Dutch parents chided for taking kids out of school early

THE HAGUE (AFP) – Dutch parents sneaking their children off on holiday two days before the official close of school were chided at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport Thursday in a sting by “compulsory education officials.”

Ten officials from the municipalities of Amsterdam and Haarlemmermeer “addressed” 80 families at the airport in the morning, said a statement.

From questioning during the “public friendly action,” it transpired that half the parents had failed to obtain school permission to leave early.

China admits controversial tiger photos faked

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has sacked a number of government officials and arrested a man in connection with a set of fake photographs that local authorities had said was proof of the existence of a highly endangered tiger.

In October, forestry officials in Zhenping county in northern Shaanxi province published photos of a tiger in a forest setting, saying they were proof of the existence of the South China tiger. A local farmer who produced the photos was paid a 20,000 yuan (1,453 pounds) reward.

Aussie politician goes wild for wombats

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia’s top treasury official is taking five weeks leave to nurse endangered wombats, prompting the government to defend him on Friday against accusations he had abandoned his post during economic turmoil.

Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, a key economic advisor to the centre-left Labour government and a passionate animal conservationist, will miss a central bank meeting as he looks after 115 critically endangered northern hairy-nosed wombats in northern Queensland state, his office told Reuters.

Japan firm scraps ad after racial controversy

TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japanese mobile phone firm has halted an advertisement depicting a monkey as a political candidate after bloggers said the commercial was a racial slur against U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

An ad aired by the mobile unit of eAccess Ltd showed the firm’s mascot, a monkey, addressing a political rally in Japanese and surrounded by supporters brandishing placards with the word “Change”.

German man torches car to protest high gas prices

BERLIN – A German man doused his BMW with gasoline and torched it on Friday in protest at skyrocketing fuel costs, police said. The unemployed 30-year-old man drove the black 1995 BMW 3-series sedan onto the lawn outside Frankfurt’s convention center grounds at about 7:30 a.m., police spokesman Karlheinz Wagner said.

He then jumped out, emptied a canister of gas over the vehicle, and set fire to it, Wagner said.

Colombian thief is nabbed sleeping on the job

BOGOTA (AFP) – A Colombian thief surprised by a home owner’s return hid inside a closet and fell fast asleep until he was discovered and arrested on Sunday, police in the port city of Barranquilla said.

The 24-year-old delinquent bored his way through a wall to get inside the house in the predawn hours Sunday, and Police Chief Oscar Gamboa surmised the physical effort and the late hour likely contributed to the thief’s exhaustion.

Pupil gains marks for exam expletive

LONDON (Reuters) – A student who scribbled an expletive on an English language exam paper was awarded 7.5 percent for accurate spelling and effective communication, The Times newspaper reported on Monday.

The pupil, who wrote “f— off” after being asked in an English exam to “describe the room you are sitting in”, got 2 marks out of 27 and would have got more if he had added some punctuation, chief examiner Peter Buckroyd told The Times.

Manure thief falls into dung, flees naked

BERLIN (Reuters) A woman trying to make “manure bombs” using stockings, slipped into a slurry tank and fled the scene naked, German police said Friday.

Two women entered a farm in the northern village of Eberholzen Wednesday evening and started to fill the stockings with manure.

“One of them slipped into the manure tank, right into the cow muck,” said a spokesman for local police. “The other one helped her out. We found their clothes in a field. One seems to have run off completely naked, the other in her underwear.”

Union anger at “Dickensian” toilet policy

LONDON (Reuters) – A meat company has been branded Dickensian after forcing its employees to clock-off every time they want to go to the toilet.

The union Unite has criticized the meat processor for “essentially stopping staff pay when they visit the toilet.”

The company, based in Dumfriesshire, insists anyone wanting to be excused from the system has to provide medical evidence, the union added.

California to drivers: Drop the cell phone, dude

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Next week California will try to wrest cell phones from the hands of drivers, telling everyone from movie starlets and dot-com millionaires to surfers and soccer moms that conversations behind the wheel must be on a headset.

Several U.S. states and some two dozen countries around the world already have restrictions on mobile phones while driving but now such a law has come to California — where the car is king and much of life is spent on the famously snarled freeways.