Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Santa sacks elves HELSINKI, Finland, April 16 (UPI) -- Three more worker elves at Santa Claus' official pole-away-from-home have gotten the jolly red slip from Finland's struggling Santa Park. Advertisement "It is really unfortunate that we had to fire them, but there is just no work," Park Director Wille Rajala told Sky News Friday. "The person who has been called the head elf still works for Santa Park." The number of Santa's vertically challenged helpers is now down to two due to a lack of visitors. It is a far jingle from the park's original plan to employ 120 of the green-clad Vulcans on monthly wages. About 500 miles north as-the-reindeer-flies from Helsinki, the park is where letters addressed 'To Santa' arrive. Santa Park made its first operating profit last year but the company's meter remained further in the red than Rudolph's nose with annual costs of some $500,000 remaining for the next 15 years to pay for the construction. Advertisement Tribe gets Arab textbook error removed WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- An Indian tribe has forced distributors of an Arab studies guide for U.S. teachers to remove an inaccurate passage about Muslim explorers. The book said Muslims preceded Christopher Columbus to North America and became Algonquin chiefs. Peter DiGangi, director of Canada's Algonquin Nation Secretariat in Quebec, called claims in the book, the "Arab World Studies Notebook," "preposterous" and "outlandish." He said nothing in the tribe's history supports them. The 540-page book says the Muslim explorers married into the Algonquin tribe, resulting in 17th-century tribal chiefs named Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik, the Washington Times said. DiGangi said the guide's author and editor, Audrey Shabbas, and the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington advocacy group that promoted the curriculum to school districts in 155 U.S. cities, have been unresponsive to his concerns since November. But, Shabbas said this week the passage was removed from subsequent copies and ways to notify 1,200 teachers were being studied. Man told truth saying he couldn't drive TAMPA, Fla., April 16 (UPI) -- A Tampa man who told a traffic specialist he couldn't drive was true to his word, and by obeying an order to move a car hit two people and two cars. Advertisement Carmelo Cordero, 29, was sitting in the passenger seat at a terminal at Tampa International Airport Thursday afternoon waiting for the driver, who had gone inside. A traffic specialist told Cordero to move the car, or face a hefty ticket, the Tampa Tribune said. Witnesses said Cordero told the specialist he didn't have a license and couldn't drive a stick shift. Reportedly with help from the specialist reaching through the window, he tried. The car lurched forward, bowling over two women and becoming wedged between two other cars. "The poor boy," said Beverly King, 74, who was knocked to her backside by the moving car. "It really wasn't his fault." Her daughter-in-law also was knocked down, but both sustained only bruises. Airport Police Chief Paul Sireci said the traffic specialist is on leave with pay pending an investigation. Burial mix-up shocks family MEMPHIS, April 16 (UPI) -- A 67-year-old Tennessee woman was buried in the wrong place at the wrong time due to an apparent mix-up at a Memphis funeral home. M.J. Edwards Funeral Home officials told Tracey Meeks they mistakenly buried her mother, Pauline Parker, who died April 8, somewhere in West Tennessee, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported Friday. Advertisement A relative thought something was wrong when he went to the funeral home to fix Parker's hair Tuesday and told Meeks she looked "darker" than he remembered. The next day, Meeks said she "got the runaround" when she went to the funeral home to see her mother for herself. "I joked (with the funeral director) saying, what could be the problem, you buried the wrong body?" Meeks said. "He turned to me and said, exactly'." Parker's body was exhumed and re-buried Thursday. An official of the Tennessee Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers said his office doesn't get many complaints of mixed-up bodies.
