Models display Indian fashion designer Shantanu Goenka's creations during a fashion show in New Delhi, yesterday. - REUTERS
WEIRD NEWS
Ivy League blues
In March, a Princeton University graduate student in applied mathematics, Michael Lohman, was arrested, suspected by police of being the guy who has been assaulting Asian women on campus for weeks by snipping locks of their hair or by furtively doctoring their drinks with unspecified "bodily fluids" in the dining hall. And a week after that, in Rockport, Massachusetts, a chaired professor of economics at Harvard, Martin Weitzman, was charged with larceny after a farmer said Weitzman has long been trespassing and hauling away manure for his own nearby farm, thus denying the farmer his market price of US$35 per truckload.
Psychopaths behind the taxi wheel no, not Jamaica
PERU (REUTERS):
Anyone climbing aboard a bus or taxi in Peru should think twice because many drivers have psychopathic tendencies, a university study said recently.
Some 40 per cent of the 640 taxi and bus drivers surveyed by Lima's San Marcos University suffered from psychological problems and showed psychopathic tendencies, such as aggressive, anxious and antisocial behaviour, the study said.
"Drivers showed they would not feel any guilt in injuring or running over a pedestrian," the study added.
Peru's capital, Lima, is crowded with ageing, pollution-pumping taxis and buses, many of which do not obey traffic rules or stop lights.
Hundreds of people die each year in bus and taxi crashes in Peru because of bad roads, poorly maintained vehicles and recklessness by drivers. In just the last three months of last year at least 85 people were killed in crashes, according to police figures. Prosecution is rare.
Man representing himself appeals lawyer's competence
Massachusetts (AP):
Thomas P. Budnick says his lawyer's incompetence was to blame for his assault conviction.
The funny thing is he was representing himself.
He took his case before the state Appeals Court recently, arguing that the trial judge never should have allowed Budnick to defend himself against charges of trying to poison a friend by lacing a bottle of beer with nitric acid.
Budnick once filed mining claims on Mars and threatened to sue NASA for trespassing. Such antics should have been enough to make the judge question his competence to waive counsel, his new court-appointed lawyer said.
"This was a guy who had just come out of Bridgewater," said Linda Harvey, referring to the state mental hospital.
Budnick was charged in 2002 with trying to poison friend Ryan Gauthier by spiking a bottle of beer.
Budnick, who claimed he had accidentally given Gauthier a bottle of acid he kept in his garage for cleaning his collection of meteorites, was convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon and sentenced to two years in prison.
But he was cleared of the more serious charge of attempted poisoning because the liquid spilled on Gauthier's leg and burned him before he could drink it.
Hampden County prosecutor Carl Lindley told the Appeals Court that, despite his eccentricities, Budnick had "made an effective litigant."
"The jury acquitted him of the most serious charge," Lindley pointed out to the panel of justices who met last Wednesday at Western New England Law School.
For more than 20 years, Budnick tried to file and peddle mining claims in such diverse places as George's Bank, the asteroid belt, Mars and the moons of Jupiter. After trying several states without success, he finally persuaded Texas authorities to accept his astral mineral rights claims in 1984.
The court did not immediately rule on Budnick's appeal. He's scheduled to be released from prison this summer.
No, you can't hire your relative: Move afoot to ban nepotism in Brazil
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters):
Brazil's Congress took a step toward banning widespread nepotism in public office amid outrage after a leading lawmaker backed the practice blamed for corruption and bloated costs.
Lower House president Severino Cavalcanti, third in line to the presidency, has publicly supported giving jobs to relatives and sparked the lower house decision to resume debate on anti-nepotism legislation stuck in Congress for nine years.
"Once it was out in the open like this, there was no way Brazilians would stand for it," said federal deputy Sergio Miranda, of the government-allied Brazilian Communist Party, who is sponsoring the bill.
Brazil's Centre-left government promised to fight nepotism, bribery and other corruption in public office, which is seen as a major obstacle to growth in South America's largest economy.
Awarding jobs to family and friends remains a routine way to boost income and grant political favours in Brazil's federal, state and city governments.
Brazil's Congress has no rules against nepotism. At least one in five federal deputies has his spouse employed in his office, according to Miranda. Only certain areas of the federal judiciary and government outlaw the practice.
"You have well-educated, qualified people and it's these family members and friends who get the jobs," said architect Paulo Tannebaum, 22, on his lunch break in Brasilia.
The new legislation would ban the hiring of a spouse, partner
or relative by any public official in all levels of government, the justice system and legislative branch.
It must be approved at commission level before Congress votes. Previous legislation was blocked on grounds it violated equal opportunity laws.
Cavalcanti, elected Lower House president in February, has become a symbol of nepotism after he said he hired relatives to his cabinet as they were educated and he could trust them.
"This (anti-)nepotism thing is for losers and failures who don't know how to raise their children," Cavalcanti said at the signing in of his son as the new head of a federal farm agency in his home state of Pernambuco.
Cavalcanti's small right-wing Progressive party had threatened to obstruct Lula's legislative agenda and leave the governing coalition unless it got such government posts.
Opposition parties said Cavalcanti was a scapegoat and the ruling Workers Party (PT) government was guilty of nepotism after creating an estimated 40,000 new federal posts.
He sues lover after sex change hitch
NEW DELHI (Reuters):
An Indian who became a man to marry a female relative was dumped after the surgery, a newspaper reported.
Twenty-nine-year-old rubber tapper Kuttiyamma, born with both male and female genitals, had been in love with the relative, Laura, 25, for 15 years before having surgery to become a man and change her name to Binu, the Hindustan Times reported.
But Laura became engaged to another man and Binu is suing her for breach of trust after spending 50,000 rupees (US$1,150) on the sex change in southern Kerala state.
"She had agreed to marry me after the surgery," the paper quoted Binu saying in the petition. "I took loans to pay the hospital bills."
Laura's fiancé has since backed out of the wedding after hearing of Binu. The paper did not say how Laura and Kuttiyamma/Binu are related.
THINGS PEOPLE BELIEVE
Last month Mamadou Obotimbe Diabikile was shot by police and arrested after his unsuccessful attempt to rob the Mali Development Bank in Bamako, Mali. He was partly hindered by the nearly seven pounds of magic charms he was wearing to make himself invisible.
