• With car-camel collisions increasing in Iran's two southern provinces, an Iranian government ministry is in the process of issuing identification cards to each camel, supposedly leading to outerwear license "plates" on each of the animals. Authorities told the Islamic Republic News Agency the registration numbers are needed if an accident victim needs to report the camel or to help trace smugglers. (No actual U.S.-style license plates on camels have yet made the world's news photographs.) [Daily Mail (London), 12-7-2016]
• Russian producers are planning the so-far-ultimate survivors' show -- in the Siberian wilderness for nine months (temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit), with 30 contestants selected after signing liability waivers that protect the show even if someone is raped or murdered. (Police may come arrest the perpetrators, but the producers are not responsible for intervening.) The show ("Game2: Winter") will be telecast live, around the clock, beginning July 2017 via 2,000 cameras placed in a large area full of bears and treacherous forest. Producers told Siberian Times in December that 60 prospects had already signed up for the last-person-standing prize: the equivalent of $1.6 million (only requirements: be 18 and "sane"). (Bonus: The production company's advertising lists the "dangerous" behaviors they allow, including "fighting," "murder," "rape," "smoking.") [Siberian Times (Novosibirsk), 12-15-2016]
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