Germany says killer clowns not funny
GERMANY: Authorities in Germany have warned that anyone dressing as a ‘‘killer clown’’ to frighten people risks a year in prison as the craze spreads.
Police arrested a man at the weekend after he terrified passengers by roaming a train wearing a clown mask and carrying a knife. A few days earlier a teen was injured after he was attacked with a baseball bat by a man dressed as a clown.
Authorities have called for prosecutors and police to take a hard line in response to the craze.
‘‘Anyone who wants to scare another person to death, as the saying goes, is not funny but a criminal,’’ Thomas Kutschaty, the justice minister in North RhineWestphalia, Germany’s most populous state, said.
Even if the victim was not physically harmed, dressing up as a clown to frighten someone constituted a ‘‘criminal threat’’, Kutschaty said. ‘‘And for this the unmasked clown can land up in jail for up to a year.’’
State authorities in Bavaria have announced similar curbs. ‘‘Such bad jokes can have serious consequences,’’ interior minister Joachim Herrmann said.
Herrmann described a case last Friday in which a clown terrified a 10-year-old boy in the street. ‘‘Suddenly someone rushed from a bush screaming, wearing a clown mask and swinging an axe,’’ he said.
Anyone publishing videos of such incidents could also expect a visit from the police, he said.
A man was arrested in the western state of Saarland after he terrorised passengers on a train wearing a clown mask and brandishing a knife.
A 19-year-old is recovering after he was attacked by a man dressed as a clown in the northern city of Rostock, and the same day a man dressed as a clown was seen wielding a chainsaw. - Telegraph Group Taylor-Morrison, 86, caused a sensation after they were posted on Instagram by her dress designer, Marco Hall.
Mr Hall said that she had given him a sketch of what she wanted, telling him that she was going all out because ‘‘this might be my last hurrah’’.
The bride and groom had been friends since their youth, when they attended the same church.
Mr Morrison came to her first wedding in 1952. After her husband died four decades later, they became reacquainted.
In an interview with People magazine, Mrs Taylor-Morrison said that she drove him to church when he fell ill, and when his health declined again asked if he would like to live with her.
His health recovered a year later, at which point Mrs TaylorMorrison felt that he ought to make an honest woman of her.
‘‘Even though we were in our twilight years, we wanted to be pleasing in God’s eyes,’’ she said. The Times