■ 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.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
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