Cockroach gets 30 TV staff fired
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Thirty TV station staff have been sacked after a cockroach was seen scuttling across a news reader's desk during a live broadcast.
Disgusted viewers bombarded the station in Turkmenistan with calls saying it had put them off their dinners.
The large brown insect crawled a full lap of the newsdesk on the 9pm news programme, Vatan.
But the appearance of the insect had more far-reaching consequences than viewer complaints.
The country's president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedo, was told about the incident.
He was so horrified that he fired 30 workers from the station.
The sacked workers included journalists, directors, camera operators, and technical staff.
The country's minister for culture, Gulmurat Muradov, has also ordered an internal investigation.
According to The Guardian, it is not the first time the country's leader has had a run-in with the state news channel.
Former president Saparmurat Niyazov, whose authoritarian eccentricities were world renowned, sacked several executives after drunken technicians failed to screen the new year's address to the nation.
The bulletin eventually aired at 3am.
Metro
