■ INDIA
`Sex lighters' not for kids
Police in the south said they arrested a man on Tuesday for selling adolescents a "sex lighter" that displays a nude woman when ignited. S. Sreejith, superintendent of police in Kottayam in Kerala, said the arrest happened after a parent complained that a boy had given his daughter one of the lighters as a gift. Sreejith said the man, who has not been identified, could face a one-year prison term.
■ CHINA
Students boycott canteens
Students at universities in the south are boycotting school canteens to protest against rising food prices, students said yesterday. Students at Sun Yat-sen University, one of the top universities in Guangdong, called for a boycott of canteen food. "There are a lot of complaints from students about food, such as the price is too high, the quantity is too small and the food itself is not tasty," a senior-year student said by telephone. Other universities, including South China University of Technology, launched similar boycotts this month, a student said.
■ AUSTRALIA
Sexcapade break-in solved
It was a stick up of a different kind for one intruder, who broke into a neighbor's house and played sex games in the bathroom with a bottle of toilet detergent and a vacuum cleaner. A court in the northern city of Brisbane heard how 27-year-old Jamie Lacey, high on drugs, broke into the house in September 2004, scattering pornographic magazines around the bathroom and making a sex toy from a bottle of detergent, a piece of wood and a rubber glove, the Brisbane Times reported. Lacey was arrested after police matched his DNA to that on the rubber glove, according to the Australian Associated Press. Lacey was sentenced to 12 months' community service.
■ UNITED STATES
Seattle welcomes the `SLUT'
Officially it's the South Lake Union Streetcar. Within Seattle's old Cascade neighborhood, part of the area to be served by the new line, it is popularly known as the South Lake Union Trolley -- or SLUT, also an offensive term for a promiscuous woman. At Kapow! Coffee, 100 T-shirts bearing the words "Ride the S.L.U.T." sold out in days and another 100 are on order. "We're welcoming the SLUT into the neighborhood," Jerry Johnson, 29, a part-time bartender, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper. Trolley tracks have been laid downtown and project officials say the US$50.5 million project should be completed and streetcars running in December.
■ UNITED STATES
Alcohol ban lifted
For the first time in more than a century, beer and wine by the glass will go on sale in a small, conservative city in Michigan with the granting of a liquor license to a pizzeria. "We could be serving in six to eight weeks," Vitale's Pizza co-owner Ryan Snyder told the Grand Rapids Press for a story on Tuesday. Zeeland is a 6,000-member community with a conservative Dutch heritage, about 32km southwest of Grand Rapids. In November, voters approved an end to the 104-year-old alcohol sales ban, 1,425 to 1,385. Turnout was 73 percent.
■ UNITED STATES
Sex blamed for car crash
A 22-year-old carnival worker in Moscow, Idaho, blames two friends having sex in the back seat of his car for an accident in which the car struck a telephone pole. Joshua Frank pleaded guilty on Monday to a misdemeanor charge of failing to notify a police officer of a traffic accident. He left the vehicle at the site of the crash. He was fined US$188, the Lewiston Tribune reported. According to a probable cause affidavit, Frank told police the actions in the backseat caused the car, which "was top heavy anyway," to become "tippy" and lose control. Frank had a minor head wound. The two in the backseat were treated for injuries.
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