Airline Execs, Just the Flight for You

Our Favorite Y2K Bug Cure: China has found the ultimate incentive to motivate airline executives to fix the year 2000 computer problem: It ordered them to take a flight on Jan. 1, 2000.

Buried Alive--Voluntarily: An Englishman has broken the world record for being buried alive by spending 142 days in an underground coffin-like box, British newspapers reported.

Nicknamed the “Human Mole,” Geoff Smith, 37, was buried last August in the garden of his local pub in Mansfield, and planned to remain underground until reaching 150 days of voluntary burial.

The box, his home for the last five months, is 7 feet long by 2 1/2 feet wide and isn’t high enough to allow Smith to sit up straight. It contains books, a mobile phone, a television and family photos.

Underwear Aid: Estonian President Lennart Meri has intervened personally on behalf of a 6-foot-7, 379-pound man unable to buy underwear to fit his large frame. Alar Sink turned to the president after a clothing company refused to fill his special order for 10 pairs of underwear. It wasn’t his first plea for government help. In the 1980s, when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union, Sink filed a request with the interior minister to allow him to go naked if stores refused to carry his size.

Chorus of Pagers Causes Crash: A Ukraine businessman who had just bought pagers for each member of his staff was so alarmed when all 50 of them went off at once that he drove his car into a lamppost. After he assessed the damage, the businessman turned his attention to the message on the 50 pagers. It read: “Congratulations on a successful purchase!”

When Boy Meets Train: Kevin Sean Rowe, 34, a writer with the south Florida alternative weekly New Times, suffered a fractured skull, broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a collapsed lung after being hit by a train while trying to flatten a quarter by placing it on a railroad track.

He had hoped a southbound train would run over the coin. What he didn’t bargain for was that a northbound train would ram him. “There’s not many people as stupid as yours truly,” Rowe told the Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale.

Spanking Not Included: London cops are sending suspected criminals birthday cards with a photo of their local police station on the front as a warning. Inside each card is a picture of a cell door and the caption: “Thinking of you on your birthday.”

“We want criminals to know we know who they are, who their friends are and what they are doing,” said a police superintendent.

News McNuggets:

* Child welfare activist Jordan Riak has proposed that the city of Oakland establish itself as the nation’s first official “No Spanking Zone” to discourage parents from hitting their children.

* A small boy believed to be the reincarnation of Sri Lanka’s slain president is drawing large crowds to his village, officials said.

* Spurred by a newspaper’s freedom-of-information request, police have released the names of 16,000 alleged prostitution customers in Huntington Woods, Mich., an upscale Detroit suburb.

* Chinese police arrested a self-proclaimed healer on suspicion of causing the deaths of 146 people.

Wide World of Weird is published on Sundays. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.