■JAPAN
Police target elderly thieves
Tokyo police will try to rein in a wave of shoplifting by lonely elderly people by involving them in community service, a police spokesman said on Thursday. One out of four elderly shoplifters in the capital blamed their crime on loneliness, Japanese media quoted a police survey as saying. Another 8 percent said it was because they had “no reason to live.” More than half the elderly shoplifters said they had no friends and 40 percent of them lived alone, media said. Elderly shoplifting cases in Tokyo reached all-time highs last year, nearly catching up with the number of cases involving young offenders. People 65 years or older accounted for 23 percent of the 17,800 known shoplifting cases last year, more than doubling in the past five years, media said. An example cited in the Ministry of Justice’s annual report on crime describes a 76-year-old woman who turned to shoplifting several years ago as a way to battle loneliness after her parents died.
■NEW ZEALAND
Horse smashes windshield
A horse flew through a car windshield, knocking the driver in the face after the woman swerved to miss two other horses that had bolted in front of her car. “I thought the body was the air bag that had gone off,” Catherine Lawrence, 74, told the New Zealand Herald after her accident near the city of Nelson on South Island. Much of the car’s roof was peeled away in the collision, which killed the horse. “The horse hit me on the corner right in front of me,” she was quoted as saying. “But he didn’t come straight back — he went across and he just grazed me, knocking his ... hooves into my face on the way through, and his head was on the back and the rest of him was piled up beside me on the passenger’s seat. If anyone else had been in the car, they wouldn’t have had a hope,” Lawrence said. She was able to get out of the car and was treated for bruises to her face and an eye injury.
■CHINA
Kung fu artist becomes nun
A kung fu artist who tows cars and cuts paper with her braided hair has given up her crowning glory to officially become a Buddhist nun. Zhang Tingting completely shaved off the hair that she says has “kung fu power” and extraordinary strength so that she can enter a temple as a nun.
■NORTH KOREA
Burger business booming
Business is booming at the nation’s first fast food restaurant, which specializes in burgers, chips and other fried delights, official media in the communist state reported yesterday. The Samtaesong restaurant in Pyongyang, which also serves waffles and crispy fried chicken, “is crowded with local and foreign customers,” the Korean Central News Agency said. The venture opened in June in cooperation with a Singaporean firm, Choson Sinbo, a Japan-based newspaper for ethnic North Koreans, reported earlier. “It instantly cooks and serves dishes to the customers as they demand,” KCNA reported approvingly. The hardline regime has long restricted or banned what it sees as Western or “US imperialist influences” on its people. But in March Choson Sinbo reported that the North had also opened its first “authentic” Italian restaurant on the orders of leader Kim Jong-il, who is believed to have a taste for some Western cuisine. The eatery, which opened in December in Pyongyang, has reportedly proved to be a major hit. In 2004, the BBC ran an interview with an Italian chef who had taught pizza-making skills to three North Korean army officers so they could cook for the country’s leader.
RSS