Word: mountainous
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...should see them coming. But in a media world addicted to drama and the bizarre, credulity will always take a hit. April Fools' Day 2009 is no different. From the Middle East, where peace threatened to break out, to Switzerland, where the national obsession with neatness created jobs for mountain cleaners, the world once again fell prey to an array of hoaxers, fibbers and tellers of tall tales - all excused by a strange yearly tradition of mysterious origin. Here are a few of the bogus news items that have appeared on our radar...
Association of Swiss Mountain Cleaners The Swiss Tourism Board announced it was seeking volunteers to join the Association of Mountain Cleaners. It claimed, 'The Association of Mountain Cleaners... makes sure that our holiday guests can always enjoy perfect mountains. Using brooms, brushes, water and muscle power, they clean the rocks of any bird droppings." Visitors to myswitzerland.com were invited to take a Mountain cleaner aptitude test and submit their name for a chance to win a week's holiday in Switzerland. See YouTube video.)... [April Fools...
...that Pyongyang doesn't welcome journalists to the People's Paradise. Each year, scores of journalists are invited to cover everything from glitzy festivals to picturesque mountain resorts and showcase factories. Everyone must obey the rules, which constantly change to make spontaneous exchanges with ordinary citizens very difficult, says one foreign journalist who visited Pyongyang recently. "This time," says the reporter, "I could take my laptop, but I could not walk alone in Pyongyang...
...takes to bring the powerful round to his point of view. He grew up poor in Cape Town. Under the apartheid racial-classification system, he was considered "colored," or mixed race, and thus confined to a home in the Cape Flats, the hot, treeless townships between breezy Table Mountain and leafy Stellenbosch. As a 5-year-old, he witnessed apartheid's bite when his classmates were divided by color. "Suddenly half the kids in my class at school were no longer there," he says. "And so politics came to me." In the 1970s, Manuel gravitated towards Steve Biko's black...
...That's what the local authorities are afraid of. Having watched with growing concern as groups of unclad walkers criss cross the canton's stunning mountain paths and cow-studded meadows, the government decided that such a practice is not compatible with the canton's conservative ways. It has drafted a law that would ban public nudity, subjecting offenders to a $160 fine. The proposed legislation will be submitted to a popular vote on April 26, during Appenzell's annual Landsgemeinde, an open-air assembly in the town's picturesque main square, where all eligible citizens vote, by show...