Fancy Fraud
A MAN WAS JAILED FOR DEFRAUDING LOADS OF PEOPLE OUT OF €290,000
He flew to Latin America with the money, and an escort
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A 26-year-old British man was jailed on Friday, after he’d defrauded both strangers and people he knew, under the guise of running a company for shipping container rentals.
Marcus Elliot, who’s been jailed for three years and two months, allegedly spent the money on lavish meals, flights to Latin America for him and an escort, and a speedboat that he later crashed and ditched.
“One of your victims leased 100 units to you and when you stopped paying him the monthly rent of them, he visited Hilton where there were only 29 as you had sold the others,” said the judge on Friday. “He was expecting to see 100 units and you could not be found. In fact no-one could find you after that because you galavanted off to South America with someone and having the time of your life on their money.”
Elliot had pretended to lease shipping containers that he’d in fact been selling for a profit on eBay between January 2012 and March 2014. He pled guilty to four counts of fraud.
Pizza To Go
A REALLY SAD POLAR BEAR WHO’S BEEN LIVING IN A MALL IS TO BE FREED
Sort of – Pizza the bear is temporarily headed to the ocean park where he was raised
A not-at-all-emotional video made by the group campaigning for Pizza’s release
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Pizza the polar bear earned a reputation this year as possibly the saddest bear on the planet, but is due to be moved out of his current home in a shopping mall in China.
According to Humane Society International, who’ve been campaigning for Pizza’s release, the bear is to be “temporarily” relocated to the ocean park where he was born. “It’s a good decision, the right decision for Pizza, but it’s not the end,” said the director of Capital Animal Welfare Association. “Temporary is not good enough. Now we hope that Grandview will learn from this episode and move Pizza permanently so that he never again has to endure the dreadful life in a shopping mall.”
The Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster had offered Pizza a new home in September. That could always be a Plan B.
Not Toying Around
LEGO ENDED ITS GIVEAWAY PROMOTION DEAL WITH THE DAILY MAIL
Some linked the move to a campaign on pulling ads out of right-wing papers
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On Saturday, LEGO announced it would no longer be running promotional deals with the British newspaper Daily Mail, in a move that was interpreted by campaigners as a bid to distance the toy brand from the Mail’s political stance.
LEGO did not comment on why the deal had ended, but a spokesperson said the company had listened to what children, parents and grandparents had to say. The Stop Funding Hate campaign, who lobby businesses to stop running ads with certain papers, had tweeted LEGO a link to a father’s Facebook post about his ethical concerns around buying the Mail in order to pick up free Lego for his son. Within days, the company had ended its Daily Mail freebie agreement.
“The agreement with the Daily Mail has finished,” a spokesman told the BBC, “and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with the newspaper in the foreseeable future.”
Double Act
TRUMP AND FARAGE GOT CHUMMY IN NEW YORK
They reportedly spoke about the US-UK relationship and a Churchill bust
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Nigel Farage, interim UKIP leader and an MEP presumably taking home his €947,000 per annum salary until we leave the EU, met with US president-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York on Saturday night.
The pair talked about what Farage deemed Trump’s “good ideas”, and returning one of two Winston Churchill busts to the White House – one was given to George W Bush by the British government, and considered his personal gift. The White House have owned another Churchill bust for decades, which is still there.
As well as discussing moving the bust to the Oval Office, Farage and Trump posed for a photo together in a front of the gold-gilded doorway leading to Trump’s place. They both looked very happy.