly five decades.

Back in July, an animal protection group called Wildlife SOS rescued Raju from his owner.

He'd been captured as a baby and spent about five decades in spiked shackles, being forced to work as a begging elephant, says the Huffington Post.

I don't know how a human being could do this for so long to a beautiful and intelligent animal like Raju, but it happened.

When Wildlife SOS rescued him earlier this year, a video of the rescue went viral because Raju could be seen crying with relief as the rescuers brought him what was probably the first act of kindness she'd seen in his entire life.

"'The vet and our team came with fruits and just started speaking softly to him, and to reassure him that we were there to help, and it was at that time that tears flooed down his face,' Nikki Sharp, the executive director of Wildlife SOS-USA told The Huffington Post, adding, 'They've done a lot of elephant rescues and the fact the tears were just coming down...he was weeping. It was an emotional moment and everyone was more motivated to get him on the truck and to safety.'

 The reason why I was worried is because, according to the Huffington Post,  it looked as if Raju's rescue would be short-lived. Her former "owner" sued to get her back, so Raju would live out her days in those shackles, begging and making that creepy guy money.

The previous owner was only named as a "Mr. Shahid," and he said the elephant was his. But the group that rescued Raju says Shadid was unspeakably cruel to the elephant, and besides, he had no papers proving he is the rightful owner.

But last week, an Indian court ruled that Shadid has no right to the elephant, and is charged with illegally obtaining him, says the Telegraph UK. 

So Raju will stay at the refuge where Wildlife SOS brought him.

In August, Wildlife SOS reported that Raju has been doing wonderfully at the refuge. He loves to play in the water, he is spoiled with buckets of foods, and he has even made some female friends.

Below, is a video, partly filmed the night Raju was rescued.

My favorite part of the video is when the gentle but determined man cutting the rusty, sharp chains off of Raju tells him, with conviction, "You'll never have to wear these again."

I'm so glad that promise came true.

Watch: