World news quick take

■Malaysia
Smoke blankets region
As gray clouds of pollution blanketed parts of Malaysia, authorities yesterday said they would take legal action against companies that lit fires to clear plantation land. Seasonal burning in parts of Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia have sent smoke drifting across the region, cutting visibility and raising health concerns. Thursday was the worst day so far, with two air quality monitoring stations -- both near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's largest city -- reporting unhealthy pollution levels, officials said. The government said it would crack down on plantation owners who lit open fires to clear land for next season's crops.

■ China
Bank seeks `smart sperm'
China's "smart sperm" bank, which accepts only highly educated donors, says it has 400 women on a waiting list for fertilization. Now it needs donors. Four years after it was set up, the center, set up in 1999, says it has fewer than 20. "The creation of the center in the southwestern city of Chengdu set off a debate in the Chinese press over its focus on the sperm of highly educated men. "Potential donors are usually busy men," Huang said. "They have little time to spend on this."

■ China
Navy reshuffles after accident
Several Chinese naval leaders have been dismissed in the wake of a submarine accident in which 70 sailors perished, official sources said yesterday. The navy of the People's Liberation Army will now be commanded by Zhang Dingfa (張定發), previously a joint commander, Chinese media said. Zhang replaces Shi Yunsheng (石雲生), 63, according to several newspaper reports quoting Xinhua press agency. Hu Yanlin (胡顏林) also replaces Yang Huaiqing (楊懷慶) as the navy's political commissar, the reports said. The changes were approved by the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the agency said, without offering a reason for the reshuffle.

■ Thailand
Woman admits to rape lie
A Hong Kong tourist who claimed she was gang-raped in front of the Thai Parliament building has admitted making up the rape story because she wanted public attention, police said yesterday. So Leong-ying, who was arrested on Thursday at the Thai beach resort of Pattaya, faces criminal charges for filing false complaints to police. "We spent long hours questioning So. Finally she admitted she made up the story," said an investigator.

■ Indonesia
Durian-flavored condoms
Durian-flavored went on sale for the first time this week in Jakarta drug stores, pharmacies and street stalls as a new gimmick in the fight the spread of HIV/AIDS, the country's leading condom producer said yesterday. "We've sold about 150,000 in the first week, which isn't bad for a new product," DKT Indonesia director Christopher Purdy said. An estimated 80,000 new HIV cases are expected this year primarily among intravenous drug users and sex workers and their clients.

■United States
DNA tests set mother free
Thinking had caught a French fugitive who had kidnapped her two children from their father, authorities held a mother in a Miami jail for six nights until DNA tests proved them wrong. When officers brandishing guns ran toward her car, Nona Cason thought they were after somebody else. Instead, they arrested Cason, accused her of being fugitive Nadine Tretiakoff, and seized her children. Cason spent the next six nights in jail. Finally, the state ordered a DNA test. The results eviscerated any possibility of a blood link between Fourcade and Cason's two children. She was subsequently released.

■ Kosovo
Mass-grave dead returned
The remains of 22 Kosovo-Albanians killed during the war in Kosovo, transported to Serbia and buried in a mass grave were returned to Kosovo on Thursday. Serbian authorities handed over the remains, which have undergone an identification process, to UN Mission in Kosovo at Merdare on the Kosovo-Serbian border. The 22 bodies were found at a mass grave in Petrovo Selo in Serbia. UN officials said they originated from Srbica and Glogovac in central Kosovo. This is the second transfer. An earlier transport in April involved the remains of 47 bodies.

■ Italy
Bomb found on airplane
Police an alleged explosive device on a plane waiting to board passengers for a domestic flight on Thursday at an airport in eastern Italy. The device was found under a seat on an Alitalia plane that had flown in to Ancona from Rome and was scheduled to make a return trip Thursday evening. Airport police said they had found "a suspicious wrapping that turned out to contain explosive material." An investigation is under way, they said in a statement. A fire department official at the airport said police had received an anonymous call alerting them about an explosive on flight AZ1128, that was to leave for Rome from Ancona, on Italy's eastern coast.

■ United States
Wife's head sawn off
A jealous husband strangled his wife, cut off her head with a saw and stuffed her body in a suitcase that he dumped on a Harlem street, police said on Thursday. Detectives found a telephone number in the suitcase and traced it back to the couple's basement apartment, where the husband eventually confessed to the killing, Inspector James Luongo said. Oscar Pilamunga, 24, was awaiting arraignment on Thursday on a second-degree murder charge. Police said he confessed to attacking his wife, Beatrice Yually, when she told him she was leaving him for a boyfriend late last month.

■ United States
Guilty plea in hacking case
An American Web designer has agreed to plead guilty to intercepting e-mail and content from Arab TV station Al-Jazeera's Internet site and rerouting it to a "Let Freedom Ring" patriotic page he devised, prosecutors said. John William Racine II, 24, of Norco, California, will plead guilty to felony charges of wire fraud and unlawful interception of an electronic communication. Racine allegedly acted after learning in March that Al-Jazeera had posted on its Web site photos of American POWs and soldiers killed in Iraq, according to the plea agreement.

■United States
Gregory Peck dies
One of Hollywood's last great leading men, Gregory Peck, famed for his heroic roles in such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird, died Thursday at the age of 87. Peck, known for his quiet dignity, became an icon of cinema's golden era with starring roles in more than 60 films, including Roman Holiday, Cape Fear and Spellbound and won the best actor Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962. A classic star who became a respected elder statesmen of cinema, Peck died peacefully in his Los Angeles home at 4am Thursday with his French-born wife of 48 years, Veronique, holding his hand. his publicist said.

■ United States
ABC newscaster dies
David Brinkley, the newscaster whose distinct speaking style and wry wit made him an American household name for half a century, has died at the age of 82. Jeffrey Schneider, vice president of ABC News, his former employer, said on Thursday that Brinkley died at his Houston home just before midnight from complications caused by a fall. For nearly half a century, Brinkley was one of the dominant faces in American broadcasting, first as a co-anchor of NBC television's evening news program and later as host of the Sunday current affairs program on ABC, This Week with David Brinkley. Brinkley helped shape American TV news as one of the first journalists to be totally comfortable with the new medium.

■ Poland
PM wants vote of confidence
Poland's left-leaning government faces a parliamentary vote of confidence yesterday, days after Poles overwhelmingly voted in favor of their formerly communist nation's joining the EU next year. In a gamble to shore up his government amid widespread criticism it is too weak to push through the reforms before the country enters the EU, Prime Minister Leszek Miller called for the vote on Monday. Calls for Miller's departure first surfaced in March, when he dropped his junior coalition partner, the Peasants' Party, after repeated clashes over government policies aimed at combatting record high unemployment of 19 percent and an economic slump.

■ United States
Researcher jailed for theft
A Chinese researcher was sentenced to a year in prison for stealing yeast cultures and other potentially lucrative biological materials from Cornell University and trying to smuggle them to China. Yin Qingqiang, a former postdoctoral research associate at Cornell, was given credit for time served and will spend 10 months behind bars. He was convicted in December of theft and lying to the FBI. Yin was arrested at the Syracuse airport last July after security officers found vials, test tubes and petri dishes hidden in his family's luggage as they tried to board a flight to Shanghai.

■ South Africa
Food shortages serious
Despite bumper crop of grain and plentiful rains this harvest season, food shortages remain a serious problem in large pockets of southern Africa, a UN agency reported on Thursday. While nowhere near the severe shortages several countries faced last harvest season, when floods and drought severely damaged crops, aid workers said that even with the best possible weather conditions and with much international help, many nations in southern Africa will be simply unable to feed their people.

Agencies