Police officers across the Bangladeshi capital are donning wigs and wearing women's clothing to catch criminals targeting females on the city's streets.
"We took this unusual move because of rising crime in the city and it is working," deputy police commissioner Imtiaz Hossain said.
"In the past four days we have arrested some 60 wanted muggers who have been targeting our officers thinking they are women civilians."
The specially formed teams across Dhaka, nicknamed "burka squads" after the Muslim female garment, are helping to catch muggers, bag snatchers and pickpockets, which are on the increase in the city.
Some male officers wear full burkas, while others opt for wigs to disguise themselves as women at busy intersections and crowded places where most of the crimes occur. (AFP)
Flu shuts schools, Karaoke clubs fill up
Hundreds of Japanese students whose schools have been closed this week to contain a swine flu outbreak have instead flocked to karaoke parlours with their friends.
Authorities in and around Osaka and Kobe cities have shut more than 4,000 schools, kindergartens and colleges after the first swine flu cases were confirmed Saturday and the number of infected reached 178 by Tuesday.
Tens of thousands of students have been asked to stay away from schools and avoid leaving home if possible - but many teenagers are clearly bored.
An Osaka prefecture official said: "We've asked schools to close down and let students stay at home unless there's a special need to go out." (AFP)
Compulsive gambler sues casino
A compulsive Australian gambler banned from Sydney's casino blew more than two million dollars (US$1.5 million) on the card tables in a neighbouring state in just 43 minutes, a court heard.
High-flying property developer Harry Kakavas is suing Melbourne city's Crown Casino in the Supreme Court of Victoria for facilitating his pathological betting, despite knowing he had a problem.
Mr Kakavas, 42, was banned by Sydney police from attending the local Star City Casino and he claims the exclusion order should have been enforced Australia-wide. Instead, his lawyers said rival casino Crown knowingly offered to fly Kakavas to Melbourne on at least 14 occasions and left him gift boxes of 50,000 dollars in "lucky money" on the private jet to help him gamble.
If Crown Casino is found to have breached the Casino Control Act by allowing Mr Kakavas to gamble it could also be liable to pay 700 million dollars in illegally-paid winnings to the Victorian state government. (AFP)
Museum wants Parthenon relics
Greece will open a new Acropolis Museum next month, its culture minister said yesterday, with the aim of bringing back historical monuments currently exhibited in the British Museum in London.
Greece has campaigned for decades to retrieve the Parthenon sculptures from the British Museum and said they were an integral part of one of the world's most important monuments, but the British Museum has refused to return the treasures.
Hundreds of foreign dignitaries, artists and academics have been invited to the June 20 official inauguration of the museum. British Museum officials have also been invited to the lavish ceremony, expected to cost €3 million.
The British Museum contains roughly half of the 160-metre frieze that adorned the 2,500-year-old temple, removed 200 years ago by Lord Elgin, then British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire which ruled Greece at the time. (Reuters)
Russian actor Yankovsky dies at 65
Russian actor Oleg Yankovsky, who was a Soviet-era sex symbol and star in Andrei Tarkovsky's films, died in the Russian capital yesterday, aged 65.
"(He was) an actor from God," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said of Mr Yankovsky, who was born in the central Kazakh town of Jezkazgan in 1944.
His death came after a long illness with pancreatic cancer, Russian media reported.
Mr Yankovsky, a much-loved household name in Russia, became known to the West through his roles in Mr Tarkovsky's celebrated movies The Mirror in 1975 and Nostalgia in 1983.
He will be buried tomorrow in Moscow's historic Novodevichy cemetery, where Russia's first President Boris Yeltsin rests, RIA-Novosti agency reported. (Reuters)