Saturday, August 11, 2007

Spanish thief saw himself as Robin Hood

Spain's most wanted thief, "The Loner," saw himself as a Robin Hood-style figure and said he robbed banks only because they stole from the public, his lawyer said on Thursday.

Accused of killing three policemen and holding up more than 30 banks, Jaime Jimenez Arbe was planning to move on to insurance companies when he was arrested last month, Spanish media reported, citing lawyer Jose Mariano Trillo-Figueroa.

"I am not a killer and if I was obliged to shoot at officers of the law, it was always against my will and in order to avoid being arrested," Jimenez said in a letter reproduced on the websites of newspapers El Pais and El Mundo.

Trillo-Figueroa said Jimenez, who robbed the banks disguised in a false beard and a wig, thinks of himself as Curro Jimenez, a Spanish 1970s television bandit in the style of Robin Hood.

“The Loner” was arrested in Portugal, armed with a submachinegun in preparation for another bank robbery.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Tight parking space (now that takes talent!)

Telekom model waits 3 months for phone line from the company she endorses

A fashion model who features in a high-profile advertising campaign for Deutsche Telekom has threatened to seek another provider after waiting three months for the company to install a new phone line at her apartment.

The 27-year-old model, known as Dora, can be seen smiling brightly in posters across Germany for Telekom's new high speed connection service. But she told Bild newspaper on August 7 that she was fed up with waiting for her Berlin home to be connected.

"I'll give them another week but that's it. After that, I'm going to switch to another provider," the model said.

A Deutsche Telekom spokesman could not be reached for comment. But Bild quoted a Telekom official saying they would be in touch with Dora right away.

British motorists can't read maps

As many as 11 million British motorists are unable to read a basic road map, according to a survey released on August 6.

The poll revealed over three quarters of British drivers were unable to identify the motorway map symbol, while only one per cent of motorists would pass the Cub Scout Map Reader badge test.

"It's pretty embarrassing the majority of Cub Scouts have better map-reading skills than the majority of the adult population," said Colin Batabyal, head of underwriting and business development at eSure, which carried out the survey.

Sixteen percent of British drivers have become so heavily reliant on satellite navigation systems that they have given up keeping a map in their car.

"It's time for motorists to take a refresher in map-reading skills," said Scott Sinclair of national mapping agency Ordnance Survey. "Technology is great but the batteries won't run out on a paper map.

Passenger smuggles monkey onto plane under hat

A man smuggled a monkey onto an airplane on August 6, stashing the fist-size primate under his hat until passengers spotted it perched on his ponytail, an airline official in New York said.

On a flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to New York's LaGuardia airport, people around the man noticed that a marmoset, which normally lives in forest and eats fruit and insects, had emerged from underneath his hat, Spirit Airlines spoksewoman Alison Russell said. The man's journey had begun in Lima, Peru.

“Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him,'' Russell said.

The monkey spent the remainder of the flight in the man's seat and behaved well, said Russell. She did not know how the monkey skirted detection in Lima and during the man's several-hour layover in Fort Lauderdale.

LaGuardia airport police were waiting for the man and his monkey when the plane landed, and he was taken for questioning. It was unclear if he would face any criminal charges.

The city's animal control agency said the monkey appeared healthy. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was planning to take it for disease testing and keep it quarantined for 31 days, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

If the monkey is healthy it could wind up in a zoo.

Sunday, August 5, 2007