QUIRKY WORLD ... Smashing good mobile lesson for Thai navy cadets
A video clip shows a row of uniformed cadets with their smartphones on the ground beside a concrete block. The voice of a commanding officer orders them to smash their phones.
The video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in the past few days, drawing mostly criticism that the punishment does not fit the crime. The Thai navy issued a statement saying students were being punished for breaking a rule against carrying mobile phones during training. But it has ordered the school to stop the punishment.
Sacre bleu
There have already been murmurs they are unhappy with their World Cup base.
But now the team bus carrying the French rugby union squad has caught the attention of a traffic warden during their stay in Croydon, south London.
Dan Hicks posted a picture on Twitter of the parking attendant taking details of the vehicle, which was parked at a bus stop, along with the words: “Welcome to Croydon, Team France!! #ParkingTicket”.
Bar raid
Two Swedish comedians say they built a reconstruction of a gay bar from the movie Police Academy on land in Finland owned by Russia.
Comedians Simon Gardenfors and Frej Larsson said the makeshift shack, meant to resemble The Blue Oyster bar from the 1984 film, was built to protest against a Russian law that bans the spreading of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” to minors.
Finnish police are investigating “some kind of construction” on a Russia-owned plot outside the village of Saltvik on the Aland archipelago in the Baltic Sea.
Crazily luxurious
China’s ruling Communist Party will prosecute a former senior city government official who connived with businessmen to build a “crazily luxurious” private club modelled on Beijing’s famous “Water Cube” Olympics swimming venue.
Wang Zhengshan, whose investigation the party announced in April, was a senior official in a development zone in the northern city of Tianjin, but he ignored party discipline orders and got into bed with a group of “illegal businessmen”, the party’s anti-graft watchdog said.
Wang illegally built a private club with three floors covering an area of more than 1,200sq m, the watchdog added. “It had a swimming pool, gym, tennis court, restaurant, BBQ pit, flower nursery and high-end imported mahogany furniture — a crazy level of luxury.”
Under cover
Police are hunting an armed robber who held up a shop wearing a pair of boxer shorts on his head.
The man entered the branch of McColls in Lyde Road, Yeovil, Somerset, on Monday night brandishing a large kitchen knife and covering his face with the grey and white patterned boxer shorts.
Avon and Somerset Police said the robber threatened staff before making off with a quantity of cash.
Shell shock
A police station had to be evacuated after a member of the public took suspected mortar shells to the front counter.
Essex Police put a 100m cordon in place around Loughton police station after the visitor arrived with three suspected mortar shells. The shells had been found in the loft of a house.
A force spokesman said: “They were secured in the rear yard of the police station for assessment by the ministry of defence’s explosive ordnance disposal team. They have attended and declared the items safe.”
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