Chinese farmer gets 5 days in jail for his story on alien invasion

A Chinese farmer received a five-day jail sentence after admitting to authorities that he made up a story about electrocuting an alien, reports the Telegraph.

The man, identified as Li, told authorities he was inspired by the 2011 science fiction comedy "Paul" starring Simon Pegg and Seth Rogan as the voice of the titular alien. Li created his own alien out of rubber, wire, and bone glue and then photographed it, claiming that he had electrocuted the space creature, according to a report from Reuters.

He posted a tall tale about the aliens and a UFO on a Chinese website.

"I was setting an electric trap for rabbits by the Yellow river when I saw a bright light," Li wrote, according to the Telegraph. "Above my bike, a UFO was floating. One by one, five aliens came down, but one of them stumbled into one of my rabbit traps and was electrocuted. The others went back into their ship and flew away."

The story and accompanying photos were a hit online and drew the attention of Chinese authorities. They questioned Li, who eventually admitted that he had made the whole thing up because he wanted other people to believe in little green men.

"After the police interrogated me, I confessed I was a fan of UFOs and the alien was a fake. I just wanted other people to believe that aliens existed," Li told the Shandong Evening News, according to the Telegraph.

Li was charged with disturbing the public order.

Qatar has highest density of millionaires

SOURCE: Trade Arabia News Service (http://www.linkedin.com/)

 

Qatar has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world with 143 out of every 1,000 households having private wealth of at least $1 million, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group.

 

The country is followed by Switzerland (116), Kuwait (115), Hong Kong (94), and Singapore (82). 

 

The US had the largest number of billionaires in 2012, but the highest density of billionaire households was in Hong Kong (15.1 per million), followed by Switzerland (9.4 per million), said the BCG’s annual report on the global wealth-management industry.

 

According to the report, global private financial wealth grew by 7.8 percent in 2012 to a total of $135.5 trillion. The rise was stronger than in either 2011 or 2010, when global wealth grew by 3.6 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively.

 

Wealth increased measurably in the old-world regions of North America (7.8 percent), Western Europe (5.2 percent), and Japan (2.4 percent), mainly owing to the sharp rebound in equity markets in most countries, particularly in the second half of the year. 

Meanwhile, new wealth creation fuelled stronger, double-digit growth in the new-world regions of Asia-Pacific ex-Japan (13.8 percent), Eastern Europe (13.2 percent), and Latin America (10.5 percent). 

 

Wealth in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) saw near-double-digit growth (9.1 percent). New-world regions will account for nearly 70 percent of the growth in global private wealth over the next five years.

 

The total number of millionaire households reached 13.8 million globally in 2012, or 0.9 percent of all households. The US had the largest number of millionaire households (5.9 million), followed by Japan (1.5 million) and China (1.3 million). China should surpass Japan in 2013.

 

Offshore wealth, defined as assets booked in a country where the investor has no legal residence or tax domicile, rose by 6.1 percent in 2012 to $8.5 trillion. Despite this increase, stronger growth in onshore wealth led to a slight decline—to 6.3 percent from 6.4 percent, compared with 2011—in offshore wealth’s share of global private wealth. While offshore wealth is projected to rise modestly over the next five years, reaching $11.2 trillion by the end of 2017, wealth is increasingly moving onshore due to the intense pressure that tax authorities are exerting on offshore centres, it said.