HERE'S some rather Friday-ish news. A man on a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles was arrested on arrival at Salt Lake City earlier in the week and charged with assaulting a flight attendant. Apparently Pogos Paul Sefilian, Gulliver's new favourite name, was twice asked to stop using an electronic cigarette, both after boarding and then again after take-off. He became agitated and, in the words of a complaint filed at a federal court (and quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune) "threw peanuts and pretzels at the flight attendant and at the flight deck door in an apparent attempt to protest the airline's policy banning electronic cigarettes". He also opened the overhead luggage compartments as the plane came in to land and ignored six requests to sit down.

Mr Sefilian's behaviour was clearly nutty, though he may have thought he was within his rights to light up, or whatever it is one does with these high-tech pieces of plastic. As this article describes, though, "e-cigarettes" are not allowed on US flights.