World Briefs

While holiday-makers sought shelter from sweltering summer heat in the Italian southern city of Palermo, one man was claiming overtime for shifting snow, the Repubblica newspaper said yesterday.

Salvatore Di Grazia claimed, and received, overtime payment for shifting snow off the streets of the island’s sunny capital throughout the summer.

Mr Di Grazia, who works for the civil protection agency in the province of Palermo, claimed 17 hours overtime for shifting snow in April, when the minimum temperature registered was 10°C. He went on to claim for 50 hours in May, 38 hours in June, 44 hours in July and 200 hours in August, when the temperature registered 30°C in the shade.

In total, Mr Di Grazia was paid for 42 hours 30 minutes overtime before the provincial authorities blocked the payments, the paper said. (AFP)

Lost chance

A woman who lost her chance for a life-saving heart transplant by continuing to commit crimes has been sentenced to more than two years in jail by a New York judge.

A judge had freed Diane McCloud in January so she could try to get on the transplant waiting list.

Long Island prosecutors say Ms McCloud stole from three pharmacies after that. She pleaded guilty to petty larceny charges last month.

Nassau District Court Judge Francis Ricigliano resentenced her to the 15 months he had forgiven her. He also added a year for the new charges.

Ms McCloud’s lawyer, Leonard Isaacs, said he had hoped for “a much better outcome”. Mr Isaacs says Ms McCloud’s doctor told him the medicine that keeps her heart pumping will eventually stop working. (AP)

Happy morning

People around the world are happiest in the morning, according to a US study yesterday that analysed hundreds of millions of messages on the microblogging site Twitter.

Cornell University sociologists used language software to detect the presence of positive words in 509 million tweets from 2.4 million users in 84 different countries over a two-year period.

Mood peaks were detected early in the day but began to dip mid-morning, about the time most people are starting their workdays.

Another positive peak was witnessed around midnight, followed by a “sharp drop in NA (negative affect, including distress, fear, anger, guilt, and disgust) during the overnight hours,” said the study in the journal Science.

The highest numbers of good mood words indicating enthusiasm, delight, activeness, and alertness were found on Saturdays and Sundays, 'which points to possible effects of work-related stress, less sleep, and earlier wake time”. (AFP)

Toilet gift

An anonymous donor has left a wad of cash worth $131,000 in a public toilet in Japan, with instructions it be used to help victims of the March earthquake and tsunami, an official said yesterday.

A plastic shopping bag, containing 10 million yen, was found on September 22 in a toilet for disabled people in the city hall of Sakado, a commuter town north of Tokyo, a city official said.

The city will give the money to the Japanese Red Cross if the anonymous donor doesn’t reclaim it within three months, city spokesman Masumi Sekiguchi said.

She said a hand-written note was attached to the cash, reading: “I’m all alone. I have no future so let the people in Tohoku use it.” (AFP)

Hidden identity

A Chinese fugitive has been discovered working as a prison warden a decade after he went on the run to escape assault charges, the Beijing News reported yesterday.

Wang Zhijia, 37, was accused of attacking his wife with a brick 10 years ago after the pair argued about a domestic issue. Police discovered this week that he was working at a prison in eastern China’s Anhui province – around 260 kilometres away from his home in central China, the newspaper reported.

Mr Wang posed as his brother to get a job as an assistant with the police force in Anhui in 2008 and began working at the jail two months ago, it said. He was caught after police checks found that two people were using the same name and identity card number. (AFP)

Sing-along science

Catchy tunes have a scientific “X-factor” which makes them sing-along hits, experts have revealed.

Researchers from Goldsmiths University of London wanted to know why certain songs inspired unabashed wedding guests and clubbers to belt out their favourites in public.

They solved the karaoke conundrum after observing thousands of volunteers as they lent their voices to a long list of tunes. Sing-along songs contained four key elements, the scientists discovered. These were: long and detailed musical phrases, multiple pitch changes in a song’s “hook”, male vocalists, and higher male voices making a noticeable vocal effort. (PA)

Purr-fect double

Frank and Louie the cat was born with two faces, two mouths, three eyes, and lots of doubts about his future.Twelve years after Marty Stevens, of Worcester, Massachusetts, rescued him from being put to sleep because of his condition, the exotic blue-eyed rag doll cat has made it into the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records.

He is the longest surviving member of a group known as Janus cats, named after the Roman god with two faces.

Mr Stevens says every day is a blessing because such cats usually survive only for a few days. The laid-back Frank and Louie loves riding in the car and taking walks on a leash. (PA)