ABRACADABRA

Notice to Lord Hanuman for Tax due

Patna: Lord Hanuman has defaulted on paying property tax of Rs 4.33 lakh in a Bihar town and authorities have decided to issue notice to him to make the payment at the earliest, officials said.

Lord Hanuman is a “property tax defaulter” in Ara, district headquarters of Bhojpur, in Bihar. “Lord Hanuman has property tax dues of Rs 4.33 lakh to be paid to Ara Nagar Nigam,” a civic official said. According to Ara Municipal Corporation officials, there are three holdings (property) in the name of Lord Hanuman at Badi Mathiae town. Concerned officials have informed the temple authorities twice to clear the dues of holding tax. But it is yet to be paid. According to Ara municipal commissioner Pramod Kumar, there is a provision to send notice in the name of holder. “Three properties are in the name of Hanuman and property tax has not been paid.”

In February this year, a lower court in Rohtas district issued summons to Lord Hanuman for appearance in court in connection with a roadside temple dedicated to him.-IANS

Cat Palmerston- in UK Foreign office

London: The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s ‘Chief Mouser’ cat hired to wage war on mice has made its first kill just weeks in the job. Palmerston, a black and white cat, was congratulated on Twitter by top civil servant Sir Simon McDonald after snaring his first rodent today. The FCO permanent under-secretary tweeted a picture of the cat and praised his work as the second biggest news story of the day after Leicester’s historic title victory in the Premier League. The pet was a rescue cat from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and has been named after the former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston. In his short career in office, the cat has already met ambassadors from Spain and South Korea, Evening Standard reported.The idea of having a Chief Mouser at the FCO came from Downing Street where a resident “mouser” has been employed since the reign of Henry VIII. The current Chief Mouser to the UK Cabinet Office is a brown and white cat named Larry Cameron.

Stealing Goats Using Car

Mumbai:  The Wadner police in Nashik were stumped after several villagers began complaining about their goats getting stolen in the early hours from outside their houses. The police launched a full scale investigation after the hapless villagers protested against the rising thefts amidst water scarcity and learnt about a mysterious car bearing a Mumbai registration number being behind the incident.

The Wadner police then traced the car to Kurla and identified the owner to be one Mohammad Feroz Sharif Khan and the Mumbai police was informed about the act. A team of unit V of Crime Branch, headed by senior inspector Ajay Sawant, began looking out for Khan and after a hunt which went on for at least couple of months, found him staying at Jarimari area with assumed identity of Imran Khan.

The officials learnt that Khan was a meat seller and had been into the business since almost a decade. The police were, however, startled after they learnt how he conducted his business which led to the breakthrough in the case.

“Khan would leave with a car for villages located in the proximity of three hours from Mumbai. He would drive to the places and spot goats tied outside the houses and would quietly bundle them in the vehicle’s boot,” said Sawant.

When the investigators asked about how he managed to keep the goats quiet all the while, he said he would hold their jaws to not let them scream and would leave with them after the act.

Khan would reach his destination by 4 am and after bundling the goats in the car, would drive down to Mumbai by 7 am. Soon after he would slaughter them and sell the meat and pocket in the cash by 10 am planning for a new place to visit the following day.

The officials joked that there would be no recovery in the case adding that Khan himself could not recall how many goats he had stolen in the similar manner in last couple of years, mostly during festivals. Khan has been handed over to the Wadner police for further investigation.

No farting in Public places: Japan

Tokyo: A Japanese tourism board has called on foreign tourists to refrain from public “belching or flatulence” in an etiquette guide which was hastily rewritten, reportedly after complaints from a Chinese resident.

The Hokkaido Tourism Organization, which represents Japan’s northern-most island, published a downloadable brochure on its website, with polite instructions on everything from public bathing to using a Japanese toilet.

Helpfully, it even dedicated an entire section to protocol for avoiding bodily functions.

“Japanese etiquette is based on avoiding causing discomfort or nuisance to others,” the guide points out.

“Accordingly, Japanese will avoid bodily functions such as belching or flatulence in public entirely, or perform bodily functions as discreetly as possible.” However, the Chinese-language guide — originally entitled “Common Sense When Travelling in Hokkaido” — upset a Chinese resident who angrily claimed the diagrams featuring examples of bad tourist behaviour were offensive, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported. The complaint prompted a new, foreigner-friendly version with softer explanations of Japanese customs.

In the updated guide available in Chinese and English, gone are the large ‘X’-marks next to cartoon illustrations of tourists committing, from a Japanese perspective, embarrassing gaffes, such as putting used toilet paper into the waste bin — the general custom in China — instead of flushing it away.

According to The Japan Times newspaper, the original booklet was first published last August and was targeted at Chinese tourists, including a reminder not to open products before buying them when shopping, a habit also seen in China. China has said it will monitor the behaviour of unruly tourists abroad and punish them on their return home after being shamed by a string of well-publicised incidents in recent years.

Research by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch found that more than 100 million Chinese tourists went abroad in 2014, spending some USD 164 billion. But reports of disruptive behaviour have tarnished their reputation, such as passengers scalding a flight attendant with hot water and noodles or a holidaymaker fined in Thailand for washing her feet in the wash basin of a public toilet.

Media in Japan have carried a spate of reports of alleged uncouth behaviour by Chinese visitors, though some local commentators have urged understanding, recalling that the emergence five decades ago of Japanese tourists as a force in global travel was often met with complaints about their behaviour.(AFP)