In Practice Obiter

Lights Out to Boost Birthrate

Forget baby bonuses. The solution that the South Korea’s health ministry (which is charged with boosting the nation’s low birthrate) has come up with has the added benefit of at least one sort of energy conservation. It is turning off the lights in its offices once a month to encourage staff to go home early and make more babies.

Bobby-sledding

Some British policemen have been reprimanded after they were filmed by a passerby using their riot shields as makeshift sleds during the country’s cold snap. The clip, posted on YouTube showed a policeman barreling downhill while another shouts, “Whatever happens, keep smiling!”

Thames Valley Police Superintendent Andrew Murray cautioned the officers “that tobogganing on duty, on police equipment and at taxpayers’ expense is a very bad idea.” But he added that snow does bring “out the child in all of us.”

For the Love of … Animals

The Native Court in Penampang district on Borneo island has ordered two lovers to compensate their communities by paying a fine of four buffaloes and a pig, valued at about MYR 6,000 after they were found guilty of having an illicit affair. 

The man and woman were also fined MYR 1,000 ringgit each for their tryst, following a complaint filed by the man’s wife after finding her husband in shorts and her colleague in a sarong at the man’s second home. The court rejected their claim that they were just “best friends”.

Straightening It All Out

To straighten or not to straighten? Women’s hair styles have become a hot topic for Indonesia’s Muslims after calls from some Islamic clerics to have the procedure banned on the grounds it invites moral danger.

The Fatwa Commission of the Indonesian Council of Ulama said it had received a request from a group of clerics linked to a girls’ boarding school in East Java to issue a fatwa banning chemical hair straightening known  as rebonding as well as dreadlocks, punk do’s and “funky hairstyles”.

A spokeswoman from the Islamic women’s rights group, Rahima, said women’s hairstyle preferences could be the topic of discussion but were ultimately an individual choice.