Zambia President Rupiah Banda has ordered scores of monkeys removed from the grounds of his official residence, after one urinated on his head during a press conference, a parks official yesterday.
More than 200 monkeys live on the State House grounds, but Mr Banda has asked the Munda Wanga Botanical Gardens to relocate most of them to its parkland outside Lusaka, the gardens' director Bill Thomas said in a statement.
"The President recently requested to the Munda Wanga Botanic Trust to remove and relocate some of the monkeys, and so far 61 monkeys have been humanely captured and translocated to the gardens," Mr Thomas said.
Two months ago, one of the monkeys urinated on Mr Banda's jacket during a press conference, as the President was castigating the main opposition leader Michael Sata. (AFP)
Biometric scanners for bureaucrats
The Indian government yesterday launched a campaign to end notoriously slack time-keeping among its millions of civil servants by introducing biometric scanners at offices in the capital New Delhi.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram arrived punctually at work to kick off the drive to improve efficiency within India's vast bureaucracy, which has a reputation for endless delays and reams of duplicated paperwork.
India's central government employs about three million civil servants - including all railway workers - while federal states employ about another seven million.
"This is a message to the whole country that everyone must do his work for the allotted hours," Mr Chidambaram told reporters. "I understand flexi time, we will introduce some flexibility. Flexibility is if you come 10 or 15 minutes late, you have to work for another 10 or 15 minutes."
In the first stage of the scheme, 5,000 home ministry employees - regardless of rank - will have their index fingers scanned to register the time they arrive and leave work.
Any employee who is late three times in a month will have to give up a day-off. (AFP)
Chinese protesters kick up stink
Residents living near a faulty sewage works in southeastern China have gone on the rampage, smashing equipment, beating police and kidnapping local officials, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Up to 200 people were involved in the unrest in Quanzhou in the coastal province of Fujian, which lies opposite Taiwan, the local Straits News reported.
The problems started in the middle of last month when the sewage works developed a fault, causing a bad odour and seepage, the newspaper said. People gathered at the facility to protest many times, and finally some broke into it.
A government official was also seriously injured and two others were still being held by residents, the newspaper said. (Reuters)
Olympic great attacks intruder
Elderly Olympic swimming great Dawn Fraser fought off an intruder who threatened to kill her by kicking him in the groin with her titanium knee, she has said.
The 72-year-old Australian swimming legend said she "lost it" when she confronted two youths who woke her when they entered her daughter's home in Noosaville in eastern Queensland state last Friday night. Ms Fraser, who became a global sensation aged 19 when she shattered the world record to win gold in the 100 metres freestyle at the 1956 Olympics, said she snapped when one of the youths threatened her.
"Out came this guy who then grabbed me around the throat and said 'I will kill you', and with that I grabbed him around the ear and hair and kneed him in the groin," she told Channel Seven television late on Monday.
Ms Fraser, who turns 73 later this week, used her reconstructed knee in self-defence while vacationing at her daughter Dawn-Lorraine's house. (AFP)
One-way street to head-on collision
French commuters ran head-on into a local political standoff yesterday after feuding towns redirected road markings to leave two busy one-way streets facing off against each other.
The Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret and its conservative council lies next door to middle-class and Socialist-run Clichy-la-Garenne. Daily, thousands of motorists pass between the two, heading into and out of the capital.
This week, after deciding that the D909 route brought too much congestion to his town, Levallois mayor Patrick Balkany declared his portion of it a one-way street, speeding traffic into neighbouring Clichy.
Balkany's Clichy counterpart, Gilles Catoire, was not amused, and promptly issued a decree of his own, declaring his section of the D909 one-way as well, only this time in the opposite direction.
Chaos naturally ensued, and yesterday both local and national police were deployed to direct traffic away from the gridlock on the towns' borders and onto narrow suburban routes unsuited to high volumes of commuter traffic.
Following yesterday morning's traffic chaos, the French central government, stepped in to order Clichy to re-establish two-way traffic on its section of the D909. (AFP)
Pollsters warned after Twitter leak
Germany's chief electoral commissioner told pollsters yesterday to be vigilant with their exit poll data on the September 27 federal election after state results were published on Twitter before polls closed on Sunday.
Roderich Egeler told a news conference he expected the polling institutes that supply exit poll data to German networks to take steps to ensure the information is not leaked out on the Twitter social networking site in breach of German law.
"I'm sure the polling institutes know themselves exactly what that means," Mr Egeler said. "I assume that they'll become more sensitised to the issue in light of the discussion of the recent events." (Reuters)