■ JAPAN
Worker smashes up office
A disgruntled worker smashed up his employer's office in a fit of pique after his boss ignored his gift of jellies, the Asahi Shimbun reported yesterday. An Osaka court heard that the 31-year-old man, who worked for an online clothing sales firm, had given the company president a box of jelly desserts in the summer as a mark of gratitude after landing the job, the report said. When the employee realized that his boss had left the box of jellies unopened under his desk, he smashed 22 computers in the office with a truncheon, the paper said. "I wish the company president had cared a little more," the paper quoted the employee's lawyer as saying.
■ INDONESIA
Suspension bridge mulled
The government is mulling a suspension bridge over the 30km strait separating the islands of Java and Sumatra, in what would be a major engineering feat in the earthquake-prone region, media reports said yesterday. The governors of the provinces at either end of the Sunda Strait and a local engineering firm agreed to conduct a feasibility study into the bridge, which would be one of the world's longest, the Jakarta Post and other media said. The rail and road bridge would cost about US$10 billion, and if the project gets a go-ahead, the construction would start in 2012, the reports said, quoting government officials.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Grandmother gets `Pumpkin'
A child allegedly abandoned by her fugitive father as he fled her mother's murder will live in China after a court yesterday granted custody to her grandmother. Qian Xun Xue, 3, who became known as "Pumpkin" after the make of clothing she was wearing when found abandoned and crying for her mother at a train station in Melbourne last month. Chief Family Court Judge Peter Boshier in Auckland yesterday granted custody of the girl, who has been in welfare care, to her grandmother Xiaoping Liu.
■ INDONESIA
Marriage lawsuit thrown out
The nation's top court ruled on Wednesday against a businessman who filed a lawsuit arguing that the marriage law was unconstitutional because it prohibited him from wedding multiple partners. Islamic teachings allow men to take up to four wives, but in the world's most populous Muslim nation polygamous marriages are only recognized by religious authorities and do not grant legal inheritance and parenting rights to all wives. The Constitutional Court said it threw out a claim that the nation's marriage act violated the constitutional protection of religious freedoms and should be amended. "The marriage act ... is not in contravention of Islamic teachings," the court ruling said in a posting on its Web site.
■ PHILIPPINES
Activist shot dead
An anti-mining activist was shot dead during a protest outside a nickel exploration project on Sibuyan island, environmentalists said yesterday. Arman Marin, 42, was leading a small group of protesters outside the site when they were confronted by armed security guards. The mine's foreign partner, Pelican Resources, recently signed a deal to supply some 500,000 tonnes of nickel over five years to Australian-based BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining concern. The Kalikasan Peoples Network for the Environment said one of the guards opened fire and hit Marin repeatedly. Marin died en route to hospital, the group said. Police said the gunman was still at large.
RSS