Global Oddities

Women’s activist groups in Kenya have slapped their partners with a week-long sex ban in protest over the infighting plaguing the national unity government.
The Women’s Development Organisation coalition said they would also pay prostitutes to join their strike.
The campaigners are asking the wives of the Kenyan president and the prime minister to join in the embargo.
They say they want to avoid a repeat of the violence which convulsed the country after the late-2007 elections.
Relations between Kenya’s coalition partners, led by President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, have become increasingly acrimonious.
Now the dispute has moved to the nation’s bedrooms.
Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida), one of the organisations in the campaign, said they hoped the seven-day sex ban would force the squabbling rivals to make up.

She said the campaign would start from her bedroom and that emissaries had been sent to the two leaders’ wives, Ida Odinga and Lucy Kibaki, urging them to join in and lead from the front.
“Even commercial sex workers should join in the campaign which is so vital to the country,” Mrs Nyaundi told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.
“Great decisions are made during pillow talk, so we are asking the two ladies at that intimate moment to ask their husbands: ‘Darling can you do something for Kenya?’”

Source: BBC news online, April 29, 2009

Voters in the heart of the Swiss Alps on Sunday passed legislation banning naked hiking after dozens of mostly German nudists started rambling through their picturesque region.

By a show of hands citizens of the tiny canton (state) of Appenzell Inner Rhodes voted overwhelmingly at their traditional open-air annual assembly to impose a 200 Swiss franc ($176) fine on violators.

Only a scattering of people on Sunday opposed the ban on the back-to-nature activity that took off last autumn when naked hikers — primarily Germans — started showing up in eastern Switzerland.

The cantonal government recommended the ban after citizens objected to encountering walkers wearing nothing but hiking boots and socks.

“The reactions of the population have shown that such appearances over a large area are perceived as thoroughly disturbing and irritating,” the government said in a statement.

A similar legal move is expected in neighboring Appenzell Outer Rhodes with legislation being prepared against “this shameless behavior.”

German Web sites promoting the activity describe it as “a special experience of nature, free and healthy” and said nude walking in the Alps has roots in antiquity.

The verdant Appenzell region has been regarded as a favorite, with trails the nudists regarded as off the beaten path.

The German sites also promote walks in France and in regions of Germany, where public nudity has roots going back to the 18th century through a movement that has come to be called “Free Body Culture.” Nudism in more conservative areas of Switzerland is less common.

A similar legal move is expected in neighboring Appenzell Outer Rhodes. The nationalist Swiss People’s Party has advised the cantonal parliament it is preparing legislation against “this shameless behavior.”

Source: AP, April 26, 2009

A lovesick Dutch woman who made up a story about being kidnapped sparked an eight-hour police hunt across Germany that ended with her capture by a special forces unit on a sealed-off motorway.

Worried relatives alerted Dutch police about the supposed abduction around midday on Thursday after the 35-year-old sent an SMS text message telling them two Eastern European men had taken her captive in her car, authorities said on Friday.
Reports soon came in that the woman’s vehicle had entered Germany, where squad cars and police helicopters fanned out in a search which spread out over three federal states.
By evening, police in Bavaria had tracked down the black Seat to a traffic jam near Wuerzburg, and shut down the motorway. Just before 9.00 p.m. (1900 GMT), the special forces team stormed the car — and found her alone inside.
“During questioning she said she was having a relationship crisis,” a local police spokesman said, adding that the hunt had cost “tens of thousands of euros” in Bavaria alone. “People need to be aware of the costs of making up stories like this.”
The woman, who has since been released, is now likely to face charges in the Netherlands for faking a crime, police said.
Source: Reuters, April 24, 2009

Australian police released Friday a shocking x-ray photo showing the skull of a murdered Chinese immigrant shot 34 times in the head and neck with a high-power nail gun.

The body of Chen Liu, 27, was found by two children last year in marshland in south Sydney, wrapped in a carpet and bound with electrical wire.

Detectives said the weapon used was a standard gas nail gun widely available and used in construction, firing nails up to 85mm (3.3 inches) long.

“In 36 years, I’ve never seen a murder of this nature,” Homicide Squad Superintendent Geoff Beresford told reporters.

Liu arrived in Australia in 2000 and was reported missing last year.

Source; Reuters, April 24, 2009

Australia’s Miss Universe contest was thrown into controversy on Thursday with doctors and dieticians complaining a leading finalist was “skin and bones” and dangerously malnourished.

Sydney model Stephanie Naumoska, 19, was one of 32 contestants from more than 7,000 hopefuls to make the glittering final at an event promoting “healthy, proportioned, bodies.”

“Bony or beautiful?” newspaper headlines said over photographs of a gaunt Naumoska posing in a red string bikini.

Health professionals said Naumoska, who is 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) tall and weighs just 49 kg (108 lbs), had a body mass index of just 15.1, well under the official 18 benchmark for malnutrition.

“She would be categorized as underweight and I would certainly want to be doing an assessment of her diet to make sure she doesn’t have some type of eating disorder,” dietician Melanie McGrice told local newspapers.

“She needs blood tests, diet analysis and an overall assessment.”

Pageant director Deborah Miller said brunette Naumoska, who was defeated in the final by 20-year-old television presenter and model Rachael Finch, had Macedonian heritage, which accounted for her extreme thinness.

“They have long, lithe bodies and small bones. It is their body type, just like Asian girls tend to be small,” Miller said.

But Australian Medical Association president Rosanna Capolingua, whose organization represents Australian doctors, said the contest should impose a minimum BMI cut-off of 20.

“The most unhealthy part about it, though, is the image it is showing other young women who may view this as normal, when clearly it s not,” Capolingua said.

While Naumoska refused to speak to media, nutritionist Susie Burrell told the Herald Sun newspaper there was no such thing as a Macedonian body type.

Eventual winner Finch will compete in the Miss Universe world finals in the Bahamas in August.

Source: Reuters, April 23, 2009

A South Korean woman who held a funeral for her husband after claiming he was lost at sea scammed insurers out of 800,000 dollars before he was found alive and well, police said Tuesday.

The fraud in the southeastern town of Tongyeong is part of an increasing trend of bogus claims, insurers say.
It began in March 2006 when she told police that her husband had failed to return from a fishing trip, a police spokesman in the nearby city of Changwon told AFP.
The husband had left his boat adrift and sneaked back ashore on a different boat as a major sea search was launched.
He went to ground for some three years elsewhere in the country as his wife successfully filed claims totalling 1.1 billion won with six insurance firms.
She even held a funeral for her spouse, receiving the customary condolence cash payments from mourners.
The pair finally came to grief when the husband shared his secret with an acquaintance during a drinking session and the friend reported it to police.
They will face criminal charges, the police spokesman said.
The Seoul Shinmun newspaper said insurance scams were becoming “low-risk, high-return” crimes.
Kim Seong, an official of the General Insurance Association of Korea, told the daily such crimes have risen sharply since the 1997 economic crisis,
The Financial Supervisory Commission said 41,019 people were caught over insurance frauds last year, up 33 percent from a year earlier.
“However, statistics on insurance frauds fail to reflect reality, as many people are believed to get away with these crimes,” Kim said.
Source: AFP, April 21, 2009

A Spanish builder with big debts kidnapped his bank manager at gunpoint and demanded a 50,000 euro ($66,000) loan plus his luxury car, police in the southern city of Malaga said on Friday.

“He needed money urgently, the company had stacked up large debts recently,” a spokeswoman said.
The builder accosted his bank manager in a car park near the bank in the Mediterranean resort of Marbella on Tuesday, and told him, falsely, that accomplices had taken his family hostage.
The builder then forced the executive to drive 20 km to Estepona, sign over his luxury car and transfer 1,500 euros to the builder’s bank account. The banker persuaded his kidnapper to let him call a colleague and told him, in code, that he had been kidnapped.
Police tracked them down to an office in the town and seized the kidnapper as they left the building. The builder was remanded in custody on Thursday, El Pais reported.
Several thousand Spanish builders are expected to go bust this year as the number and value of house sales collapse and banks become ever more reluctant to lend to house buyers.
Source: Reuters, April 20, 2009

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.
The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms.
It has led to a call for condoms of mixed sizes to be made more widely available in India.
The two-year study was carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of the country had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimetre.
The scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers.
The conclusion of all this scientific endeavour is that about 60% of Indian men have penises which are between three and five centimetres shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.
Source: BBC news online, April 20, 2009

A Vietnamese airline passenger has been found carrying an infant’s dead body in his luggage, a senior security official said.

Security staff at southern Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat airport discovered the tiny corpse when checking the luggage of a man about to fly to the northern port city of Hai Phong, the official said, refusing to be named or to provide other details.

According to the Thanh Nien newspaper, Vu Van Tho, 36, was trying to carry home for burial the body of his son, who died when his mother prematurely gave birth.

A similar case was reported last year when a passenger was discovered carrying the body of a relative’s daughter. She died a day after birth and was being returned to the family’s native province for burial.

According to Vietnamese tradition, a dead body can rest in peace only if buried in its native homeland.
Source: AFP, April 19, 2009

China’s official media and outspoken bloggers on Friday protested over a German advert promoting the use of condoms which shows revolutionary leader Mao Zedong as a sperm cell alongside Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.

The Communist Party’s People’s Daily devoted a page to the storm, quoting internet commentaries which called for the makers of the advert to apologize to China.
The Global Times newspaper said advertising agency Grey Worldwide, which made the safe sex advert for Doc Morris Pharmacies, had sent a letter of apology to the Chinese consulate in Frankfurt.
The campaign showing Mao, Hitler and Bin Laden as human spermatozoids has sparked a debate in China and among international blogging. Not all Chinese appear to agree with the official line of anger.
“I am a former worker who is now 70. I have thought about it a lot and I still cannot understand why these people defend Mao so strongly,” said one comment on the sina.com website.
Last year, French car maker Peugeot Citroen apologized for using an advert in Spain which showed Mao as a cross-eyed old man.
Source: AFP, April 17, 2009