WhiteBoard News for Wednesday, January 21, 2004

New Delhi, India (Reuters):

It's not quite the goose that laid the golden egg, but an Indian diamond merchant's prize cow is producing bejeweled dung. 

Dilubhai Rajput had stashed a bag of more than 1,700 small diamonds, worth almost $900, in a pile of hay at his home in Gujarat state, famous both for its dairy and diamond-cutting industries, but hadn't reckoned on the risk of a hungry cow, the Economic Times newspaper reported on Monday. 

Now he's feeding the animal a diet of grass, grain, fruit and laxatives and has so far recovered 300 diamonds in three days. 

"I am sure within a week I will retrieve all my diamonds," the paper quoted Rajput as saying. 

It was unclear why he chose to hide the stones in the hay. 
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Madrid, Spain (Ananova):

Tom Cruise has appeared on Portuguese television to ask a woman to marry her boyfriend.

Cruise asked the factory worker, named only as Sonia, to marry cameraman Joao Martins.

He'd filmed the actor at the Spanish premiere of The Last Samurai.

In a clip shown on state channel RTP, Cruise said: "Sonia, you have to marry Joao. Please marry Joao. He is crying behind the camera."

His girlfriend accepted the proposal, according to media reports. Martins, who works for RTP, was on the phone to his girlfriend when the marriage proposal was aired.

Cruise also joked in the footage they should name their children after him, says BBC News Online. The couple plan to wed later in the year.

The cameraman said he was amazed when Cruise agreed to his request to deliver the proposal. "All my girlfriend asked for was that I get his autograph," he said.
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Antwerp, The Netherlands (Ananova):

A Belgian who was arrested on suspicion of possession of marijuana was released after police found he'd been fobbed off with cabbage.

The 27-year-old man had travelled by train from his house in Brussels to Amsterdam to buy marijuana from one of the city's famous coffee shops.

On the way home, Dutch railway police pulled him in because he "stank" of marijuana, reports De Telegraaf.

The man admitted that he'd been smoking marijuana in a coffee shop and had bought $256 worth of the drug to take home.

He was handed over to Belgian police who took him to a police station to Antwerp but then found his marijuana was cabbage.

A police spokesman said: "He was quite mad about it. We1ve set the man free, because it's not prohibited to bring cabbage over the border.

"Probably the man had smoked so much in Holland, that he didn't realise he'd been swindled."
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Helsinki, Finland (Independent Online):

They say only two things are certain in life, death and taxes, but rarely do they come together as they did in the case of a Finnish taxman whose death at his desk went unnoticed for two days.

The 60-year-old auditor died last Tuesday, but it took his colleagues until Thursday to notice he wasn't silently poring over tax returns, tabloid Ilta-Sanomat reported on Monday.

Officials declined to comment on the cause of death or confirm the age of the man, saying they would only say how it was possible he could be dead for two days at work without anybody noticing.

"The reason for this was many coincidences," said Anita Wickstroem, director at the Helsinki tax office.

'Colleagues who might have had lunch with him were busy in meetings' 
"He was working alone and often visited companies. Colleagues who might have had lunch with him were busy in meetings or outside the office at the time," she noted.

There are about 30 workers in the auditing department where the auditor worked, and a total of 100 on the same floor, Wickstroem said.

Finns, who enjoy a comprehensive welfare system, pay among the highest taxes in the world. 
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London, England (Reuters):

British war leader Winston Churchill's foul-mouthed 104-year old parrot refused to surrender to newshounds Monday after a British newspaper tracked the bird down and discovered it was still alive. 

"They've been trying to get him to talk all day, but he's not saying much," said Sylvia Martin, who manages Heathfield Nurseries where parrot Charlie has lived for the last 12 years. 

Charlie, who kept Churchill company during World War II, was famous for occasionally squawking four-letter obscenities about Hitler. But Martin told Reuters the bird has mellowed. 

"He doesn't say very much anymore -- usually just hello and goodbye. But he does get so excited about music and dances to it. He's very fit." 

Charlie -- invariably referred to as "he" despite being female -- is now owned by Peter Oram, the garden center's owner, Martin said. Oram's father-in-law sold Churchill the bird and was asked to take it back after the prime minister died in 1965. 

Steve Nichols, founder of Britain's National Parrot Sanctuary, said that although parrots did not often live longer than 40 in the wild, some had lived to up to 110. 

"It's obviously had the best life possible," he said. 
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ananova

A courier firm in Germany is on the verge of bankruptcy after an employee ran up a $36,678 mobile phone bill by calling sex hotlines.

The unnamed employee, who worked as a driver for the firm in Aurich, Lower Saxony, had already received a warning against using the phone to call 0898 numbers over a bill for more than $3,367 last summer.

But the man began calling the hotlines again in November and December and was finally given the sack when his bosses received a massive invoice for over $36,000.

A spokesman for the courier firm, now facing severe financial difficulties, said they were seeking legal advice about whether it was possible to sue the former worker for damages.
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