Foul mouth grounds plane
Northwest Airlines canceled a Las Vegas to Detroit flight after the captain cursed on his cell phone while in the bathroom and then swore at one of the passengers.
During the boarding process, the captain left the cockpit to finish his phone conversation in the front lavatory. As passengers boarded, they could hear his end of the conversation through the bathroom door.
One brave passenger confronted the captain about his phone language, which prompted more foul words.
Northwest canceled the flight and flew the pilot back to Detroit, where he is based.
The airline is conducting a review of the matter and apologized to its customers. To the inconvenienced passengers, the airline provided meals, hotels and compensation.
Career pissed away
A British dentist was found guilty of urinating in his surgery sink and using dental tools meant for use on his patients to clean his ears and fingernails.
The medical tribunal ruled against the dentist Thursday, saying it was satisfied that 51-year-old Alan Hutchinson had risked the health of himself, staff and patients for more than 28 years.
Hutchinson also routinely failed to wear gloves or wash his hands while practicing.
One of Hutchinson’s dental nurses, who’d worked for him for 16 years, said she’d caught him urinating in the sink more than once.
The tribunal said the dentist’s poor hygiene habits made him unfit to practice and banned him from working.
Sexist adultery law unfair
A Ugandan court scrapped a federal adultery law that campaigners claimed discriminated against women.
The law said it was legal for a married man to have an affair with an unmarried woman but illegal for a married woman to have an affair with an unmarried man. Women found guilty of such crimes had faced up to a year in jail or a fine.
Uganda’s Constitutional Court ordered the penal code to be changed.
“Section 154 of the Penal Code Act, which penalizes married women on the offence of adultery, is discriminatory,” the Constitutional Court ruling said.
The ruling came after a legal challenge was filed by a group of female lawyers.
Porn-swap information leak
After swapping pornography on their computers, three Japanese naval officers triggered a scandal over a possible leak of sensitive information about Japan’s missile defense system.
According to Japanese media, police launched an investigation after a naval officer, who is married to a Chinese woman, took home a computer disk containing information about the high-tech Aegis radar system.
The Aegis system is used on Japanese destroyers fitted with SM-3 missile interceptors as part of the missile defense program.
The naval officer told police he accidentally copied the classified data onto his computer when he was copying porn from a computer that belonged to an officer on another ship.
A third navy officer also copied the data while copying pornographic images.
Police believe senior officers had to be involved in the data swap since none of the three officers had access to the confidential information.