A 43-year-old German man was taken to hospital in critical condition after he fell off a second storey balcony during a spitting contest with his 12-year-old son, police said Friday.
A spokesman for the police in the eastern town of Cottbus said the man in Forst had apparently lost his balance after thrusting too far forward in his attempt to out spit his son.
He tumbled over the ledge and landed on a balcony of the ground floor apartment, police said. He was taken to hospital in a rescue helicopter.
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Asia's largest design event showcased an unlikely hero: North Korean leader Kim Jong-ill.
The communist dictator was featured on key chains, T-shirts, and other artwork featured Sunday at Design Festa in Tokyo — an event featuring 6,000 artists from across the region.One stall displayed greeting cards showing the leader, who famously sports a quiff, dressed as Elvis Presley and was titled "Jong Il B. Goode"
In apparent reference to an ongoing international standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions — and following Pyongyang's test of a nuclear weapon in October — other cards showed the secretive Kim posing in front of spy ships and mushroom clouds.
Elsewhere, key chains depicting the leader tied up in Japanese-style bondage ropes were sold out. Also popular was a stall selling T-shirts emblazoned with cartoon images of the leader.
"Kim Jong Il was one of our most popular models," said key chain designer Hayato Sakai, 32. "It's just a joke. Nobody takes it seriously."
"I think it's a timely theme," said illustrator Naotoshi Inoue, 46, who drew the Kim postcards. The design event opened just days after North Korea test-fired at least one short-range missile into waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan.
"If you think seriously about what Kim Jong Il is doing, it's so scary. But that's why it may also help to laugh," Inoue said.
Design Festa is held twice a year in Tokyo and is billed as Asia's biggest design event. About 60,000 people a year attend.
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Police found more than 8,000 pieces of women's clothing and lingerie in the home of a Japanese man who stole the items so he could sleep buried in them.
Maeyasu Kawamura, 60, was indicted for theft on Friday, police in Osaka prefecture, western Japan, said.
Police found 2,400 pieces of lingerie, 600 kimonos and 5,200 items of other clothing all piled up high in his small apartment room.
Kawamura has confessed to stealing the items, which included a wedding dress.
"He seemed to get a thrill out of sleeping covered in women's clothes," a police spokesman said. "He seemed to like the smell."
No further details were available.
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Guest Post, Mark Frauenfelder.
A Michigan man was arrested by police for accessing a coffee shop's public Wi-Fi hot spot. He was charged with a felony and faced up to 5 years in jail, but he took an offer of "paying a $400 fine, doing 40 hours of community service and staying on probation for six months."
The coffee shop owner said she was surprised by the arrest of 39-year-old Sam Peterson, who is a toolmaker, volunteer firefighter, and secretary of a bagpipe club. "He could have just come in the cafe, even if he didn't have any money, I would let him get on it," said the owner. Before the arrest, Peterson had no criminal record.
In the article about the incident, Sparta police chief Andrew Milanowski and Kent County assistant prosecuting attorney Lynn Hopkins come off as brittle, badly-programmed automatons.
"I was sitting there reading my e-mail and he came up and stuck his head inside my window and asked me who I was spying on," Peterson told FOXNews.com.
Someone from a nearby barbershop had called cops after seeing Peterson's car pull up every day and sit in front of the coffee shop without anybody getting out.
"I just curiously asked him, 'Where are you getting the Internet connection?', you know," Sparta Police Chief Andrew Milanowski said. "And he said, 'From the café.'"
Milanowski ruled out Peterson as a possible stalker of the attractive local hairdresser, but still felt that a law might have been broken.
"We came back and we looked up the laws and we figured if we found one and thought, 'Well, let's run it by the prosecutor's office and see what they want to do,'" Milanowski said.
A few weeks later Peterson said he received a letter from the Kent County prosecutor's office saying that he faced a felony charge of fraudulent access to computer networks and that a request had been made for an arrest warrant.
Looks like the cops and prosecutor's are getting that age old disease again - absence of common sense and decency, plus a personal abuse of authority!
Your "on the spot" scribe;
Allan W Janssen
