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World News Quick Take

■ Singapore
Bribe attempt leads to jail
A woman from China was sentenced to five months' jail and fined 2,000 Singapore dollars for overstaying her visa and trying to bribe a policeman, said a report in The Straits Times newspaper yesterday. On May 27, Liang Zhu Rong, 32, tried to run away from two police officers, but they caught up with her and she threw herself to the ground and begged them to let her go. When they refused, the 32-year-old woman from China took out a wad of cash from her handbag and offered it to Staff Sergeant Benny Quah Kang Hai. He declined and Liang was arrested. She could have been jailed for five years and fined US$100,000.

■ Hong Kong
Harry Potter locked up
Thousands of copies of the new Harry Potter book were under lock and key in Hong Kong yesterday after being delivered to the territory ahead of next Saturday's worldwide launch. Book shops around the territory are preparing for huge queues when Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix goes on sale next Saturday morning with thousands of advance orders already placed. Copies of J.K. Rowling's new blockbuster were delivered under tight security on Friday after being flown into the territory, which has a huge Harry Potter following among its young readers, but were then placed in locked storerooms under a strict embargo put in place by the publisher.

■ Laos
Free reporters, group asks
Reporters Without Borders on Friday called for the immediate release of two European journalists arrested earlier this month in Laos on murder-related charges. The Paris-based journalism watchdog group also called on the Laotian government to allow the journalists to receive visits from French and Belgian diplomats and their relatives. The group, along with friends and colleagues of the journalists, have formed a committee seeking the release of Belgian photojournalist Thierry Falise and French cameraman Vincent Reynaud. In a statement, the committee said it is worried about their physical and mental well-being.

■ Indonesia
Group claims violations
The Indonesian national commission on human rights (Komnas HAM) has strongly defended its previous statement that seven unarmed civilians, including a 13-year-old boy, were shot dead in the war-torn Aceh province, news reports said yesterday. Komnas HAM, the government-funded independent human rights body, also claimed a "number of human rights violations," including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, torture and sexual harassment since martial law was enforced in Aceh on May 19.

■ Philippines
Christian man beheaded
Authorities are looking into the possible involvement of Muslim Abu Sayyaf rebels in the beheading of a young Christian man who had gone missing in the southern Philippine island of Basilan, the military said yesterday. Ariel Royo, 18, went missing on Friday near the rebel-plagued town of Lantawan and his body was found later in the day. He was decapitated and his head was still missing, Basilan army chief Colonel Bonifacio Ramos said. "We are not discounting the involvement of the Abu Sayyaf here. We are still investigating and we cannot be conclusive on our suspicion," Ramos said.

■ Italy
Berlusconi faces new test
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faced fresh legal embarrassment on Friday with the launch of a probe over suspected tax fraud in the sprawling business empire of the country's richest man. The new case, involving alleged irregularities in dealings over television and cinema rights for Berlusconi's Mediaset empire in the 1990s, comes as Italy prepares to take over the EU presidency from July 1. Judicial sources said the Milan magistrates in charge of the case had decided to extend their investigations to Berlusconi because he was the owner of Mediaset at the time of the alleged irregularities.

■ United Kingdom
Woolf notebook uncovered
A lost notebook covering three months of the novelist Virginia Woolf's life in her 20s has been found after lying in an academic's bottom drawer in Birmingham, England, for 35 years. The find, made during a house move, ranks high in the annals of literary discoveries. Extracts highlight the acuteness and vision of Woolf's style when she was a struggling 27-year-old unpublished writer. However, they also controversially underline her snobbery and early anti-semitism. In a sketch headed Jews, she writes of a Mrs Loeb: "... a fat Jewess, aged 56 [she tells her age to ingratiate herself], coarsely skinned, with drooping eyes and tumbled hair ... Her food, of course, swam in oil and was nasty."

■ United Kingdom
Gay bishop sparks protests
Evangelicals were threatening to split the Church of England Friday as their anger mounted over the appointment of a homosexual theologian and campaigner for gay Christian rights as Bishop of Reading, west of London. Protests have mounted since Jeffrey John, the canon theologian of Southwark Cathedral, London, was appointed by Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, three weeks ago. Some parishes are threatening to withdraw the financial contributions they make to diocesan running costs and in effect make a unilateral declaration of independence from the Church of England, though so far only one, in the City of London, has done so.

■ Greece
Doctor accused of doping
A neurosurgeon was accused on Friday of heavily sedating two hospital colleagues in an apparent reprisal for being assigned unpopular shifts, authorities said. The 48-year-old surgeon was arrested late Thursday carrying a box of sedatives. He was charged Friday with intent to cause serious harm and suspended from the state-run Tzanneio hospital at Athens' main port of Piraeus. His name was not announced. Police said they were investigating claims that the two colleagues, also surgeons, had been drugged on several occasions. The suspect allegedly slipped sedatives into their coffee at the hospital canteen.

■ France
Fisherman nets cannabis
A French fisherman netted a surprise catch this week -- 30kg of cannabis. The man was fishing on the river Yvette, on the southern edge of Paris, when he spotted something strange in the water, French media reported. Taking a closer look, he discovered 28 bags, each containing a little over a kilogram of cannabis resin and immediately alerted the police. "Perhaps it was the usual hiding place for a drug trafficker," a local policeman was quoted as saying in the Liberation daily. "With the heat, the [water] level had fallen. There was only about 50cm of water," he said.

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