World Briefs

All Michael Buday wanted to do was take the last name of his wife, Diana Bijon, when they married. But it took two years, a lawsuit alleging sex discrimination and a change in California law before he picked up his new driver's licence in the name of Michael Bijon on Monday.

Michael Bijon, 31, discovered it would take a $350 fee, court appearances, a public announcement and mounds of paperwork to make a change on his driving licence that is routine for women who marry.

After months of frustration, the Los Angeles computer programmer and his ER nurse wife Diana, 29, took their problem to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

A double-barrel name would have been no problem, nor would Diana and Michael deciding to each keep their birth names. But California and some 40 other US states provided no place on the marriage licence application, and driving licence, for the groom to choose the bride's surname.

A subsequent lawsuit led to a new California state law guaranteeing the rights of both married couples and registered domestic partners to choose whichever last name they prefer on their marriage and driving licences.

Speeding drivers get away with it

Speeding drivers in south China are getting away thanks to machines which switch the numbers on their licence plates in seconds, state media said yesterday.

"More than 50 per cent of cars caught on camera for speeding and other offences either cover up their plates or use a fake licence plate," a traffic policeman in the Guangdong city of Yangjiang was quoted by the Beijing Youth Daily as saying. "Our chances of capturing them is next to nil."

The price of the remote-control device starts at around 800 yuan (€74), while a more advanced apparatus with the ability to flip over the numbers in less than three seconds costs more than double.

"The era of covering up the licence plate by hand has passed," a driver surnamed Zheng told the newspaper.

Maid had sex with boss's teenage son

A 45-year-old Indonesian maid admitted having sex with her Hong Kong employer's 14-year-old son after watching internet porn together, a newspaper reported yesterday. A court heard how the maid, a divorcee and mother of two, had sex with the boy in a relationship that lasted five months, the South China Morning Post reported.

The boy tried to end the affair, but she refused, the paper reported. The teenager eventually confessed to the relationship to the leader of a Christian group he belonged to and the maid was arrested.

The maid, Suwartin, had worked with the boy's extended family for 11 years and pleaded guilty to five charges of committing an indecent act with an under-age partner, the Post reported. She later apologised and said she "would live with the shame of what she had done for the rest of her life", the paper reported.

Firm in trouble for slum tour

A Rio de Janeiro tour company could be in trouble for giving tourists too intimate a view of life in the city's notorious slums, including photo opportunities with drug gang leaders.

The Brazilian city's tourism chief said that the company, Private Tours, could be stripped of its licence after a report in a newspaper showed that it had set up meetings between traffickers and tourists.

The paper sent a reporter disguised as a foreign tourist on the four-hour, €35 tour of Rocinha, the city's largest slum, that included visits to the bocas de fumo where traffickers sell drugs to Rio residents. It said the traffickers told the tourists stories about their time in prison, described the life of a Rio drug dealer, and would then pose for pictures with their guns - as long as their faces were not photographed.

Sports argument ends in murder

A New York Yankees' fan was accused on Monday of murdering a Boston Red Sox supporter and injuring another by running both down with a car after a heated argument over one of America's oldest sporting rivalries.

Ivonne Hernandez, 43, pleaded not guilty to reckless second-degree murder aggravated driving while intoxicated after the incident in a Nashua, New Hampshire parking lot last Friday.

Prosecutors say Ms Hernandez was drunk when she drove her car across a dirt parking lot into Matthew Beaudoin, 29, and Maria Hughes, 21, after exchanging words with them about the Yankees and Red Sox baseball teams.

The spat began at a local bar where Ms Hernandez said she was a Yankees fan. It then spilled outside where a group that included Mr Beaudoin chanted "Yankees suck!" when they saw a Yankees sticker on the rear window of Ms Hernandez's car.