ABRACADABRA

'Sworn-In' a week ago, as Minister, but in trouble already
Thiruvananthapuram: In a big embarrassment to Kerala’s Congress-led United Democratic Front government, a court has initiated probe into a sexual harassment complaint that a woman has filed against Water Resources Minister P J Joseph. Joseph, who was acquitted in a molestation case earlier, has been accused of seeking sexual favours from a mother of two children from Thodupuzha in Idukki district. Admitting the complaint, the Thodupuzha First Class Judicial Magistrate court issued summons to two witnesses.
Peerumede MLA Bijimol and the Thodupuzha branch manger of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, who were listed among the witnesses in the complaint, have been directed to appear in the court.
The woman alleged that Joseph had called her up through mobile and offered to provide her husband a job if she obliged him. Joseph continued to send her lewd SMS messages even after she rejected his offer. The woman said his supporters threatened to eliminate her if she complained against him.
The woman said she had moved the court, after the complaint she lodged with the senior police officers and other authorities did not evoke any action. Joseph, who was sworn in as minister on May 23, was not immediately available for comments.
Joseph had resigned from the V S Achuthanandan Ministry in April 2007 following a complaint by a former television newsreader that he had tried to molest her while travelling by Kingfisher flight from Chennai to Cochin in August 2006.
With this Joseph has become the second minister in the present UDF Cabinet facing sexual harassment charges. Industry Minister and Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader P K Kunhalikutty is also facing a re-investigation in the ice cream parlour sex scandal.
The previous Left Democratic Front government ordered the probe following revelation by a close relative of Kunhalikutty that the IUML leader had saved his skin by bribing the victims, witnesses and judges.

Nine-year-old caught in UK for drunken driving
London: A nine-year-old boy was held for drunk driving in Britain, a media report said. ‘The Sunday Sun’ reported that the boy, too young to be prosecuted for a criminal offence, was nabbed in Cumbria for driving under the influence of alcohol. The boy was breathanalysed and then taken into police custody. It was then that the officers were left stunned when they learnt about his age. “It is incredibly concerning that young people, many of whom will have had no formal driving tuition, are risking their own and other’s lives on our roads."

Pigs cause traffic jams in Siberian city
Novokuznetsk (Russia): Eight pigs have caused a huge traffic jam on a bridge in the West Siberian city of Novokuznetsk after they overturned a trailer in which were being carried, a police official said. “The pigs might have been under stress during the ride and started rocking the trailer,” a spokesman for the traffic police department said.
The pigs escaped. The driver of the vehicle, traffic police and sympathizers joined the search for the pigs, he said. Other drivers wishing to cross the bridge faster helped haul the trailer away.

Oz arrest 1,600 ‘boozed-up idiots'
Sydney: Australia’s binge-drinking culture has been starkly highlighted with 1,600 “boozed-up idiots” arrested by police in a hard-line weekend crackdown on alcohol fuelled violence and crime. The trans Tasman “Operation Unite”, a two-day blitz on public alcohol abuse and related crime, was the latest attempt to hammer home the message that drunken thugs will not be tolerated. Almost two-thirds of the arrests were made in New South Wales state, followed by Western Australia, and included numerous assaults on police officers. Other offences included drink-driving, urinating in public, failing to quit a licensed premises when asked, and resisting arrest.

Shortage of men in Australia
Sydney: Urban Australia is suffering from an unusual kind of drought. Single women in big cities are now heading to the countryside “in search of love” as the ratio of men to women is far more favourable there than in metropolitan areas, IANS reports.
It has reportedly become very difficult for women in their late 20s and early 30s to find an eligible man in cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane says the ‘Daily Telegraph’.
Seeking to gain from this, a dating agency has started sending single women to the countryside on weekend tours, named “Thank Goodness He’s a Country Boy”. The tour involves eight hours of intensive speed dating at a country pub, where farmers are introduced to single city girls.
Brie Petersen came up with the idea after visiting friends in the rural town of Mungindi in Queensland.
During a night at the pub, the owner told her that he regularly received letters from single women in Brisbane and Sydney asking him to set them up with farmers. “These women obviously needed help, it was simply a matter of putting the two groups in the same place,” Petersen said.
The first tour, which took 50 Sydney women to the town of Tamworth has been a success, with an “85 percent pick up rate”, she said. The tours are the “latest symptoms” of the chronic gender unbalance in metropolitan and rural area, which has already led to a popular reality TV programme, “The Farmer Wants a Wife”, says the report.
The programme matches single women with farmers from far-flung areas, and after six series it has generated four marriages and three babies.
Bernard Salt, demographer and author of “Man Drought”, said, “The farmer does want a wife because there’s no single sheilas in the nearby towns.”
While women in the 1960s would marry a local man after finishing school, they now head-off to the city in search of work, leaving the men behind, he said.“As soon as that 18-year-old girl leaves, she upsets the gender balance in the town, because there are not enough marriageable women, and she also upsets the gender balance in Sydney because there is an oversupply of women in the inner city suburbs.”
A 29-year-old Sydney woman, Bianca Wignall, one of the Petersen’s clients, says it is a matter of quality, as well as quantity.“Country men are more gentlemanly, they hold the door open for you and if they see you with an empty glass they will be the first to offer to get you a drink, they are more attentive.”

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