AUSTRALIA
Mega-brothel gets go-ahead
A Sydney brothel has received the green light for a multimillion-dollar expansion that will see it become the nation’s largest sex premises, with rooms featuring multiple beds and pool tables. Plans to double the number of rooms at Sydney’s “Stiletto” into a mega-brothel were knocked back late last year by the city council on the grounds that it was too big. However, the owners won an appeal to the Land and Environment Court this week, with Commissioner Susan O’Neill ruling the A$12 million (US$12.2 million) development should go ahead. O’Neill said Stiletto’s operation to date had been assessed by the council as “acceptable and better than most” brothels in the city, and the proposed expansion to 40 rooms had addressed traffic and other concerns. Stiletto promotes itself as “the world’s finest short-stay boutique hotel and Sydney brothel.” Its standard hourly rate of A$370 includes room, lady of choice and beverages. It is open 24 hours each day of the year except for Christmas Day and boasts a “mixed clientele,” which it claims includes top-end celebrities.
INDONESIA
Tax collectors to beef up
Tax collectors will get three weeks of military physical training from presidential security forces in an effort to build up the muscles and moral fiber of an organization seen as ineffective and corrupt. The nation was shocked last year by revelations of tax official Gayus Tambunan, who bribed his way out of jail while awaiting conviction for taking kickbacks to cut companies’ taxes. “It is very important to build character,” said Dedi Rudaedi, a spokesman at the tax office. “We have 32,000 employees and the majority want to make a change, they want the office to be cleaner.”
FRANCE
Lust unlucky for turtle pairs
German paleontologists have dug up the remains of nine turtle pairs that died while mating 47 million years ago, sinking into poisonous waters while locked in a final embrace, a report said yesterday. The find represents the first-ever fossil record of copulating vertebrates, said a report in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters. “Millions of animals live and die every year and many enter the fossil record through serendipitous circumstances, but there really is no reason to enter the fossil record while you are mating,” co-author Walter Joyce said about the rarity of the find. “The chances of both partners dying at the same time is highly unlikely and the chances of both partners being preserved afterwards even less likely.” The paper said it was common in fresh water turtles for the couple to freeze into a mating position. “If mounting occurs in the open water, the mating couple is likely to thereby sink to considerable depths,” it said — possibly explaining why so many individuals fell into the same death trap.
FRANCE
Royal flush leads to treasure
A hairpin belonging to 16th-century Queen Catherine de Medici has been discovered at Fontainebleau Palace outside Paris. What has conservators scratching their heads is exactly where it was found: down a communal toilet, not a royal one. Officials said it’s the first time in modern history that a possession of the Renaissance royal has been found at Fontainebleau. Though the queen was renowned for her lavish jewelry, much of her collection has been lost, sold or stolen. The rare 9cm pin was identified easily because it bore interlocking C’s — for “Catherine” and had a finish of white and green, known to be Catherine’s colors.
MEXICO
Erotic hotel open as usual
Just a few hundred meters from where global powers worked around the clock this week to ease Europe’s debt crisis and revive the world economy, the customers at one hotel were letting it all hang out. The adults-only Desire Resort and Spa combined business and pleasure as usual, even as leaders from the world’s biggest economies took over Los Cabos beach resort, troops patrolled the streets and beaches and navy vessels sat just off the coast. Desire bills itself as a “deliciously erotic” hotel where clothing is optional. Desire’s guests were said to be delighted by the extra security. “They feel more secure because they can go out onto the street and they feel more protected,” said Jhaxiri, a 19-year-old receptionist at the hotel. While world leaders were locked in tense discussions on everything from the violence in Syria to trade policies, Desire’s guests were letting loose. “The first night here they get comfortable. The second night, they start to meet couples and by the third or fourth night they start taking their clothes off in the pool ... They’re already more than acclimatized,” Jhaxiri said.
MEXICO
PAN candidate turns to sex
Sex sells — at least that’s what the ruling party candidate is hoping as she seeks to rescue her fading chances in the upcoming presidential election. Polling well behind the frontrunner, Josefina Vazquez Mota of the National Action Party (PAN) has appealed to women voters to use their wiles to ensure their husbands vote on July 1. First she urged them on her Twitter account to withhold cuchi cuchi, or hanky panky, for a month if their husbands do not vote. Then, challenged by a disgruntled man, she upped the ante on Monday. “Today a man wrote to me and said: ‘Josefina, why the negative? What’s the prize? Why not a month without hanky panky for those who don’t come out to vote, and double rations for those who do?’” the conservative, usually serious Vazquez Mota told a rally in the city of Atlixco. “If the woman wants to, that depends on each individual, but the thing here is we all take part [in the vote],” she added.
UNITED STATES
Doctors remove spear
Doctors in Miami have successfully removed a spear accidentally shot through a teenager’s skull during a spearfishing trip. Yasser Lopez, 16, was in a serious condition on Tuesday at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center. Lopez was hospitalized on June 7 with 91cm of the spear protruding from his forehead. Doctors said the spear entered his head 5cm above his right eye and came out of the back of his skull. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue tools were used to cut the spear so Lopez could be X-rayed. The rest of the spear was removed in a three-hour surgery. Doctors said on Monday the spear missed the main blood vessels in the brain. Lopez does not remember the accident, they said.
CANADA
Students ill after hypnotism
A private girls’ school in Quebec says a student was left in a four-hour trance and several others in a daze following a hypnotism demonstration. Quebec’s College Sacre-Coeur said on Tuesday that it should have taken the June 7 activity more seriously. Thirteen other students complained of nausea and headaches and the hypnotist’s mentor had to be called in, school officials said. Principal Daniel Leveille said school officials did not realize that people 14 and younger are more susceptible to hypnosis and said they regretted not seeking parental authorization.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the