The Bangladeshi Prime Minister has ordered public servants to ditch suits and ties for short-sleeved shirts to cut air-conditioning use in the power-starved nation.
Sheikh Hasina first raised the idea at a Cabinet meeting last month and asked her colleagues to set an example to other government employees.
"She told us to avoid suits and ties on hot days and to wear plain, simple shirts," said Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain.
"The Prime Minister pointed out that air conditioning is a luxury and if we wear the lighter clothing we will need to use the AC less. I've already noticed top public servants are no longer wearing suits and ties." (AFP)
Ex-homeless now tourist guides
Five former Dutch street dwellers are soon to become official tour guides, showing visitors around their former haunts in the central city of Utrecht, organisers said yesterday.
Having completed formal training through the tourism bureau, the group will take up their duties from September 13, said Simone Lensink, press officer for the welfare organisation Altrecht, which is behind the project. "The idea is for people to rediscover the town and in particular those areas where their guides used to sleep or do drugs," she told AFP. "This is a small part of the history of Utrecht."
Utrecht has about 200 homeless people today, compared to up to 1,200 eight years ago when nine new homes were built for the destitute, she said.
"These are people with a unique background," she added. "They had to learn to be social and to be able to tell their story in an interesting and coherent manner." The tour, titled Utrecht Underground, will take 75 minutes and cost €5. (AFP)
China takes aim at bugs and rats
China, which wants to stamp out any potential threats to its carefully choreographed National Day celebrations in Tiananmen Square on October 1, has taken aim at some pesky foes - bugs and rats.
Beijing has launched a broad security crackdown to prevent attackers or dissidents from disrupting the festivities, but Xinhua news agency said it has also targeted pests such as "mosquitoes, flies, rats and cockroaches".
The campaign is aimed at ensuring that dignitaries and other participants in the 60th National Day celebrations are "free from epidemics and bites", it said.
Officials have launched a series of night-time "extermination sweeps" at the square and the adjacent Forbidden City imperial palace and Mao Zedong mausoleum, it quoted Zeng Xiaofan, an official in charge of the programme, as saying.
"Rats could eat electric cables and mosquitoes could bite and annoy people gathering in the square on October 1 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of (Communist) China," Mr Zeng was quoted saying.
China is planning a huge military parade and mass pageant in and around Tiananmen Square on October 1. (AFP)
Editor, critic of Berlusconi, quits
The editor of a leading Catholic newspaper in Italy, which had criticised Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, quit yesterday in the latest sign of fraying relations between the Vatican and the government.
Dino Boffo, who edited the Avvenire daily paper, said he was stepping down after allegations about his private life in the Il Giornale newspaper, owned by the premier's family.
"My life, that of my family, my editorial staff, have been violated with a disrespect I never imagined could exist," he wrote in a letter of resignation to the Italian bishops' conference, which owns Avvenire.
Il Giornale, owned by Mr Berlusconi's brother Paolo, referred in an article on Friday to a case in which Mr Boffo had allegedly pestered a woman to leave her husband, with whom he was in a gay relationship. The paper accused the editor of hypocrisy, saying he was in no position to offer moral guidance to Mr Berlusconi.
The head of the Italian bishops' conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, had described the attack as "sickening and very serious." (AFP)
No thumbprint, no money, US bank tells armless man
A bank in the southeast US state of Florida refused to cash a cheque for an armless man because he could not provide a thumbprint.
"They looked at my prosthetic hands and the teller said, 'Well, obviously you can't give us a thumbprint'," Steve Valdez told CNN on Wednesday. But he said the Bank of America Corp branch in downtown Tampa, Florida, still insisted on a thumbprint identification for him to cash a cheque drawn on his wife's account at the bank, even though he showed them two photo IDs.
In the incident last week, a bank supervisor told Mr Valdez he could only cash the cheque without a thumbprint if he brought his wife in with him or he opened an account with them.
"I told them I neither wanted an account with them and couldn't bring my wife in because she was nowhere close by," Mr Valdez said.
Bank of America said in a statement cited by CNN: "While the thumbprint is a requirement for those who don't have accounts, the bank should have made accommodations." (Reuters)
Jail term for TV criticism
A Shi'ite who has been on death row in Saudi Arabia for 16 years for insulting the Prophet Mohammed was sentenced this week to another five years in jail for criticising Saudi Arabia's justice system, an activist said. The jail sentence against Hadi al-Mutif, who is from the Ismaili Shi'ite minority, could rattle the minority's confidence in recent efforts by the government to improve relations at a time of instability in Yemen, which borders their native region.
The verdict punished Hadi al-Mutif for criticising the Saudi justice system and the absolute monarchy's human rights record in comments he made from prison aired by US-funded Alhurra Television in 2007. (Reuters)