Global Oddities

A Hindu holy man with thousands of followers across India resigned as head of a religious organization on Tuesday after police began investigating his role in a sex scandal, officials said.

Video footage allegedly showing Nithyananda Swami, head of Dhyanapeetam, or “knowledge center,” frolicking with two women angered hundreds of devotees who tried to ransack his center outside the southern city of Bangalore this month.
The 32-year-old has denied any links to the women and said the tapes were doctored, but the police are investigating and have asked people to come forward with evidence.
This month has been particularly bad for India’s self-styled holy men with Indian police arresting one for running a brothel involving air stewardesses and college students, while charging another with kidnapping a minor.
Nithyananda Swami, who has big politicians and movie stars as devotees, announced his resignation in a statement.
“I have decided to live a life of spiritual seclusion, for some indefinite time…,” he said on his website.
Nithyananda Swami has spiritual centers in Europe and United States and Dhyanapeetam runs free medical centers and supplies food to the poor.
Source: Reuters, March 30, 2010

Police in Michigan have released a copy of a 911 call where a suspected drunken driver chats with an emergency dispatcher for about 20 minutes before she is pulled over and arrested.

In the first moments of the March 13 call, the dispatcher asks: “Are you intoxicated?” and the woman replies: “Absolutely.” The dispatcher pleads with the woman to pull over and she tells him she “shouldn’t be driving.”

The dispatcher helped officers find the driver in East Lansing.

Police say the 27-year-old Charlotte resident placed the call at 5:40 a.m. The woman was issued a citation for operating while intoxicated and faces up to 90 days in jail. Her name hasn’t been released.

Police released the call Friday to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Source: AP, March 27, 2010

Two historic sex toys thought to date back to the 1700s have been sold at an Essex auction for £3,600.

The wooden items, believed to be French, were auctioned at Brentwood Antiques Auction on Thursday.

Auctioneer Wendy Wood said: “You might laugh but it’s a good opportunity for investment. You won’t see another one in a long time.”

An anonymous bidder bought the pair which come with their own leather-lined case.

One of the objects measures 10in (25cm) and the other 11in (28cm).

Staff at the auction described the sex toys as “extraordinary and exceptionally rare”.

The catalogue description read: “Designed to please Lot 340 – an extraordinary and exceptionally rare “Travel Godermiche”.

“A pair of wooden phallus contained within a fitted kid leather covered Treen case with strap fleurs-de-lys decoration

“The case, although having a re-lined interior appears to have age commensurate with the phallus.”

Source: BBC news online, March 27, 2010

A pit bull is on probation after ripping the bumper off a police car and chewing the tires on three other cars flat as two other dogs barked and wagged their tails, local media reported Friday.
The brown and white mixed breed named Winston spent two weeks locked up in the Chattannooga, Tennessee animal shelter after the bizarre attack was captured on a police surveillance camera.
His owners said they had no clue why he went wild that day, chewing through two fences and attacking four different cars.
He’d never shown any aggression before that day, owner Nancy Emerling told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
A two minute police video posted on the paper’s website (http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/mar/26/car-eating-dog-set-free/) shows Winston yanking on the bumper of a police cruiser, refusing to let go as it drives slowly back and forth trying to dislodge the dog.
“Keep your car still, man,” one police office can be heard saying as he drives up to the other cruiser in an attempt to scare the dogs away.
The bumper eventually rips right off and a brown dog grabs hold of it as Winston bounds away tail wagging and then drops the white bumper on the pavement.
The two dogs and a big black one which had been barking from the sidelines then chases the cruiser down the road.
“I cannot believe they didn’t shoot him,” Emerling told the paper shortly after the March 14 attack. “I think that the officers showed amazing restraint. They could not have been nicer.”
Winston was eventually caught by an animal control officer using a pole after police failed to subdue him with pepper spray and a Taser.
He was held for two weeks in the city’s animal shelter where he was described as a model prisoner.
A judge said she would drop a citation naming Winston a “potentially dangerous dog” after six months if he completes obedience training and doesn’t act up again.
“The obedience training is going to be more like anger management,” Emerling’s lawyer, Jim Anderson jokingly told the paper.
Source: AFP, March 25, 2010

A six-year-old Chinese boy has undergone surgery to remove an extra five fingers and six toes.
Li Jinpeng was born with 15 fingers and 16 toes – seven fingers on his left hand, eight on his right and eight toes on each foot.
It took doctors five hours in the operating theatre to remove Li’s extra digits.
Surgeon Tian Lijie said: “We have successfully completed the operation as anticipated.
“The shape of Li’s fingers and toes improved greatly.”
Medical staff believe his condition may have been caused by genetic mutation of problems during pregnancy.
His parents had been advised to wait until the boy was older before he had surgery.
But Li was bullied at school over his extra fingers and toes with many classmates branding him a monster.
His parents felt the time had come for him to go under the knife.
Dr Lijie said that the boy would begin rehabilitation in a month.
His parents say he is looking forward to fitting his feet into a pair of shoes.
Source: Skynews online, March 25, 2010

A Florida man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for trying to break back into the jail where he had been held following his conviction in a manslaughter case, local media reported on Wednesday.

A judge sentenced Sylvester Jiles, 25, to the maximum 15-year penalty on Monday after his conviction earlier this year for the attempted break-in at the Brevard County Detention Center, the Florida Today newspaper said.
He apparently feared violent reprisals from family members of the manslaughter victim and suffered severe cuts when he tried scaling a 12-foot-high (3.65-meter) barbed wire fence to break into the jail.
The newspaper said Jiles had been released on probation from the jail a week before he tried to force his way back inside.
Source: Reuters, March 24, 2010

A woman who tortured and killed two of her adopted daughters and stored their bodies in the family freezer has been jailed for life by a judge in the United States.
Renee Bowman told the court in Maryland: “I am very sorry for the abuse of those girls. It haunts me. It haunts me every day.”
Handing her the maximum punishment possible, judge Michael Algeo said: “You sentenced these two young innocent children in the dawn of their lives to a death chamber, and for you that option is not available.”
The bodies of Minnet, who would now be 12, and Jasmine, who would now be 11, were discovered in a locked freezer in the family’s home in Maryland in September 2008.
Authorities searched the house after a third sister escaped and was found wandering the neighbourhood.
Prosecutors said Bowman was a sadist who derived pleasure from her children’s misery as she kept them in a locked room with a bucket for a toilet.
All three girls had suffered severe injuries from repeated beatings and none ever went to school.
The surviving girl, now aged nine, dazzled court as she testified with a teddy bear in her arms.
She said Bowman beat them with a shoe and a baseball bat and repeatedly choked them until they lost consciousness.
The court was read an email Bowman sent to a friend in which she gleefully compared herself to the death row warden in the movie The Green Mile.
She said she shouted “Dead man walking,” when any of the girls was about to be punished. “They hate it. Hahaha,” Bowman wrote.
Investigators believe Bowman killed the girls months before they were found, while the family was living 60 miles away, and took the freezer with her when she moved home.
Bowman’s lawyers say she suffered a difficult childhood, having been given up by her schizophrenic mother.
She was sentenced to the maximum penalty under Maryland law – two consecutive life sentences for the killings plus 75 years in prison for three counts of first-degree child abuse.
The judge told her: “You come across as such a nice, soft-spoken person. I can only conclude that the Renee Bowman I see before me is a different Renee Bowman from the one who lived in that house.”
State attorney John McCarthy said the surviving daughter faces an uncertain future at the centre of a complex adoption case.
“God knows she’s going to have lifelong difficulties dealing with the emotional, as well as the physical, scars from these crimes.”
Source: Skynews online, March 23, 2010

A judge in Malawi says that two gay men arrested in December after getting engaged have a case to answer.

A lawyer said the couple would now call defence witnesses. Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, and Steven Monjeza, 26, deny charges of gross indecency.

They have now spent almost three months in custody in what is being seen as a test case for gay rights in Malawi.

The judge said a full trial would proceed in April. Homosexual acts carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

But the men’s lawyers have argued that their constitutional rights are being violated.

The courtroom was packed for the hearing – the first stage in the legal process. About 50 people were reportedly unable to get in.

“The court has established a prima facie case against the accused persons,” said magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa-Usiwa.

The BBC’s Raphael Tenthani in Blantyre says the two men looked relaxed during the proceedings. They waved to hundreds of on-lookers outside court as they were driven back to the city’s Chichiri Prison.

“We are sad that the couple will continue suffering for choosing to live the way they were born,” said Gift Trapence from the recently formed gay rights group Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP).

Malawi is a deeply conservative society.

But some voices in government have started to call for more openness about homosexuality as the authorities try to tackle high rates of HIV/Aids.

Human rights groups and diplomats have joined the debate, with donors including the UK and Norway warning that the country should respect human rights or risk international isolation.

Source: BBC news online, March 22, 2010

PM Harper (l), receives his beer from US ambassador Jacobson

A US envoy delivered two cases of beers Friday to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to settle a bet US President Barack Obama lost when Canada beat the United States for Olympic ice hockey gold.

David Jacobson, the US ambassador to Ottawa, delivered a case of Molson Canadian and an extra case of Obama’s brew of choice, Yuengling from America’s oldest brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, to the doorstep of the prime minister’s official residence at 24 Sussex Drive — just in time for breakfast.
Canada beat the US squad three to two in overtime in a thrilling match-up on February 28 to become the first Olympic host nation to capture men’s hockey gold in 30 years.
Under the terms of the friendly wager, if the United States had won the match, Obama would have received a case of 24 beers from Harper.
Harper’s spokesman Dimitri Soudas said both cases of beer would be sent to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto for display.
Source: AFP, March 19. 2010

A British pair caught kissing in public in Dubai face up to a month in jail in the Gulf Arab emirate for indecency after an Emirati mother complained her child had seen their indiscretion.

The pair, a British man living in Dubai and a female friend, were arrested in November on accusations of kissing and touching each other intimately in public and consuming alcohol, their lawyer said. They were ordered jailed for a month.
The case is the third time in under two years in which Britons have hit the headlines by falling foul of decency laws in Dubai, a flashy Muslim emirate popular with sun-seeking Western tourists and expatriates.
A lawyer for the pair, who launched an appeal on Sunday, said there had been no inappropriate kissing and the two were just friends. A verdict in the appeal is expected on April 4.
“There was no lip kissing. It was just a normal greeting that is not considered offensive,” lawyer Khalaf al-Hosani told the court, adding the complainant’s testimony was contradictory.
The British man’s mother in London said her son, Ayman Najafi, had vowed to clear his name.
“My Ayman is a good boy, he’s very wise and mature. I can’t believe it,” his mother Maida Najafi was quoted as saying in The Independent. “He knows the rules over there. He would never do that. He wouldn’t even do it over here.”
The pair, free on bail, were also fined 1,000 dirhams ($272) for illegal consumption of alcohol, the lawyer said. They were to be deported after the completion of their jail sentence.
Dubai’s foreign population has expanded rapidly in recent years as expatriates flocked to the Gulf Arab trade and tourism hub for its tax-free earnings and year-round sunshine.
The changes have challenged the Emirati population, which is now vastly outnumbered by foreigners, raising concern that their emirate’s rapid pace of growth is a threat to their social and religious identity in what remains a deeply conservative region.
In a high-profile case in 2008, a British couple narrowly escaped jail after a court found them guilty of engaging in drunken sexual activity out of wedlock, and for doing so in public on a beach in the emirate.
They were sentenced to three months in prison followed by deportation, but had their jail terms overturned on appeal.
In a separate case this year, a British couple who shared a hotel room managed to escape trial in Dubai for having sex out of wedlock by producing a marriage certificate.
A British embassy spokesman said it could confirm that a British national was arrested in November and the mission had provided consular assistance, but gave no further details.
Source: Reuters, March 18, 2010