No more maids
Hong Kong’s Canto-pop star Jacky Cheung was
banned from hiring maids from the Philippines
after firing 21 in three years.
Cheung and his wife, former actress May Lo,
have been blacklisted as “sub-standard employers.”
The Philippine consulate in Hong Kong maintains
a list of no-good employers.
After hiring and firing 21 maids in a span of
three years, Cheung has earned the nickname
“the terminator” within the local Filipino community.
The Philippines consulate said a consul-general
met with Lo last week to explain that she would
not be allowed to hire any helpers from the
Philippines for one year.
Considered a “Cantopop Heavenly King,”
Cheung has built-up a huge pan-Asian fan base
in his 20-year career.
The hiring ban came after one of Cheung’s
former Filipino maids was controversially jailed
last year for stealing photographs and a letter from
the star. She said she was “the 60th helper” to be
sacked by Cheung.
Kiss of death
A woman in China has been sentenced to death
after she killed her lover with a rat poison-laced
kiss. She apparently suspected him of being
unfaithful.
The woman passed a capsule containing rat
poison into the mouth of her longtime lover
during a kiss. The man swallowed it and died
not long afterward.
The couple had made an agreement that if
either one of them cheated, they would have to
die. The woman felt that his “talking” to another
woman was cause enough to go through with
the murder.
Screw-scammer nailed
Over a period of two years, a German factory
worker stole and sold more than a million screws
from the assembly plant where he worked.
The man was selling the screws for much less
than they were worth, which ended up skewing
the market. Each night, the man smuggled between
2,000 and 7,000 screws out of the factory, then
auctioned them on the Internet. The scheme cost
his company 110,000 euros ($156,000).
Chimney-stuck
After drinking heavily during Munich’s Oktoberfest
beer festival, a German man got stuck in
a chimney for 12 hours.
At 2 a.m. the 27-year-old man, finding that his
friend was not home, climbed onto the neighboring
house and attempted to gain access through what
he thought was a gap between the two houses.
It turned out it was a chimney. He slid 98 feet
headfirst into the chimney.
A janitor at the hotel next door heard the
man’s cries for help. The fire brigade eventually
rescued him at around 2 p.m. To retrieve him,
the firemen had to knock a hole into the side of
the chimney.
In those 12 hours, the man had managed to
remove his clothes and turn himself around in an
attempt to climb back up. He is being treated for
hypothermia at a local hospital.
Bulgarian ballot blunder
Bulgaria has so many candidates running for
local elections next month that the ballots are 6 1/2
feet long. The ballots won’t fit into the country’s
largest envelopes.
To solve the problem, authorities are importing
more than 11 million extra-large envelopes to
accommodate the extreme ballot length.
In Bulgaria’s 264 constituencies more than 70
parties and coalitions are running for the offices
of mayor and municipal councilors. All candidates
have a joint ballot. A Bulgarian administrator was
quoted as saying envelopes made in the country
are just too small. He is also worried about the
size of their ballot boxes.