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Snowbound airport sends in the clowns

(AFP)

With travellers frazzled by hundreds of flight cancellations, Germany's busiest airport has hired clowns to help them and their children pass the hours, a spokeswoman said Monday.

"Four clowns are performing in the terminal halls," the spokeswoman for Frankfurt's international airport told AFP.

"We came up with the idea for the kids, who are finding the delays particularly trying."

The clowns, outfitted in brightly coloured costumes and some parading on stilts, started working over the weekend, when heavy snowfall led to hundreds of flights being scrapped amid chaos in the European air traffic network.

Fights broke out at the airport among stressed-out holiday travellers late Friday, according to press reports, leading police to send in reinforcements.

More than 1,000 stranded passengers had to spend the night from Sunday to Monday at the airport, where camp beds were set up in the terminals.

On Sunday about half of Frankfurt's scheduled 1,329 flights were grounded, mainly because other airports around Europe were closed due to extreme winter weather.
Over 340 flights were axed by the early afternoon on Monday.

 
Punch a panda! Feel good!

(SUPPLIED)

Angry enough to punch a defenseless panda? Then come to New York.

Every week this winter, performance artist Nate Hill dons a panda suit, heads onto the streets, and challenges members of the public to take a swing.

"Hit me. Hit more hard," he urged passersby on a freezing afternoon at busy Union Square. "You know you're angry, you were angry this morning."

A towering figure in white panda paw gloves, bodysuit and a head the size of a prize-winning pumpkin, the panda hopped down the sidewalk like a boxer.

Hill, 33, said he thought up the persona of Punch Me Panda as a "community service".

"I knew people were angry. I knew people want to punch things, because I want to punch things," Hill explained.

He cruises busy thoroughfares, businesses expecting layoffs, and even goes on home visits, all as a one-panda relief valve in a world filled with angry people. "It will lighten their day," he said.

Many on Union Square rolled their eyes at the sight. Some confused Punch Me Panda with an advertizing campaign. Others seemed horrified at the idea of punching anything. Or they might just not have been angry.

Then the idea started to catch. A woman gave a gentle jab. A young man fired a quick left-right. A group of men egged each other on, punching, kicking and shoulder charging the ever-patient victim.

Each time, the panda pugilists walked away, faces glowing.

"We both felt so good after," David Melman, a visiting 23-year-old farmer, enthused. "At the first punch I was kind of hesitant, but upon the first contact I could tell it enlivened the panda and I decided to go for it."

Tianna Robinson gave Punch Me Panda her best shot -- but she wasn't thinking of pandas as her knuckles landed.

"I'm dealing with relationship issues," Robinson said. "I envisioned the dude I'm dealing with and it felt damned good, it felt damned good."

Actress Chelsey Clime, 24, practiced her kick boxing skills on the uncomplaining beast. She looked radiant afterwards.

"It's great. Everybody needs to shake it out. You know, you can take a cue from dogs. Dogs, when they're going through something, it's cold or they're upset, they just shake it out," she said.

"If there's a panda to help us shake it out a little bit, I don't see any problem with that."

Without his panda suit, Hill turns out to be a soft-spoken man with round, horn-rimmed glasses. His day job is at a laboratory where he cares for fruit flies used in experiments.

He's a veteran of attempts to confront New Yorkers' deepest angst.

As Death Bear, he dressed in a menacing black teddy bear mask and went to people who had broken up with partners and wanted someone to carry away mementos of the lost love.

As Mr Dropout, he wrapped himself head to toe in white, something like the Invisible Man, and wandered New York embodying detachment.

"My purpose is to relieve some of the suffering on the street," he said, the panda head at his side, as he wound down from his latest performance. "I think a lot of artists are focused inward on their own predicament and I'm trying to be less of a selfish person."

His methodology skirts the line between making the panda a provocateur and a passive victim.

To attract a beating, he thumps his chest with a red boxing glove, which would-be punchers are invited to wear. "I'm not going to hit you back," he assures in a muffled voice.

But unlike the human chickens and other animal suits parading on sidewalks as part of business promotions, Punch Me Panda has a threatening side as he hops in and out of the crowd.

"I like to bring a little aggression to it," Hill said. "I'm trying to get people excited to punch me. Just to provoke them."

The blows leave him sore, but don't really hurt. He protects his chest with a black breastplate and cushion.

Some assailants take the moment seriously. One, a tall, nearly toothless man who'd clearly trained in boxing, unloaded a flurry of combinations until Punch Me Panda put his hands up in surrender.

"I just pretended I'd had enough," Hill explained later. "I wanted him to feel like he was doing something. That's part of the theater."

Sometimes, though, the theater gets a little too real.

"I got punched in the face twice today," Hill said. "When I took the head off, the first guy ran. The second one, I took the head off and he apologized profusely."

The seven or eight home visits he's made so far -- answering requests made on Twitter -- can be a little tense.

"I always get real nervous going to somebody's house that I don't know. But I have to remind myself that they must be just as nervous and they'd have to be real crazy to want to do anything to a stranger in a panda costume."

Hill says the project will continue for about another five months. Details of his work can be found on: https://natehillisnuts.com/

Chinese online stores offering cat and dog skin products

(SUPPLIED)

Thousands of products made from the skins of cats and dogs are being offered on China's largest retail website Taobao, sparking outrage among animal lovers, state media reported Tuesday.

Search results and sales records from Taobao showed the most popular items were trousers and hats made from dog fur, which is touted for its ability to ward off the cold, AFP found after searching the website.

One seller with the username "sjz2ys" boasted that all the cat skin products available in his online store were authentic, though he had only sold one item -- a waistcoat -- in the past month, the Shanghai Daily said.

A spokeswoman for Taobao disputed the number of products cited in the report, saying the site's word search function was imperfect and the phrase "cat skin" would bring up unrelated products.

"There are such products on Taobao but there are a hundred of them at most. We have noticed the report and are contacting the seller to take them off shelves," the spokeswoman told AFP.

An AFP search on the term "dog fur" yielded thousands of results, and a quick scan of those results revealed veritable animal-based products.

Animal rights activists said dealers usually targeted stray animals, selling their skins to fur traders in the country's east and the meat to restaurants in the south.

"We have volunteers to protect the animals but their efforts are not enough as the government's supervision is inadequate," Zhai Yining, an official with the China Small Animal Protection Association, was quoted saying.

Animal lovers posted comments on popular social networking site Douban calling for the sales of such products to be banned.

"Would those sleeping on a mattress made at the cost of lives feel really happy and comfortable? Isn't that cruel?" one web user said in a comment on a picture of a mattress made from cat fur.

According to rules introduced by Taobao in November last year, the sale of cat or dog meat, furs and fur products is formally banned along with sale of products made from the parts of endangered species.

But enforcement of the rules is spotty.

An unnamed official with Alibaba, the operator of Taobao.com, told the Shanghai Daily website inspectors charged with deleting irregular information were overwhelmed by the number of sellers publishing product details.

Anonymous thief pays for stolen hammer

(SUPPLIED)

An anonymous thief sent an envelope of cash to a family-owned supply store in western Pennsylvania to pay for a hammer stolen decades ago, one of the store owners said on Monday.

The cash arrived at Central Contractors Supply Co. in Johnstown, Pa., with a handwritten note saying the hammer was stolen 25 to 30 years ago, said Lynne Gramling, who owns the store with her father.

"I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. Enclosed is $45 to cover the hammer plus a little extra for interest," said the unsigned letter dated December 6. "I'm sorry I stole it, but have changed my ways."

While plenty of merchandise has disappeared since the family bought the store some 50 years ago, this is the first time anyone has paid for a stolen item, Gramling said.

Gramling took the money to a nearby shopping mall, where her father was volunteering as a Salvation Army bell ringer.

"I went up and dropped the money in his kettle," she said, adding that the money was "really a lot more than a hammer would cost."

"He was very generous," she said. 

Man gives $50 bills at Goodwill

(SUPPLIED)

Those at a Goodwill store in Memphis got some extra Christmas spending money thanks to a man who handed out $50 bills to everyone.

According to WMC-TV, no one knows the identity of the man, who passed out the money Monday.
Store employee Chestine Dunn says the man carried a stack of envelopes with him. Inside each envelope was $50.

Witnesses say the man didnÕt buy anything and asked for nothing in return. He simply gave lucky strangers an envelope, wished them a merry Christmas and moved on.

One of lucky ones, Betty Ridenour, says everyone was stunned.  

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