How a Single Cockroach Cost 30 People Their Jobs

Here’s a truly bizarre story of how a single cockroach put 30 people out of work in Turkmenistan:

For the viewers of Turkmenistan’s popular nightly news programme, Vatan, it was another routine bulletin. But as the newsreader began the 9pm broadcast, viewers across the central Asian country spotted something unusual crawling across the studio table: a large brown cockroach.

The cockroach managed to complete a whole lap of the desk, apparently undetected, before disappearing. The programme, complete with cockroach, was repeated at 11pm that night. [...]

The country’s president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, took news of the insect so badly that he responded by firing no fewer than 30 workers from the main state TV channel, the news website Kronika Turkmenistan reported yesterday.

Link – via Presurfer

Previously on Neatorama: Craziest Dictator Ever: Turkmenbashi