■ Malaysia
Insulting boss allowed
It's OK to use derogatory and vulgar language about your superiors in the office as long as it is done behind their backs, a court has ruled. The Industrial Court said that a secretary at Malaysia National Insurance Bhd was not guilty of misconduct when she sent e-mails from the office computer to friends, griping about her superiors, the national news agency Bernama reported on Friday. Court chairman Syed Ahmad Radzi Syed Omar said that Ratnawati Mohamed Nawawi's sacking for misconduct was unjust. The court awarded her back wages and compensation amounting to US$18,570.
■ India
Condoms too big
Condoms designed to meet size specifications used internationally are too big for many men as their penises fall short of what manufacturers had anticipated, a study has found. The Indian Council of Medical Research, a leading state-run center, said its initial findings from a two-year study showed 60 percent of men in Mumbai had penises about 2.4cm shorter than those condoms catered for. For a further 30 percent, the difference was at least 5cm. A poor fit meant the prophylactics often didn't do the job they were bought for.
■ Singapore
Containers for US screened
The government has announced measures to more closely screen shipping containers bound for the US in a move to keep nuclear material and illicit weapons from the wrong hands, a newspaper reported yesterday. The island-state already checks cargo for radioactive material and uses powerful sensors to scan steel containers. The stricter new measures, to start next month, are in response to the US-led Secure Freight Initiative. The US Department of Homeland Security launched the first phase of the initiative on Thursday.
■ Turkmenistan
Nationalist theme park open
Authoritarian leader Saparmurat Niyazov on Friday formally opened an amusement park named after himself. Niyazov, who has ruled the country for 20 years, has created an extensive cult of personality around himself, including ordering citizens to call him Turkmenbashi, or Father of All Turkmen. The 33-hectare amusement park in the capital is named "The World of Turkmenbashi Tales." It has 54 rides including a Ferris Wheel echoing designs of Turkmen jewelry and a roller coaster swooping over a model of the Caspian Sea, the source of Turkmenistan's rich oil and gas reserves.
■ Australia
Wildfires disrupt flights
Smoky skies disrupted flights through the main airport in Victoria state yesterday, as firefighters battled what many fear will become the state's worst wildfires in almost 60 years. More than 20 towns were warned they could soon be threatened by the blazes, though no injuries or property damage had been reported. The country's largest airline, Qantas Airways, reported flight delays of up to an hour through the airport in Victoria's capital, Melbourne. Heavy smoke across much of the eastern part of the southern state reduced visibility and triggered fire alarms in the airport's baggage handling area and control tower. More than 170,000 hectares of drought-stricken farmland and forests have been incinerated by 18 major fires.
■ Somalia
Soldiers, Islamists clash
Islamists and pro-government soldiers shelled each other in a second day of fighting yesterday, witnesses said, a major escalation of violence many fear will erupt into all-out war. The fighting occurred in Maddoy village about 40km from the interim government's headquarters in Baidoa, the only town it controls in its own country. The two sides fought in the area on Friday, killing at least two bystanders. "The war restarted about 30 minutes ago," Maddoy resident Ahmed Mohamed Adan told reporters by telephone.
■ United States
Space chic the final frontier
You've booked your seat on the spaceship and passed the medical -- but what to wear for that flight into the final frontier? Orbital Outfitters has the answer. The new Los Angeles-based company on Thursday promised to dress the first space tourists and crew members in style. "When someone puts on an IS3 [sub-orbital space suit], they will be protected by the best technology we cam muster, yet they will look like they've stepped off the set of a science fiction movie," Orbital Outfitters president Rick Tumlinson said. Tumlinson said Orbital Outfitters planned to be on the leading edge of space suit fashion in a tourism industry expected to blast off around 2008.
■ France
Storm knocks out power
A powerful storm with gusting winds lashed on Friday, knocking out power to 400,000 homes and one pedestrian was killed when a billboard collapsed in Paris. The northern, western and central regions of the country were the worst hit, with the weather service saying that wind gusts reaching 148kph and 137kph atop the Eiffel Tower. Authorities raised the weather alert to orange -- the second the highest of four levels -- for 26 out of the country's 95 regions. A pedestrian was crushed to death on Friday morning by a falling billboard, Paris firefighters said.
■ United Kingdom
DNA tests on Diana driver
DNA tests on blood samples back up initial findings that the chauffeur of Princess Diana's car was drunk on the night she died in a Paris crash in 1997, the BBC reported late on Friday. The BBC said on its Web site that the tests indicate that the samples taken from driver Henri Paul just after his death were indeed his and show him accurately to have been three times over the French drunk-driving limit. A source close to the French authorities said the DNA tests were done in France within the last year, adding that DNA taken from Paul's blood samples matched with that of his parents. Diana, 36, and Dodi Fayed, 42, were killed with Paul when their high-powered Mercedes crashed in Paris.
■ United States
Youth indicted for murder
Authorities on Friday indicted an 18-year-old in Arizona with the murder of a female Japanese tourist earlier this year. Randy Wescogame is accused of stabbing 34-year-old Tomomi Hanamure to death after robbing her on the Havasupai Indian Reservation on May 8. Wescogame, a member of the 650-strong Havasupai tribe, has been in Indian tribal custody on unrelated assault charges since May and was transferred to federal detention on Friday. He has been charged with five counts of murder, robbery and kidnapping and faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment if convicted.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
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