Global Oddities

Hundreds of Neapolitan women have pledged to go without sex unless their men promise to refrain from setting off dangerous illegal fireworks.
Local authorities are backing the women and have sent out text messages urging the men to “make love, not explosions”.
The women say it is the only way to persuade their partners that they are serious about their concerns.
“Setting off illegal fireworks isn’t celebrating, it’s dangerous,” Carolina Staiano, a founder of the campaign, told La Stampa newspaper. She told women that if their man did not understand the dangers they should “take action and make him sleep on the sofa”.
”If a sex strike is what it takes in order to get the attention of our men, husbands, partners and sons, then we’re ready for it,” Mrs Staiano, 44, told Italy’s Ansa news agency.

Mrs Staiano, who has the support of local churches, speaks from personal experience when warning of the dangers of fireworks.
She has spent her life caring for her father, who was left partially paralysed and with epilepsy after a firework exploded next to him at New Year’s Eve party before she was born.

But the campaign, which started as a small-scale pledge in her home town of Lettere, about 40km (25 miles) from Naples, now has hundreds of supporters and has generated massive media interest.

”I’m receiving phone calls all the time from people who want to join. To be honest, I really wasn’t expecting this level of interest,’ said Mrs Staiano.
The move was inspired by the ancient Greek play Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens refuse to have sex unless their men folk forge a truce with their rivals from Sparta.
Doctor and local councillor Vincenzo Sorrentino, who has long campaigned against the illegal fireworks, said a sex ban was “an issue that men are particularly sensitive to”.
”The idea of no sex is not exactly popular and polls among local men have suggested they plan to make much greater efforts this year to prevent illegal fireworks being let off,” he said.

Previous attempts to prevent the New Year’s Eve mayhem had proved unsuccessful, said Mr Sorrentino, but he hoped the women’s threat would do the job.
“They are more convincing and they always achieve their goals,” he said.
The BBC’s Duncan Kennedy in Rome says if the men of Naples fail to get the women’s message, an awful lot of them could be waking up on sofas on New Year’s Day.

Source: BBC news online, December 31, 2008

A Vermont man is $650,000 richer after retrieving a lottery ticket he had been given for Christmas but accidentally threw away.

Steven LeClair of Richford got the ticket for the Dec. 24 Tri-State Megabucks drawing as a gift from his mother. But it was in a gift bag that LeClair threw out, not knowing it was inside.
Vermont Lottery spokeswoman Hadley Melendy says LeClair’s wife found out two days later that the only winning ticket had been sold at a market in Richford. So LeClair went through the trash at his home and found it.

LeClair works for a car dealership and doesn’t normally play the lottery. He couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday; his telephone number isn’t listed.
New Hampshire and Maine also participate in Tri-State Megabucks.

Source: AP, December 30, 2008

Thieves cut their way into enclosures at a zoo in central France and made off with five endangered monkeys, police said Tuesday.

The gang, which appears to have had experience with primates and was armed with specialised equipment to pin down the elusive creatures, struck in broad daylight at lunchtime on Monday.
They made off with two marmosets, two capuchins and a cotton-top tamarin, all rare species being protected and studied at the La Fleche zoo near Le Mans in northern France.
Source: AFP, December 30, 2008

Police in Pennsylvania say a family there didn’t realize they’d had an unexpected Christmas guest until a man who had been in their attic for days emerged wearing their clothes.

Stanley Carter surrendered Friday after police took a dog to search the home in Plains Township, a suburb of Wilkes-Barre about 160 kilometres north of Philadelphia.

He was charged with several counts of burglary, theft, receiving stolen property and criminal trespass.

Police say the 21-year-old Carter had been staying with his friends, who are the family’s neighbours in a duplex.

He apparently accessed the shared attic through a trap door in a bedroom ceiling.

Carter went missing on Dec. 19 and his friends filed a missing person report a few days before Christmas.

Meanwhile, homeowner Stacy Ferrance said she had heard noises but thought they were caused by her three children. She notified police on Christmas Day when cash, a laptop computer and an iPod disappeared, then called police again the next day when she found footprints in her bedroom closet, where the attic trap door is located.

“When he came down from the attic, he was wearing my daughter’s pants and my sweatshirt and sneakers,” Ferrance said. “From what I gather, he was helping himself to my home, eating my food and stealing my clothes.”

Carter kept a list of everything he took, said Plains Township police Officer Michael Smith.

“When we were going through the inventory of what he did take, we found a note labelled ‘Stanley’s Christmas List’ of all the items he had removed from the residence and donated to himself,” Smith said.

Carter was in jail Sunday at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility with a preliminary hearing set for Jan. 5. He did not yet have a lawyer to speak for him.

Source: AP, December 28, 2008

The box of crackers Debra Rogoff bought from the grocery store had some crackerjack in it – an envelope stuffed with US $10,000.

Yet the Irvine woman was more curious than ecstatic about her daughter’s find. After all, who would leave money in such a place?

“We just thought, ‘This is someone’s money,”‘ she said. “We would never feel good about spending it.”

Rather than go on a shopping spree, the family called police and was initially told the money could be part of a drug drop.

Police later heard from store managers at Whole Foods in Tustin that an elderly woman had come in a few days earlier, hysterical because she had mistakenly returned a box of crackers with her life savings inside. In a mix-up the store restocked the box rather than composting it.

The Lake Forest woman, whose identity was not released, had lost faith in her bank and decided the box would be a safer place for the money.

Luckily for her, the box of Annie’s Sour Cream and Onion Cheddar Bunny crackers were bought by the Rogoffs, who discovered the crisp $100 bills in an unmarked white envelope on Oct. 10.

The Rogoffs never heard from the woman and didn’t receive a reward, but Rogoff did return to Whole Foods a couple weeks later.

“I asked them if I could have another box of crackers,” she said with a laugh. The store obliged.
Source: AP, December 27, 2008

A man was given three days in detention for breaking a non-smoking rule on a new high-speed rail line, Chinese state media said, an unusually severe punishment in a country where smoking bans are routinely ignored.

He was caught smoking in the toilet just after the train had left Tianjin for Beijing, triggering an alarm and causing the train to stop, the official Xinhua news agency said on its website (www.xinhuanet.com).
The high-tech line connects the capital with neighboring Tianjinin. It opened in time for this year’s Beijing Olympics and features carriages more luxurious than usual in China, including swivel chairs and spacious, plush interiors.
No-smoking signs and rules are generally given short shrift in China and about half of all Chinese men smoke.
“It is strictly forbidden to smoke on the Beijing-Tianjin Express, and they hope everyone respects the rules, travels in a civilized manner and ensures the train’s safety and punctuality,” Xinhua said.
Source: Reuters, December 25, 2008

In a bizarre Christmas Eve rampage, a 45-year-old man in a Santa Claus outfit showed up at a party in a Los Angeles suburb and opened fire at a group of revelers, killing three people and injuring at least three others, including two children, the police said on Thursday.

The suspect, identified by witnesses as Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, later killed himself, the police said.

The shooting, which may have been prompted by a marital dispute, occurred just before midnight Wednesday at a two-story home on a cul de sac in Covina, a small town about 22 miles east of Los Angeles.

Investigators said that about 30 people were inside the home celebrating when the costumed man knocked on the door. When a guest opened the door, the man stepped inside the house, pulled out a handgun, and immediately started shooting, Lieut. Pat Buchanan of the Covina Police Department said in a telephone interview.

Officers quickly responded to a burst of 911 calls, and arrived at the house moments later to find that shots were still being fired inside. They also found the house engulfed in flames, but kept firefighters from getting too close until it appeared that the shooting had stopped. The police said there were three bodies inside the house, which have yet to be identified. Three survivors were transported to the hospital, two of whom had gunshot wounds, Lieutenant Buchanan said. They were described only as an 8-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a 16-year-old.

Witnesses said Mr. Pardo stripped off his Santa outfit after the shootings and fled in street clothes. Lieut. Buchanan said he had been having problems with his wife, the homeowner, who may have been a victim and whose name was not made public. It was also unclear what connection Mr. Pardo had to the injured children and the other victims, he said.

“We don’t know if they were residents of the house or not,” Lieutenant Buchanan.

Source; New York Times, December 25, 2008

An Egyptian court has sentenced a schoolteacher to six years in jail for beating a pupil to death because he had not done his homework.

Maths teacher Haitham Nabeel Abdelhamid, 23, took Islam Amr Badr outside the classroom and hit him violently in the stomach.

The 11-year-old boy fainted and later died in hospital of heart failure in the city of Alexandria.

The court was told the boy had four broken ribs.

Abdelhamid was convicted of manslaughter.

He said he only meant to discipline the pupil and did not mean to hurt anyone.

The teacher’s lawyer was quoted as saying in court: “Hitting [a child] is not banned in schools and my client did not break the law.”

National outrage

Observers say the case has been seen as a shocking reminder of the failings of Egypt’s state education system.

The incident, at Saad Othman Primary School on the outskirts of Alexandria in October, caused national outrage.

Islam’s father, Amr Badr Ibrahim, said others should have stood trial with the teacher.

“The problem is the teaching and the teachers because they cannot find good teachers,” he said.

“The minister of education should be the first person to be accused – how can he agree to let such a young man teach children?”

In the state education system, young, inexperienced and under-resourced teachers often struggle to control classes of 60 to 100 children.

The Egyptian government says it is bringing in education reforms – including new teacher testing.

It is also trying to tackle violence in schools and has issued new statements on the prohibition of corporal punishment.

Source: BBC news online, December 25, 2008

Police in Finland believe they have caught a car-thief thanks to a DNA sample taken from a sample of his blood found inside a mosquito.

Last June a car was stolen in Lapua, some 380 kilometres (235 miles) north of Helsinki. It was soon found near a railway station in Seinaejoki, about 25 kilometres from where it was stolen.

“A police patrol carried out an inspection of the car and they noticed a mosquito that had sucked blood. It was sent to the laboratory for testing, which showed the blood belonged to a man who was in the police registers,” inspector Sakari Palomaeki told AFP.

The suspect, who has been interrogated, has insisted he did not steal the car, saying he had hitchhiked and was given a lift by a man driving the car.

Palomaeki said a prosecutor would decide if the evidence was solid enough for charges to be pressed.

Finnish police said it was rare for them to use insects to solve crimes, although they are interested in everything found at a crime scene.

“It is not usual to use mosquitoes. In training we were not told to keep an eye on mosquitoes at crime scenes,” Palomaeki said, laughing.

“It is not easy to find a small mosquito in a car, this just shows how thorough the crime scene investigation was,” he added.

A self-described ‘lonely’ man jumped into the enclosure of the Berlin’s zoo’s famed polar bear Knut.

German police say zoo workers were able to keep the 200-kilogram bear away from the intruder by distracting him with a leg of beef. The 37-year-old man, whose name has not been released, jumped over a fence into a water-filled ditch at the edge of the bear’s enclosure Monday morning.

Police said the man initially ignored instructions to leave the enclosure, but was eventually led away unharmed.

Before being let go, the man told them that he felt lonely and the bear appeared lonely, too.

Knut, now two years old, was raised by zoo keepers after his mother rejected him at birth. He rose to stardom early last year as a cute white ball of fluff, but has grown rapidly into a hulking predator.

Source: AP December 21, 2008