UNITED STATESThey obviously didn't do lunch.
An office worker cleaning a refrigerator full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven colleagues to hospital and made many others ill.
Firefighters had to ev
acuate the AT&T building in central San Jose after the fumes led someone to call emergency services. A hazardous materials team was called in.
What crews found was an unplugged refrigerator crammed with mouldy food which an office worker had tried to clean out. The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea. The authorities said the worker who cleaned the refrigerator didn't need treatment – she can't smell because of allergies.
BELGIUMThe Belgian city of Ghent has declared Thursdays a "Veggie Day", offering climate-conscious consumers tips and help to limit meat intake, which it considers a key source of pollution.
Ghent city councillor Tom Balthazar says urging citizens not to eat meat for one day a week "is good for the climate, your health and your taste buds." City restaurants will now offer vegetarian fare on Thursdays.
Balthazar says meat production causes 18 per cent of greenhouse gases.
TURKEYA court has ordered an employer to reinstate a woman who was fired after she kissed her boyfriend at work, ruling it was just a stolen kiss and that no customers saw it.
The woman was confronted by her boss after she was caught kissing on tape on the business's closed circuit TV.
"When you take into consideration that the kissing was momentary and that there were no customers present and that no other workers saw it, it's a grave decision to say the action breached the order of the workplace," the appeals court said, annulling a decision by a lower court to uphold the firing.
Critics of the Islamist-rooted AK Party government complain of increased pressure to conform with conservative social values in officially secular Turkey since the party took power in 2002.
SAUDI ARABIAA judge has told a conference on domestic violence that a man has the right to slap his wife if she spends lavishly on such things as clothing.
The remarks do not carry the weight of law, as they were made out of court. But such public pronouncements by Saudi judges, who are also Islamic clerics, are often widely respected.
Those campaigning for women's rights in Saudi Arabia said the comments were another setback in efforts to gain the right to vote, drive and freely participate in politics.
"If a person gives 1,200 Saudi riyals (£212) to his wife and she spends 900 riyals (£159) to purchase an abaya (head-to-toe robe) from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment," Judge Hamad Al-Razine was quoted as saying by the English-language Arab News newspaper.
GERMANYA court fined an unemployed man 900 euros (£810) last week for knocking the head off a waxwork figure of Adolf Hitler in a Berlin museum.
Minutes after the Madame Tussauds museum opened in the German capital last July, the 42-year-old pushed past security staff and ripped off its head.
The man, an ex-police officer, said he found it inappropriate to display an exhibit showing the Nazi leader only 500 yards from Berlin's Holocaust memorial.
MOVERS & SHAKERS
KAILASH SINGHA 63-year-old man has not bathed or brushed his teeth for more than 35 years in the hope that the ritual will give him a son.
Instead Kailash Singh, popularly called Kalau, has a "fire bath" every day.
Residents of his village near the Hindu holy city of Varanasi watch as Singh lights a bonfire, smokes marijuana and prays to Hindu deity Shiva while standing on one leg.
"It is just like using water to have a bath," he told the Hindustan Times.
"A fire bath helps kill all the germs and infections in the body."
However, his unclean habits have proved costly for Singh. The grocery store he used to run incurred losses when customers boycotted the shop. He is now trying to make ends meet for his family as a farmer.
JENNIFER MEYER AND TOBEY MAGUIREThe wife of Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire has given birth to the couple's second child, a boy, according to Maguire's publicist Kelly Bush. Jennifer Meyer, 31, gave birth to the couple's daughter, Ruby Sweetheart Maguire, more than two years ago.
Meyer is the daughter of Ron Meyer, president of Universal Studios.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO AND KATE WINSLETTitanic stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have pledged to help the last survivor of the ocean liner. They have thrown their support behind a fund that will subsidise Millvina Dean's nursing home fees.
Dean was two months old when the Titanic sank on 14 April, 1912. She has been at a nursing home in Southampton since she broke her hip about three years ago but has struggled to pay the fees.
OH, REALLYA man lost E23,000 (£20,500) to the wind when an envelope with the money he had stuck in the passenger seat pocket of his convertible blew away during a test drive in northern Germany.
Eight police officers blocked the road for nearly half an hour and helped the man recover ?20,000 of the cash.
"The remaining ?3,000 have not been found," a police spokeswoman said.
