CHINESE FARMER SENT TO PRISON FOR FAKING PHOTO OF A RARE TIGER

Well...it was a pretty bad fake (See left).

A Chinese farmer who claimed to have taken photos of a rare tiger was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on Saturday for faking the pictures, a court official and state media said.

Zhou Zhenglong was tried for fraud in Xunyang County People's Court in Shaanxi province Saturday morning and was sentenced a little over five hours later, the Xinhua News Agency said.

An official who answered the telephone at the court said in addition to the prison sentence, Zhou was also fined $290. She refused to give her name or any other details.

According to official media accounts, Zhou, aged 54, heard that a reward of about $146,000 had been offered to anyone who found an endangered South China tiger in the wild, where one had not been seen for more than 20 years.

Last October, he emerged from the woods in Shaanxi with his claim of a tiger sighting, plus dozens of digital photos. The provincial forestry department rewarded him with $2,900.

SAUDI WOMAN TO BE BEHEADED FOR PRACTICING WITCHCRAFT

They're making great progress over there...

A leading human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Thursday to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the kingdom's religious police who arrested and interrogated Fawza Falih, and the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence in the face of "absurd charges that have no basis in law."

Falih's case underscores shortcomings in Saudi Arabia's Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.

The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission.

Witchcraft is considered an offense against Islam in the conservative kingdom.

VET SENTENCED FOR TEARING DOWN MEXICAN FLAG

For mentally ill liberals and the ACLU, burning the American flag is free speech, but tearing down a Mexican flag being flown on American soil is a hate crime.

On September 18, 2007, veteran Peter Lynch noticed a Mexican flag hanging from a flagpole outside Scholes Hall Mondayat the UNM campust. Lieutenant Pat Davis of the UNM Police Department testified that when Lynch saw the Mexican flag flying without an American flag, which is improper flag etiguette, he first reported it to the office of UNM’s Dean of Students, then to the Officer of Veteran Affairs. They would not act on the illegal display of the Mexican flag, so Lynch took it down and tore it and took it to the Air Force ROTC office.