TWW'S CRAZY NEWS STORIES

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Elementary, My Dear Watson

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian children as young as six are to get lessons in detective work and criminal law at a school run by the police, local media reported Friday.

Russia's police force has adopted school No. 1862 in Moscow for children aged six to 17 and created a "detectives' section" as part of a campaign to clean up its reputation for incompetence and corruption.

"Future Sherlock Holmes's will be able to learn the basics of the detective's trade," Itar-Tass news agency quoted First Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin as saying. "We are investing in youth."

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Hotel Magnate Helmsley's Dog Trouble in Trouble

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. hotel magnate Leona Helmsley's pet dog "Trouble" is in legal trouble.

An ex-employee of the woman who earned the nickname "Queen of Mean" in a celebrated tax-evasion case has sued Helmsley, charging that her female Maltese bit her on the right hand and caused serious injuries.

"Trouble is no trouble," Helmsley, 84, responded in a statement on Thursday. "She is a loving dog and plans on fighting the case tooth and nail."

According to the complaint filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday, Zamfira Sfara says the incident took place on Nov. 26 last year at the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South, where Helmsley lives.

The civil suit says that the small dog has bitten people before and is likely to attack and bite anyone who might come near.

During Helmsley's tax-evasion trial in the 1980s, one of the witnesses against her was an ex-hotel maid who said she had heard her say, "Paying taxes is for little people."

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Snowfall Revives Ghost of Autocratic Past

MADRID (Reuters) - Try as you like, it's hard to erase traces of a traumatic past.

Spain last year removed giant stone letters that spelt out the slogan "Serve Spain to the Death" on a hillside near a military academy -- a legacy from the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, who died in 1975.

But the slogan, in the northeastern Catalonia region, blazed forth with new visibility this week after snow fell in the area and stayed longer in the cavities where the stone letters used to lie than on the surrounding, ground, covered in vegetation.

"Until vegetation grows back on the ground where the letters used to be, you'll be able to see the words, especially if you know what was there before. It's true that with the snow, it's much easier to see," said a colonel at the academy.

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Brazil Newspaper Slams NY Times Over Obesity Story

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - A Brazilian newspaper on Thursday accused the New York Times of illustrating a story on obesity in Brazil with a picture of three flabby-looking Czech women on a beach famed for its shapely local beauties.

The Times story went to the heart of Brazil's self-image as a place of sunny sexiness and was the second in less than a year to provoke strong criticism in Brazil, where the globally influential newspaper's coverage has faced heavy scrutiny by local media.

The Jan. 13 story by correspondent Larry Rohter was based on a government study that said more than 40 per cent of Brazilians are overweight.

It noted that Brazil's "gifts to global culture" included the Girl from Ipanema and the thong, or "tanga," bikini.

The photograph, by John Maier, showed three overweight women in bikinis on Rio de Janeiro's Ipanema Beach.

However, according to Globo newspaper, the women were not Brazilians but Czech tourists. "Certainly I am not a girl from Ipanema. I am a woman of a certain age," 59-year-old Milena Suchoparkova told Globo in an interview.

"I think I'm overweight but I never was skinny. I was always robust but I wouldn't say I was obese," said Suchoparkova, Czech-born but a naturalized Italian.

Globo, one of Brazil's biggest dailies, ran its story under the headline "New York Times Screw-up." It ran a separate article on Rohter and questioned the Times' ethics and credibility.

Suchoparkova and her friends were upset because, they told Globo, the photographer had not asked their permission before taking the shot. They were not mentioned in the story itself.

Rohter declined to comment to Reuters. A statement in Friday's New York Times said "The Times regrets that the nationalities of the women in the photo were not verified."

Last May, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered Rohter's visa canceled after he wrote an article that many Brazilians were concerned by Lula's drinking habits.

Lula reversed the decision under pressure from domestic and international media groups, and the Human Rights Watch advocacy group cited the government's reaction to the drinking story as a threat to freedom of expression.

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China Pandas Laugh All the Way to the Blood Bank

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's endangered pandas, who grab world attention each time they give birth, are now going to have their own blood bank to help to keep their numbers up, state media said on Friday.

The China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in southwest Sichuan province will finish setting up the country's first giant panda blood bank this year.

"The center will hold a general survey of the blood types of all the 81 pandas in the center, collect and keep their blood so as to be better prepared for future protection and rescue of pandas in the wild," the newspaper said.

"Initial studies have found that pandas have different blood types. But researchers have not conducted in-depth studies and do not know a lot about the matter," center deputy chief engineer Huang Yan was quoted as saying.

Pandas have boosted their numbers in the wild by almost half to about 1,600 in just a few years thanks to enlarged habitat and improved ecosystems, Xinhua news agency said last week.

Chinese forestry officials said last year that pandas, notoriously fussy eaters and picky partners, were rebounding from the brink of extinction but that they were not yet out of the woods.

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Stripper Wins Damages After Tiger Attack

TORONTO (Reuters) - A stripper mauled by a tiger in an Ontario safari park has won C$800,000 ($650,000) in damages because her scars meant she could no longer work, Canadian media said on Friday.

Jennifer-Anne Cowles was driving through the park nearly nine years ago with her then boyfriend when a tiger jumped into their car and tried to drag them away. The two insisted their windows had been shut when the tiger charged, although the park had challenged that.

The judge accepted the couple's testimony that the power windows had been inadvertently lowered when one of the big cats bumped against the car, frightening them.

In a ruling delivered on Thursday and reported in a number of Canadian newspapers, Justice Jean MacFarland said she could only imagine the "stark terror experienced by these young people during this horrendous event."

She awarded Cowles over C$800,000 in damages, almost half of it to compensate for income she would have made as a stripper.

Her musician boyfriend, David Balac, won C$1.7 million, because his injuries left him unable to work as an accordion player.

African Lion Safari, near Hamilton, Ontario, west of Toronto, said it is reviewing the ruling, but it insisted the park was safe.

"Hundreds of millions of people drive through safari style parks worldwide every decade and there are very few incidents causing injury," it said in a statement. "It is one of the safest activities you can do with your family."

[rainstorm]

brazil wants to keep its sexy image!!

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After Phone Sex, China Targets New Year Geomancy

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has targeted fortune-telling as its next target in a crackdown on illegal telephone content after going after phone sex.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has banned "birthday decoding" and "new year fortune-telling" text message and telephone services on the grounds they promoted superstition, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"Any advertisements that harm young minds or violate regulations will be banned immediately," Xinhua quoted the administration as saying in a statement.

Interest in China's traditional fortune-telling arts spikes every year around the start of the Lunar New Year. The Year of the Rooster begins on Feb. 9.

The Communist Party tried to eradicate the traditional arts of geomancy and prognostication after coming to power in 1949 but devotees have kept live what the government has branded "pseudo-science."

Roadside vendors sell calendars charting weekly fortunes priced under $1 at intersections around Beijing. Many people, especially in southeast China, seek geomancy masters' guidance on financial, career and personal matters.

The phone fortunes ban comes on the heels of China's sharp crackdown on pornography in 2004, in which the government ordered severe punishment of phone sex operators and shut down hundreds of Web sites.

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Police Bare Teeth to Boost Public Image

MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine police with bad teeth got something to grin about Monday when President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's husband handed out free dentures to improve the confidence and public image of the national force.

Mike Arroyo's "A New Smile for the Toothless" campaign originally focused on market vendors in Manila but was extended to police officers, who earn as little as $157 per month.

Omar Taribul, a senior officer with two decades of service, said he had endured years of humiliation since losing his teeth in a gunbattle with communist rebels in 1994.

"I can smile because I now have a brand new set of teeth," Taribul said at the headquarters of the Philippine National Police's southern command in Manila, as dentists examined members of the force.

About 200 officers have received free dentures, worth about $50 per set. The scheme is due to help another 200 police, as well as their families, with dental care.

"This will boost their confidence," said dentist Marilen Acuna Principe. "When you're missing some teeth and you have to talk to people, then you tend to become embarrassed."

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brazil wants to keep its sexy image!!

I have a lot to post to get back up to speed

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Waiter, There's a Fish in My Wine!

BEIJING (Reuters) - The French used grapes, Russians fermented potatoes, Koreans put ginseng in their drink and Mexicans distilled cactus plants to make fiery tequila.

Now China is introducing fish wine.

Sun Keman, an entrepreneur in the northeastern port city of Dalian, has formed the Dalian Fisherman's Song Maritime Biological Brewery, with a plan to use his background in the fishing industry to make fish into wine.

"Different from China's thousands of years of brewing, the brewery will clean, boil, and ferment fish for making wine," the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The company already had orders from Japan, Russia and other parts of China, it said.

Tipplers might also take heart in knowing the brew is purported to be good for them.

"Experts said the wine is nutritious and contains low alcohol," Xinhua said.

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Russian Legislator Falls Through Ice, Feared Dead

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian parliamentary deputy has fallen through ice covering the sea outside the city of St. Petersburg and is feared drowned, his political party said on Monday.

Kirill Ragozin, a 37-year-old deputy in the lower house of parliament, was riding a snowmobile over the sea Saturday when he crashed through the ice.

"In as far as his body has not been found, we cannot confirm the fact of his death," said a statement on the United Russia party's Web site http://www.duma.edin.ru.

Fishermen and winter sports enthusiasts frequently fall through thin ice on Russian lakes. The Gulf of Finland, a branch of the Baltic Sea, freezes in winter and is popular for car and ski races. This winter has been unusually warm, despite a cold snap over the past few days.

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Fish Returns to Devastated Town - from the Sky

LAMNO, Indonesia (Reuters) - Pregnant Saulmati and others left homeless in this tsunami-hit Indonesian town crave fish on their plates after more than a month without their favorite dish.

"Who doesn't like fish over here? But we just don't know how to get them any more," said Saulmati, who lost her husband and house in the Dec. 26 disaster and expects her third child in two months.

"There are only dried fish in the market ... that's if you have money, which I don't."

The wait may be ending. Helicopters from the World Food Program dropped Thai-made cans of mackerel in tomato sauce on Monday into a dried rice paddy in Lamno, a coastal town hugged by lush green hills.

Fish is the favorite meal on the west coast of Aceh province, where giant waves five weeks ago wiped out fishing villages and planted fear that fish in the ocean and rivers have been contaminated by dead bodies.

The WFP planned to bring almost 600 tonnes of fish to the seafood-loving people of Aceh province, where as many as 230,000 people died or disappeared in the magnitude 9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that may have killed nearly 300,000 around the Indian Ocean region.

"People need protein and they need fat in order to have a good diet, in order to stay strong. Today, we are going to be bringing in 45 metric tonnes (of fish) with these helicopters. That's the big step for us," said Heather Hill, a WFP spokesman.

Hill said WFP was using five private helicopters, which were scheduled to fly once every 30 minutes from the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, a city 60 km (40 miles) north of Lamno.

Lamno was chosen because its town center and market place survived the disaster, making it a natural hub for people from neighboring areas that were not so lucky.

"Our homes have become sea. An ocean without clean fish," said Jalaludin, an elderly man staring at the boxes of canned mackerel.

FEAR OF FISH

He is not alone in believing the fish in the ocean and rivers are rotten. Bare-chested Nizar, like many fishermen, realizes he has to find a new career.

"I cannot go to sea now because I don't have a boat. Even if I have a boat, nobody will want my catch," the 25-year-old said as he got his first haircut since the disaster behind the town's market, where dried and salted seafood were stacked nearby.

"People here think the fish are contaminated by a virus from dead bodies because the fish eat corpses," Nizar said, adding that he would become a rickshaw driver when aid dries up.

Some Lamno refugees had a lukewarm response to the return of their preferred meal. They complained about the distribution of aid in their town that sometimes failed to reach camps for the homeless due to poor coordination on the ground.

"We plead that the fish can be sent straight to the camps. Sometimes, the aid is kept in storage and never comes to our place," said Rusli, pointing to a two-story building guarded by Indonesian soldiers.

The canned mackerel from the World Food Program was not to be distributed Monday, but put into storage. Crowds watched as boxes of food were shifted to trucks by local residents under the supervision of troops carrying automatic rifles.

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Doodle Mix-Up Confuses Blair with Bill Gates

LONDON (Reuters) - When a sheet of paper covered in doodles was found on Tony Blair's desk at the Davos World Economic Forum, handwriting experts delighted in analyzing it, concluding the prime minister was stressed and under pressure. Experts who examined the tangle of boxes, circles, loops and notes on debt and trade variously described Blair as "struggling to concentrate" or "not a natural leader" and "stressed and tense."

But there was a problem.

The doodles, it later transpired, were nothing to do with Blair but were the work of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who shared a table with Blair at the summit.

"Somebody from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has said that the notes are from Bill Gates rather than from Tony Blair," a spokesman from Blair's Downing Street office said on Monday.

"We were surprised nobody bothered to ask us about this when the paper was made public last week because the writing is obviously not the prime minister's," he added.

Psychologists and graphologists drafted in by a number of British newspapers even noted how "Blair's" handwriting had changed for the worse since he first won election as British Prime Minister in 1997.

"We look forward to psychologists reassessing their conclusions of how these characteristics ascribed to the Prime Minister equally apply to Mr. Gates," the Downing Street spokesman said.

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Pope's Doves of Peace Take Flight, Eventually

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Two doves released by children from the windows of the Vatican Sunday to symbolize peace initially refused to take flight, causing the Pope to take the matter literally into his own hands.

A boy and girl released the birds from the window from which Pope John Paul had told pilgrims of the need to teach the young about peace. First the doves refused to leave the window ledge and when the Pope brushed them off, one flew back into the room.

The Pope himself then launched the bird once more into St Peter's Square but it flew back a second time, raising a chuckle from the 84-year-old pontiff. An unseen aide then threw the dove out again and it flew away.

The presence of the children was to illustrate the Pope's message that the young have to be taught to make peace.

"In the Gospel, Jesus proclaimed: 'Blessed are the peacemakers', even the very small can be such," he told thousands of the faithful in the square below.

"We need to beat injustice with justice, lies with truth, revenge with forgiveness, hatred with love. This lifestyle cannot be improvised, it needs to be taught from childhood," the Pope said in a croaky and wavering voice.

The Pope, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and can no longer walk unaided, has often spoken out about the war in Iraq but made no mention of any specific conflicts during his address.

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Utilities Warn 'Fear Factor' Over Shocking Segment

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There's no such thing as a safe shock.

That's the warning that U.S. electric utilities gave to the producers of NBC's gross-out stunt show "Fear Factor," which is planning a segment next week where couples will compete to see who can get zapped by high-voltage electricity.

In a letter to the NBC network, the Edison Electric Institute, which represents most major U.S. utilities, raised concerns about the spectacle.

"It's important for viewers to realize that there is no such thing as a 'nuisance shock,'" and copycat pranksters could face serious injury or death from electrocution, wrote Tom Kuhn, president of the Washington lobbying group.

Details on the Monday night show were not available. "Couples are shocked by next week's high-voltage stunt!" NBC wrote in a teaser on its "Fear Factor" Web site.

Previous episodes have featured contestants eating dead rats, ground-up spiders and live worms.

"The stunts described on this Web site were designed and supervised by trained professionals," a site disclaimer said. "They are extremely dangerous and should not be attempted by anyone, anywhere, anytime."

A spokesman for the show on NBC, owned by General Electric Co., was not available for comment.

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U.S. Nazis Adopt a Road, Pick Up Litter, Get a Sign

PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - The American Nazi Party has volunteered to pick up trash along a quiet stretch of rural road in Oregon state, causing an uproar after getting a sign placed there crediting its work.

The issue has flared up in the same week that world leaders and aging survivors gathered in the Polish town of Auschwitz to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the infamous Nazi death camp.

"American Nazi Party" reads the sign, which is part of the "Adopt-A-Road" program, a widely promoted U.S. scheme encouraging local groups to clean up road litter in exchange for recognition on small signs.

The sign, located on a quiet stretch of road near Salem, Oregon, also lists the initials "NSM," which stands for the National Socialists Movement, another white supremacists group.

Marion County officials say there is nothing they can do about the Nazi litter pick up because barring the group from the program would violate its First Amendment free speech rights.

"I myself have gotten at least 30 complaints," Dan Estes, the senior policy advisor to the Marion County Board of Commissioners said. "We knew there was going to be a great deal of public outcry." The Ku Klux Klan "adopted" a stretch of road in Missouri. After several legal battles, U.S. courts ruled that attempts to block the white supremacist group from the litter program was a violation of its free speech.

Neither the American Nazi Party nor the National Socialists Movement immediately responded to attempts to reach them.

The Oregon county put up the two signs at a cost to taxpayers of about $500, Estes said. If the signs are destroyed, the sponsoring organization must pay for replacements.

Any group sponsoring a litter pick-up must clean the roads twice a year. They must be a recognized organization, but it is usually a Boy Scout troop or civic organization.

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Pole Wants Telephone Pole Out of His Kitchen

WARSAW (Reuters) - Piotr Kardys is a Pole with a problem -- a pole; in fact, a telephone pole in his kitchen.

It was erected without his permission by telephone operator TPSA and when he built a home on his property in 2001 he had to build around the offending object, which is how the pole ended up in his kitchen.

Local authorities said since no one objected when the pole went up, it was legal. Kardys, a businessman from Kolbuszowa, disputed this view and Poland's Supreme Administrative Court has now agreed with him.

But his problems aren't over. Local authorities rescinded the building permit for the pole and told TPSA to move it, but TPSA spokeswoman Izabella Szum said the company would appeal.

"We have to have a binding decision -- we could do it on our own, but you have to realize this is a big investment," she said.

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After Phone Sex, China Targets Phone Fortune Telling

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has targeted fortune-telling as its next target in a crackdown on illegal telephone content after going after phone sex.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has banned "birthday decoding" and "new year fortune-telling" text message and telephone services on the grounds they promoted superstition, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"Any advertisements that harm young minds or violate regulations will be banned immediately," Xinhua quoted the administration as saying in a statement.

Interest in China's traditional fortune-telling arts spikes every year around the start of the Lunar New Year. The Year of the Rooster begins on Feb. 9.

The Communist Party tried to eradicate the traditional arts of geomancy and prognostication after coming to power in 1949 but devotees have kept live what the government has branded "pseudo-science."

Roadside vendors sell calendars charting weekly fortunes priced under $1 at intersections around Beijing. Many people, especially in southeast China, seek geomancy masters' guidance on financial, career and personal matters.

The phone fortunes ban comes on the heels of China's sharp crackdown on pornography in 2004, in which the government ordered severe punishment of phone sex operators and shut down hundreds of Web sites.

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The Cop Without a Clue...

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Swedish police officer has confessed he robbed a bank and later investigated the crime himself, telling reporters at the time police had no clues.

A court in the central town of Bollnas Monday officially charged the 36-year-old for the armed robbery on Dec. 17, court documents said Tuesday, adding he had pleaded guilty.

The amount of money stolen was not disclosed but was described as sizeable. An hour after the crime the police officer returned to the bank as a leading police investigator handling the case.

Colleagues became suspicious when he bought a new car in mid-January, paying 219,000 Swedish crowns ($31,400) in cash using banknotes from the robbery, the court said.