World in brief: Polar bear cub makes debut

German polar bear fans have another star to visit.

Stuttgart’s Wilhelma zoo presented 4-month-old Wilbaer to the public on Wednesday, bringing the fluffy cub outdoors alongside his mother, Corinna.

Wilbaer made his debut just a week after the Nuremberg zoo presented its female cub, Flocke, who has been hand-raised since her mother was seen tossing the cub around her enclosure in January.

No such worries for Wilbaer, who initially stuck close by his mother when he emerged on Wednesday.

Wilbaer was born on Dec. 10, a day before Flocke. However, the zoo only announced his birth at the end of February, citing the media frenzy that surrounded the Berlin zoo’s hand-raised polar bear cub Knut last year as its reason for keeping the arrival under wraps at first.

Still, zoo officials say they have had his name – a combination of the zoo’s name and the German for bear – registered as a trademark.

Mexico City

Amount spent on bribes rising

Mexicans spent a whopping $2.58 billion in bribes in 2007, some 42 percent more than they doled out just two years ago, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The survey, conducted by the nonprofit group Transparency Mexico, showed that 197 million bribes were paid nationwide in 2007 – compared with 115 million in 2005.

That’s almost two for every living Mexican, given the country’s population of about 105 million. Bribes ate up about 8 percent of family incomes here in 2007, the study said.

The poll found that while more people are giving out bribes, the average bribe was smaller: about $13, compared with $17 in 2005.

Smaller bribes include those shelled out to avoid traffic tickets or pay off informal “parking attendants,” private citizens who block off sections of public streets and force drivers to “tip” them for giving them a space. The attendants, in turn, pay police for the right to operate.

Corruption is so pervasive in Mexican culture that many people see nothing wrong with it. A continuum runs from tipping a waiter to bribing a politician, with no clear line separating what’s acceptable and what’s not.