Reuters: Oddly Enough: Grandfather takes China by storm - as women's fashion model

Reuters: Oddly Enough Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Grandfather takes China by storm - as women's fashion model Nov 26th 2012, 08:03 GUANGZHOU, China | Mon Nov 26, 2012 3:03am EST GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Liu Qianping was visiting his 24-year-old granddaughter in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou recently when the women's clothes the aspiring fashion entrepreneur was packing into boxes caught his eye. His visit came as the model that granddaughter Lv Ting and four friends had booked for a photo shoot to promote their online fashion business suddenly canceled, dealing a setback to their new venture. But Liu, a 72-year-old former farmer visiting to escape the chilly winter of central Hunan province, stepped in to help. "I walked into the room and saw them packing up some clothes and I thought they looked quite interesting and quite cute," Liu told Reuters. "So I tried on a jacket and they found it really funny, and I thought it was quite funny. So they asked if they could take pictures of me and post them on the Internet to sell the clothes. And I said, 'why not?'" It was at that time two weeks ago that a star was born. Liu, known affectionately as "MaDiGaGa" - funny elderly - is now one of China's most recognized models. Delighted with his new fame, Liu says he now sometimes looks at fashion programs on television for ideas on how to pose but generally relies on Ting's team for direction. He does, however, have his own opinions on styling. "He will tell us which items should be stronger and what should be improved," Ting said. "He really likes bright, contrasting colors while I prefer more tone-on-tone combinations. So he gives lots of advice when we try different combinations, so we have some very different styles." Since her grandfather became involved, visits to their online site have increased four-fold and continue to rise. Liu, who traveled to Shanghai with his daughter for the first time last week after they were invited to appear on television, said he had been approached by other companies to model for them but had turned them down. "I never dreamed of lucky things like these happening to me. Now, my name has spread to everywhere in the country," he said. Ting has been criticized on the Internet and accused of using her grandfather, but he insists the experience has put a spring in his step and she says they are now closer than ever. "We have no firm plans on how long we will continue, it depends on my grandfather," Ting said. "If he is happy and his health is fine, we will keep using him as our model." (Reporting by Stefanie McIntyre, editing by Elaine Lies and Anne Marie Roantree) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read more »

Reuters: Oddly Enough: UK circus owner found guilty of elephant cruelty

Reuters: Oddly Enough Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

UK circus owner found guilty of elephant cruelty Nov 23rd 2012, 17:29 LONDON | Fri Nov 23, 2012 12:29pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - A British circus owner was given a conditional discharge on Friday for causing unnecessary suffering to an Asian elephant by keeping her chained up and allowing a handler to beat her. Bobby Roberts, 69, was convicted of three counts of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. Northampton Crown Court heard that Anne, an arthritic, 58-year-old elephant was kept tethered to the ground by one front leg and one back leg at all times. Roberts failed to give Anne her arthritis medicine and to prevent a handler from repeatedly beating the animal. Roberts told the court he would never have condoned the beatings. Secret film of the beatings taken by rights group Animal Defenders International (ADI) formed a key part of the prosecution case. Roberts's wife Moira, 75, was cleared of the same three charges following a five-day trial. Both she and her husband had denied the charges. The Press Association reported that District Judge David Chinnery told Bobby Roberts he recognized that he had not directly inflicted the suffering, adding that he had cared for animals "for the greater part of your 70 years without criticism from any quarter. "No cruelty was administered by your own hand. The chaining I regard as serious but the real cruelty it seems to me was inflicted by your groom, a man whom you had entrusted with the care of Anne, behind your back and without your knowledge." The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) issued a statement after the verdict. "Today should serve as a warning that those who mistreat animals can expect to face prosecution," it said. But ADI was disappointed with the sentence. "Despite the considerable suffering caused to Anne the elephant, the sentencing meted out to Mr Roberts is derisory and provides no faith that the Animal Welfare Act can protect animals in circuses," ADI Chief Executive Jan Creamer said in a statement. In April 2011, as a result of the secret filming, Anne was taken away from the Super Circus in Polebrook, Northamptonshire owned by Roberts, and re-homed at a safari park. She was born in the wild in Sri Lanka in 1954, the ADI website said. In 2001 her offspring Janie and Beverly died suddenly, leaving Anne alone, the website added. (Reporting By Dasha Afanasieva, editing by Paul Casciato) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read more »

Reuters: Oddly Enough: Can anyone crack the pigeon's wartime code?

Reuters: Oddly Enough Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Can anyone crack the pigeon's wartime code? Nov 23rd 2012, 12:55 By Dasha Afanasieva LONDON | Fri Nov 23, 2012 7:55am EST LONDON (Reuters) - A World War Two code found strapped to the leg of a dead pigeon stuck in a chimney for the last 70 years may never be broken, a British intelligence agency said on Friday. The bird was found by a man in Surrey, southern England while he was cleaning out a disused fireplace at his home earlier this month. The message, a series of 27 groups of five letters each, was inside a red canister attached to the pigeon's leg bone and has stumped code-breakers from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's main electronic intelligence-gathering agency. "Without access to the relevant codebooks and details of any additional encryption used, it will remain impossible to decrypt," a GCHQ spokesman said. The message is consistent with the use of code books to translate messages which were then encrypted, according to GCHQ, one of Britain's three intelligence agencies. However without knowing who the sender, "Sjt W Stot", is or the intended destination, given as "X02", it is extremely difficult to decipher the code, GCHQ said. Although the code books and encryption systems used should have been destroyed, there is a small chance that one exists somewhere. A spokesman for GCHQ said it was "disappointing" that the message brought back by a "brave" carrier pigeon cannot be read. He added: "It is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code-makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was undecipherable both then and now." The Curator of the Pigeon Museum at Bletchley Park, north of London, Britain's main code-breaking centre during World War Two, is also trying to trace the identity numbers of the pigeon found in the message, according to GCHQ. Pigeons were used extensively in the war to carry vital information to Britain from mainland Europe. Flying at speeds of up to 80 km per hour, they can travel distances of up to 1,000 km but were vulnerable to hungry hawks and bored soldiers who used to take pot-shots at them as they flew overhead. For a Reuters video on the pigeon's discovery: here (Reporting By Dasha Afanasieva, editing by Paul Casciato) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read more »

Reuters: Oddly Enough: Burglar of Steve Jobs' house admits to eight break-ins

Reuters: Oddly Enough Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Burglar of Steve Jobs' house admits to eight break-ins Nov 22nd 2012, 20:06 By Malathi Nayak SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Nov 22, 2012 3:06pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A former salesman who lost his job and ended up homeless admitted in a plea deal on Wednesday to burglarizing Steve Jobs' house and seven other homes in a crime spree capped by his break-in at the late Apple founder's Silicon Valley residence. In return for his plea of "no contest," legally equivalent to a guilty plea in California, Santa Clara County prosecutors agreed to recommend that Kariem McFarlin, 35, be sentenced to no more than seven years and eight months in prison. Jailed since his arrest in August, McFarlin would otherwise face a maximum penalty of more than 16 years behind bars when he returns to court for sentencing on January 17, his lawyer said. McFarlin was originally charged with one count of burglary and one count of receiving stolen property for the July 17 break-in and theft that occurred at Jobs' home while the house was unoccupied and undergoing renovations. More than $60,000 in jewelry, along with several computers and Jobs' wallet were stolen in the burglary, which came nine months after the high-tech executive had died at age 56 following a lengthy battle with cancer. The house in Palo Alto, about 30 miles south of San Francisco, had briefly become a shrine for admirers who left flowers outside in the weeks after Jobs' death. McFarlin apparently had no idea the English country-style home belonged to Jobs when he entered the property, authorities said. The investigation that followed led authorities to a storage locker where McFarlin had stashed stolen goods from previous burglaries he was found to have committed since March of 2011. The various cases were combined, and he ultimately pleaded no contest to eight counts of first-degree burglary, including the Jobs break-in, and one count of receiving stolen property. Like Jobs' house, McFarlin had singled out other homes that appeared temporarily vacant during construction or renovation in upscale San Francisco Bay-area communities. Authorities said McFarlin had spent the night in some of them. A college graduate who once played football for San Jose State University, McFarlin had held steady jobs in sales for 15 years before ending up unemployed, defense attorney James Kellenberger told reporters after Wednesday's hearing. "After he lost his job, he ended up homeless and living in a car," Kellenberger said. Police initially tracked down McFarlin with help from Apple investigators, who noticed an iPad stolen from the Jobs house was connected to the company's servers on July 18, the morning after the burglary, according to court documents in the case. The user of the iPad was re-installing the operating system, and by tracing the Internet connection, police found McFarlin's home in Alameda, just south of Oakland. Shackled and dressed in green prison garb on Wednesday, McFarlin appeared expressionless through the proceedings and said little except to answer, "no contest," when asked how he would plead to the charges. (Reporting By Malathi Nayak; Editing by Steve Gorman and Andrew Hay) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read more »

Reuters: Oddly Enough: Gold Christmas tree for a mere $4.2 million in Tokyo

Reuters: Oddly Enough Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Gold Christmas tree for a mere $4.2 million in Tokyo Nov 22nd 2012, 10:07 TOKYO | Thu Nov 22, 2012 5:07am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - For those seeking a glow to their Christmas this year, a jewelry store in downtown Tokyo has just the answer: a pure gold revolving "tree" covered in Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, Tinker Bell and Cinderella. The tree-like ornament is made of 40 kg (88 pounds) of pure gold, standing about 2.4 meters (7.9 ft) high and 1.2 meters in diameter. It is decorated with pure gold plate silhouette cutouts of 50 popular Disney characters and draped with ribbons made of gold leaf. The price tag? A mere 350 million yen ($4.2 million). But the ornament is actually a deal, said Tomoko Ishibashi, in the marketing department of Tanaka Kikinzoku Jewelry, which runs the Ginza Tanaka jewelry store. "Right now gold is over 4,400 yen per gram. We used pure gold and had an expert craftsman form each Disney character by hand," she said of the decoration, which took 10 craftsmen two months to complete. The combination of gold and Disney characters had spectators mesmerized. "It is very vivid and the gold is very pretty," said Takashi Miura, a 36-year-old jeweler. "The characters on it are also really cute and it really looks like a Christmas tree." For those with less ready cash, the store offers a scaled-down version that features 20 Disney characters and stands 25 cm high for a mere 2 million yen ($243,000). While nobody has yet made a down payment on the larger tree, the miniature has already found buyers, Ishibashi said. (Reporting by Kimiteru Tsuruda, editing by Elaine Lies) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read more »

Reuters: Oddly Enough: 4D scans show fetuses yawn in the womb

Reuters: Oddly Enough Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

4D scans show fetuses yawn in the womb Nov 21st 2012, 23:44 1 of 2. A 4D ultrasound scan shows a foetus yawning in the womb during a study by Durham and Lancaster Universities and released in Durham, northern England November 21, 2012. Growing into a fully formed human being is a long process, and scientists have found that unborn babies not only hiccup, swallow and stretch in the womb, they yawn too. Researchers who studied 4D scans of 15 healthy foetuses also said they think yawning is a developmental process which could potentially give doctors a new way to check on a baby's health. Credit: Reuters/Dr Nadja Reissland/handout

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read more »

Reuters: Oddly Enough: New Jersey man with cannibalism fetish charged with luring teen

Reuters: Oddly Enough Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

New Jersey man with cannibalism fetish charged with luring teen Nov 21st 2012, 23:48 Wed Nov 21, 2012 6:48pm EST (Reuters) - A New Jersey man accused of chatting online about his sexual fantasies of kidnapping, raping and eating children has been charged with luring a 15-year-old boy to Pennsylvania for sex, federal authorities said on Wednesday. The U.S. Attorney's office in Newark said Robert Mucha, 56, met the boy through his mother, who lived in Sussex County, New Jersey, where Mucha now lives. In October 2010, Mucha persuaded the boy to visit him by promising to take him to an amusement park, after which the boy would spend the night in his apartment. On the night of the visit, Mucha fondled the boy, who objected and left the apartment, the criminal complaint lodged against him said. Mucha, of Newton, New Jersey, was charged with possessing child pornography in a separate case in July. Matthew Reilly, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, said Mucha had been charged with a further count of possessing child pornography on his home computer. If convicted of enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity, Mucha faces a maximum sentence of life behind bars, Reilly said. According to the charges, Mucha used a web-based chat service on multiple occasions to communicate with individuals who shared his sexual fascination with child cannibalism. Many of their communications focused on how they might "abduct the children, drug them, roast them and, ultimately, consume them," the criminal complaint said. (Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and David Brunnstrom) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read more »