May/June 2000 

Onkaparinga: In an new approach to stamping out graffiti, Onkaparinga Council in South Australia has turned its back on counselling and rehabilitation and instead is achieving remarkable results with a far older method: suing the culprits for damages. According to a spokesperson, the Council lost faith in the juvenile justice system about two years ago. So when it found out that the civil court handed down rulings based on damage caused rather than the offender's age, it decided "to take the law into its own hands". As a result, 9 of 57 graffiti vandals captured on video surveillance cameras who refused to work with the Council's contract counsellors or undertake community service work to pay for their crimes will instead spend several decades of their lives paying out substantial amounts of hard cash for the damage caused by their graffiti attacks. As word of the hardball attitude spread, the incidence of graffiti in Onkaparinga has declined by 75%.
(Source: The Australian)

Rhode Island: Providence police are searching for two men who stole a 136-pound, six-foot-tall Mr. Potato Head statue from outside The Providence Journal newspaper building and loaded it onto a truck.
(Source: Reuters)

Berlin: German police said they are hunting a man dubbed by a local newspaper as the "KaDeWe Ripper." The name came from the man's fondness of slashing clothing in the Kaufhaus des Westens department store. Police said the man has been taking a scalpel to clothing at several department stores since September 1998.
(Source: The Times)

Divine Excuse Of The Month South Africa: Disgraced South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje, sacked after taking money from Indian bookies to fix cricket matches, resorted to a defence rarely heard in courts since the Middle Ages when he claimed this month that the Devil made him do it. In front of retired judge Edwin King, who is heading an inquiry into the affair, a remorseful Cronje said that he'd become involved in match-fixing and bribery because he "took his eyes off Jesus" and allowed "Satan to dictate terms to me". (Source: The Age, Melbourne)

San Jose:The upscale Bella Mia restaurant has agreed to pay a $60,000 court settlement for substituting pork in its veal dishes such as veal parmigiana. A former chef admitted using pork instead of veal over a five or six year period because he thought pork was a superior meat. The restaurant has already paid restitution to hundreds of customers adding up to a sum of about $10,000.
(Source: CNN Fringe Mail)

Hong Kong: "Smelly tofu" has been part of Chinese cuisine for generations, but some Hong Kong communities want it banned from sale in their neighborhoods because of the stench it emits. One shop owner was fined this month after Hong Kong's Environmental Protection Department served a summons on her for selling the deep-fried fermented bean curd snack, a failure in compliance with an "air pollution abatement notice."
(Source: Straits Times)

Montreal: Two men who are part of a Canadian political protesting pie throwing group were convicted of assault Wednesday and given six-month suspended sentences. The pair threw pies at Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion in May 1999. The group they belong to has targeted others in the past including actor Sylvester Stallone.
(Source: New York Times)

Donkeys, Drugs and Sex Sydney: Sexual practices, drugs and donkeys dominated the evidence of Sydney solicitor John Marsden yesterday during his first foray into the witness box in his defamation case against Channel 7.The 58-year-old solicitor denied in ever having been involved in whipping sessions, saying they were "not my scene" but admitted to smoking marijuana regularly, although he did not keep the drug at his home from late 1993. "I gave an undertaking to the (then Police Minister) Ted Pickering that I would not have it in my home when I was on the Police Board and I didn't" he told the NSW Supreme Court. Marsden, who has recently grown a beard, was well-dressed for his first appearance, wearing a dark suit, a light purple shirt and dark purple tie, his Order of Australia lapel pin and a Gay Rights badge. Channel 7 is defending his defamation action brought over programmes broadcast in 1995 and 1996 which claimed the solicitor had sex with underage boys. Marsden yesterday denied having ever gone to Kings Cross nightclub Costellos or the nearby Fitzroy Gardens, places from which some witnesses have testified he picked them up, but agreed he did visit the Bottoms Up Bar. He said that he'd never used cocaine but had regularly used the stimulant amyl nitrate "in the sex act" - a practice he said was common in the gay community. One witness, who said he had under-age sex with Marsden, testified that he saw a donkey at the solicitor's home in the 1980s. But Marsden said it was not until 1992 that he acquired his first donkey as a 50th birthday gift from Louise Aaron of the Law Society. Soon after, he bought another donkey because the first one was lonely, and he ultimately ended up with six. Marsden is expected to be in the witness box for some weeks (Source: The Courier Mail, Brisbane, 30-05-00 Author: Margaret Scheikowski)

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