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World News Quick Take

■ Japan
Government to probe orgy
The Japanese government will investigate reports hundreds of Japanese tourists took part in a sex orgy in a Chinese hotel that stoked anti-Japanese sentiment in China, Japan's top government spokesman said yesterday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told reporters the foreign ministry would question employees of a Japanese company who were reported to have taken part in the incident at a five-star hotel in the southern city of Zhuhai last month. According to Chinese media, about 400 Japanese tourists and 500 local prostitutes were involved in the orgy. Chinese officials have detained suspects and closed the hotel in the coastal city in Guangdong Province.

■ Japan
Mad cow checks stepped up
Japan will maintain "extremely strict" inspections of cattle following the confirmation of a new case of mad cow disease, government spokesmen said, adding they believe a new strain of the disease has emerged. "We conduct extremely strict tests on all cows," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference yesterday. "The cow in question was found through such testing. We have to check into it thoroughly and find out the cause."

■ North Korea
Kim's wife in hospital
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's wife, Ko Yong-hi, 50, is in critical condition after she sustained a head injury in a traffic accident in late September, a Japanese report said yesterday. The former star actress was traveling in a car when the accident happened, the Sankei Shimbun said, quoting a "Korean Peninsula source." No further details, including the location or cause of the accident, were known, the newspaper said. With speculation mounting that one of her two sons by Kim Jong-il will be named as the successor, North Korean media recently started idolizing Ko, an ethnic Korean who used to live in Japan and went to North Korea in the early 1960s, it said.

■ Hong Kong
Harbor reclamation goes on
The government said yesterday it will restart work on a reclamation project in Hong Kong's famed Victoria Harbor, a day after conservationists failed to persuade a judge to stop it. However, Housing and Planning Secretary Michael Suen said officials will limit their work to dredging and dumping rocks onto the seabed. He said the area near the Central business district could be restored to its current state if appellate courts ultimately rule against the reclamation. "This is a simple procedure that won't cause any major damage to the harbor," Suen said.

■ New Zealand
Ten strip to protest GE crops
A group of 10 men and women stripped off their clothes on the grounds of New Zealand's parliament building in Wellington yesterday to protest genetic engineering (GE) of crops. The 10, joined by a man who kept on his underwear and a woman who stayed clothed, spread themselves on the grass to spell out the words "NO GE." The New Zealand government plans to lift a two-year moratorium on field tests of GE crops on Oct. 29. The protest went a stage further than a group of women who took off their tops to reveal their bras in the public gallery of parliament in another anti-GE demonstration last month. Police took the names of the strippers with a view to issuing trespass notices that would ban them from the parliament grounds.

■ United States
Graham pulls out of race
Democratic Senator Bob Graham of Florida ended his bid for the White House on Monday night after months of struggling to attract enough money and support to mount a competitive campaign. He is the first of the 10 Democrats in the race to drop out. "I have made the judgment that I cannot be elected president of the United States," Graham said on the Larry King Live show on CNN. The announcement brought a surreal end to a period of intense disarray and confusion at the Graham campaign. The senator once appeared to be among the most formidable contenders, and many Democrats were flummoxed by how a candidacy that had seemed so promising could fail to catch fire.

■ United Kingdom
Black woman leads Lords
A Cabinet official was appointed on Monday as the first black woman ever to lead Britain's House of Lords. Valerie Amos, who in 1997 became the first black woman to enter the unelected upper house of Parliament, replaced Lord Williams of Mostyn, who died last month, as the leader of the peers. In May, Baroness Amos was appointed international development secretary in the Cabinet after Clare Short quit that position to oppose the war in Iraq. The leader of the house, who is appointed by the government, organizes the agenda for debates and other business.

■ Liberia
Monrovia to be arms-free
Days after a gunfight broke two months of calm in Liberia's capital, the country's ex-combatants have pledged to make the city a weapons-free zone in 72 hours. UN peacekeepers have promised citywide searches to enforce the agreement. General Daniel Opande of Kenya, commander of a new UN peacekeeping force that has been in Liberia several days, secured rebel and government leaders' agreement Monday to make the entire city of more than 1 million an arms-free zone.

■ Switzerland
SARS warning issued
Countries must be ready for another SARS outbreak this November, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday, warning that relaxed safety checks at some laboratories, particularly in China, could increase the risk of fresh contamination. The virus killed nearly 800 people after it appeared in southern China almost a year ago, possibly by jumping from animals into humans, and the phenomenon could be repeated around the same time this year, said Guenael Rodier, director of the WHO's communicable diseases and response department. "We can, just to be prudent, anticipate something this November," he told a news conference in Geneva.

■ France
Filthy Swine to Eat Onions
Tired of being sniggered at, people from French villages whose names sound like "Filthy Swine" and "My Arse" plan a weekend get-together in a tiny hamlet whose name means "Eat Onions" in old French. The idea, local newspapers say, is for the villagers to form a united front against constant teasing and forge a new pride in their colorful toponyms. Only villages "with suggestive names that evoke a smile, a laugh, or have a singsong folkloric name" can take part, say organizers, who plan a gourmet market to show off local fare. Among the 15 or so villages joining the event in the southwestern village of Mengesebes ("Eat Onions" in Occitan) are: Saligos (which sounds like "Filthy Swine"), Montcuq (sounds like "My Arse") and Trecon ("Very Stupid").

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