‘Stop wearing bunny suit,’police tell man
SALMON: Police in Idaho Falls have told a man to stop wearing a bunny suit in public after people complained he has been frightening children. Residents in the northwestern city of 54,000 people also reported William Falkingham, 34, occasionally wears a tutu with the bunny suit, police said in a statement on Tuesday. (UNI)
Bears saved from forced vodka drinking
KIEV: Ukraine’s Environment Minister Mykola Zlochevsky vowed to free all bears kept in restaurants for entertainment purposes and often forced to drink alcohol, Interfax news agency reported on Wednesday. Captured and tamed bears were often used for entertainment in the Russian Empire, which included Ukraine, turning the animal into a national symbol. (UNI)
To start life afresh, Thais ‘practice’ death
BANGKOK: For those facing a run of bad luck and wanting to start things over, one Thai temple has an unusual solution: ”rehearse” death with a mock funeral, including lying down in a coffin. Pram Manee temple in Nakorn Nayok province, 107 km northeast of Bangkok, holds two of the rituals every day: at exactly 9:09 am and 1:09 pm, since the number nine is believed by Thais to bring good luck. (UNI)
Rate your priest on new Website
BERLIN: You can rate your restaurant meal, your make-up, your teacher online and now in Germany your priest. Hirtenbarometer (http://hirtenbarometer.de) or the ”shepherds’ barometer” is the first online platform where priests can be rated for their performance at church services, on projects for youths and the elderly, on their credibility and on how up to date they are. (UNI)
Wild boars invade farms, attack pets
NEW YORK: Wild boars are invading the farms of central New York state, attacking livestock, killing family pets and chasing people, experts warned on Friday. The feral swine are a non-native species suspected of escaping from game farms. As many as a couple of hundred are roaming the state, said Paul Curtis, a natural resources professor at Cornell University in Ithaca. (UNI)
Town asks mayor to quit after bar scuffle
MILWAUKEE: The mayor of a Wisconsin town has been asked to step down following a late-night bar room scuffle, but said on Thursday he would not resign despite a unanimous vote by a city council committee. Bob Ryan, 48, told WHBL-AM radio that he intended to seek outpatient alcohol rehabilitation treatment while continuing to act as mayor of Sheboygan, a city of 50,000 located about an hour north of Milwaukee on the shores of Lake Michigan. (UNI)
Southern US distillery to legally sell moonshine
CHARLESTON: Two entrepreneurs are taking advantage of new micro-distillery laws in South Carolina to make and sell traditional moonshine whiskey legally for the first time in the southern state. The Dark Corner Distillery will open next month in Greenville, where engineer Joe Fenten, 27, and longtime home beer brewer Richard Wenger will produce and sell small batches of 100-proof moonshine from a custom-made copper still. (UNI)
Lost Alfred Hitchcock film found
LOS ANGELES: A lost 1920s Alfred Hitchcock film that provides clues into the legendary director’s early working style has been discovered in New Zealand, archivists said.
Recently uncovered film ”The White Shadow” features a 24 year-old Hitchcock’s work as a writer, assistant director, art director and editor. The film was first released in 1924.
It is considered to be the earliest surviving feature film in which Hitchcock received a credit, according to the US-based National Film Preservation Foundation.
Only the first three of the movie’s six reels survive. That adds to the movie’s mystery, which some film buffs see as fitting for Hitchcock, because he was famous for creating mysterious stories full of suspense.
”Who knows, maybe someday the rest of it will turn up, (and) we can put the pieces together,” said Randy Haberkamp, director of educational programs for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. ”Perfect for Hitchcock.”
The three reels of ”The White Shadow,” which was directed by British filmmaker Graham Cutts, were donated in the 1980s to the New Zealand Film Archive by the family of late movie projectionist and collector Jack Murtagh.
”The film was mislabeled, so no one knew what it was really,” Haberkamp said.
The film reels, in the form of highly flammable nitrate prints, sat in the New Zealand Film Archive for 23 years, the archive said in a statement. As a British film distributed by a US company, it was given less priority than other movies that originated in New Zealand, Haberkamp said.
The movie was recently uncovered in a project by the National Film Preservation Foundation to identify early American films at the New Zealand Film Archive.
”The White Shadow” is a melodrama featuring Betty Compson, who was a big star in the 1920s, in dual roles as twin sisters — one angelic and one devilish.
The movie features mysterious disappearances, mistaken identity and even the transmigration of souls. At the time of its release by Hollywood studio Lewis J. Selznick Enterprises, critics faulted the film for its improbable story.
The British-born Hitchcock began working in movies in the early 1920s as a title card designer for silent films.
Hitchcock, who died in 1980, went on to direct film classics such as ”Rear Window” (1954), ”Vertigo” (1958) and ”Psycho” (1960), and is widely regarded as one of cinema’s most significant artists for his psychological thrillers.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will show the surviving three reels of ”The White Shadow” on September 22 at its Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. (IANS)
Immigrant found hiding in sports bag in Spain
Melilla (Spain): Authorities have discovered inside a sports bag a Moroccan youth who was trying to illegally get to Barcelona in the trunk of a relative’s vehicle.
The man was nabbed Tuesday when officers who were searching the vehicles that had been driven onto the ferry plying the route between this Spanish city in North Africa and mainland Spain, the Civil Guard announced in a communique.
The Moroccan family that owns the automobile was intending to travel on the ferry to Barcelona.
The auto, which was occupied by a Moroccan man who lives in Barcelona, his wife and a son, had the trunk filled with luggage and an officer observed “a slight movement” in one of the bags, whereupon he asked the driver to open it.
Also, the young man was “completely soaked in sweat, a result of the small space where he was, crammed inside the sports bag” without any ventilation or fresh air.
Nevertheless, the man did not require medical assistance, according to the Civil Guard.
The man is a relative of the driver of the vehicle. Both men could face charges. (IANS)