It isn't often that a man asks for sympathy because he is addicted to pornographic Web sites. That might be a good because it's revealing such an addiction is more likely to generate disgust than sympathy. Except if the sex addict was feeding his habit at work while being paid by his employer to work. Then such an addiction is likely to generate unemployment, as was the case with an American working for IBM. When James Pacenza, 58, was caught using an online sex chat room at work, IBM fired him. But Pacenza, a Vietnam veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, claims IBM should have kept him on and given him sympathy instead of giving him a pink slip.

Jeffrey Francis Cullen, a Vietnam war veteran, was sentenced to five months in prison and was put on five years of intensive probation after a Mohave County Judge found him guilty of aggravated assault against firefighters. The incident dates back to August last year when a fire crew went to Cullen's home to extinguish an alleged tree fire reported by him but instead found a cat stuck on the tree and Cullen demanding to rescue it. According to police reports, Cullen, 59, told firefighters he had wanted a cat rescued from his tree and knew they would only respond to a fire call.

A Japan-bound Vietnam Airlines plane was forced to remain grounded for nearly four hours after a passenger spotted a white mouse on the plane. The aviation authorities suspect the mouse might have hitched a ride aboard the plane in the hand luggage or pocket of one of the passengers and eventually escaped. The Boeing 777 from the central city of Da Nang landed at the Hanoi-based Noi Bai International Airport late Saturday and was scheduled to fly to Japan but the flight was delayed after a passenger aboard the plane reported the airplane crew of the mouse.

In a treatment that equates Internet addicts to mentally ill people, China is giving electric shocks to people who spend more time on the Internet than required. The Chinese government has launched a nationwide campaign to treat "Internet addiction" and many Internet-addiction clinics have been opened in this regard. A recent survey found that nearly 14 percent of teens in China are vulnerable to becoming addicted to the Internet. The Communist Youth League calls it a "a grave social problem" that threatens the youth of this Asian country.