Offbeat
Latest stories
Australian Groom Beats Bride in Wedding Car

An Australian man who repeatedly pummeled his new wife, bit her face and tried to strangle her during the limousine ride to their wedding reception was jailed Friday for at least 15 months.

Adnan Rusanovski, 30, savaged his bride, Ferdi, in the back of a Melbourne limo last May in an attack the driver described as "worse than a boxing match", leaving the 28-year-old bruised and bloodied.

W140 Full Story
Indonesian Clinic Uses Smoking As Cancer Cure

An Indonesian woman exhales cigarette smoke into the mouth of a gaunt, naked patient at a Jakarta clinic, where tobacco is openly touted as a cancer cure.

The Western patient is suffering from emphysema, a condition she developed from decades of smoking. Along with cancer and autism, it's just one of the ailments the Griya Balur clinic claims it can cure with cigarettes.

W140 Full Story
Taiwan Kicks Out Chinese Writer Over Slapping Cure

Taiwan's government on Thursday ordered a Chinese writer to leave the island after he claimed that slapping a person's body can cure chronic disease.

Xiao Hongci drew criticism when he claimed that his "slapping therapy" had healing powers at a promotion in Taipei earlier this week, slapping a woman's arm red while demonstrating his technique.

W140 Full Story
'World's First 3D Porn Film' Opens in Hong Kong

Movie-goers flocked to see what is billed as the world's first 3D porn film as it opened to packed cinemas across Hong Kong on Thursday, with some screenings selling out completely.

Loosely based on a piece of classical Chinese erotic literature, the $3.2-million Cantonese-language movie "3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy" features orgies, swinging and some very graphic sex scenes.

W140 Full Story
Alleged Abuse Costs Emirati Man His Penis

An Ethiopian maid struck back at her allegedly abusive employer in Dubai, slicing off the Emirati man's penis in response to harassment, the 7DAYS daily on Wednesday quoted the emirate's police as saying.

Police responded to a call from the man and "found him bleeding badly. His housemaid had chopped off his private parts using a knife", 7DAYS quoted a Dubai police official as saying of the attack on Monday.

W140 Full Story
Armenia fears Easter egg shortage

Armenia has banned the export of eggs to head off fears of a shortage which could threaten traditional Easter celebrations in the ex-Soviet state, officials said on Wednesday.

The move follows a national controversy caused by a shortage during the New Year holiday season, when eggs disappeared from many shops for several hours and prices almost tripled.

W140 Full Story
Branson to Work as Stewardess After Losing Bet

British billionaire Richard Branson will dress and serve as a stewardess on Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia X on May 1 after losing a Grand Prix bet with the founder of the airline.

Branson, whose Virgin group sponsors the Marussia Virgin Racing team, will finally honor his bet with AirAsia founder and Team Lotus co-principal Tony Fernandes on whose team would finish higher at the 2010 Bahrain Formula One GP.

W140 Full Story
Estonian Equal Pay Activists Turn to Risque Food Games

Estonian equal-pay campaigners have come up with a new way to spotlight the gulf between men and women's wages in the Baltic state, engaging in risque word-play about sandwiches.

Menus of participating cafes and restaurants across the nation of 1.3 million on Tuesday included salmon sandwiches, with a mark-up of almost one third for added dill.

W140 Full Story
Israeli Minister Talks Live... From The Toilet

Israeli officials often conduct radio interviews at home, but listeners got an unexpected insight into just where their foreign minister was when he punctuated his comments with a toilet flush.

Israeli news site Ynet.com reported Tuesday that the unusual soundtrack to foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman's interview came as he was addressing the issue of a flare-up of violence with Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

W140 Full Story
Indonesian Lawmaker Quits Parliament Over Porn

An Indonesian lawmaker from a conservative Islamic party resigned on Monday after he was photographed looking at pornography on his tablet computer in parliament.

Despite an outcry against him on Twitter, Arifinto insisted that nobody had pressured him to resign and that he was stepping down from the House of Representatives "for the sake of my and my party's honor".

W140 Full Story