Global Oddities

Tokyo police said Tuesday they had arrested a man with a passion for women’s underwear who used a fishing rod to reel them in.

Akira Hino, 51, was arrested last week for stealing a pair of knickers from a laundry pole on a second-floor balcony, a police spokesman said.
He stretched out a three-metre (10-foot) rod and caught the underwear on a hook, the Mainichi Shimbun reported.
Called to his house, police found more than 500 pairs of women’s underwear inside. He reportedly told investigators he had got into the habit of stealing undergarments when he was 18.
It was not known for how long he had been using a fishing pole.
Source: AFP, September 30, 2008

ATHENS (Reuters) – Two airplanes due to land on the Greek island of Lesbos had to circle above the Aegean sea for more than half an hour because an air traffic controller overslept, police said Monday.

An Olympic Airlines aircraft, arriving from the Greek capital Athens, and a Slovakian Airlines plane made several failed attempts to contact control tower personnel.

“They were calling the tower to get directions, but no one would answer,” a police official, who declined to be named, told Reuters. “The woman later said she overslept.”

The airport’s secondary control service assisted the pilots to land after they had circled for 40 minutes. Police said the controller, who was not named, would be suspended for a few days.

Source: Reuters, September 29, 2008

Brazilian police reportedly have caught up with a motorist who owes the equivalent of nearly $2 million in unpaid traffic fines. Folha OnLine said police stopped a 36-year-old man on Wednesday night and discovered he has been ticketed nearly 1,000 times since 2001, the year he bought his current car.

Folha OnLine said the accumulated fines for speeding and running red lights total 3.4 million reals ($1.9 million).
The man said he never received the tickets because he was always too busy to register the car in his name.
Folha OnLine said the car is worth about $6,600 and was impounded. It will be auctioned unless the man comes up with the money he owes.

Source: AFP, September 26, 2008

An Omaha, Nebraska, man on Wednesday abandoned nine of his children at the Creighton University Medical Center, saying he was just too overwhelmed to take care of them.
Gary Staton told newsmen that since his wife died in 2007, he had found it difficult feed the children, pay house rent and take care of other family matters. He also said he is currently out of job.
Staton’s action is not illegal in Nebraska. The state has a safe haven law for the protection of kids.
The abandoned kids, five boys and four girls, are between ages 1 to 17. His eldest child, an 18-year-old girl, was not abandoned.

BANGKOK (Reuters) – A publicity stunt by an underdog in the race to be governor of Bangkok went badly wrong when her campaign manager drowned as they bathed in a canal to highlight the plight of residents who have no access to clean water.

Candidate Leena Jangjanya said 32-year-old Thirasak Sitanont drowned Thursday as she and other staff were showing journalists the rashes they got from washing in the filthy water.
“One of my staff saw him waving and crying for help, but we thought he was pretending and he was far away from us, posing for two TV crews,” a sobbing Leena told Reuters.
“A few minutes later he disappeared and we had to call the police to come and find him,” said Leena, who had fallen into another canal in front of the TV cameras Wednesday as she was trying to show her support for riverboat commuters.
Leena, a businesswoman, is among 16 candidates in the race to be governor of Thailand’s capital city of 10 million people.
She said she had suspended her campaign for the October 5 election to help arrange a funeral for Thirasak and look after his wife, who is seven months pregnant. “If I were to continue to campaign after his death, I would be no better than an animal,” she said.
Source: Reuters, September 25, 2008

A 25-year-old man who tried to kill a priest by stabbing him in a Rome church has told police that he did so after the watching the film “The Da Vinci Code” and believing himself to be the anti-Christ.
The priest, Rev. Caino Calitri, 68, was in critical condition in a Rome hospital after he was stabbed repeatedly in the neck on Tuesday by Marco Luzi, according to Italian media reports, including the Catholic paper Avvenire.
Police found a note in one of Luzi’s pockets reading “this is just the beginning, 666.”
The number 666 is known as “the number of the beast” in the Book of Revelation in the Bible.
Luzi, who stabbed three other people who had tried to help the priest, told police after his arrest that he had watched “The Da Vinci Code” on television the night before.
They also found various references to the novel by Dan Brown in Luzi’s apartment, including a print of the “The Last Supper” fresco by Leonardo Da Vinci.
One note read “I, the anti-Christ.”
The theme of the anti-Christ and Leonardo’s fresco figure prominently in the best-selling book and its film adaptation, both of which have been condemned by the Vatican.
“The Da Vinci Code” outraged the Vatican and some Catholics because of its storyline that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children, creating a royal blood line that Church officials kept secret for centuries.
Source: Reuters, September 24, 2008

He Pingping from Inner Mongolia, China’s autonomous region, the world’s smallest man sits underneath Svetlana Pankratova from Russia, the Queen of Longest Legs, as they pose at Trafalgar Square in London, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008. Pingping, born with primordial dwarfism, holds the Guinness World Record for the smallest man at 74.61 cms (2 feet and 5.37 inches) and Pankratova holds the Guinness World Record for the longest leg of any woman at 132 cms (4 feet 4 inches) in length.
(Source: AP Photo/Sang Tan)

MIAMI (AFP) – A Florida judge has deemed unconstitutional a law banning baggy pants that show off the wearer’s underwear, local media has reported.

A 17-year-old spent a night in jail last week after police arrested him for wearing low pants in Riviera Beach, southeast Florida.

The law banning so-called “saggy pants” was approved by city voters in March after supporters of the bill collected nearly 5,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot.

The teen would have received a 150 dollars fine or community service, but he spent the night in jail due to a history of marijuana use, the Palm Beach Post newspaper said.

“Somebody help me,” said Palm Beach Circuit Judge Paul Moyle, before giving his decision.

“We’re not talking about exposure of buttocks. No! We’re talking about someone who has on pants whose underwear are apparently visible to a police officer who then makes an arrest and the basis is he’s then held overnight, no bond.”

“Your honor, we now have the fashion police,” added public defender Carol Bickerstaff, who asked the law be declared “unconstitutional.”

The judge agreed with Bickerstaff immediately, reported the Post.

Laws that ban low-slung pants are on the books in several US cities, including Delcambre, Louisiana, where offenders can be fined up to 500 dollars or jailed for up to six months.

Dallas, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia are among the larger US cities considering similar measures.

Source: AFP, September 16, 2008

A nightly carnival where bachelors are ridiculed into getting married is under way in northern Nigeria.
Until 1 October, Kano’s “Bachelor catcher” and his band of musicians will roam the streets, parading a bachelor they have caught in a noose.
The carnival is part of the celebrations of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, where people fast during the daylight hours.
These days the bachelor is a symbolic one, chosen for the event.
But in the past the troop of drummers known as “Nalako” used to roam the streets looking for men they thought should do the decent thing and marry.

The title of Kano’s “Bachelor catcher”, the Sarkin Nalako, has been handed down for at least three generations, according to its current holder Auwalu Nalako.
“This is something my father did, and his father before him. It is of great importance,” he says.
Auwalu’s two sons will take over from him, he says.
After sunset, when Muslims break their fast, it is traditional among Kano’s Hausa population for young men to go into the streets in groups and go door-to-door dancing and singing.
People give contributions of food or money.

But the Nalako group have a message to their songs.
They call bachelors “dogs” and say their prayers during Ramadan are worthless.
The Sarkin Nalako dresses up like a hunter, and his bachelor prey is paraded around with a rough noose around his neck and indigo dye smeared on his face.
Their songs are accompanied by goatskin drums and metal bells.
“Its important to encourage people to get married to avoid the immorality of having sexual intercourse with lots of people,” says the Sarkin Nalako.
In Hausa tradition, a man cannot be recognised as an adult unless he is married.
Those without the means to marry are often denied respect and a voice in society.

Source: BBC news online, September 22, 2008.

The winner of a free funeral has not turned up to claim his prize after ticket number 11 was chosen in a raffle in southern Italy, an Italian newspaper reported Tuesday.
The holder of the winning ticket in the raffle — held in the town of San Marco in Lamis — is entitled to a free lined coffin, a tombstone, copper candlesticks and a grave site, Il Corriere del Mezzogiorno reported.
There is no deadline for claiming the prize and the winner can give it to somebody else, raffle organisers said, according to the paper.

Source: AFP, September 17.