Swiss police were on the lookout for the Phantom of the Opera last month, after he reportedly robbed a money-changing office in Basel. Being the middle of carnival season, the masked and caped man did not raise eyebrows until he raised his gun. He escaped with $85,000. According to Basel police, they were hampered in locating the thief because the Phantom of the Opera was in production in the city and many revellers dressed up in the same costume, thus making the thief difficult to track down.
In order to appease the offended nose of Thailand's Queen Sirikit, Thai officials have covered a garbage dump with truckloads of air fresheners. According to the Queen, the dump's stench aggravated her allergies and wrinkled her nose every time she made her weekly trip to her palace in Ayutthaya, about 45 miles north of Bangkok. Town officials say they will stop the weekly and expensive potpourri treatment when they are able to build an incinerator to take care of the trash-and subsequent stench-permanently.
Almost a half-million Australians took part in a massive one-day cleanup of the land down under a heap of garbage. According to Clean Up Australia organizers, the Aussies picked up 10,000 tons of garbage-that's almost as much as YUDH dishes out each year. A posh Sydney neighborhood took top honors, with residents hauling in, among all things, a dead sheep. Also brought in were 1,000 wrecked cars and a condom full of unidentified white powder.
Soccer is taken seriously in Brazil, the home of soccer god PŽlŽ. However, it is also big business. When the soccer club Londrina ran into debt and could no longer pay bonuses to the country's top soccer players, the new chief executive came up with an alternate incentive plan: every goal scored will be rewarded with the gift of a cow. Fortunately, the executive also owns a cattle ranch-one of the many advantages garnered from the burning of the Amazon rainforest. Already, 20 cows have been distributed among the players, with 50 more waiting to go.
-Compiled by Michael Rubin from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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