One on a Blue Moon

Is it enterprise or lunacy? A Chinese company is fighting for the right to pitch plots of land on the moon for sale after authorities shut the scheme down on charges of profiteering and lunacy. Beijing Lunar Village Aeronautics Science and Technology Co has sued commercial authorities in China’s capital for suspending its business licence just days after it opened. Its CEO has been quoted saying that there is not a law or regulation in China that prohibits the selling of land on the moon.

The company, which calls itself the ‘Lunar Embassy to China’, had sold 49 acres of lunar land to 34 Chinese clients at under 300 yuan (S$63) per acre within three days of opening, two days after two Chinese astronauts returned to Earth from the country’s second manned space mission. The domestically financed firm is the China agent of the US-based Lunar Embassy, an extra-terrestrial real estate agency aimed at exploiting what it sees as a loophole in a 1967 international treaty on the moon.

Mail and Shame

The US Supreme Court has rejected a San Francisco man’s appeal that his sentence for stealing mail amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. A lower court had ordered him to stand outside a post office for 100 hours wearing a sandwich board that reads: ‘I have stolen mail. This is 
my punishment.’

His attorney argued that this was prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution and the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, but said he was disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss the case 
without comment.

Window Seat?

A French woman who is terrified of flying admitted in an Australian court that she had drunkenly tried to open an airplane door mid-flight to smoke a cigarette. She was placed on a good behaviour bond after pleading guilty in Brisbane Magistrates Court to endangering the safety of an aircraft. Sellies was travelling on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to the east coast city of Brisbane when the incident occurred at the start of a three-week Australian vacation with her husband.

She walked toward one of the aircraft’s emergency exits with an unlit cigarette and a lighter in her hand and began tampering with the door, prosecutors said. But a flight attendant intervened and took her back to her seat. She was arrested and charged by police on arrival at Brisbane airport.

No Monkey Business

European legislators who visited Malaysia’s Parliament were treated to heated exchanges when a government legislator accused his opposition rivals of behaving ‘like monkeys’ and embarrassing the nation in front of foreigners. The uproar began while a delegation from the European Parliament was observing a debate in Malaysia’s lower house of Parliament about the country’s growing backlog of court cases. Government legislator M Kayveas became irritated when opposition leader Lim Kit Siang and other opposition members interrupted his explanation of the issue, prompting him to accuse them of ‘acting like monkeys’.

A 10-minute commotion then erupted, with opposition members demanding that Kayveas be referred to Parliament’s disciplinary committee for making derogatory remarks. Parliament Speaker Ramli Ngah Talib eventually directed Kayveas to retract his comment.