tokiwo (地球のB面の投稿者)

“No Coffee”: Laos’s Illegal Wildlife Shops Hidden in Budget Tours

2026-09-23 by tokiwo

On September 17, 2026, officials in Luang Prabang, one of Laos’s best-known tourist cities, met to deal with a rather unusual problem: souvenir shops.

Authorities said they had inspected 15 premises suspected of involvement in illegal wildlife-product sales, closed two shops and detained foreign suspects. They also moved against businesses that admitted only selected foreign tour groups, calling for legal shops to be accessible to ordinary customers and for tighter scrutiny of businesses linked to so-called “zero-yuan” or “zero-dollar” tours.

But trace the story backward, and it leads to a wonderfully strange clue: a reporter walked up to a place called a coffee shop and was told there was no coffee.

Laos

Mexico City’s Axolotl Boom: Everywhere in the City, Missing from the Nets

2026-09-23 by tokiwo

街じゅうウーパールーパー、野生は「捕獲ゼロ」――メキシコシティ“アホロートル化”の奇妙な現実

On June 8, 2026, just days before the FIFA World Cup opened, Mexico City appeared to be experiencing an unusual kind of wildlife boom.

The animal was the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), the salamander native to the lakes and canals of the Valley of Mexico. They were not crawling through the streets, of course. Instead, brightly colored purple and pink axolotls were turning up on murals, public art, transit vehicles, sculptures and merchandise across the city.

At almost the same time, researchers looking for actual wild axolotls in the canals of Xochimilco were confronting the opposite situation: their survey nets were coming up empty.

In the city, axolotls seemed to be multiplying everywhere. In the wild, researchers caught none. Yet when they tested the water, the animals’ DNA was still there. That contradiction is the strange reality now surrounding one of Mexico City’s most famous native animals.

Mexico

Why Was Faladdin’s Founder Arrested? How Turkey Treated Fortune-Telling Revenue as Criminal Proceeds

2026-09-22 by tokiwo

AI占いの売上はなぜ“犯罪収益”とされた？ Faladdin創業者逮捕と1925年のトルコ法

On July 16, 2025, Istanbul police carried out a cybercrime operation targeting companies behind mobile fortune-telling services. Sertaç Taşdelen, founder of the Faladdin and Binnaz platforms, was taken into custody that day and ordered into pretrial detention by a judge on July 17.

The investigation went well beyond whether fortune-telling itself was suspicious. Authorities imposed seizure measures on bank and electronic-money assets, vehicles, vessels, and company interests. Istanbul police said that two vehicles, two vessels, and assets connected to two companies were valued at roughly TRY 107.5 million.

The central allegation was more serious: prosecutors suspected that revenue generated through fortune-telling services had been presented as legitimate corporate income and then laundered through financial transactions.

But calling this a case of “someone getting arrested for using AI to tell fortunes” would be misleading. AI itself was not the stated reason for the arrest. What makes the case unusual is that a modern mobile app ended up at the intersection of a century-old Turkish law, cybercrime provisions, and money-laundering rules.

Turkey

Did a Cleaner Really Steal a Train? The Truth Behind Sweden’s 2013 Runaway Train Crash

2026-09-22 by tokiwo

「清掃員が列車を盗んで暴走」は本当だったのか？2013年スウェーデン列車事故、3日後に覆った真相

At 2:23:55 a.m. on January 15, 2013, a commuter train sitting at the Neglinge depot outside Stockholm, Sweden, suddenly began moving toward the terminus at Saltsjöbaden.

The train consisted of two C10/C11 two-car units, four cars in total. In the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority’s analysis, the consist was treated as weighing roughly 90 metric tons. It traveled about 1.7 kilometers (1.1 miles) in roughly one minute and forty seconds, accelerating to around 80 km/h (50 mph), before breaking through the buffer stop and crashing into a residential building about 30 meters (100 feet) beyond the end of the track.

Only one person was aboard: a woman who had been cleaning the train. She was seriously injured. No one else, including residents of the building, was reported injured.

The following day, Japan’s AFPBB News ran a striking headline saying that a cleaner had stolen an unmanned train, driven it at high speed and crashed it into a house.

But within three days, that “train thief” story had fallen apart.

Sweden

Freight Train Hit Amtrak Twice Near Memphis — What an 82-Car Shoving Move Really Tells Us

2026-09-21 by tokiwo

貨物列車がAmtrakに2度衝突――「ブレーキの抵抗」と思った82両の後退運転で何が起きたのか

At about 11:00 a.m. on February 22, 2026, an Illinois Central Railroad Company (IC) freight train, Z19491-21, struck a stopped Amtrak train on the same track near Memphis, Tennessee, at milepost 9.6 on the Shelby Subdivision.

The freight consisted of two locomotives and 82 railcars. Amtrak 59-21 had one locomotive and seven passenger cars, carrying 118 passengers and seven Amtrak employees. The IC train was shoving north on Main Track 1 at about 10 mph when the leading end of the freight consist reached the Amtrak locomotive.

That would already qualify as a low-speed train collision. But the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary investigation contains a second, much stranger part.

The IC crew told investigators that they interpreted the resistance from the first collision as resistance associated with an air-brake problem. They then moved forward, reversed again, and about three minutes after the first impact, struck the same Amtrak train a second time at low speed.

Two Amtrak employees and two passengers suffered minor injuries. The bigger puzzle is obvious: how does a train hit another train once, then return and hit it again? To understand that, the accident itself is only half the story. The other half is how U.S. railroads handle switching moves, restricted-speed operation and Positive Train Control.

United States

Spain’s “Trains Too Big for Tunnels”: What the 2026 Audit Found

2026-09-21 by tokiwo

In January 2023, a strange railway story emerged from Asturias in northern Spain and quickly travelled far beyond the country: Spain had ordered new trains that were too large to fit through its own tunnels.

The story concerned the former FEVE meter-gauge network serving Asturias, Cantabria and other parts of northern Spain. Renfe had commissioned new rolling stock from CAF, but the train specifications turned out to conflict with clearances around old tunnels and other infrastructure.

There was, however, a major difference between the viral version and what actually happened. When the problem became public in 2023, there was no completed fleet of 31 oversized trains. No train using the incompatible dimensions had been manufactured.

That much was already clear from the original investigation. But in May 2026, Spain’s Court of Auditors published a detailed audit of the procurement. Its findings revealed a deeper story: the real failure was not simply the size of a train.

Spain

Why Did a Nearly Empty Taiwan Home Get an NT$259,457 Electricity Bill?

2026-09-20 by tokiwo

台湾のほぼ空き家に電気代25万9457台湾ドル　なぜ300台湾ドル台が約126万円になったのか

On September 9, 2025, a post from Budai Township in Chiayi County, Taiwan, began attracting attention for a very strange reason. A traditional sanheyuan—a three-sided courtyard house that was barely occupied—had received a July–August electricity bill for NT$259,457.

The family joked that they were not exactly running a Bitcoin mine. And they were right. There was no mysterious power-hungry operation hidden inside the old house. According to Taiwan Power Company, or Taipower, the real cause was much more ordinary: a data-entry error after the electricity meter had been replaced. The correct bill was eventually reduced to just over NT$300.

Taiwan

Taipei Zoo’s 2026 Animal Escapes — A Banana Tree, a Swimming Monkey, and an Unlocked Gate

2026-09-20 by tokiwo

台北動物園で2026年に動物脱走相次ぐ――バナナの木、泳ぐクモザル、施錠ミスの「3つの出口」

In 2026, Taipei Zoo had an unusual run of animals getting outside their designated enclosures.

On May 18, a southern tamandua may have used a banana tree that snapped while she was climbing it as an accidental escape route. On July 4, a brown spider monkey jumped into the water and swam across. Then, on September 17, two chimpanzees got through doors that had not been properly secured.

The strange part is not simply that several animals escaped from the same zoo. It is that the “exit” was different almost every time. A tree, a body of water, and finally a human failure to lock a door. Put the incidents side by side, and this becomes more than a collection of quirky zoo stories.

Taiwan

Thailand’s “Black Magic Cleansing” Case: 7 Arrest Warrants and Abuse Allegations

2026-09-19 by tokiwo

Bathing in blessed water to wash away bad luck does not sound especially alarming. In Thailand, where religious practice, local custom and folk belief can overlap in everyday life, rituals of protection or purification are hardly unusual.

But on February 12, 2026, women went to Thailand’s Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) with allegations involving an undertaker in Ang Thong Province, central Thailand. They said they had undergone bathing rituals intended to remove คุณไสย (khun sai), a Thai term commonly associated with harmful magic, sorcery or “black magic,” and that sexual acts had occurred during those rituals without their consent.

On March 2, the man was arrested in Song District, Phrae Province, on seven arrest warrants issued by the Criminal Court. As investigators and local authorities examined the case, another issue emerged beside it: an infant cemetery located within the grounds of the temple where he had worked.

Thailand

Why a Thai Singer’s Monk Costume and Palad Khik Prop Became a Police Matter

2026-09-19 by tokiwo

タイでは「僧侶コスプレ」が犯罪になる？――男根形護符パラット・キックで歌手が警察沙汰になった理由

On September 13, 2026, a video from an entertainment venue in Lampang Province, northern Thailand, began circulating online. A male singer appeared onstage draped in orange cloth resembling a Buddhist monk’s robe, with a huge phallic-shaped prop hanging from his waist.

At first glance, it had all the ingredients of a bizarre viral clip destined to disappear into the internet within a day or two. Instead, the Lampang Provincial Office of Buddhism filed a complaint with police that same day, saying the performance could potentially fall under Section 206 of Thailand’s Penal Code, concerning acts that insult religion, and Section 208, concerning the unlawful impersonation of monks or other religious clergy.

On September 16, the singer and representatives of the venue went to a temple to apologize. The provincial Buddhist authorities, however, said the legal process would continue.

There is one important distinction. As of September 18, 2026, the major reports reviewed for this article did not show that the singer had been formally convicted—or even that Sections 206 or 208 had definitively been applied. At this stage, this is a police complaint and an ongoing legal matter, not a settled criminal judgment.

And then there is the object hanging from his waist. It was not simply an oversized dirty joke. It was modeled after a real Thai amulet known as the Palad Khik. That changes the story considerably. What looks obscene to an outsider can exist, in another context, as part of a long-standing protective amulet tradition.

Thailand