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TOKYO (Reuters) –
What's wrong with being naked?

That's what a Japanese TV star asked police who arrested him for public indecency when he was found drunk, naked and screaming in a Tokyo park in the early hours of the morning last week.

His words struck a chord with the public and have now become the slogan on a new range of T-shirts sold by online retailer ClubT. (http://clubt.jp/product/53243.html)

"They are definitely selling," said company spokeswoman Nanako Shibuya, who said she could not give precise figures.

Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, 34, who shot to fame 20 years ago as a member of boy band SMAP, resisted arrest and was bundled into a police vehicle wrapped in a blanket, media reports said. Police questioned him at length and also searched his home.

Prosecutors decided on Friday not to charge Kusanagi, media reports said.

But the incident has sparked sympathy for Kusanagi. Many Japanese complained the slight, serious-looking actor was treated too harshly, especially after he appeared close to tears during a news conference he called to apologise for his behaviour.

One fan threatened online to attack the Akasaka police station where he was held, the Asahi newspaper said last week.

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

TOKYO (Reuters) –
Japan's slim hopes of winning a medal at the world table tennis championships have been dashed after Ai Fukuhara made a tearful early exit.

The 20-year-old, famous for throwing temper tantrums on national television as a table tennis-playing toddler, told Japanese media on Friday her shock defeat by German veteran Elke Schall was "pathetic."

"I'm totally embarrassed," said Fukuhara, biting her lip as tears flooded down her face, after she followed her worst ever result in the women's singles by bowing out of the mixed doubles on Friday.

"It's pathetic I couldn't respond to everyone's expectations of me … I was so desperate to win I was rushing everything. I was completely clueless. That's why I lost. I'm so upset I don't know what to say."

Fukuhara had little realistic hope of ending China's dominance at the April 28-May 5 championships but was given top billing nevertheless by Japan's star-struck media.

Once the darling of the Japanese media, Fukuhara appeared regularly on TV shows as a child where she would throw tantrums and burst into tears if she lost a point to celebrities.

Earlier this year, eight-year-old Miu Hirano eclipsed Fukuhara's record by becoming the youngest player to appear at the Japanese championships.

Chinese players are expected to clean-sweep the medals in Japan, as they have at the last two world championships and last year's Beijing Olympics.

(Reporting by Alastair Himmer; Editing by Ian Ransom)

KANSAS CITY (Reuters) –
Humans have it. Pigs don't. At least not yet, and U.S. pork producers are doing everything they can to make sure that the new H1N1 virus, known around the world as the "swine flu," stays out of their herds.

"That is the biggest concern, that your herd could somehow contract this illness from an infected person," said Kansas hog farmer Ron Suther, who is banning visitors from his sow barns and requiring maintenance workers, delivery men and other strangers to report on recent travels and any illness before they step foot on his property.

"If a person is sick, we don't want you coming anywhere on the farm," Suther said.

Those sentiments were echoed by producers around the nation this week as fears of a possible global flu pandemic grew, with more than 200 people sickened, including more than 100 in the United States, and at least 177 dead, all but one in Mexico.

"There is no evidence of this new strain being in our pig populations in the United States. And our concern very much is we don't want a sick human to come into our barns and transmit this new virus to our pigs," said National Pork Producers chief veterinarian Jennifer Greiner.

"If humans give it to pigs, we don't have things like Tamiflu for pigs. We don't have antivirals. We have no treatment other than to give them aspirin," said Greiner.

The World Health Organisation on Thursday officially declared it would stop calling the new strain of flu "swine flu," because no pigs in any country have been determined to have the illness and the origination of the strain has not been determined.

The never-before-seen H1N1 flu virus has elements of swine, avian and human varieties.

PIGS BEHIND SECURITY FENCES

Still, U.S. hog farmers said flu fears have hit them hard in the wallet as hog prices plummeted this week in response. Many countries reacted to the outbreak earlier this week by banning pork or meat from U.S. states that have human cases of the flu. And Egypt ordered the slaughter of all pigs in the country as a precaution.

U.S. hog producers have already been struggling financially for more than a year due to poor prices and high feed costs. If the new flu strain does hit their herds, it could spur further price declines, and could potentially spread broadly through herds.

To try to protect against such a scenario, industry groups and veterinarians this week warned farmers to step up their biosafety protocols, keeping pigs in barns behind security fences with access by any outsiders extremely limited.

Purdue University veterinarian Sandy Amass said farmers should keep an eye on pigs for "coughing, runny nose, fever and a reduction in feed intake," and to have the animals tested immediately if they exhibit such flu symptoms.

"Pigs get flu just like people get flu," Amass said. "We're want to do everything possible so the pigs don't get infected."

For Carroll, Iowa, producer Craig Rowles that means if any of his workers feel sick, they are ordered to take time off work — paid — to keep them away from the pigs.

"It's a real issue," Rowles said. "If the pigs get it, there isn't much we can do. Water, aspirin, and bed rest, that's all we've got."

(Reporting by Carey Gillam; additional reporting by Bob Burgdorfer in Chicago, Editing by Sandra Maler)

NEW YORK (Reuters) –
Call her the modern day Goldfinger.

A New York woman was charged on Wednesday with stealing as much as $12 million (8.1 million pounds) in gold bullion and jewellery over a period of six years, lifting the ill-gotten booty from her employer by concealing the stash in the lining of her pocketbook.

The district attorney for New York City's borough of Queens said Teresa Tambunting, 50, was arraigned on Wednesday on charges of first-degree grand larceny and first-degree criminal possession of stolen property from Jacmel Jewelry.

"The defendant is accused of establishing a virtual mining operation … which siphoned off millions of dollars worth of the precious metal from her employer," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement.

In January, an inventory audit conducted at Jacmel revealed that nearly 850 pounds (386 kg) of gold merchandise worth about $12 million was unaccounted for, Brown's statement added.

After an investigation was initiated, Tambunting returned to Jacmel a suitcase containing 66 pounds (30 kg) of gold. On February 13, an additional 448 pounds (204 kg) of gold was recovered from Tambunting's residence, the DA said.

Jack Rahmey, Jacmel's president, declined to comment.

Spot gold traded at around $890 an ounce on Thursday.

(Reporting by Frank Tang; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

BERLIN (Reuters) –
Adolf Hitler is coming back to Berlin.

More than six decades after the Nazi dictator killed himself in his Berlin bunker, a character parodying Hitler will feature in the first production in Germany of the award-winning Broadway musical comedy by Mel Brooks, "The Producers."

Berlin's Admiralspalast theater — just blocks to the north of the dictator's infamous bunker — will stage "The Producers - Fruehling fuer Hitler" (Springtime for Hitler) from May 17.

It is the eagerly awaited German rendition of Brooks's record-setting musical about two men trying to create a Broadway flop that ran for six years with more than 2,500 performances. It grossed $300 million in New York and $1 billion worldwide.

Hitler was himself a patron of the same 1,700-seat Admiralspalast theater and had his own luxury "Fuehrerloge" box.

But because Hitler and the crimes of the Third Reich remain a sensitive issue in Germany, local media have questioned whether it is appropriate for Germans to laugh about Hitler.

"I think Germans are definitely ready to laugh about Hitler," said Rita Baus, the artistic director of the Admiralspalast, in an interview with Reuters in the Fuehrer Box.

"Mel Brooks has shown how totally ridiculous Hitler was and given us the chance to laugh about him. It's not just a musical comedy about the Nazis. It's a comedy about a couple of crooks. But I'm convinced it's liberating for Germans to be able laugh about Hitler."

NAZI-LIKE BANNERS

Berlin police have nevertheless already been called in by concerned local citizens evidently unable to see the humour. They complained about the ominous looking Nazi-like red banners hanging from the theater on the central Friedrichstrasse avenue.

While Nazi symbols are in general outlawed, they are allowed for "artistic" purposes. The theatre's banners look similar to the real Nazi ones, with only a black pretzel shape rather than a swastika in the center. Police have not issued a citation.

"There are moments you might wonder why you're laughing," said Baus. "It's the funniest and most disrespectful musical I've ever seen. I agree with what Mel Brooks said: there is no better place to stage 'The Producers' than Berlin."

There have been similar public debates in Germany in recent years. In 2007, Jewish director Dani Levy's "My Fuehrer — The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler," was widely criticised by the public and critics, but had a strong box office run.

As a vast majority of Germany's population was born after 1945, a self-imposed ban on mixing humour and Nazis has faded.

The musical comedy, created from Brooks's 1968 movie, won a record-breaking 12 Tony awards after it opened on Broadway in 2001 with Nathan Lane as scheming theatrical producer Max Bialystock and Matthew Broderick as his accountant Leo Bloom.

After Bloom tells Bialystock he could make more money with a flop than a hit, the down-on-his-luck producer runs with the idea. But with "Springtime for Hitler," a feel-good musical about the rise of the Nazis, the two are then undone when the hideous spectacle is embraced as a hilarious comedy.

In Berlin, ticket sales are running briskly.

While it is impossible to find anywhere in Germany that would express any pride in the fact that Hitler might have once "slept here" or "lived here" or "ate lunch here," the Berlin theater has no qualms about using Hitler's name.

"It's definitely not something to be proud of but there is no point hiding the fact that Hitler had this theater redecorated and installed the Fuehrer Box," said Lone Bech, head of the theatre's press office.

"Laughing about Hitler is a great way to take revenge."

(Editing by Mike Collett-White and Paul Casciato)

MOSCOW/YEKATERINBURG (Reuters) –
Steel workers in Russia's industrial heartland are returning to the land to dig themselves out of an economic crisis that has pushed national unemployment rates to an 8-year high.

Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works is offering 1,000 plots of land around Russia's biggest steel plant on which its employees can grow potatoes free of charge. Transport to the farms and 24-hour security will be included.

"Sowing will begin next week, weather permitting," Alexander Derunov, chairman of the steel plant's trade union committee, was quoted as saying in Magnitogorsk's in-house newspaper.

"The earth there has been fallow for seven years now. The crop should be good."

Ten percent of the Russian workforce, or 7.5 million people, were unemployed in March as the country headed into its first recession in a decade. Another 1.2 million were on unpaid leave or forced holiday, Economy Ministry data shows.

Steel makers and associated industries, such as the automotive and machine-building sectors, are most at risk from a further round of job cuts that the ministry expects will affect more than a third of all Russian companies.

"In the current situation, protecting the interests of its workers has become a pressing concern for the management," said Yevgeny Kovtunov, a spokesman for Magnitogorsk, which employs about 25,000 people in the Ural mountains city of the same name.

AVOIDING UNREST

Steering Russia through the economic crisis and avoiding mass social unrest poses a major challenge for the country's leaders, who have grown accustomed to nearly a decade of economic boom fuelled by high oil and commodity prices.

"Everyone is saying: 'Crisis! Crisis!'," said Eduard Rossel, the long-serving governor of Sverdlovsk region, home to many of Russia's metallurgical and machine-building enterprises.

"We need to gossip less about the crisis, and work harder," he told reporters.

"Give me a hammer, a saw, and in a few months I will build a house, a vegetable garden, and do everything to save myself and my family." Sverdlovsk region has 82,600 registered unemployed, more than triple the number of jobless at the beginning of October. The rate at which unemployment is growing, however, has slowed to 2-3 percent each week from 10 percent in January.

In Chelyabinsk, the neighbouring region that is home to the Magnitogorsk steel plant, 67,318 people are registered unemployed — 3.7 percent of the working population.

(Writing by Robin Paxton)

SYDNEY (Reuters) –
An Australian politician, who had bone-stretching surgery to become taller, has admitted to having the painful procedure done eight years later, saying she was self-conscious about her size.

Hajnal Ban, a local government representative in Queensland state, spoke to reporters about the procedure after local media linked her to "God Made Me Small, Surgery Made Me Tall," a book she wrote under the pseudonym Sara Vornamen and which detailed her insecurities about her height.

"I wanted to be taller. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed of it," Ban, who was 154 cm (5 feet) before surgery but is now 162 cm (5 feet 3 inches), told Reuters. "I had an insecurity and the means to fix it."

"This is no different to having breast augmentation or nose procedures," she said.

In 2001, Ban, now aged 31, spent more than eight months in a Russian orthopedics clinic, where doctors broke both her legs in several places and inserted wire rings as part of the bone-lengthening procedure.

Tired of being taunted at school and called names such as 'midget', Ban said she traveled to Russia for the procedure because it is not performed in Australia.

"It basically required one year from the time I had my operation to the time I could walk out in heels again," she said.

Limb lengthening procedures are usually used to help people born with deformities rather than for cosmetic reasons.

(Reporting by Pauline Askin, writing by Miral Fahmy, editing by Valerie Lee)

ROME (Reuters) –
Italy's first family soap opera was back on the front pages Wednesday after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's wife said his party's selection of women to run in European elections was a "shamelessly trashy" process.

Veronica Berlusconi, who has publicly lamented her husband's eye for younger women in the past, also accused him of going to the birthday bash of an 18-year-old woman in Naples but not attending the coming-of-age-parties of his own children.

Veronica, 52, who rarely appears with her husband, said she agreed with Italian newspapers' descriptions of her husband's party's choice of female candidates as "entertainment for the emperor," in what newspapers saw as a reference to him.

The latest public clash between the Berlusconis, which dominated mainstream newspaper front pages along with swine flu and Fiat's rescue of Chrysler, follows a media debate over "starlets in politics."

"Women in Politics — Veronica's Wrath," was the way La Stampa of Turin put it.

In an e-mail to Italian news agency Ansa, she praised politicians such as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then added:

"But what's happening today (in Italy) behind a front of bodily curves and female beauty is grave." She added that it offended all women and particularly those who had fought in the "frontline" for women's equality.

Her 72-year-old husband, speaking to reporters during a trip to Warsaw, said he was sorry his wife had apparently believed "what she read in the papers" and added that it was all "a campaign (against him) hyped by the leftist press."

The controversy exploded earlier this week when an on-line magazine close to Berlusconi's main conservative ally, lower house speaker Gianfranco Fini, criticizedhow center-right women candidates were being chosen for the June European elections.

COSTUME-JEWELLRY POLITICIANS

That article, seen by some media as a reference to Berlusconi's party, said women politicians could not be used like "pieces of costume jewelry" to attract votes.

Berlusconi's People of Freedom party is considering a number of former actresses and television personalities as possible candidates in the June European election, media reports say. As party leader, he has a powerful voice in who makes the list.

"Some have written that it is all part of entertainment for the emperor. I agree," Veronica said. "What is emerging from newspapers is shamelessly trashy, all in the name of power."

Berlusconi told reporters in Warsaw it was "absurd" that women who speak several languages and have several degrees should consider themselves excluded from politics just because they had been on television or in show business.

Veronica Berlusconi also took her husband to task for recently dropping in at the birthday party in Naples of an 18-year-old woman whose father is a political acquaintance.

"That surprised me very much too," Veronica said, "Even because he never came to the 18th birthday parties of his children, even though he was invited."

Berlusconi has three children with Veronica and two by his first marriage. He has been in hot water with her several times in the past in a very public way.

Two years ago, she criticized him for flirting with young starlets at a party. He later issued a syrupy public apology in the press, saying: "I beg you to forgive me."

(Additional reporting by Francesca Piscioneri in Warsaw; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) –
Fast food chain McDonald's lost a lawsuit in Malaysia on Wednesday after an appeals court overruled a decision that its trademark had been infringed by a local restaurant called McCurry.

"Where the learned judge, with respect, erred is to assume that McDonald's had a monopoly in the use of the prefix 'Mc' on a signage or in the conduct of business," Judge Gopal Sri Ram said, overturning a 2006 ruling in favor of McDonald's.

The McDonald's operation in this Southeast Asian country of 27 million people is run as franchise by prominent businessman Vincent Tan and has 185 outlets, according to the company website (www.mcdonalds.com/my).

McCurry, by contrast, serves Indian fast food from one restaurant in Kuala Lumpur as well Malaysian dishes such as fish head curry and is short for "Malaysian Chicken Curry," according to the company website (www.mccurryrecipe.com).

(Reporting by David Chance; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) –
Fast food chain McDonald's lost a lawsuit in Malaysia on Wednesday after an appeals court overruled a decision that its trademark had been infringed by a local restaurant called McCurry.

"Where the learned judge, with respect, erred is to assume that McDonald's had a monopoly in the use of the prefix 'Mc' on a signage or in the conduct of business," Judge Gopal Sri Ram said, overturning a 2006 ruling in favour of McDonald's.

The McDonald's operation in this Southeast Asian country of 27 million people is run as franchise by prominent businessman Vincent Tan and has 185 outlets, according to the company website (http://www.mcdonalds.com/my).

McCurry, by contrast, serves Indian fast food from one restaurant in Kuala Lumpur as well Malaysian dishes such as fish head curry and is short for "Malaysian Chicken Curry," according to the company website (http://www.mccurryrecipe.com).

(Reporting by David Chance; Editing by Bill Tarrant)