KANCHANABURI, Thailand – Thai police have charged 22 people, including three Buddhist monks, with wildlife trafficking and removed more dead animals including a bear and a leopard from the infamous Tiger Temple, authorities said on Friday.

The temple in Kanchanaburi province, west of the capital, Bangkok, has been a major tourist attraction for more than two decades, with visitors paying 600 baht (S$27) admission to pose for photographs with the tigers.

Wildlife activists have accused the temple of illegally breeding the tigers while some visitors on online forums complained that the tigers appeared sedated.

The temple denies the accusations.

Adisorn Nuchdamrong, from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, said 22 people had been charged with wildlife possession and trafficking, including 17 members of the temple’s foundation and three monks trying to flee with a truckload of tiger skins.

It followed the grim discovery on Wednesday of the bodies of 40 tigers cubs inside a freezer.

Thai officials continues removal of tigers from controversial temple

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AFP, Reuters, The Nation/ANN

It remains unclear why the dead tiger cubs were being stored, though tiger bones and body parts are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

“We’ve confiscated all the hard disks of closed circuit cameras in this temple for police to find evidence of wrongdoing,” Adisorn said.

The temple officially opened in 1994 close to a wild tiger habitat. It received its first tiger cub, which had been found by villagers, in 1999.

The cub died soon after but villagers kept bringing cubs to the temple, usually when the mothers had been killed by poachers, the temple said.

Repeated efforts to shut down the temple have been blocked by the monks.

Thailand is a well-known trafficking hub of illicit wildlife products, including ivory.

Thailand’s wildlife department began raiding the temple on Monday. There were 137 tigers inside the temple and 119 have been removed.

The World Wildlife Fund said in April that the number of wild tigers in the world stands at around 3,890, with more than 100 wild tigers in Thailand.

A university student in Taiwan has caused a stir after she posted photos of a certain body part online.

No, it’s not what you think – the images are hardly salacious.

What’s got everyone talking are her unusually long toes, which some say resemble fingers.

Her post has attracted more than 11,000 reactions on Facebook and attracted some 1,500 comments to date.

She posted the photos on Dcard’s Facebook page on May 28. Dcard is an online community for university students.

She even shows off her impressively flexible toes in one image, where her toes are tightly interlaced like fingers.

Taiwanese student’s toes as long as fingers

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facebook

In the post, she says that she is not tall, and stands at 151cm, but feels her toes are disproportionately long.

Since she was a child, her unusually long digits have attracted attention whenever she wears open-toe shoes or slippers.

She added that people would gawk at her as if she was an animal, and some have even asked if she “did not evolve properly”.

The good-natured woman however, does not seem to have taken the remarks to heart, punctuating her sentences with smiley face emojis in her post.

“How terrifying… such long toes,” commented one user surnamed Wang.

Another user, Pool Chang, commented that she “could hardly tell the difference (between the toes and fingers) anymore.”

The Taiwanese student with unusually long toes wrote in her post that she has even encountered people who have asked her to send them her used socks – presumably, because they have a foot fetish.

Growing up, she thought her toes were normal, as both her parents have really long digits as well, she wrote. In fact, the first time she saw other people’s toes, she thought to herself: “What short toes they have!”

“As I got older, I realised I was the weird one,” she said.

xiuhuil@sph.com.sg

Forget Ip Man. Here’s a renowned gongfu grandmaster who is still punching, kicking and fighting at 93.

Meet Madam Zhang Hexian, a martial arts master who has been practising gongfu since the tender age of three. Known as a living legend in Dongyuan village, near Ningbo at Zhejiang province in China, Madam Zhang is widely respected in her village and even has a history of dealing with criminals.

But besides her disciplinary life of waking up at 4am to practice gongfu for two hours each day, Madam Zhang also helps out in the fields and walks 3km to the market and back, reported Women of China.

What’s impressive is that Madam Zhang is said to have never fallen ill or plagued by diseases, and usually recovers from a cold quickly by having sound sleep.

Her 53-year-old son, Feng Chuanyin, who also practises gongfu, said: “She’s always in perfect health. She’s never been to the hospital one single time.”

Madam Zhang also has a healthy appetite for food and was said to have eaten a plate of eight whole crabs by herself. She refuses to take healthcare supplements and insists that ordinary food is enough for her body. She believes that the aim of practising gongfu is to build a strong body and fight against evil.

Her willingness to help people in need is also another reason for her reputation in town.

“We have to care for others. Never take advantage of others. We need to carry forward in goodness and kindness. You think you’re invincible. No one is capable of being your rival.

“However, invincibility is meaningless,” said Madam Zhang.

China’s 93-year-old gongfu grandma

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Ruptly

klim@sph.com.sg