April Fool's Pranks Go Wrong

As if to prove that Taiwanese people have a failed sense of humour, April Fool's Day 'gags' have been spectacularly backfiring all across the heavily-polluted island.

In Tainan, 45 year-old Rang Toh-Yah donned a JFK mask, entered a police station brandishing a plastic AK-47 and roared, "Give me the money! Free the imprisoned gang bosses!" Panicked officers shot him 20 times.

On flight EVA1276 from Hong Kong to Taipei, startled passengers overwhelmed an elderly woman who announced she had a grenade and wanted to be taken to Mexico City. After a brief brawl in which the woman, who cannot be freed for legal reasons, was beaten unconscious by her contemporaries, flight attendants found a mouldy papaya in her hand.

Meanwhile, in Taipei, the American company Hewlett Packard reinstated three suspended employees who were among the victims of a particularly malicious prank. Mean-spirited Tiffany Yen couldnt understand the English editions of Harry Potter and, stretching her language skills to the limit, directed her rage upon the letters HP. She asked her boyfriend, a software engineer, to hack into the HP website, and he changed HPs slogan from HP Invent to Harry Potter isn't even good. More than 700 angry Harry Potter fans complained to Hewlett Packard, who suspended three webmasters before they discovered Ms. Yen's involvement. Their legal team continues to investigate, and have found that Ms. Yen remains unmarried.

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