What in the World?

Monday, October 30th, 2006
1. Charity Begins at Home?

A FATHER who set up a charity in his daughter’s name then stole £80,000 of donations has been jailed for three years. Stephen Jacobs, 53, of The Heath, Radlett, was jailed for three years on Friday as a judge branded him “despicable”. Luton Crown court was told that his daughter Kati suffered from Crohn’s disease and spent many of her teenage years in hospital enduring dozens of operations. She had a rare strain which was unresponsive to treatment but was hopeful a cure could be found. She died in 2002 but while she was still ill he set up the Kati Jacobs appeal to fund a research unit into the bowel disease at the hospital where she was treated- St. Marks in Harrow. Prosecutor Ian McLaughlin said at one charity event in 2000 he raised £73,000, using sports and showbiz contacts he had met through his work as an addiction counsellor. He gave that sum to the hospital. In the end, “This was a man who over a period of about two years siphoned off £80,000 which would have directly gone to the target charity. £63,000 had been withdrawn in cash with £17,000 being paid into his account or spent on a credit card he had sole use of,” Mr McLaughlin said. When arrested he admitted taking the cash and sometimes forging the signature of the trustee who had to countersign the cheques. He claimed the bulk of the money had gone on gambling, he having relapsed into his addiction following his daughter’s death.

2. It’s just pi e

Akira Haraguchi, 60, spent 16 straight hours on Oct. 4 reciting the value of pi from memory to 100,000 decimal places, breaking his old record of 83,431. Haraguchi, whose day job is psychiatric counselor, performed in front of officials at a public hall in Kisarazu, Japan, and rattled off the numbers continuously except for a five-minute break every hour. (In 2002, two University of Tokyo mathematicians, using a supercomputer, calculated pi to 1.24 trillion decimal places.)

3. No More Agents Orange!

With Halloween upon us I was remembering as a child and father that kids became fundraisers (as well as hell raisers) on Halloween when they hit the street with their little orange boxes for UNICEF. I guess collecting pennies has finally reached futility because the Toronto Sun reports ” UNICEF Canada launched a new approach to fundraising for the international children’s charity and a break with its 50-year tradition. Instead of the ubiquitous little orange cardboard boxes children tote to collect coins on Halloween, UNICEF is encouraging them and their families to find fresh, fun ways to support their annual trick-or-treat campaign. ” I wonder if the innocence of having kids out collecting small amounts of spare change taught them about philanthropy and sharing. Possible not when the aim of the evening was about hording a large stash of personal rewards.