It’s Death To All Egyptian Pigs

Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country as a precaution against swine flu even though no cases have been reported, infuriating farmers who blocked streets and stoned vehicles of Health Ministry workers who came to carry out the government’s order.

The measure was a stark expression of the panic the deadly outbreak is spreading around the world, especially in poor countries with weak public health systems. Egypt responded similarly a few years ago to an outbreak of bird flu, which is endemic to the country and has killed two dozen people.

At one large pig farming center just north of Cairo, scores of angry farmers blocked the street to prevent Health Ministry workers in trucks and bulldozers from coming in to slaughter the animals. Some pelted the vehicles with rocks and shattered their windshields and the workers left without killing any pigs.

“We remind Hosni Mubarak that we are all Egyptians. Where does he want us to go?” said Gergis Faris, a 46-year-old pig farmer in another part of Cairo who collects garbage to feed his animals. “We are uneducated people, just living day by day and trying to make a living, and now if our pigs are taken from us without compensation, how are we supposed to live?”

Most in the Muslim world consider pigs unclean animals and do not eat pork because of religious restrictions. One Islamic militant Web site carried comments saying swine flu was God’s revenge against “infidels.”

Cruise Ships Skip Mexican Ports

Carnival Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line have suspended stops at Mexican ports over concerns about swine flu.

Carnival said on its Web site it has canceled all calls at Mexican ports through May 4, and in many cases will be able to substitute the canceled stop with an alternative port.

Royal Caribbean had said it was monitoring the situation but telling passengers not to worry because the outbreaks are inland, not in the Mexican coastal cities popular with cruise tourists. But later the company said it was suspending port calls indefinitely in Mexico until more is known about the swine flu outbreak.

The move affects its Royal Caribbean International and Celebrity Cruises ships.

Norwegian is canceling Norwegian Pearl’s final two calls in Mexico after saying earlier that it was monitoring the situation and asking passengers about their health before cruises start but keeping the trips.

Norwegian’s schedules do not include any other ports in Mexico until the end of September 2009, the company said.

Flushable Wipes Not So Flushable

Sitka, Alaska officials are asking residents not to flush the so-called flushable wipes down the toilet.

The city has had to divert wastewater workers away from regular duties to untangle messes in sewer machinery. The wipes can clog and sometimes disable lift station pumps in town and at the treatment plant, requiring some equipment to have to be pulled and cleaned.

City Environmental Superintendent Mark Buggins said his workers have been four or five times as busy in recent months removing baby wipes and a towel product that markets itself as “flushable.”

Buggins said “it’s a real drain” on manpower.

Watch Thieves Hide Behind Flu Masks

Three armed thieves wore the blue surgical masks now ubiquitous in flu-hit Mexico City to hide their faces as they robbed watches from a department store, Mexican media reported.

Employees and security guards at a branch of the Sanborns department store told the daily Excelsior the thieves were able to slip through the shop without attracting attention as they blended into a sea of masked shoppers.

One of the robbers threatened store assistants with a gun while another guarded the door and the third helped himself to watches from the jewelry department.

Mexico is in the grip of a new strain of flu that has killed up to 149 people and set off a major global health scare after infecting people in the United States, Canada and Europe, raising fears of a flu pandemic.

Banks in the Mexican capital have been forced to abandon normal rules over not letting in customers wearing face coverings as the government took emergency measures over the weekend and advised residents in the crowded city to wear face masks at all times outside their homes.

Dutch Senior Arrested Smuggling Cocaine In Oranges

 The elderly man claimed he needed the oranges in his suitcase to keep up his vitamin C level, but Italian police soon realized the “C” stood for cocaine.

Customs officers in Rome arrested a 76-year-old Dutch man who tried to smuggle in more than 13 pounds (six kilograms) of cocaine packed into oranges that had been emptied of their pulp.

The man arrested on international drug trafficking charges at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport had arrived from Buenos Aires, Argentina and said he was on his way back to the Netherlands after a vacation.

Police at the airport said the drugs would have had a street value of euro5 million ($6.6 million).

In a separate bust, police arrested five Italians and a man from Paraguay when they seized more than 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of cocaine concealed in the trunks of tropical plants shipped from Argentina to a northern Italian port.

13th Annual Travel Hot List Released

Hotels and resorts from Israel, Mongolia, Peru, Slovenia and Zimbabwe made it onto Conde Nast Traveler’s 13th annual “Hot List” in the magazine’s May issue.

None of those countries had ever been represented before on the list, which includes lodging, restaurants, nightclubs and spas from 53 countries around the world.

The list is compiled by Conde Nast Traveler editors who visit and evaluate each establishment according to a standard set of criteria.

Forty-three of the hotels on the list are under $250 a night.

U.S. properties named to the list include the newly reopened Fontainbleau in Miami Beach, the Greenwich Hotel in New York and Montage Beverly Hills in California but the hot hotels are not only to be found in New York, L.A. and Miami. The list also includes Avia in Savannah, Ga., the Hidden Pond in Kennebunkport, Maine, the Hotel Ivy in Minneapolis, The Nines in Portland, Ore., Hotel Saint Cecilia in Austin in Texas, the Iron Horse Hotel in Milwaukee, and the Arctic Club Hotel, Seattle, Wash.

U.S. restaurants on the “Hot Tables” list include Kogi BBQ in Los Angeles; Zinnia, San Francisco; Sra. Martinez, Miami; Cochon Butcher, New Orleans; Hungry Mother, Cambridge, Mass.; Wazuzu, Las Vegas; Zahav, Philadelphia; and Poppy in Seattle.

Internationally, the list includes Hotel Montefiore in Tel Aviv, Israel; the Terelj Hotel in Gorkhi-Terelj National Park in Mongolia; in Peru, Las Casitas del Colca in Colca Canyon and La Casona Inkaterra in Cuzco; Kempinski Palace in Portoroz, Slovenia, and in Zimbabwe, Singita Pamushana Lodge in the Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve.

America’s Best Restroom Is In Nashville

The Hermitage Hotel has afternoon tea in the grand lobby. Down-filled duvets (that’s a fancy word for comforters).  A presidential suite with 2,000 square feet.  And a really nice toilet.

So nice, in fact, that it’s been voted (drum roll please) America’s best restroom.

Flush in the middle of downtown Nashville, the luxury hotel and its ground-floor men’s bathroom are definitely the head (so to speak) of the class.

The redoubtable restroom is art-deco style with gleaming lime-green-and-black leaded glass tiles, lime-green fixtures, terrazzo floor and a two-seat shoeshine station.

“You just can’t find anything like it anywhere else,” says Janet Kurtz, director of sales and marketing at the hotel.

The restroom won the honor in online voting sponsored by Cincinnati-based Cintas Corp., which supplies restroom hygiene products and services. The company says “tens of thousands” of people voted over two months last summer. Precise numbers are kept, well, private.

Criteria were hygiene, style and access to the public. The highfalutin honor has earned the restroom entry to “America’s Best Restroom Hall of Fame.”

“People see it and fall in love with it,” Kurtz said.

It has four stools, three urinals, four sinks, spotless mirrors and a Sultan telephone that connects to the front desk.

Facebook Surfing While Sick Costs Woman Her Job

A Swiss insurance worker lost her job after surfing popular social network site Facebook while off sick, her employer confirmed.

The woman said she could not work in front of a computer as she needed to lie in the dark but was then seen to be active on Facebook, which insurer Nationale Suisse said in a statement had destroyed its trust in the employee.

“This abuse of trust, rather than the activity on Facebook, led to the ending of the work contract,” it said.

The unnamed woman told the 20 Minuten daily she had been surfing Facebook in bed on her iPhone and accused her employer of spying on her and other employees by sending a mysterious friend request which allows access to personal online activity.

Nationale Suisse rejected the accusation of spying and said the employee’s Facebook activity had been stumbled across by a colleague in November, before use of the social network site was blocked in the company.

Flying Chihuahua Reinited With Owners

Tinker Bell has been reunited with her owners after a 70-mph gust of wind picked up the six-pound Chihuahua and tossed her out of sight.

Dorothy and Lavern Utley credit a pet psychic for guiding them to a wooded area nearly a mile from where 8-month-old Tinker Bell had been last seen. The brown long-haired dog was dirty and hungry but otherwise OK.

The Utleys, of Rochester, had set up an outdoor display at a flea market in Waterford Township, 25 miles northwest of Detroit. Tinker Bell was standing on their platform trailer when she was swept away.

Dorothy Utley tells The Detroit News that her cherished pet “just went wild” upon seeing her.

Don’t Call It ‘Swine’ Flu In Israel

Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman declared that Israel would call the new potentially deadly disease that has already struck two continents ‘Mexican Flu,’ rather than ‘Swine Flu, as pigs are not kosher.

“We will call it Mexican flu.  We won’t call it swine flu,” Litzman told a news conference, assuring the Israeli public that authorities were prepared to handle any cases.

Under Jewish dietary laws, pigs are considered unclean and pork is forbidden food, although the non-kosher meat is available in some stores in Israel.

Two cases of suspected swine flu have been detected in Israel, but Health Ministry officials have said chances are low that either hospitalized men has actually contracted the disease.

Both men, one 47 years old and the other 26, were quarantined after checking into hospital with flu-like symptoms upon their return from Mexico.