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World News Quick Take

■ Australia
Howard mulls early election
Australian Prime Minister John Howard fuelled speculation that he might call an early general election, telling party colleagues yesterday that the next poll could be just a year away. A government spokesman said Howard told party room colleagues that he was not inclined to call a double-dissolution election even though his conservative government now had the political triggers to do so but he said it remained a possibility.

■ Australia
Suspect report dismissed
The government yesterday dismissed a report that an Australian terror suspect being held by the US military has agreed to plead guilty in return for a firm release date, but added it was checking the report with Washington. David Hicks, 28, has been detained at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 20 months without charge after he was allegedly caught fighting with Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Citing unnamed US officials, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Hicks and two Britons, also held in Guantanamo without charge, have agreed to plead guilty, renounce terrorism and assist investigations in return for release dates.

■ Hong Kong
Stores pull Nazi fashion line
A popular Hong Kong fashion chain has pulled a new line of clothes, printed with swastikas and other Nazi party symbols, from its stores after sparking outrage among consumers and harsh criticism from Israel. "We will remove today all merchandise with the Nazi insignia from our shops. Some people have made comments via e-mail and we will apologize to them," said Gloria Yu of I.T. Ltd, the group that owns the garment chain. The row erupted at the weekend when the stores put up flags and banners with the Nazi insignia to promote the new line.

■ Singapore
Scientist invents hair grower
A Singapore researcher has developed a lotion he claimed will restore at least some of the crowning glory to shiny pates using substances from plants, a newspaper reported yesterday. And Hong Kong-based Lo Hong Ka, a company dealing in bird's nest products, has bought the rights to sell Lee Chee Wee's lotion, called Biolyn Hair Serum, for an undisclosed sum, The Straits Times said. It is getting ready for an assault on the regional market by pumping up production to 120,000 bottles by November. Lee Seng Siew, chairman and founder of Lo Hong Ka, said he was persuaded that the lotion worked after he gave 100 bottles to friends who rubbed them on areas of their scalps with thinning hair.

■ Vietnam
Fears grow for missing Miss
Reigning Miss Vietnam has been missing for a week and is feared kidnapped by her police officer boyfriend, her father said yesterday. Pham Thi Mai Phuong, 18 -- who represented Vietnam in the Miss World contest last November -- was last seen seven days ago getting into a van with her boyfriend and several other young men, said the girl's father, Pham Thanh Hung. Phuong was due to leave Vietnam next month to begin a four-year, US$56,000 university scholarship in the UK. Her boyfriend, Nguyen Bao Khanh, 26, is the son of the local police chief and was unhappy that Phuong was planning to leave Vietnam, the girl's mother said yesterday from the port city of Hai Phong, 100km east of Hanoi.

■ Canada
Kyoto funding planned
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien plans to outline around C$1 billion (US$725 million) in spending aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, an official said on Monday. The announcement will account for about half the C$2 billion Ottawa pledged in February's budget for a five-year program to help meet Canada's commitment under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

■ United Kingdom
Toes frostbitten in heatwave
Britain's heatwave produced its first case of frostbite on Monday when a solicitor was diagnosed with the condition after driving to Manchester from London with his air conditioning on maximum and directed at his midge-bitten foot. Mike Ball, 46, went to the doctor after his toes turned numb and one of them started to lose its healthy pink color and go black. Another then began turning blue -- a combination usually associated with attempts on Everest or the poles. "It was incredibly hot," said Ball, who decided to make the journey in his Jaguar XK8, using its air con as therapy for a more conventional heatwave injury. "A day or so earlier I had been bitten by a mosquito or something in my garden so it was also a relief to feel the cool air on my foot.

■ Mexico
Amnesty criticizes police
The Mexican police have mishandled evidence, failed to question witnesses and otherwise botched investigations into a decade-long series of slayings of as many as 370 poor, young women in the sprawling border city of Ciudad Juarez, Amnesty International said in a report released here Monday. In the 71-page report, the group documented what it called "unjustifiable delays" in investigations that could otherwise have led to arrests. The London-based group said the authorities in Ciudad Juarez, which borders El Paso, Texas, had bungled autopsies and resorted to falsifying evidence and torturing suspects to obtain confessions. The Amnesty report also said that the families of the victims, all of them poor and with virtually no political influence, had been ignored and even maligned by the authorities.

■ Lebanon
Singer's fans mob station
Hordes of angry Lebanese mobbed a Beirut television studio to protest at the elimination of a Lebanese contestant from an Arab Superstar singing contest. Witnesses said a melee erupted in the studio audience after viewers voted Lebanese singer Melhem Zein out of the semi-final round of the televised contest -- leaving a Jordanian and a Syrian to compete for the crown. "With our blood and souls, we sacrifice for you Melhem," the protesters chanted. But Ali Jaber, executive manager of competition sponsor Future TV, said Zein had lost in a fair contest.

■ The netherlands
Sleeping thief arrested
A burglar who took a nap after breaking into an elderly woman's house in Amsterdam was arrested after she found him asleep on her couch. The burglar slipped in through a window and combed the house for valuables before settling down for a snooze, police said. He was rumbled at about 6am when the pensioner found him in her living room and called the police. The drowsy burglar, who was found with some of the woman's jewelery, admitted his crime to police.

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