New York's commuters are up in arms against the five-hour simultaneous closing of all 78 subway toilets from midnight to 5 a. m. The New York Transit, through spokesman Charles Seaton, defended the new policy implemented the past few weeks, as its way of making the riding public more comfortable by setting exclusive window hours for its maintenance staff to clean the toilets.

A local substitute teacher was terminated from his post here after being accused of performing "wizardry. "According to Jim Piculas, a substitute teacher at the Rushe Middle School in Pasco County, he was removed from his post last January, with officials bearing their accusations on a disappearing-toothpick act that he performed for his students a week before.

Two residents of Hawaii have asked a district court in Honolulu to stop the Department of Energy and its partners from constructing a particle accelerator facility on the border between France and Switzerland. Walter F. Wagner and Luis Sancho's federal lawsuit filed Monday also seeks to delay the opening of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) pending its safety inspection on grounds that the gigantic atom smasher that physicists will use to study the origin of the universe could accidentally create "strangelet," an unknown matter, or an expanding black hole that both could destroy the Earth.

A campaign that calls for better etiquette from local policemen was launched in Beijing. Citizens, through the campaign, are calling for law enforcers to use words such as "good morning" and "please" upon pulling over a motorist. According to reports, this pro-courtesy campaign also asks that policemen greet drivers with salutes and "etiquette words. "

A man got locked inside an HSBC bank branch after he entered the still closed establishment, surmising from its unlocked door that it was already open. Jay Whitmarsh, 47, said that when he entered the bank and saw it was empty, he merely thought that the staff had stepped out, and would return in a few minutes. Then suddenly heheard the door slam shut, and the latch lock. He tried opening the door, but had no luck getting free.