Paris’s elephantine problem

GAUHATI, India: In what is arguably one of the most bizarre stories to hit today’s wires, Associated Press has reported that conservationists on Tuesday have hailed socialite Paris Hilton for apparently trying to highlight the cause of binge drinking elephants in northeastern India.

According to the report, activists said a celebrity endorsement was sure to raise awareness of the plight of the pachyderms that get drunk on farmers' homemade rice beer then go on a rampage.

“There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn't chased them away. And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad,” Hilton was quoted as saying in Tokyo last week.

Hilton of course has no idea where Meghalaya is. She has, however, expressed a desire to try some of the moonshine.

“The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them,” she said in a report posted on the World Entertainment News Network Web site.

Maybe Paris should try a similar tack among her addled friends on the Hollywood has-been circuit.

According to the report, while welcoming Hilton's interest, another conservationist said elephant alcohol abuse was just a symptom of the real problem.

Looks like Elephants Anonymous is just round the corner. We really must get these elephants to deal with their emotions in a reasonable manner, rather than trying to find solutions at the bottom of a bottle. Of course we might find it a smidgen difficult to get an elephant to stand up and say: “My name is Dumbo, and I am an alcoholic.”

Hilton recently announced plans to do charity work in Rwanda for the Playing for Good Foundation, but the trip was postponed until next year.

We reckon that was due to the fact that...well...she just couldn’t find a good nightclub in Kigali.

There. He finally said it

KRASNOYARSK, Russia: President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that a convincing victory for the party he is leading in December 2 parliamentary elections would give him the "moral right" to maintain strong influence in Russia after he steps down next year. Putin's remarks were the clearest affirmation yet that he plans to keep a powerful hand on Russia's reins when his eight years as president are over, but he stopped short of saying whether he would seek a formal role.

Diary of a Lady - 13

Parents who let their children walk around in squeaky shoes should be fed to a pack of hungry lions (I'll be cheering from the stands).

There's nothing like a spot of afternoon sex on a lazy Sunday to get you all relaxed and happy. What my partner and I hadn't counted on was a toddler pacing outside our window wearing shoes that squeaked. Through it all: foreplay and mainplay, the brat never stopped walking. So we decided to time our responses.

The refrain was rather simple: squeak, oh yeah, squeak, jesus that's good, squeak, I'm coming, squeak, squeak, squeak, yes, yes, yes!

Forty-five minutes later, I was enjoying my orgasm (which I very rarely have), and I could hear the ominous 'squeak, squeak, squeak'.

Stuart Gair dies, aged 44

Hapless Scottish victim of a notorious miscarriage of justice

By Bob Woffinden, The Guardian
Stuart Gair (right), who has died of a heart attack at the age of 44, was the victim of one of Scotland's most flagrant miscarriages of justice. He was born in Reading, Berkshire, never knew his father and was brought up in Plean, a small mining community near Stirling, when his mother returned to her home area. After a troubled childhood, he lived mainly on the streets in Glasgow and survived through small-time criminality.

On April 11 1989, Peter Smith, a supermarket manager, was found dead from a single stab wound to the chest in a well-known gay cruising area of the city. At the time, Gair was with his girlfriend and two acquaintances in a hostel. However, he was picked up the following morning for an unrelated minor offence. When Strathclyde police found out that he was from Plean (where Smith had also been brought up), they began to build a case against him for the murder.

A number of young, frightened gay men were pressured into giving evidence. Forensics ostensibly linked Gair with what was purported to be the murder weapon. For reasons that remain obscure, his alibi witnesses were never called to give evidence. According to witnesses, Smith had been attacked by two men. William McLeod, another vulnerable young man, was coerced into signing a confession that he and Gair had killed Smith together. Charges against McLeod were then dropped and he became the main prosecution witness. At trial, however, he said he had signed the confession only under duress. That evening, he was threatened with perjury charges, and the following day went back to court to restate the untruthful account.

Gair was convicted by an 8-7 majority verdict on August 30 1989 and sentenced to life imprisonment. In Glen Ochil prison, he was befriended by Dr Jim MacGregor, who was a GP in Alloa and part-time medical officer at the prison. MacGregor studied the papers, concluded that it was "a shocking case of corruption" and helped to mobilise a growing campaign. The case became a cause celebre; among those lending assistance was Peter Mullan, the Scottish actor and director of The Magdalene Sisters.

From 1995, Gair was represented by Glasgow solicitor John Macaulay, who uncovered "one impropriety after another" and built up an impressive dossier of evidence for his client. Key witnesses retracted their evidence. Dr Bill Hunt, a leading pathologist, described the forensic science evidence as ranging from "quite seriously flawed" to "total nonsense".

In 1999, Gair's became the first contemporary case to be referred to appeal by the new Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. Pending the appeal's outcome, he was released on bail in 2000. While the case was becalmed in the torpid Scottish judicial process, he was living a kind of purgatory. "I didn't comprehend how mentally damaged he was as a result of the years he'd spent in prison as an innocent man," said MacGregor.

Gair, a heroin user, had no family, no support, no means of getting by, and he alienated many of those who had tried to help him. He was taken to court three times on other charges, twice for possession of heroin and once for breach of the peace after inviting two schoolboys back to his flat.

Finally, his conviction for Smith's murder was overturned at appeal in 2006. There was general disquiet - although not surprise - that, rather than opening the can of worms that the case represented, the judges allowed the appeal on the limited ground of non-disclosure of evidence.

After that, friends felt that Gair had turned the corner. However, on October 26, Donal MacIntyre, the television reporter, was filming with ambulance crews in Edinburgh when they were called to the flat of someone who had just suffered a major heart attack; it was Gair. MacIntyre stayed with him at the Royal Infirmary and contacted Paddy Hill, one of the Birmingham Six, and John McManus, who together run Mojo (Miscarriages of Justice Organisation) Scotland.

"He was gifted and highly intelligent," MacGregor said, "but his whole life seemed blighted. The biggest tragedy was that he died just as he was beginning to look forward and to plan his life."

· Stuart Gair, miscarriage of justice victim, born August 27 1963; died October 29 2007

Captain's Log: If any Scots out there have any memories of Gair, or the case, please don't hesitate to let the Crystal Ship know

Surf's up...check it out

Thanks to the Guardian for bringing to our attention this cracking website. It's a treat for anyone with a penchant for irony and sarcasm..oh and for those who have immense amounts of time on their hands, as well.
Here's the site: www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

Saudi Prince goes for size, buys A380

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi billionaire who is Citigroup Inc's biggest individual investor, agreed to buy a $319 million Airbus SAS A380 superjumbo (seen in picture), becoming the first private customer for the world's biggest aircraft.

The purchase was announced by Toulouse, France-based Airbus at the Dubai Air Show today. Alwaleed, ranked the world's 13th-richest person by Forbes magazine, flew in from Saudi Arabia on his Boeing 747.

Who is this dude?

• As of 2007, his net worth is estimated at $20.3 billion and he is ranked by Forbes as the 13th richest person in the world, and the richest Arab. He has been nicknamed by Time magazine as the Arabian Warren Buffett.

• Al-Walid completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration at Menlo College in 1979 and a Masters in Social Science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, in 1985. He was also awarded an honorary PhD from the University of Exeter.

• He is the owner of the Kingdom Holding Company (not to be confused with Big Brother and his)

• After the 9/11 attacks, Al-Walid suggested that the attacks were an indication that the United States 'should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause', Giuliani asserted, Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10 million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.

• As of 2007, he was believed to be in talks with Robert Earl, founder of Planet Hollywood, about taking a controlling stake in the English Premier League's Everton FC

Britney in a tizzy over mum’s book

London: Troubled pop star Britney Spears, who is working on a comeback, is upset with mother Lynne for writing a book about her and now wants pen her side of the story.

Lynne has signed a $1 million deal to pen the book on parenting. Spears wants to write her own memoir at the same time, contactmusic.com reports.

"She is trying to make a quick buck. She says she's not sure if she'll go through with it — but I can't really trust her," Spears reportedly told a friend.

Spears is trying to regain control over her life so that she can get custody of her children who now are with her ex-husband Kevin Federline.

She also has a new album out, Blackout, as an attempt at a comeback.

The Crystal Ship has also discovered that Britney has already written a book — about how to get fat and dance like an orgasmic dervish — but she just can’t remember where she put the manuscript. Maybe it’s in the car with her kids

20 years' salary for families of workers killed in Dubai

DUBAI: The families of the seven Indian workers who were killed in last week's accident at a bridge construction site in Dubai will get 20 years' salary — double the compensation announced earlier.
The Wade Adams Contracting Company Monday announced that the next of kin of each of the deceased would get 20 years' salary as compensation instead of 10 years as announced earlier.
"Our company has decided to give 20 years' salary — their lifetime salary — to their (the workers') families. We don't want them to suffer," N M Naushad, human resources director of Wade Adams, told IANS.
He said that, as an interim measure, the company has decided to give 20,000 dirhams ($5,400) to the next of kin of each of those killed.

The bitch is back!

MADURAI: A 33-year-old man in Sivaganga district of Tamil Nadu has married a dog in a bid to ward off the "curse" of a canine couple he had killed 15 years ago.

Selva Kumar tied a 'mangal sutra' on the animal, petnamed Selvi, at a Ganesh temple in Manamadurai, about 50 km from here, yesterday.

The 10-year-old saree-clad "bride" was brought to the temple in a grand bridal procession. After the function, the bride was feasted with bread.

Kumar, who vowed to protect Selvi all through its life, said he married the animal as per the advice of an astrologer. "I will take care of it till its death."

According to Kumar, when he was 18-years-old, he had clubbed to death a dog-couple when they were mating and hung them on a tree.

After the incident, he suffered a stroke and could not move his left arm and legs and also turned deaf. He now walks with the help of a stick.

Kumar claimed that an astrologer had suggested him that he had the "curse of dogs".

The astrologer advised him that all his problems will be solved once he did the penance by marrying a bitch, Kumar said.

Captain’s Log: The astrologer is obviously a complete nutter. Not because he believes in the ‘curse of dogs’ but because he claims that “all his problems will be solved once he did the penance by marrying a bitch”. Trust me, marrying the bitch only aggravates the situation, just ask Paul McCartney.

Selva Kumar, rather, should be hung up by his testicles and bull-whipped, for murdering those two dogs. I hope the “bitch” bites his head off. Now that would be justice.

Monkey business injures 25 in New Delhi

NEW DELHI: A wild monkey went on a rampage in a low income neighborhood in the Indian capital, injuring several people, most of them children, police said Monday.

Police sub-inspector Gaje Singh told The Associated Press that the attacks started late Saturday in the Shastri Park area of New Delhi, adding that it was not immediately possible to give an exact tally of the injured. Local news reports said as many as 25 people were injured.

Singh said officers were patrolling the neighborhood in search of the rogue animal.

“But the monkey hasn't been spotted yet,” Singh said.

People in Shastri Park often sleep outside their homes or on open roofs to escape the heat.

Neighborhood resident Naseema, who goes by one name, carried her one-year-old daughter into her house in attempts to escape the animal. “The monkey followed me in and buried its teeth in my baby's leg,” she told the Times of India newspaper.

As New Delhi's forest cover shrinks, rhesus macaque monkeys have overrun its government buildings, temples and residential areas, occasionally biting passers by or snatching food from them. A government official died last month when he fell from his balcony during an attack by wild monkeys.

Part of the problem is that devout Hindus believe monkeys are manifestations of the god Hanuman and feed them bananas and peanuts, encouraging them to frequent public places.