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From the Editor,
| Making Heroes Out of
Top Taxpayers |
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KUALA LUMPUR (LifeLine News) - Malaysia's Finance Ministry wants the country's top taxpayers to be made ``national heroes'' for their contributions to the nation's development, the state Bernama news agency said on Wednesday. The ministry has made the suggestion to the Inland Revenue Board to encourage individuals and companies to pay their taxes, Bernama quoted Deputy Finance Minister Shafie Mohd Salleh as saying. Companies that paid the highest amount of taxes were once allowed participate in the country's National Day parade, he said. Last year, only 16 percent of the population of 22 million people were registered as taxpayers. Direct taxes collected by the Inland Revenue Board in 2001 totaled 29.16 billion ringgit ($7.67 billion), Shafie said. |
| Convict Misses Home
Cooking, Court Fed Up with Appeal |
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HONG KONG (LifeLine News) - A Hong Kong court has thrown out an appeal by a Chinese man to cut his prison term short because he can't get spicy food behind bars, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday. Law Kwok-hing, 32, told the court on Tuesday he had a hard time adjusting to life in prison because dishes from his native Hunan province were not available, the South China Morning Post reported. ``I am a native of Hunan and I like spicy food, but there is no spicy food here,'' the paper quoted him as saying. It said Law, a garment worker, had been convicted five times in Hong Kong since 1990 for offences including theft, giving false information to police and illegally staying in the territory. His latest conviction came in July, when he was sentenced to 20 months in jail for stealing. |
| Man Sneaks Box
Cutters on Plane? |
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PHILADELPHIA (LifeLine News) - A 59-year-old businessman allegedly smuggled four box cutters past a security checkpoint and onto a plane on Monday at Philadelphia International Airport in an effort to convince his wife not to fly, the FBI said. Thirteen days after hijackers used box cutters to carry out the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Dennis Knaus allegedly succeeded in getting four of the bladed instruments past airport metal detectors and onto a Northwest Airlines jet bound for Minneapolis. Knaus, who notified authorities of what he had done before the plane departed, was charged with illegally carrying a weapon past a security checkpoint, a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison, the FBI said. An FBI affidavit said after Knaus smuggled the box cutters aboard the plane, he called his wife in Malvern, Pennsylvania, to try and convince her that she should cancel a planned trip to Ireland. He also called the Federal Aviation Administration to tell officials what he had done. He remained on board Northwest Airlines Flight 687 until police arrived to take him away. Knaus was expected to spend Monday night in jail before being arraigned in federal court on Tuesday. According to the affidavit, Knaus told investigators that he also inadvertently carried four box cutters onto a flight on Sept. 15, four days after the hijacking attack that destroyed New York's World Trade Center, crippled the Pentagon and left nearly 7,000 people dead or missing. Knaus wrote to the FAA on Sept. 17 to complain about the earlier breach of security, the affidavit said. |
| California to
Celebrate Prunes No More |
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YUBA CITY, Calif. (LifeLine News) - Pity the poor prune. Celebrated for years as one of California's most important crops, the prune this year will find itself on the sidelines, wrinkled, dried out and ignored. Instead, California's Sept. 8-9 Dried Plum Festival -- formerly known as the California Prune Festival -- will be dedicated to the prune's more presentable persona, the "dried plum." "This is a change that is going on throughout the United States, so we felt we needed to follow suit," Bree Gianassi, managing director of the California Dried Plum Festival, said on Tuesday. Hoping to escape the medicinal whiff of the term "prune," U.S. growers won Food and Drug Administration permission to begin marketing the product as "dried plums" to pitch it as a healthy snack.
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| Couple And 53 Stray
Cats Return |
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LONDON (LifeLine News) - An elderly couple and 53 stray cats landed in Britain on Tuesday, ending a year-long worldwide appeal to fund the trip for Gordon and Katherine McLaughlin and their full feline family. "I'm ecstatic," said Gordon, 68, surrounded by dozens of cat boxes as officials at London's Heathrow airport checked the animals' paperwork. He and his wife, who is 73, began taking in stray cats over a decade ago on the Greek island of Andros, where they have lived since the 1980s. The Britons had wanted to return home for some time, but did not have the funds to take their adopted animals with them. They refused to leave the cats on Andros, fearing that locals may either poison them or simply leave them to starve. Liz Ringrose of the Greek Cat Welfare Society, a charity based in Britain, heard about their plight and began a campaign to raise funds to bring cats and keepers home. "There is a lot of poisoning of cats on the island, so they couldn't envisage leaving the animals behind," Ringrose told reporters at Heathrow. The majority of the cats will remain with the McLaughlins in their home in eastern England. Around 20 are suitable to go to new homes, said Gordon, who knows each animal by name.
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Motorist Who Knocked Girl Down
Wins Stress Damages
LONDON (LifeLine News) - A motorist who knocked down a young deaf mute after she ran out in front of his car was awarded more than $700,000 in damages Thursday for post-traumatic stress as a result of the accident. The court found that the accident, which badly injured the girl, had left motorist Mark Cooper, 28, in a "parlous" state of health. His condition was such that he was unable to run his scaffolding business, which collapsed, and his wife left with their children because of his behavior. The child was struck by Cooper after she ran out in front of his car from behind a parked vehicle. A London court made the award against a taxi driver who had been ferrying the 4-year-old to her home in 1991, as well as the firm the taxi driver worked for. |
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Three-Wheeling Driving Days at a
Dead End
LONDON (LifeLine News) - Britain's last three-wheeled car rolled off the assembly line, bringing to a close 65 years of motoring tradition that has been the butt of endless jokes. The Reliant Robin, a uniquely British concoction of fiberglass and lateral instability that brought motoring pleasure to thousands, finally succumbed to a new generation of inexpensive four-wheel microcars. The quirky Robin, which features a single wheel up front, was made famous in the British comedy "Only Fools and Horses," and won devotees who needed only a motorcycle license to drive it. Reliant Motors produced 300 a week in its three-wheeling 1960s heyday, but that number slumped to only 10 a week. Some 44,000 still grind along British roads -- to the amusement of four-wheeling motorists -- and the car has spawned a number of Reliant owners' clubs and rallies.
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Gingerbread Man Hit by Political
Correctness
LONDON (LifeLine News) - Political correctness has hit a traditional British biscuit -- the gingerbread man has become a gingerbread person. The supermarket chain Safeway announced that it would be producing an equal number of gingerbread men and gingerbread women in response to consumer demand. "The gingerbread men wear trousers while the gingerbread women have longer hair and wear a skirt," a spokeswoman said. The move provoked mockery in the town of Grantham where the biscuit originated in 1740. "This is utter nonsense, a waste of time and effort," Mayor Mike Williams told Saturday's Daily Express. |
I'll be Surprised!
The other day as I came to work, I had the opportunity to stop in the new bosses office. I thought it would be nice for the company to through a little get together for the chief. So I made the mistake and asked how we could get the company to pay for the party. Needless to say the party was smaller than I thought it should be, as we all had to help pay for it ourselves.
This week we will swearing into office our new president. It will be a gala event, fireworks, to my understanding as many a six balls, not to mention a parade that puts the super bowls half time activities to shame. Truly an event lined with stars, past a current.
Now I realize that Bush worked hard and long to become the president, but it just seems unfair that our company would not spend $200 for our new boss, while the government shells out more than $20 million for this weekends bash in D.C. In fact the fireworks alone are a tidy half million. All in a time when both candidates were concerned about paying down the national debt.
I will be pleasantly surprised when politics will not be business as usual and we stop spending so much money on a party, let alone world hunger, or even hunger in this country. It is estimated that as many as 5 million Americans will go to bed hungry, and as many as 4 million Americans still have no home. Now I realize that the $20 million spent on this weekends bash will not take care of all these Americans, that have not. But admittedly I am slightly curious as to their thoughts about this weekends bash? I wonder how many of them were invited?
The Editor
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Letter Carriers on Scooters??
PARIS (LifeLine News) - Ten French postmen are coasting around Paris on foot-propelled scooters to test whether the trendy two-wheelers can help them deliver mail more easily, the post office said Wednesday. If they are approved, up to 3,000 postal routes in French cities could soon be served by postmen buzzing about on scooters, it said. La Poste stressed that the scooters, which popped up across Paris last year as part of a world-wide fad for a new compact aluminum model, would only be used on flat paved surfaces and wide sidewalks. "The scooter aims to ease movements for pedestrian postmen and simplify distribution of the post to better satisfy the demands of Paris clients," it said.
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Jet Takes Off After Day-Long Mouse
Hunt Ends
ZURICH (LifeLine News) - A Swiss jet that was grounded for a day while crews searched for a mouse on board headed off to the Mexican resort of Cancun after the reticent rodent turned up dead in the cockpit. Some 200 passengers were stranded overnight when Swiss aviation conglomerate SAirGroup banned the Balair charter jet from taking off until the mouse -- which appeared during the incoming flight from the Dominican Republic -- was found. It posed a safety risk if it chewed on cables. An SAirGroup spokesman said the poisoned mouse was found on Monday morning, allowing the jet to take off after a 24-hour delay. Passengers in Zurich spent the night in a hotel or at home. Those in Cancun got an extra day of holiday.
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Want to Buy a Moose? Toronto Has
141 for Sale
TORONTO (LifeLine News) - A herd of 141 fiberglass moose went up for sale as Toronto auctioned off some of the painted, decorated animals that have stood guard outside city banks and stores for months. The life-sized hulks were part of a Moose in the City exhibition designed to increase tourism. Toronto, Canada's financial capital, estimates that the animals attracted two million visitors to the city between April and October. The 326 moose, painted by local artists and sponsored by local firms, were scattered Monday around Toronto street corners, squares and boulevards. Some have already been auctioned off. During the "season" pranksters ripped antlers off dozens of the animals, and a moose with antlers is likely to raise more money than one without. The 16-day online auction, on the Web site buyamoose.com, will raise money for charity. A third of the proceeds will go to The Canadian Olympic Athletes Association. "Moose sculptures from Toronto's phenomenal 'Moose in the City' outdoor art exhibition are going on sale, online, for the wildest fund-raising auction this town has ever seen," the Web site said. A further 31 moose will be auctioned on Jan. 29. |
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Card Crime Soars As Thieves Turn
High-Tech
Credit card crime and mobile phone snatches soared in Paris last year as high-tech theft gained ground, police said on Friday. Growing numbers of crooks stole card details given out over mobile phones or on the Internet, pushing the number of financial crimes to 5,972 in 2000, corresponding with a fall in the number of street thefts. "We will only be able to stop this galloping rise in this new type of criminality by putting in place efficient security procedures," Paris police chief Philippe Massoni said in a statement. Overall levels of crime in Paris rose by 1.73 percent, with the 295,655 crimes reported last year hovering around the average rate recorded in the last decade. Armed robbery, violent thefts and burglaries, bag snatchings and car crime fell 6.2 percent in 2000, but police said they had noted a marked rise in mobile phone stealing. |
EDINBURGH, Scotland (LifeLine News) - A suspected Scottish jewel thief was caught when doctors X-raying him for a broken hip discovered thousands of pounds worth of loot in his stomach, police sources said Friday.
The sources believe the bungling burglar swallowed the jewels after being disturbed while robbing a first-floor flat in the central Scotland town of Perth.
He then leapt to freedom from an icy window-ledge, but landed awkwardly in the street below and broke his hip.
Officers arriving at the flat to investigate a possible break-in discovered the injured man in the road and took him to hospital for X-rays.
"When we found him he was in agony and couldn't move and was right below the open window of the flat," the sources said.
"Staff at Perth Royal Infirmary were having a good laugh about the X-ray because it's pretty obvious what happened to the jewelry."
Officers had mounted a 24-hour hospital guard over the suspect in a bid to retrieve the stolen goods.
"It's now a case of waiting by his bed with a bucket just in case things start to move," the sources said.
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Teen Hackers Enlisted to Play
Cyber Cops
NEW DELHI (LifeLine News) - Teenage computer hackers will play cyber policemen to help an Indian panel tackle Internet crimes, a top software industry official said Wednesday. The National Cyber Cop Committee set up by the industry will be advised by a group of 19 hackers, all between 14 and 19 years of age, based in metro cities, Dewang Mehta, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), told a news conference. "They are brilliant. They told me that within five minutes they can hack the (Indian) defense ministry Web site...," he said. Hacker is a term used to describe those who illegally break into computer systems to steal or copy information. Sometimes, they alter the content on a Web Site and write offensive material. Young, adventurous minds are said to resemble those of hackers. "If you want to catch hold of a hacker, you need the brains of a hacker," Mehta said. "We want to use them positively so that they can create adequate firewalls so that nobody can hack our country's Web sites," he added. These hackers do not possess a formal engineering background but are innovative, creative and technically very sound with source codes, Mehta said. "The 14-year old attends school. None of them (the 19 teenagers) have a criminal record." Mehta said the new committee will hold workshops for judicial and police officers to help them learn to distinguish between various Internet-related offences. Last year, India passed a landmark digital law to crack down on Internet crimes and enable e-commerce. But vast sections of police and the bureaucracy in the country, where use of computers in governance is limited, have little knowledge of such crimes. "The committee has representative police officials from all states, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the ministry of home (interior) affairs," Mehta said. "We've had discussions with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation also," Mehta said without elaborating. He said the new committee would evolve various ways to prevent government Web sites from being hacked. "Hacking, spreading viruses are much bigger criminal offences in cyber terrorism than pornography," Mehta said. |