Consumer Case

Kingfisher Airlines told to pay Rs 40,000 to customer

Chandigarh, September 26
The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum has slapped a fine of Rs 30,000 on Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. for its failure to provide a boarding pass to a Mani Majra Housing Complex resident.
District forum president PD Goel, and members Rajinder Singh Gill and Madanjit Kaur Sahota, observed that the opposite parties were under legal obligation to provide a hassle-free and comfortable journey to their potential customers; which they had failed while dealing with the situation in the present complaint.
The forum also directed the opposite parties to issue a complementary return ticket to the complainant on any domestic flight, besides Rs 10,000 as costs of litigation.
The complainant, Lata Sikri, had averred that she had booked an air ticket for Bidar via Hyderabad with Kingfisher Airlines through Airpak Travels, Chandigarh. The flight was scheduled to take off at 9.25 am from Delhi.
She said even though the opposite party issued boarding passes to all her male colleagues, she was denied the same. Subsequently, the boarding pass of another airlines, Spice Jet, was issued to her and the flight departed in the late hours at 3.45 pm. She was given in writing that surface transport would be provided by the Hyderabad Airport Authority for Bidar. She contended that the airport authority provided her with a taxi, but the driver lost his way and it took another six hours to reach the destination. She wrote to Kingfisher Airlines, which regretted the inconvenience and offered her a complimentary return ticket on Kingfisher Airlines, which she declined. The counsel for the opposite parties argued that the complainant had already availed of the services against the consideration paid by her to the opposite parties.

Ex-Governor General still costs Canadians

Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson still costing taxpayers money

Adrienne Clarkson continues to be a drain on the pocketbooks of Canadian taxpayers.

The former Governor General, known for her extravagant spending habits, has billed taxpayers more than $500,000 for secretarial help since leaving Rideau Hall in 2005.

Clarkson defends the expenditures.

Her assistant Michael Henry told the Toronto Star the "temporary" staff is needed to respond to correspondence Clarkson receives related to her time in office.

"Clarkson gets up to 200 letters and between 20 and 30 requests a month for speaking engagements, involvement in benevolent causes and demands related to her role as colonel-in-chief of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Regiment," he said.

"As Canada's most active and involved Governor General, she created a profile which means that there are still many worthwhile calls on her personal participation, which she takes seriously and requires time and research to assess their value for active involvement."

But the Toronto Star reviewed the public accounts records and found only one other former Governor General had claimed federal funding for temporary help.

Romeo LeBlanc, who served in the post between 1995 and 1999, received $273,115 between 2007 and 2009. Leblanc was 81 when he died in June 2009 after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease.

This is not the first time Clarkson has been questioned about her spending habits.

During her tenure as Governor General her budget increased from $11 million a year to $19 million and, in 2003, she enraged Canadians after going $4 million over budget on a northern country tour to promote Canadian culture.

Clarkson and husband John Ralston Saul are now co-chairs of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, a Toronto-based non-profit organization that helps new Canadians enter mainstream life.

And, of course, she earns a sizable government pension estimated to be greater than $120,000 a year.

Trial of Saudi woman for violating ban on female drivers reveals limits of king's reform drive

CAIRO - A Saudi activist will stand trial for defying the kingdom's ban on female drivers, a lawyer and rights advocates said Sunday, revealing clear limits on how far the conservative Muslim land is willing to go to grant women greater rights.

Just a day earlier, King Abdullah, who is regarded as a reformer by Saudi standards, decreed that women would be allowed for the first time to vote and run as candidates in elections for municipal councils starting in 2015. He also promised to appoint women after two years to the Shura Council, the currently all-male consultative body with no legislative powers.

Activists in Saudi Arabia and abroad welcomed the changes as a step in the right direction, while urging the kingdom to end all discrimination against women. Some also pointed to the case against Najalaa Harriri as evidence of how far the kingdom still has to go on the path of reforms.

Harriri was among the dozens of Saudi women to challenge the country's longtime ban on driving in a campaign that began in June. In a nod to the power of social media, the campaigners posted video of themselves behind the wheel on the Web, drawing international attention at a time of great tumult across the Arab world.

She was summoned for questioning on Sunday by the prosecutor general in the western port city of Jeddah, according to attorney Waleed Aboul Khair. She will stand trial in a month, joining several other women currently on trial for driving.

Activists say the trials reveal a gap between the image the kingdom wants to show to the outside world and the reality on the ground in the ultraconservative nation.

"I believe that Saudi Arabia has always had two kinds of rhetoric, one for outside consumption to improve the image of the kingdom and a more restrictive one that accommodates the religious establishment inside," Aboul Khair said.

In Saudi Arabia, no woman can travel, work, marry, get divorced, gain admittance to a public hospital or live independently without permission from a "mahram," or male guardian. Men can beat women who don't obey them and fathers or brothers have the right to prevent their female relatives from getting married if they don't approve of her suitor.

"Right now, women are harassed and they get dragged to courts and nothing has changed in this respect," said Aboul Khair, who himself has been referred to court after challenging the social restrictions women face as well as other issues. His trial has yet to start.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women — both Saudi and foreign — from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor.

In a high-profile case that triggered the June Internet campaign, Manal al-Sherif was detained for more than 10 days after appearing in a video clip driving her car and calling for a mass driving protest on June 17. Al-Sherif, an IT expert, was released after signing a pledge not to drive again or speak to reporters.

Since then, Harriri and dozens of other Saudi women have followed her lead. Harriri also helped start a similar campaign this month called "My Right, My Dignity" that calls for an end to all forms of discrimination against women.

In most cases, the women are stopped by police and held until a male guardian is summoned and the women sign a pledge not to drive again. Some are referred to court.

Harriri refused to sign, according to Samar Badawi, another female activist who was present at the police station with her three weeks ago.

"Najalaa is not the only one. I've received phone calls from many women who get detained and referred to trial," Badawi said. "At court, you have one of two options: either the judge issues a sentence or closes the case."

The ban is rooted in religious edicts and Saudi Arabia's conservative traditional culture, which views limitations on women's freedom of movement as a necessity to prevent sins. However, there is no written law banning women from driving. As a result, there is no set punishment for the offence.

Also, activists like Badawi argue this means there is no legal basis for brining the women to trial.

She notes that she has been driving every two or three days in Jeddah since June and without a problem. The port city is notably more liberal than the capital, Riyadh, and other parts of the country.

"We are marginalized in very basic rights," said Badawi, who was sentenced herself to six months in prison for disobeying her father. "They think that by giving us some political rights, we will be pleased and shut up."

Coroner Concludes Irishman Died of Spontaneous Human Combustion

Can people suddenly and inexplicably explode into a ball of fire?

It sounds like something in a horror film, but some people believe it happens. It's also what an Irish coroner recently concluded about the death of Michael Faherty, a 76-year-old Irishman who burned to death in his home in December 2010. There were scorch marks above and below the body, but no evidence of any gasoline, kerosene, or other accelerant. The coroner, Ciaran McLoughlin, reported: "This fire was thoroughly investigated and I'm left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation." [Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena]

Usually, of course, fires do not start on their own. When investigators are searching for the cause of forest fires they don't assume that the flame ignited itself, but instead that it was probably caused by a careless camper or a lightning strike. Though rare, spontaneous combustion has long been known to occur. Under the right circumstances many things can self-ignite on a hot day, including used rags containing oil or gasoline and piles of compost. Coal dust can also spontaneously ignite, one of many dangers that miners face. [How Long Do Mafia Victims Take to Dissolve in Acid?]

But the claim that people can suddenly burst into flames for no apparent reason is a whole different matter. The best-known case of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is actually fictional: in Charles Dickens's 1853 novel "Bleak House" a character explodes into fire. The phenomenon has also appeared in movies and on TV shows like "The X-Files."

But are there any confirmed real-life cases?

This is where things get trickier. Though some writers suggest that there are hundreds (or even thousands) of SHC cases throughout history, only about a dozen have been investigated in any detail. Researcher Joe Nickell examined many "unexplainable" cases in his book "Real-Life X-Files" and found that all of them were far less mysterious than often suggested. Most of the victims were, like the Irishman Faherty, elderly, alone, and near flames (cigarettes, candles, fires, etc.) when they died. Several were last seen drinking alcohol and smoking.

How could a body burn once it has ignited? If the person is asleep, intoxicated, unconscious, too weak, or otherwise unable to move or put the flames out, then the victim's clothes can act as a candle wick, drawing on the body's fat (which, because it is an oil, is flammable, and very near the skin's surface) to fuel the fire. Once a body starts to burn, it will continue to burn until the fuel (clothing, chairs, paper, body fat, etc.) is used up.

Fires are notoriously fickle; sometimes flames will spread to other places, other times they won't. Sometimes fires will consume the whole body, other times they won't. It all depends on the specific circumstances of each case. [The World's Greatest Hoaxes]

Nickell also pours cold water on the idea that bodies can only be consumed by temperatures far higher than ordinary flames could provide: "Experiments show that liquefied human fat burns at a temperature of about 250 degrees [Celsius] (482 degrees Fahrenheit); however a cloth wick placed in such fat will burn even when the temperature falls as low as 24 degrees [Celsius] (75 degrees Fahrenheit)."

Michael Faherty's case may not be as mysterious as it looks. There was, after all, an open fire close to his burned body. It seems likely that a spark or ember might have popped from the fire onto his clothing, and caught his clothing on fire. It's not clear why the coroner conclusively ruled this explanation out.

If SHC is a real phenomenon (and not the result of an elderly or infirm person being too close to a flame source), why doesn't it happen more often? There are 5 billion people in the world, and yet we don't see reports of people bursting into flame while walking down the street, attending football games, or sipping a coffee at a local Starbucks. If spontaneous human combustion is a real — but very rare — phenomenon, statistically we should see far more cases. As it is, the only time when SHC is even suspected is in a very specific set of circumstances—usually ones that suggest a more logical explanation.