Foreign acts often draw protests by the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), whose youth wing succeeded in forcing Beyonce to cancel a 2007 concert and sought last year to prevent Canadian singer Avril Lavigne from performing in this mainly Muslim country of 27 million people.

“We are against western entertainment that promotes hedonism. We do not want our youth to be misled,” said Ahmad Sabki, vice-president of PAS Youth, was quoted as saying in Thursday’s New Straits Times newspaper.

Malaysia’s image as a moderate Muslim country has been hit by the recent sentencing to caning of a woman caught drinking beer.

Beyonce is due to perform in Malaysia on October 25 for the first time, if she is allowed, as part of a global tour, the newspaper said.

Earlier this month, Malaysia initially banned Muslims from attending a concert by U.S. hip-hop band The Black Eyed Peas, which was sponsored by Guinness, one of the brands owned by the world’s biggest spirits group Diageo.

The ban was reversed, but a senior official said it was up to the individual’s “better judgment” to attend the event.

PAS conservatism on cultural issues has caused problems for the three-member opposition alliance of which it is a part, said Zaid Ibrahim, a former law minister who is now a senior opposition politician.

“It is as if for PAS Youth, the effort to fight corruption, abuse of power and inciting racism is less important compared to the efforts to make sure the young who are just learning to love and wish to be entertained freely are obstructed from enjoying a little freedom,” Zaid wrote on his website

A Malaysian welder had to have a nut removed from around his penis after an attempt to lengthen it before he gets engaged next week went embarrassingly wrong, a news report said Sunday.

The nut got stuck on his penis following an erection, the Star newspaper said, forcing him to seek help at a hospital in southern Johor state.

Staff from the Sultanah Aminah hospital had to drain some blood from the penis and cut away a top layer of skin before the object could be removed, the newspaper said.

It said the fire and rescue department were also involved in trying to remove the nut from the unnamed welder, who is in his 20s and hoped the nut would weigh down his penis to make it longer.

“The patient is now recovering and we hope to discharge him today (Sunday),” hospital director Daud Abdul Rahim told the Star.

On August 25, another young man in Kuala Lumpur had tried to increase his sexual prowess by slipping a steel ring around his penis, forcing the fire department to cut off the ring after doctors were unable to remove it, the newspaper said.

Indonesia and Malaysia will start talks in August to bridge cultural differences following a squabble last October over a popular love song, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday.

The southeast Asian neighbours had bickered over the song, Rasa Sayang (Feeling of Love), which Indonesians claim as their own but was used by Malaysia in a tourism campaign. The spat sparked calls for a boycott of Malaysian products in Indonesia.

Indonesia believes the song originated from its eastern islands of Maluku, as the lyrics of the Indonesian version suggest, while Malaysians say they have been singing the song since they were young.

Discordant notes creep up occasionally in relations between the two neighbours who share cultural and religious ties, speak a similar language and practise Islam.

A eminent people’s group, set up by the Indonesian and Malaysian presidents in July, will start initial discussions on August 29-30 in Jakarta to review history, misperceptions and efforts to increase people-to-people contact.

“We will listen again to their understanding of Indonesia, and our understanding of Malaysia, and why these two nations can easily be provoked over issues concerning the other,” said Teuku Faizasyah, the Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman.

“We see that our relations with Malaysia should have gone further, and should not be based on ethnic group sentimentality.”

The group of 14 diplomats and cultural experts from Indonesia and Malaysia is also considering reviving cultural programmes such as exchange visits and a TV show jointly produced by the two countries.

The programmes were forgotten after one of the initiators, former Indonesian president Suharto, stepped down in 1998.

As the biggest country in the region, Indonesia played a bigger role in the region until the 1990s, but its influence eroded after the political and monetary crisis in 1998.

(Reporting by Olivia Rondonuwu; Editing by Sugita Katyal and Valerie Lee)

Bystanders gave chase on hearing the screams of a housewife at a coffee shop in Ipoh, capital of the northern state of Perak, when the thief grabbed her handbag, the New Straits Times said.

The man was taken to a police station, where a check of his identification papers showed he was a policeman.

Perak police chief Zulkifli Abdullah confirmed the suspect was a policeman, but declined further comment, saying police would investigate, the paper added.

“I don’t want him to die in jail,” a tearful Chew Ten Hee, 67, told the New Straits Times newspaper, adding that her son, Sim Chung Mine, 41, would die if he did not get his medication regularly.

“I don’t understand how the police can claim he was involved in a robbery when he is so weak, he can’t even walk without assistance,” she added.

Sim was arrested in an Interpol operation in neighbouring Singapore on July 6 and sent back to Malaysia, where he has been remanded for 60 days, the paper said.

But his family does not know where he is being held and wanted assurances from police that he was receiving proper medical attention, his mother added.

Many Malaysians are willing to suspend disbelief when dealing with the supernatural, and the exhibitions capitalise on a widespread fascination with the ghouls and goblins that populate Malaysia’s legends and folklore.

But supernatural beings should not be played up in exhibitions, state news agency Bernama quoted the chairman of Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council as saying.

“They are beyond the comprehension of the human mind as they involve the invisible world,” Abdul Shukor Husain said.

“We don’t want to promote a belief in the supernatural and in superstition, which we do not know about. So we do not need to focus on such things or play them up by having such exhibitions.”

Just over half of Malaysia’s population is Muslim. The National Fatwa Council, made up of respected Islamic scholars, is the main body that issues religious edicts (fatwas).

Malaysian government officials have already called for a halt to one such exhibition in a state museum that has put on display decaying artefacts described as the carcasses of a genie and a mythical phoenix bird.

Last year more than 200,000 people flocked to an exhibition of about 100 coffins, ghosts and genies that organisers claimed included relics of mermaids and vampires.

Renjis Empati immediately ran back to the village where he screamed to alert the others living in a traditional indigenous “longhouse” in Sarawak state on Borneo island, the New Straits Times said.

“I could feel the earth trembling, and I saw the longhouse collapse into the sinkhole,” the paper quoted Renjis as saying.

The incident happened just after midnight Friday, the paper said.

“If not for him, most of us would be dead by now,” villager Lada Rentap said, according to the Times. Several said they lost all their possessions, including ancestral items passed down to them.

A number of indigenous tribes in Sarawak state live in “longhouses,” where an entire community lives under a single structure.

Officials in Sri Aman, Sarawak could not be immediately reached for comment.

Lucky and Flo, two female black Labradors deployed by Malaysian authorities in their crackdown on pirated movie DVDs and music CDs, carried out their first major successful operation in Johor state on Tuesday.

The New Straits Times said syndicate bosses had offered an unspecified reward for the killing of the two dogs.

“As a result of the extent of loss to the pirate syndicate, we have information from the domestic trade ministry that the Johor syndicate is intent on killing Lucky and Flo,” said Neil Gane, an official of the Motion Picture Association.

“The Malaysian authorities are taking this threat seriously and the security around the dogs’ current location has been beefed up,” he told Reuters.

In Tuesday’s raid, the two dogs helped seize a cache of around a million pirated game and movie discs in the southern city of Johor Baru, neighbouring Singapore. At least six people were arrested.

The fake DVDs, replicating machines and other tools used to make and sell discs were hidden in concealed spaces and secret compartments spread over four floors of an office building.

Malaysia, which figures on a U.S. watchlist on piracy, has dramatically stepped up efforts to rein in copyright pirates as it negotiates a free-trade pact with the United States.

The dogs are being given a month’s trial by Malaysian officials in a joint effort with the Motion Picture Association, which groups six major Hollywood film companies.

The dogs are trained to sit down when they smell plastic. Until now, the animals have been used mainly to check containers in cargo hangars.

The Terengganu state government plans to enlist the part-time spies to look out for un-Islamic behaviour, such as unmarried couples kissing or holding hands, the Star daily said.

“Some of these ‘spies’ could be waitresses or even janitors at hotels acting as auxiliary undercover agents for our religious department,” the head of the state government’s Islamic and welfare committee, Rosol Wahid, was quoted as saying.

“Accurate details are required for the enforcement officers to act, otherwise they could be pouncing on married couples.”

Last October, religious police in another part of this mainly Muslim country caused an outcry when they mistakenly raided the rented holiday apartment of a Christian American couple on suspicion that they were unmarried Muslims in “close proximity”.

Many of the Southeast Asian country’s 80 army bases are believed to be plagued by the pests, forcing authorities to assign special officers to tackle the problem, newspapers reported Saturday.

“There are several problems with our camps, like old age and wear and tear. But the biggest problem are the termites,” the New Straits Times quoted Deputy Defense Minister Zainal Abidin Zin as saying while visiting a naval base Friday in eastern Malaysia.

“These termites are like guerrillas inflicting damage on our facilities,” Zainal was quoted as saying by The Star. “There are more termites than members of the force.”

Officials have “found the termites not only attacking the wood but also the concrete sections of buildings,” the minister said, according to The Star.

A ministry panel will appoint personnel to pinpoint which camps are afflicted and take steps to curb the menace, the reports quoted Zainal as saying.

Calls to Zainal’s office seeking comment went unanswered Saturday.

Zulkifli Setapa was deemed the rightful owner after blood samples from the cow matched with those of two other cows that belonged to him, national Bernama news agency said.

Zulkifli and farmer Isa Mohamed, both from northeastern Kelantan state, had filed police reports in November for custody of the animal which is estimated to be worth around 2,000 ringgit ($571).

They jointly paid for DNA tests that cost about 3,200 ringgit ($914) to settle their dispute, in the first such case in Kelantan.

State veterinary official Zaimi Mohamad Daud told farmers to mark their herds to prevent future disputes, Bernama said.

State veterinary officials could not be immediately reached for comments.