Weird World News: Vote for sex; Mandarin teachers strip and turtles – hold that position

PHUKET: We all know that sex sells, but this latest Weird World News Round-up is about pushing the limits: a female Mexican presidential candidate encourages women to withhold any “favors” if their husbands don’t vote; a instructional website that exposes pupils to flesh as well as Mandarin Chinese, and a pair of turtles is caught in their favorite position for approximately 47 million years.

Vote for ‘hanky panky’
Mexico’s ruling party candidate is attempting to turn around her diminishing chances in the upcoming presidential elections by using, not sex appeal, just good old-fashioned sex, reported Reuters.

Despite being positioned far behind the frontrunner, and even trailing Playboy model-turned-presidential hopeful Julia Orayen in the polls, Josefina Vazquez Mota of the National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, PAN) has called on the women of Mexico to withhold “cuchi cuchi” (hanky panky) for a month if their husbands don’t vote.

Having a disgruntled man write to the presidential hopeful after such a message came as no surprise. However, Ms Mota refused to back down.

“Today a man wrote to me and said: Josefina, why the negative? What’s the prize? Why not a month without hanky panky for those who don’t come out to vote, and double rations for those who do?” Ms Mota told a rally in the city of Atlixco.

“If the woman wants to, that depends on each individual. But the thing here is we all take part (in the vote),” she added.

Support for the conservative PAN has been hurt by a mounting death toll in the government’s war on drug cartels, and a failure to create enough jobs for the growing population, reported Reuters.

Dressing down Mandarin
Since its launch in December last year, a website ostensibly set up to teach basic Mandarin-language skill has become an on-line sensation by using scantily-clad teachers to get its students through the lessons, reported The Telegraph.

SexyMandarin.com seems to have taken a note out of the soft-core porn industry playbook; its courses are typically conducted by Asian lingerie models, who take their students through a variety of linguistic topics.

The website recently announced that it ranked number 43 among the most subscribed to channels on YouTube. Whether its online students are actually making to the end of the videos, or are cutting class early to head for the bathroom, remains unknown.

However, an animated schoolmaster, the bespectacled Mr Fung, does help keep the course on topic and adds some gravitas to the lessons.

All would-be-teachers are cast like actors, though the site does ask for applicants to supply a list of any teaching experience in addition to “close up” and “full body” shots.

Coitus non-interruptus
If you thought your sex life was getting dull, just imagine being stuck in the same position for about 47-million years.

In Germany, paleontologists have uncovered pairs of prehistoric turtles fossilized in what is thought to be a sexual position.

The most recent male and female pair was found in the famous Messel Pit near Darmstadt. Overall nine pairs of turtles have been found “mounting up” before their deaths in the area eons ago, reported The Mirror.

Dr Walter Joyce, of the University of Tübingen, told Biology Letters: “People had long speculated they [the turtles] might have died while mating, but that’s quite different from actually showing it.

“We’ve demonstrated quite clearly that each pair is a male and a female, and not, for example, just two males that might have died in combat.

“This fact, combined with the observation that their back ends are always orientated toward one another, and the two pairs with tails in the position of mating, that’s a smoking gun in our view.”

Scientists believe that the animals were suddenly overcome by toxic water as they had sex in the lake that had once covered the area.

After death, the turtles sank to the lake bed, where they were buried by sediment and subsequently fossilized.

The turtles are thought to be the only example in the fossil record of vertebrates preserved in the act of coitus, reported The Mirror.

— Isaac Stone Simonelli