Police say 40-year-old Thomas Infante walked into the bank and gave a staff member a note saying, “Be Quick…Give your cash or I’ll shoot”.

He got $400 (£270), but left behind half of his note as he fled.

Detectives found the rest of the slip - complete with his name and home address - outside the bank’s front doors.

Mr Infante was later arrested at his home in Cary, Illinois. If convicted of bank robbery, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

Robbery suspect left his address

For the first week of the year - and longer if people seem to be smiling back - highway policemen in Thailand will wear the masks “to lift the mood of motorists,” according to police officials.

“For our highway policemen, we have the policy that the police must be friendly and smiling all the time, but the problem is, when we’re tired, it’s hard to keep smiling,” said Colonel Somyos Promnim, the Highway Police commander.

It has been a rough year in Thailand, with revolving governments, restless mobs and a weeklong takeover of Bangkok’s airports that frightened away tourists from the country that keeps on calling itself “The Land of Smiles.”

“They have to put on a mask because a smile doesn’t come naturally anymore,” said Ammar Siamwalla, an economist who keeps a close eye on the mores of his countrymen. “Normally people smile. You don’t have to put on a smiley mask.

Today in Asia & Pacific

Tokyo Tower goes from futuristic hope to symbol of the good old days

U.S. plans alternate supply routes to Afghanistan

India may dry up as source of extra Catholic priests

“But these past few years that smile has worn thin because we are all angry at each other and willing to show it.”

It is a complicated thing, the Thai smile, as varied, nuanced and eloquent as the bow in Japan, and apparently requiring just as many muscles.

Foreign visitors are charmed, but the truth is, it can often be as difficult to know what is behind the Thai smile as it is to guess the real expression of a police officer hiding behind a smiley mask.

Happiness or sadness, regret or anticipation, triumph or embarrassment, warmth or wickedness, the important thing - and apparently sometimes the hardest thing nowadays - is just to keep on smiling.

Earlier this month a leading polling agency, Abac, spent three days questioning 2,079 people in the Bangkok area and found that on a scale of 1 to 10, people gave Thailand only 5.77 points for being the Land of Smiles.

“People forget to smile, you know,” said Kritika Kongsompong, a professor of business who for a year was Thailand’s public curmudgeon as the grim host of the television import The Weakest Link.

“I think with better training we can do a better job,” she said, noting that one customer service company had given its employees mirrors in which to practice their smiles. “Training should always be one of the top categories for anybody.”

In dour Singapore, where social engineering is often attempted by fiat, people walked around smiling for a while a few years back in response to a campaign called Smile Singapore.

In Japan, where people can sometimes get carried away by the seriousness of life, workers have been trained to hold a chopstick in their teeth to produce the living equivalent of a smiling emoticon.

Now Thailand is attempting to live up once again to what might be a national motto, by way of the musical “Bye Bye Birdie” - “Just put on a happy face! Put on a happy face. Put on a happy face.”

Starting out his new administration, the already embattled prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva - the fourth prime minister this year - made a promise to his people this month: “I will prove that once again Thailand can be the land of the free, the land of opportunities, and the land of  smiles.”

The highway police seem to be as good a place to start as any.

The new cloth masks, which hook behind the ears and cover the mouth and nose, will help “reduce the stress from drivers when they see the police,” said Somyos, the Highway Police commander.

To that end, he said, some 200 police booths would also distribute holy water, chewing gum and mints.

He defended his force when asked why drivers needed smiley masks and gum and holy water to calm down when approached by a patrolman.

“The police are not that scary,” he said. “When I was in the United States, their highway police seemed to be more fierce than Thai police. I was scared of them.”

To lift motorists, smiley masks for Thai police

Man spends days unnoticed in Pa. family’s attic

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - A burglar who broke into a house claims he was held captive by a “supernatural figure” for three days without food and water, officials said.

Police official Abdul Marlik Hakim Johar told The Star newspaper the house’s owners found the 36-year-old man fatigued and dehydrated when they returned from vacation Thursday.

He says they called an ambulance to take him to a hospital.

Father Antonio Rungi, of Mondrag-one, near Naples, said he expected at least 1,000 nuns to enter the Sister Italia contest. It would run online at first, but he hoped that it would become a “real pageant” along the lines of the annual Miss Italy contest.

Father Rungi, a moral theologian with his own blog, said that the nuns would not wear swimsuits or revealing outfits. What he valued most in a woman was “inner beauty”. Asked for his feminine ideal, he replied: “Well, I would say Sophia Loren.”

The contestants must be aged between 18 and 40, and can be either full members of an order or novices. Father Rungi said that he expected many who applied to be young, attractive — and non-Italian. He said: “Do you really think nuns are all wizened, funereal old ladies? Today it’s not like that any more, thanks to an injection of youth and vitality brought to our country by foreign girls.” He said there were nuns from Africa and Latin America who were “really very, very pretty. The Brazilian girls above all.”

Priest Antonio Rungi wants beauty contest - for nuns

Two British doctors investigated the phenomenon after reading of a middle-aged patient who had uncontrollable sneezing fits when he thought of sex.

They unearthed evidence, via internet chat rooms, of 17 others - of both sexes - with the same problem.

The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine study suggests it may be down to a mix-up in brain circuitry.

The researchers, Dr Mahmood Bhutta and Dr Harold Maxwell, also uncovered three people who claimed to sneeze after orgasm.

Dr Bhutta, a specialist in ear, nose and throat medicine at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, said the phenomenon could be more widespread than thought and might even be inherited.

He said: “It certainly seems odd, but I think this reflex demonstrates evolutionary relics in the wiring of a part of the nervous system called the autonomic nervous system.

“This is the part beyond our control, and which controls things like our heart rate and the amount of light let in by our pupils.

“Sometimes the signals in this system get crossed, and I think this may be why some people sneeze when they think about sex.”

Sneezing ‘can be sign of arousal’

The fire at the humane society shelter in Oshawa also killed three dogs and some rats that were up for adoption.

An initial report from the fire marshal says mice or rats chewing through electrical wires in the ceiling are likely to have sparked the blaze.

Offers of help have been pouring in from animal lovers across Canada.

“It’s unfortunate and ironic that mice caused the fire that killed the cats,” Toronto Humane Society spokesman Ian McConachie told the BBC News website.

“Unfortunately, the mice probably perished in the fire as well,” he added.

The $250,000 (£137,000) fire is still under investigation by the Ontario Fire Marshal’s office.

Mr McConachie said it would be some days before a final report would be released.

In all, only nine dogs, two cats and one rat were rescued in Wednesday’s early morning blaze.

They are being housed in a nearby municipal shelter, while volunteers rebuild the burnt-down shelter for the Humane Society of Durham Region.

Mice suspected in deadly cat fire

A Florida pizza delivery man who was challenged by armed robbers in the city of Miramar got in first with his own weapon - a large pepperoni pizza.

Eric Lopez Devictoria, 40, flung the piping hot pizza at the gunman, then turned on his heels and ran.

He made a safe getaway, according to the Florida Sun-Sentinel, despite one shot being fired as he fled.

Police later arrested three teenage suspects, who have been charged with armed robbery.

US man uses pizza in self-defence

Mei Lanfang, one of the most famous Peking Opera artists, developed and created many beautiful finger patterns as well as colorful make-up. International opera fans used to say that his hands had a kind of “intoxicating beauty”.

Peking Opera performers make expressive movements with their hands, such as smoothing a beard, adjusting a hat, jerking a sleeve while raising a foot. These all convey particular emotions.

A trembling body indicates extreme anger while the flicking of a sleeve expresses disgust. If an actor throws his hand above his head and flicks his sleeves back, he is astonished or surprised and an actress demonstrates embarrassment by covering her face with one sleeve.

Some of the movements are less easily understood. For instance, if an actor quickly grasps his sleeves and then promptly puts his hands behind his back in a determined manner, this indicates he is bracing himself for something important.

Let your fingers do the talking

Machines with heated seats, built-in bidets and a dynamic range of flushing options are almost ubiquitous in homes and public buildings.

A poem recently published by a stressed-out salary man captured their comforting appeal with haiku-like brevity. “The only warmth in my life is the toilet seat,” he mourned.

But lavatories here can do much more than keep you warm. One even sends a tiny electrical charge through the user’s buttocks to check their body-fat ratio.

The art of the toilet in Japan

 Asher, 52, of Redland City was booted from the Wynnum Golf Club men’s team after members got upset when they found out he was taking hormones in preparation for a sex-change procedure, The (Brisbane) Courier-Mail reported Saturday.

It took an emergency meeting at the club but Asher was given permission to play for the ladies team, a move that’s just fine by him, the newspaper said.

“It feels as though everything is right at last,” said Dasher, whose wife and 27-year-old son are standing by him. “It was hard when certain male members were trying to kick me out of the club, but the women have been absolutely lovely.”

He’s already refigured his handicap playing from the women’s tees.

Still, some members won’t play while he is on the course. And then there’s the issue off his using the women’s toilet and shower facilities since his transformation to female isn’t yet complete.

Aussie golfer’s sex change rankles team