World Briefs

New Zealand’s national museum yesterday warned pregnant or menstruating women to stay away from some of its exhibits or risk an encounter with angry Maori spirits.

The Te Papa Museum in Wellington confirmed it had invited regional museum staff on a behind-the-scenes tour of its collections on the condition that women who were pregnant or menstruating did not attend.

The museum’s Maori adviser Michelle Hippolite said the condition was because some of the Maori artifacts had been used in wars and were believed to contain sprits that could harm pregnant or menstruating women visiting the exhibit.

Te Papa mouthpiece Jane Keig said the policy was not an outright ban, rather it was strong advice designed to protect pregnant and menstruating woman from exhibits which Maori, New Zealand’s indigenous people, believed could hurt them. “Pregnant women are sacred and the policy is in place to protect women from these objects,” she said. (AFP)

Charged over speeding clip

Israeli traffic police are apparently now patrolling the web, with a man facing charges after being caught speeding... on Facebook.

The 23-year-old man was charged with speeding and reckless endangerment after police came across a video posted on Facebook of him driving at 260 kph along Israel’s coastal highway, Ynet news website said yesterday.

The driver was charged in a traffic court in the northern city of Acre, even though police could not say when the incident occurred nor identify the car he was driving.

The only basis for charging him was a video posted by his friends on the social networking website that showed the speedometer reaching 260 kph on a road where the speed limit was 90.

His two friends, who were encouraging him to go faster and filming him as he drove, were also charged with encouraging a crime, Ynet said. (AFP)

Crocodile Dundee pub up for sale

The outback Australian pub that featured in the 1980s hit movie Crocodile Dundee is to be sold because the current owner wants a break from working in the tourist attraction.

The Walkabout Creek Hotel, in the small community of McKinlay in the northeast state of Queensland, attracts hundreds of people each day as they travel the highway between Brisbane and Darwin.

“I’ve been running it for 23 years, it’s time for a change and a break, publican Paul Collins told AFP.

Mr Collins said he loved working in the remote location, but it would take a special kind of person to take on the 18-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week job.

The hotel, which was built in 1900, served as a location in the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee when it was then known as the Federal Hotel.

After the release of the film, which centred on a knife-brandishing bush hero played by Paul Hogan, its name was changed to the Walkabout Creek Hotel, as it appeared in the movie. (AFP)

Calls police after public bar lock-in

A sleepy New Zealander who staged an unplanned one-man lock-in at his local pub had to call police to release him, it was reported yesterday.

Staff at the Coach and Horses Inn in the South Island town of Lawrence somehow missed the 42-year-old as they were closing up early on Sunday morning and left him snoozing at the bar, the Otago Daily Times reported.

It said the man woke up at 5.30 a.m. and called police to let him out, fearful he would trigger alarms if he tried to exit by himself.

After scouring the town for someone with a key to the hotel, police turned up 90 minutes later and found the man asleep on a couch in the public bar with a bottle of beer next to him.

Police said the first thing the man did was to offer to pay for the beer, which he took after he realised he was in for a long night.

He was not charged and was given a ride home by police. (AFP)

Official jailed over Van Gogh theft

A senior Egyptian cultural official was among 11 people jailed for three years yesterday for negligence after the theft of a Van Gogh painting from a Cairo museum, a judicial source said.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers, also known as Vase with Flowers, was stolen in August in a brazen daytime heist from the Mahmud Khalil museum in a case that highlighted major security lapses in cultural institutions.

The head of the Culture Ministry’s fine arts sector, Mohsen Shaalan, and Reem Bahir, the museum’s director, as well as nine other officials were convicted of negligence. The Dutch masterpiece, valued at more than €36 million, was cut out of its frame.

Investigations found that the museum had reduced the number of guards and that most of the surveillance cameras were not working. (AFP)

Driven to distraction

A Chicago man took matters into his own hands by getting behind the wheel of an ambulance as paramedics worked on one of his relatives in the back.

Jimmy McCoy, 27, “probably thought he was helping” when he drove the ambulance as his family member was being treated for a diabetic collapse, a fire department spokesman said.

Mr McCoy was charged with unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle. (PA)