What a Wonderful World..

Actress in hot water over pre-marital sex

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A popular south Indian actress has been pelted with sandals, tomatoes and rotten eggs and hauled before court for telling Indian men not to expect their brides to be virgins anymore.

Khushboo, a 35-year-old star of Tamil language movies, told a magazine in September there was nothing wrong with premarital sex -- as long as it was protected sex.
She is now out on $100 bail (58 pounds), and banned from making any more public comments or giving interviews.

The row has also engulfed 19-year-old tennis player Sania Mirza, already under a separate Islamic fatwa for wearing skirts on court, after she stormed out of a news conference on Sunday when pressed on her reported support for what Khushboo said.

Initially, Khushboo's comments went unnoticed. But a week later, Tamil-language Sun TV, based in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, ran a story of film industry outrage.
Sun may not be an entirely disinterested party. Sun dominated Tamil television without rival for 15 years -- until Khushboo came along, hosting a game show on the rival Jaya network which quickly became the most popular Tamil show.

The controversy was picked up by conservative political and community groups, who staged rowdy demonstrations and filed more than two dozen defamation and public interest suits, including one accusing her of "corrupting innocence".

The controversy has at once titillated and outraged Indians, both supporters and critics, and is still front page news.
Even the finance minister has been grilled by journalists for his opinion, sidestepping the specifics but backing free speech.
Miss Universe' Russia's Natalie Glebanova, and Indian Formula One driver Narain Karthikeyan have also come out in support.
Newspapers also initially reported Mirza, ranked world number 31 and also from south India, as backing her.
But the Muslim teenager, who has angered some Islamic clerics by wearing skirts on court, quickly denied saying any such thing.

"I will like to clearly say on record that I cannot possibly justify premarital sex as it is a very big sin in Islam and one which I believe will not be forgiven by Allah," Mirza said in a statement, having walked out of a sponsor's news conference when reporters continued to press her on Khushboo.
Khushboo, also known as "Baby Khushboo" after starting her career in the 1980s as a child actress, is originally from Mumbai. She moved into Tamil films as an adult after her Bollywood career failed to take off.
Now busy with her game show, she gained a tremendous following in Tamil movies as a heroine in sexy song-and-dance films. Adoring fans have built temples in her honour.

But it's not the first time she has been embroiled in a scandal in deeply conservative India. In a bid to breathe life into her Hindi film career, she once appeared on the cover of a film magazine kissing another actress -- one of India's first public shots of women kissing.
In the latest controversy, Khushboo has found support in an unlikely quarter, the hardline Hindu Rahstriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

"In a state which has one of the highest rates of female foeticide and disparity in male-female literacy rates, talking of protecting womanhood is a sham," its newspaper, Organiser, said.

"If womanhood is the issue, the protesters should have trained their guns on vulgar movies ... and artists like M.F. Hussain, who has done a series of nude paintings of Hindu goddesses," it added, referring to India's leading international painter, whose works sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

'Husband-taming' by dog trainer!
Asian News InternationalLondon, November 22, 2005

The British TV show, "Bring Your Husband to Heel", was supposed to teach women how to 'train' their husbands to start helping around the house. So, they brought in a dog trainer, Annie Clayton, to teach the old dogs (read hubands) some new tricks. Instead, what the show did do, was raise the hackles of over 200 viewers who said it was demeaning to men. The BBC , which broadcast the show, though accepting that the programme was 'inappropriate', still maintains that the show is not sexist.

Now, the BBC's view is being supported by Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, which said that the show was a part of the British tradition of the "battle of the sexes" and added that, it was not demeaning to men.
"The battle of the sexes has always been part of British culture through literature and other media. This programme, set in the factual entertainment genre, was part of that tradition. It was clear from the context that the programme was not seriously proposing a demeaning view of men," The BBC quoted Ofcom, as saying.

Ofcom had received over 35 complaints from viewers who held the view that a similar programme which featured women or minority groups as being 'trained' would never have been broadcast

Pensioners drove 300 miles in the wrong direction

An elderly couple drove 300 miles in the wrong direction after using their car to visit their son who lived just down the road.
Franz Mueller, 88, and his wife Eva, 86, of Breitenborn in Germany, were stopped by police at Wrestedt hundreds of miles away.
A huge traffic jam had built up behind them as they travelled slowly looking for signs to lead them back home.
A police spokesman said: "They asked the officers who stopped them if they spoke German, and then if they were still in Germany. They were really lost."
Police alerted the couple's son, who drove to meet them and help them make the trip back home.

Not-so-frequent flyer lands in jail

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man who illegally collected 17.6 million frequent flyer points with some of the world's biggest airlines, without getting onto a plane, was jailed for fraud Wednesday, local media reported.

Austin Perrott, 45, pleaded guilty in the Victorian County Court in Melbourne to nine counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception and was jailed for six months, local newsagency Australian Associated Press reported.

The court was told Perrott received the points between February 1996 and October 2002, while working as a Singapore Airlines customer services supervisor in Melbourne.
Perrott used a computer irregularity to collect points on 29 accounts from frequent flyer programs at nine airlines, including Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways.
Perrott never used his frequent flyer points to fly but redeemed 4.3 million points, which he mostly sold to family and friends for money, the court heard.
Judge Roy Punshon said the value of the points stolen was about A$400,000 (US$296,000) and that Perrott's motive was probably his desire to make his family's life comfortable.

College basketball team loses 118-6

WILLIMANTIC, Conn. - No missing zero or anything, this basketball score really was 118-6.The rout came in the consolation game of the women's Eastern Connecticut Tip-Off Tournament Saturday, when Endicott College defeated City College of New York.CCNY, which has no juniors or seniors on the team this year, lost another game, 117-26 during the same Division Three tournament.

Endicott coach Jen Lucey was in no mood to gloat after the landslide victory. In fact, she didn't want to comment on the game at all.Endicott, -- which is in Beverly, Mass., knew first-hand what it felt like to get beat soundly. The Lady Gulls lost to Bowdoin, 75-29, in the opening round of the tourney.

56 Cats Under Same Roof Really Stink

WASHINGTON

About 56 cats were recovered Tuesday from a Northeast Washington home where authorities said the animals were being hoarded."There are cats on the floors, and in the cabinets, and under the dishwasher, and behind the refrigerator, and under cabinets, and in closets," said Adam Parascandola with the Washington Humane Society. Conditions inside the home were beyond belief, he said.

"A very strong smell of ammonia, and there's only a few litter boxes for all the cats and they're all incredibly overflowing. And with this number of cats they won't go in the litter box, they go all over the furniture and the floors," Parascandola said.Officials said they had been to the house in June after getting a complaint. Back then, there were about two-dozen cats. Another round of complaints brought them back to the home Tuesday.

Two of the cats were dead and the rest were in varying degrees of health. Officials said some will have to be euthanized. For the time being, they were being kept at the shelter.A woman and her grown son who live in the modest home were taken to a hospital for check ups.This is just the latest cat hoarding case in the metro area. In July, a Fairfax County, Va., woman was arrested after authorities found more than 400 cats, both dead and alive, in two homes.