ODDLY ENOUGH | Pet pig returned to Pa. couple

ODDLY ENOUGH

Pet pig returned to Pa. couple

FOLSOM, Pa.

A wayward pet pig whose residency was challenged by township officials has been returned to his owners.

Steve the Vietnamese micro potbellied pig was reunited with Brian Maguire and Bernadette Broadhurst on Friday. Broadhurst says a Ridley Township commissioner personally delivered the stray swine days after he’d been taken to a farm by police.

Maguire said Steve apparently had escaped from his yard for a stroll and disappeared. When he checked with police to see if Steve had been spotted, Maguire said he was told the animal was found but sent to a farm because of a ban on keeping farm animals.

Maguire said he feared for the 6-pound, 10-week-old pig’s safety in a farm setting.

A Facebook group the couple set up following Steve’s disappearance garnered about 2,000 supporters.

International judge rules against lawyers’ wigs

THE HAGUE, Netherlands

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

A judge has asked lawyers to shed their wigs next time they appear before her at the International Criminal Court.

A handful of attorneys appeared Monday in traditional black gowns and white, horsehair wigs for a preliminary hearing in a case dealing with violence after Kenya’s disputed 2007 presidential election.

Justice Ekaterina Trendafilova paused briefly at the end of the hearing to pass a hair-raising judgment.

“This is not the dress code of this institution,” she said.

“In this quite warm weather, maybe it will be more convenient to be without wigs,” she added with a smile.

It is unusual for lawyers to appear at the International Criminal Court in wigs, but not unheard of. At least three lawyers wore wigs during the initial appearance of three Kenyan suspects April 8, without Justice Trendafilova issuing any dress-code guidelines.

Steven Kay, one of the lawyers wearing a wig Monday, said the court’s registry gave him the option of wearing Dutch lawyer’s garb or the English version of wig and gown.

“I was not aware before the proceedings of any rule that there were no wigs at the ICC,” Kay told the AP in an email.

Court spokesman Fadi El Adballah said there were no specific rules about wigs and it is up to individual judges to run their courtrooms “in a harmonious way.”

Trendafilova decided that since wigs are not mandatory, it would be better for all lawyers to have the same dress code — in this case without wigs, he added.

David Hooper, another British barrister who appeared in court Monday, did so without his wig.

In 2006, Serb nationalist Vojislav Seselj refused to accept a bewigged Hooper as a court-appointed defense lawyer because he wanted to defend himself at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.

Associated Press