Stuffed

Do you have something to declare, Madam?

Authorities at Bangkok’s international airport found a baby tiger cub that had been drugged and hidden among stuffed toy tigers in the suitcase of a woman flying from Thailand to Iran, an official and a wildlife protection group said Friday.

The woman, a Thai national, had checked in for her flight and her oversized bag was sent for an X-ray which showed what appeared to be a live animal inside, according to TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring group.

The woman was arrested at Suvarnabhumi Airport before boarding her Sunday flight. The cub, estimated to be about 3 months old, was sent to a wildlife conservation center in Bangkok.

“The cub arrived at our unit Monday,” said Chaiyaporn Chareesaeng, head of the Wildlife Health Unit at the Department of National Parks’ Wildlife and Plant Conservation Center, where the animal was put under close supervision.

“He appeared exhausted, dehydrated and couldn’t walk, so we had to give him oxygen, water and lactation,” said Chaiyaporn. “We have monitored him closely. As of today, he looks better and can walk a little now.”- Associated Press

The smuggler faces up to a 40,000 baht fine and four years in prison. Since 911 smuggling stuff on your body or in baggage has become incredibly difficult. Some people apparently haven’t gotten the memo.

In other Tiger news, a golfer by the last name of Woods shot 65 yesterday in a PGA Tour golf tournament. IMHO I think we need more than one excellent round before saying Tiger Woods has gotten his golf game back together again.

Below average

Did BBC’s Jennifer Pak ever study statistics?

Malaysian authorities are grappling with a growing problem of abandoned babies.

Sixty-five infants have been found so far this year, and many were dead by the time they were discovered.

The government fears that number will surpass previous totals – an average of 100 babies are found each year.-BBC

Now read the three parts in bold carefully. A growing problem, 65 infants and an average of 100 babies a year.

2010 is almost eight months old 8 divided into the total amount of babies abandoned- 8.125 a month

8.125 times 12 months equals 97 babies for a year.

The article claims an average of 100 abandoned babies are found each year. Average is the key word, not record high. So it seems to me based on what Jennifer Pak wrote, the number of abandoned babies is on about a normal level. 97 is less than 100, but its within the margin of error. The amount of abandoned babies is not increasing at all.

Does anyone at BBC understand basic statistics or do they prefer writing scary misleading articles and headlines?

Toppled over

The photo of the day. From BBC-

Que Jingde and Zhang Zhiqin of Shanghai Meidu Real Estate both received life terms for the June 2009 collapse.

According to China Daily, Zhang had allowed an unqualified contractor to build an underground car park.

This, combined with a large pile of excavated earth on the other side of the building, caused it to topple to one side, the paper said.

The building, a large apartment complex in Shanghai’s “Lotus Riverside” development, fell over almost intact.

It was empty at the time of the collapse, but a worker who had returned to the site to collect his tools was killed.

Contrast the justice handed down in Shanghai compared to that in South Korea when a building collapse took 500 lives. The longest prison term handed down for Sampoong was ten and a half years.

The way the building collapsed in Shanghai is pretty amazing. It looks like something made with Lego.

Women are from Venus

And the wife of Japan's next Prime Minister claims to have visited that planet. From Reuters-

Japan’s next prime minister might be nicknamed “the alien,” but it’s his wife who claims to have had a close encounter with another world.

“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year.

"It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”

Yukio Hatoyama is due to be voted in as premier on September 16 following his party’s crushing election victory over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party Sunday.

My own travels have been closer to home. All fifty United States and over a dozen countries. Even if I was offered a ride on a spaceship, I would take a pass.

The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Philippine television personality Willie Revillame. He gets the award for the following-

Controversial TV host Willie Revillame is said to be deeply upset over the negative reaction he has received regarding the comments he made pertaining to the airing of President Cory Aquino’s funeral cortege on his TV show, “Wowowee” on Aug. 3.

“He feels isolated,” said friend and Wowowee director Johnny “Mr. M” Manahan who has taken the cudgels for his beleaguered colleague.

Manahan revealed that Revillame had relieved himself of his duties from the show “for the time being.”

*****

The signature campaign was fueled by videos uploaded on the World Wide Web showing Revillame visibly irked while a live streaming video of President Cory Aquino’s cortege was being flashed via a small window in a portion of Wowowee.

For those who don't know, Wowowee is an immensely popular television show in the Philippines. My wife is a Filipina and we get 4 Filipino television channels through our satellite provider. Willie is one of three Philippine television personalities I can name and recognize on hearing their voice.

“Pangit! Hindi ho maganda sa atin. Nagsasalita [ako], ipinapakita yung kabaong ni Tita Cory, hindi ba? Papano kami makapagsasaya?” Revillame was heard saying.

Which translates to- “It is ugly for us that while I am talking they are showing the cortege of Aunt Cory, isnt’ it? How can we may everyone happy?”

“I don’t think dapat ipakita ‘yan. Nagsasaya kami dito, papakita n’yo sa amin yun [libing]…? Hindi tama, okay?”

Which translates- “I don’t think they should show it. We are having fun, and they burial cortege is being shown. It’s not right. ”

These are really dumb things to be saying and Willie deserves to be in the trouble he is now. My wife says he has a big head and should be fired for what he said. His conduct was disgraceful. She also points out if not for Corazon Aquino, Willie may not have a job now. ABS CBN was sequestered by the Marcoses during the time of martial law.

My own opinion- Willie was way out of line, and I have no problem naming him today's Knucklehead of the Day.

Leave us alone

From Reuters-

About 200 women marched through the Nepali capital Monday to denounce a government scheme to pay cash incentives to men for marrying widows, witnesses said.

Nepal's center-left coalition announced a plan last month to pay men the equivalent of $650 for marrying widows, angering the widows.

Monday, women shouting slogans such as "You can't sell your mother," and "We don't want government dowries," marched toward a government complex that houses the prime minister's office.

They were stopped by riot police, but there were no arrests or violence.

Durga Neupane, an organizer and a widow, said activists would mobilize widows throughout the Himalayan nation if the government failed to scrap the decision by Friday.

"If that is not done we'll gather widows from across the country and organize more protests," she said.

The government says the scheme seeks to help widows who face social and cultural barriers in a majority-Hindu society.

But Neupane said it would only add to their woes as men would marry widows for money and later abandon them. Widows, she said, should instead be given jobs, better health care and education.

Did Ms. Neupane ever think some widows may be in financial need or just plain lonely? I don't think any government should be paying out any such incentives. As for protest, if widows in Nepal have the free choice whether to re-marry or not, then they should be able to benefit from the incentive.

Don't cry

Naked News in South Korea won't be airing anytime soon.

After all of the circus hoopla and controversy surrounding the launch of the Korean version of the Naked News franchise, its existence now hangs by a pithy thread as production came to a screeching halt since Thursday -- just one month after its inception. The problem? Money.

Nine of the anchors have yet to be compensated for their work during the month the service has been up while customer service has ceased its operation leaving 260,000 paid subscribers for the month of July, hanging, according to local reports.

The problem began when management of the Naked News Korea branch requested its anchors contracted to present news only in semi-nude form (i.e. in lingerie and bikini tops) to strip down completely for its pay-for-play adults-only version.

This prompted five of its anchors to hand in their resignations while the rest of its personalities stayed on.

Naked news that didn't go topless. Only in South Korea?

I'm only guessing but these anchor women were probably offered large salaries. When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

They may have lost money, but maybe these women still have their dignity. That is worth something.

Hat tip- GI at ROK Drop. Brian and Marmot's Hole are also blogging on this news.

Pass the Parmesan cheese

Take a guess where an Italian restaurant opened in late 2008. From AP-

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has ordered the opening of the isolated country's first Italian restaurant, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper reported, despite the nation's continuing struggle to feed its 24 million people.

Kim -- a reputed gourmand -- sent North Korean cooks to Naples and Rome last year to learn how to reproduce authentic Italian pizza and pasta after "repeated trial and error," the newspaper said Saturday, citing a restaurant manager.

If my father was still alive, he should have sent the cooks to Florida. Dad* used to make the best meatballs.

"Our people should be also allowed to enjoy the world-famous food," the manager of the Pyongyang eatery quoted Kim as saying, according to the Tokyo-based Choson Sinbo newspaper.

The newspaper, considered a mouthpiece for the communist regime in Pyongyang, said the North's government buys wheat flour, butter and cheese from Italy for the restaurant.

It is unclear how many North Koreans can afford to eat out -- let alone eat imported food -- in a country that is among the poorest in the world. The average per capita income was $1,150 in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, according to the South's central bank.

The article went on to say the restaurant was crowded since its opening last December. Do the laws of supply and demand work in the Hermit Kingdom? Either they don't or the reporter's tour was carefully arranged. The North Koreans wouldn't do that, would they?

*- My father passed away 12 years ago yesterday.

One in five

Is anyone shocked by this news?

An x-ray analysis of the bones of competitors in the Youth Games in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong discovered that 3,000 of the 15,000 athletes, or 20 per cent, had misrepresented their age.

Two thousand of them were too old to be eligible for youth competition, while one offender was seven years older than he claimed.

Suspicions of age-faking have dogged Chinese sport and caused embarrassment for China during last year's Olympic Games in Beijing. He Kexin, a gold medal-winning gymnast was investigated by the International Olympic Committee after being accused of being only 14 years old and ineligible.

Although Miss He was eventually cleared by the IOC, suspicions linger on and Bruno Grandi, the president of the International Gymnastics Federation recently gave an interview to the German press in which he said that there was "strong circumstantial evidence" of age falsification by the Chinese.

Steps are being taken to prevent a repeat at next year's Asia games. What happened in Beijing has so tainted Chinese sports, its going to be awfully hard to accept anyone's word that age shenanigans won't be happening there also.

Swimming upstream

Has Air Force General Howie Chandler gotten the memo that print newspapers are dying? From Stars and Stripes-

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea -- The U.S. Air Force will resume publication of newspapers at some Pacific bases, a move that runs counter to a broad consumer trend away from print papers in favor of Internet news sites.

Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Howie Chandler ordered a return to print editions after touring air bases.

"We discovered a drawback to discontinuing base papers is the challenge of getting news and information to our family members and those who do not have routine access to a computer," Maj. Kenneth Hoffman, a PACAF spokesman in Hawaii, said in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes. "As a quality of life issue, Gen. Chandler decided re-establishing base papers in PACAF was the right thing to do."

The order will see the start-up of a new command-sponsored weekly newspaper in South Korea that will be distributed to airmen peninsulawide, Air Force officials said.

And it will bring back the Northern Light newspaper at Misawa Air Base in Japan, they said.

*****

The Air Force in 2006 told bases to quit printing service-funded newspapers, partly to cut costs but also because of trends showing declining newspaper readership and more reliance on the Internet for news and information.

They will pay a contractor to print these newspapers. Readership was declining three years ago, if anything that trend is worse today.

Our government tax dollars at work. Maybe this was part of the stimulus package.

It's raining, It's pouring

Meet Kazuya Yamazaki.

A 13-year-old boy passed the weather forecaster certificate exam, it was announced Friday.

At 13 years and 7 months, Kazuya Yamazaki, of Yokohama, is the youngest candidate to ever pass the test, which has been held 31 times since 1994.

Yamazaki, a first-year student at Eiko Gakuen Middle School in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, has been interested in meteorology since he was a small child, and first sat the exam as a fifth-grader in primary school.

The most recent exam was his fourth try. This round saw 272 out of 4,329 candidates pass the test--a pass rate of 6.3 percent.

Yamazaki spent about a month preparing for the latest exam, dedicating about an hour a day to studying. "I'm surprised I passed. I wasn't sure I would. It hasn't really sunk in yet, but I'm happy," Yamazaki said.

The previous record for the youngest successful exam-taker was a boy aged 14 years and 1 month in his second year of middle school in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture.

I wish the young man good luck in his future job. Will he come to South Florida and replace the local weather guessers who think a puddle in Port St. Lucie is breaking news?

The biggest loser

What if there ever was 'So who wants to be my mistress competition?' In China a millionaire hosted one when the economy forced him to make cutbacks.

At the time, the businessman, identified only by his last name -- Fan -- was married and had four other mistresses, according to the Peninsula Metropolis Daily newspaper in Qingdao.

The women knew of one another, but none elected to break up with the man and give up their rent-free apartment and a 5,000 yuan ($730) monthly allowance, the reports said.

When the economy soured, the businessman apparently decided to let go of all but one mistress.

He staged a private talent show in May, without telling the women his intentions. An instructor from a local modeling agency judged the women on the way they looked, how they sang and how much alcohol they could hold, the Shanghai Daily said.

If a mistress loses their job in China, are they eligible for unemployment?

This already wacky story, soon went over the edge.

The judge knocked out Yu in the first round of the competition based on her looks. Angry, she decided to exact revenge by telling her lover and the four other women to accompany her on a sightseeing trip before she returned to her home province, the media reports said.

It was during the trip that Yu reportedly drove the car off the cliff.

Yu died, the rest survived. What kind of idiot gets in a car with a fired mistress?

The story isn't over yet.

Fan shut down his company after the crash and paid Yu's parents 580,000 yuan ($84,744) as compensation for her death.

The four other women left him, as did his wife when she learned of the affairs.

The woman almost kills him and four others, but he pays compensation. Some how I don't feel sorry for Mr. Fan.

Hat tip- Below the Beltway

Inappropriate affair

Another example of why the South Korean justice system is insane.

A local court has ordered a ward office in North Jeolla Province to annul its decision to dismiss a civil servant for having an affair with a female worker during work hours.

The unidentified public servant left his office with the female junior worker around 4 p.m. Aug. 16 in 2007 to drink. They went to a motel afterward, where her husband caught them.

The civil servant filed the suit after the ward office dismissed him for not maintaining his integrity as a public worker and leaving his office during work hours.

``He left his office about two hours before work had finished, which did not disturb the office. An official reprimand would have served as an appropriate punishment,'' the court said.

``He may face social and ethical criticism for having an affair with his junior. But he is a civil servant of a local ward office, whose duties do not include high-mindedness in private, so a wage cut may be also be due punishment,'' it added.

The court said the total punishment shouldn't be heavier than ``suspension from duty,'' saying dismissal was too harsh.

So getting fired for screwing around with a married co-worker isn't grounds for dismissal. Maybe the guy should ask for a raise!

One shouldn't be surprised by this decision. After all this is the same country that gave barely 10 years in jail to the person responsible for killing 500 people. Another judge gave suspended sentences to people who raped a family member. South Korea or Broward County Florida, which has the most broken justice system?

Hat tip- Robert Koehler at Marmot's Hole

The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is the Korea Times and cartoonist Stephane Peray. They get the award for the following political cartoon.

GI at ROK Drop does an excellent job of summing up why this is a Knucklehead winner-

The cartoonist is making fun of the bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria by trying to blame them on global warming. Global warming is not what started the bushfires because most of the fires were started by arsonists on the hottest day of the year in Victoria. The fires were started near towns which caused many people to die in their cars as they had no time to escape which is what this cartoonist is making fun of.

This cartoonist is not the only one that has been pushing this global warming nonsense as Greenies in Australia have been saying the same thing to include Australian Greens Parliament Member Bob Brown. These people are disgusting and revolting and should be ashamed on themselves.

It is disgusting ,revolting, in horrible bad taste and after an uproar, the Korea Times pulled cartoon. Its too late so far as I am concerned, I name the Korea Times and Stephane Peray today's Knuckleheads of the Day.

Note- If you go to the hyperlink for Peray, you'll see it is he who takes credit for the cartoon.

The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is China Central Television aka CCTV. They get the award for the following-

BEIJING - China's state-run television broadcaster apologized Tuesday for an unlicensed fireworks display that sparked a blaze that destroyed a luxury hotel in the network's headquarters complex in downtown Beijing.

The fire, which sent off huge plumes of black smoke and showered the ground with embers, left one firefighter dead and a handful of others injured, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The blaze was put out early Tuesday after burning for more than five hours at the unfinished Mandarin Oriental hotel.

Xinhua quoted Luo Yuan, a spokesman for the Beijing fire department, as saying that fireworks set off to celebrate the Lunar New Year were to blame for the fire that destroyed the nearly finished Mandarin Oriental hotel.

He was quoted as saying CCTV had hired a fireworks company to ignite several hundred large fireworks in an open area by the hotel. Video footage posted on Youtube showed spectacular bursts of fireworks above the top of the building in downtown Beijing.

"According to the Beijing fire department, this fire occurred because the person in charge of the construction of the new building project of CCTV, without permission, hired staff to set off fireworks that violated regulations," China Central Television said in a statement on its Web site.

CCTV said it was deeply grieved "for the severe damage the fire caused to the country's property."

The 159-metre (520-foot) Mandarin Oriental, designed by Netherlands architects Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, was part of a stunning CCTV complex that helped transform the capital's skyline for last year's Olympics.

Carelessness and stupidity took a life and caused millions of dollars of property damage. The Chinese would be wise to make sure the hotel owners are properly reimbursed. Nothing scares off foreign investors quicker than the risk of losing your investment without compensation.

In the meantime I name China Central Television aka CCTV today's Knucklehead of the Day. Below is a video of the fire.

Here comes Yu-Na Kim

She has to be considered one of the favorites for the gold medal at the Olympics in Vancouver next year. From the Chosunilbo-

Korean figure skating icon Kim Yu-na clinched the gold in the women's single competition at the International Skating Union's Four Continents Championships.

Kim won 116.83 points in the ladies' freestyle final in Vancouver, Canada Friday local time ranking on the top with the total score of 189.07 in the competition. This follows setting a world-record short program performance of 72.24 points on Wednesday.

In the beginning of the performance on Friday she pulled off a combination of a triple flip and a triple toe loop although she fell once in her attempt to do a triple loop jump.

Ranking second was Canada's Joannie Rochette and Japan's Mao Asada last year's champion came in third.

Yu-Na has had a history of great short programs but not being to follow it up in the free skate part of the competition. She is one of the two or three top candidates for the gold next year. If Yu-Na does win it, will she inspire South Korean girls to take up the sport like Se Ri Pak did in regards to golf over a decade ago? My own opinion is that it won't on a comparable scale because of the limited amount of skating events and slots for skaters in them. There won't ever be 45 South Korean skaters competing in ISU events like there are on the LPGA Tour in a given year.

Curiously I just completed a web fiction story inspired by Yu-Na Kim and this old post of GI at ROK Drop. A young man in New Hampshire who wants to make his college hockey team and fails. He visits a magic shop where the owner sells him a wishing object. All he wanted to be was a better hockey player and skater. Instead he ends up a South Korean figure skater(Not Yu-Na Kim) in his hometown training for the Olympics. To get out of the spell and become a better hockey player himself, the young man must help the female skater improve also.

Before that story I rarely paid this sport and knew diddly about figure skating. Now I will probably watch the women's competition at next year's Olympics. It will be interesting to see if Yu-Na can bring home the gold.

To the Moon

Guess what country full of starving people claims it is building a space program?

NORTH Korea has declared it is actively pursuing a space program, amid reports from US and South Korean officials that Pyongyang is preparing to test fire a long-range missile.

Rodong Sinmun, the official daily of the ruling communist party, said the North had every right to develop a space program, as a member of the international community.

"The DPRK's (North Korea) policy of advancing to space for peaceful purposes is a justifiable aim that fits the global trend of the times. There is no power in the world that can stop it," the newspaper said in an editorial.

"As long as developing and using space are aimed at peaceful purposes and such efforts contribute to enhancing human beings' happiness, no one in the world can find fault with them."

It noted that Iran on Monday successfully launched a satellite carried by a home-built rocket, setting alarm bells ringing among Western powers because of the implications for the range of its ballistic missiles.

I think it is a great idea. As long as Kim Jong-il flies the first craft into orbit. The world would be so much better off without him.

Hat tip- GI at ROK Drop who writes- "The big question is that why does the international community have moral responsbility to send hundreds of millions of dollars in food and aid to North Korea every year when they have enough money to start a "space program"?"

Sizing things up

What happened to the days when students would watch 'On the Waterfront' or 'The Miracle Worker' at school? From myjoyonline.com-

A university in Taiwan has opened a course to teach students how to appreciate and analyse porn movies.

The Mass Communication Department of Providence University opened the course this semester, reports United Daily News.

To pass the course, students must give a 15 minute presentation in which they analyse an audience's psychological reaction to a porn clip from an academic perspective.

One worried student, who did not wish to be named, commented: "If I get a very good score in this course, I don't know how I'll explain it to my parents."

The student has things reversed. How do you explain to your parents why you are taking this course.

When registering for the voluntary course, students signed a paper agreeing that if the scenes were too explicit, they could choose to leave the classroom.

The teacher, assistant professor Miss Chen Mingmei, said no students had ever left her class but some would briefly cover their eyes during the stronger scenes.

I'm glad to hear that. By the way how does one become a professor of porn movies?

Lack of chemistry

The expression 'hung like a stallion' must not apply to polar bears. From AP-

TOKYO -- Puzzled Japanese zookeepers have cleared up a mystery over a lack of chemistry between a couple of polar bears as both turn out to be female, a Japanese zoo said Wednesday. Tsuyoshi, a four-year-old "male" polar bear, and his 11-year-old female partner, Kurumi, have been living together since June at the Kushiro Municipal Zoo in Hokkaido, northern Japan.

But much to the frustration and puzzlement of zookeepers, the bear couple, on a breeding mission, showed no signs of chemistry, and Tsuyoshi has never gone into rut even during "his" mating period.

"Observing his behaviors, we got suspicious as to whether Tsuyoshi was really a male," the zoo said in a statement.

The zoo put Tsuyoshi under an anesthetic earlier in the month for a gender checkup, and learned he was a she.

Why wasn't this test done before they tried to mate the two polar bears? Was this zoo government run or subsidized? That may explain things.

Note- I know where the city of Kushiro is in Japan. Part of my latest webfiction story was set in the city.

Suspended death penalty

Don't you wish the Chinese took product safety as seriously as they do corruption.

Beijing's former Vice Mayor Liu Zhihua was sentenced to death for taking bribes but was given a two-year reprieve, Chinese official media reported Sunday.

According to a report carried by the China Daily, the sentence was handed down Saturday by the Hengshui Intermediate People's Court in Beijing's neighboring Hebei Province.

The court found that Liu, 59, and his mistress Wang Jianrui pocketed a total of about 6.97 million yuan ($1.02 million) when Liu was vice mayor of Beijing from 1999 to 2006, during which time he oversaw various projects around the city, including construction projects for the 2008 Olympics.

It said Liu abused his power to get contract projects and loans, while he offered promotions for others in exchange for benefits.

So Mr. Liu will get to live two years knowing he'll be executed. I don't know if that is a sign of mercy or not to the former vice mayor.