A ban on grumpiness, gossiping, mini-skirts and rudeness is what the doctor orders to improve patient care in Serbia's hospitals, according to new rules issued by the country's Health Ministry.
The rules, posted on the ministry's website, say staff are not allowed to criticise their hospital or their superiors, and should not accept gifts for their services.
Hospital staff are often bribed with cash or gifts for attention or better treatment.
"There needs to be ground rules for decency," a ministry spokesman said.
Serbia's public health system crumbled during the conflicts of the 1990s, with patients' relatives having to provide everything from bandages and antibiotics to food.
Funding improved as stability returned but bribery, often involving hundreds of euros, is still widespread.
House for sale, dead owner found
An estate agent who took a prospective buyer to view a house in central England found the owner hanging dead in a closet, the agency said on Thursday.
It was the first viewing of the Stg 350,000 house which had been on the market for a week. The owner was hanging from a belt inside a walk-in closet in the main bedroom.
"It was quite a shock," said a spokesman for estate agents Hartleys. "Our agent quickly ushered everyone out, locked the property and called the authorities."
The owner, a single man in his 40s, is thought to have committed suicide. He inherited the house from his mother who died recently, the estate agents said.
Scientists to send fish on rocket
Scientists plan to launch 60 tiny fish on a zero gravity rocket ride from above the Arctic Circle on Monday to try to plumb the secrets of motion sickness.
Tomas Hedqvist, project manager for Sweden's Esrange Space Centre, said the baby cichlid fish will head 260 km (160 miles) into the air on an 11-metre (36-foot) two-stage rocket, where they will experience six minutes of weightlessness.
Experimenters Reinhard Hilbig and Ralf Anken of the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim in Germany will train six video cameras on the fish, each of which will be housed in its own aquarium, to see how they react.
Earlier related experiments sent cichlid fish on parabolic plane rides - which involve a steep ascent followed by a plunge - but Hedqvist said these only offered 20-30 seconds of weightlessness and were too short for clear conclusions.
Funeral horses overturn hearse
A hearse overturned when the horses pulling it to a south London cemetery stampeded, dragging the carriage and coffin past appalled relatives and sending floral tributes flying.
"It was dreadful," a mourner told the South London Press. "The horses dragged the carriage to the cemetery on its side, tossing the coffin all over the place and destroying all the flowers inside.
"Some people got very angry and had to be restrained by other mourners... It is understandable given the circumstances. I'm horrified that something like this could happen."
Police were called to calm angry mourners so that the funeral last month could go ahead.
The carriage appeared to have clipped a mini-roundabout as it entered Lambeth Cemetery for the funeral, the local council which administers the graveyard said on Friday.
Paying police to lose weight
The central Mexican city of Aguascalientes is considering paying a cash bonus to local police who slim down, amid the increasingly common sight of overweight officers in Mexico.
Aguascalientes city hall plans to decide next week on whether to pay 100 pesos ($9) for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) that officers lose, a police spokesman said on Thursday.
"We do have some fat officers. We have been encouraging them for a while to lose weight, to be more agile, to do sport," he added.
Obesity is one of the biggest health problems in Mexico, where diabetes is the biggest killer and where sugary soft drinks and fatty hamburgers are increasingly becoming part of the national diet.
City threatened with TV remote
A drunken man's threat to blow up half a city with his television remote control forced Australian police to declare a state of emergency at a luxury golf resort, a local court heard on Thursday.
Geoffrey Martin Fryatt, 57, a resident of the Fairways Golf and Lifestyle Retreat in Brisbane, was arrested by elite paramilitary police after terrifying neighbours with a knife and threatening to detonate a store of chemicals with the TV remote.
Fryatt's lawyer told the Brisbane District Court that his client lost control after losing much of his life savings in a fraud carried out by his finance broker, local media said.