World News Quick Take

■ Afghanistan
Taliban to kidnap hacks
Taliban in Afghanistan are looking for American journalists to kidnap as hostages and use to press demands for the release of Taliban members held by the US, the Department of State said on Friday. The US Embassy in Kabul warned of the danger on Friday through its warden system, an informal way of keeping American citizens abroad informed on security, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a daily briefing. He quoted the message as saying: "Taliban forces are actively searching for American journalists to take hostage for use as leverage for the release of Taliban that are under United States control.

■ Japan
Man arrested for navy death
Police western Japan arrested a man yesterday on suspicion of attempting to murder a US Navy sailor in a gun attack last month, an official said. Petty Officer Eric Heinze, of Fremont, California was shot Oct. 26 as he walked across a street with two other sailors near a karaoke bar in the western city of Hiroshima. Tomoyuki Matsumoto, 37, was detained for illegal possession of a firearm after he surrendered to police two days after the incident, allegedly telling authorities he had gotten angry at the Americans for cutting him off by walking in front of his car.

■ Australia
Missing girl found dead
Australian launched an investigation yesterday into the suspected abduction and murder of a five-year-old Sydney girl. Chloe Hoson's body was found early yesterday on a creek bed about 17 hours after she went missing from a caravan where she lived with her parents southwest of the city. They noticed her missing around lunchtime Friday and after conducting their own search for four hours, called in police. The dog squad and a helicopter were not able to locate the child in nearby bushland before night fell. When the search resumed early yesterday, her body was found by a male family member while walking through a restaurant carpark near the creek.

■ Hong Kong
Stones roll into town
The Rolling Stones rocked Hong Kong for the first time in their 40-year career. The veteran British rockers were the biggest name lined up for Harbor Fest, a three-week event designed to boost Hong Kong's economy and morale after the killer SARS virus swept through the region earlier this year. A largely expatriate crowd packed the 13,000-seat Tamar Site arena in central Hong Kong for the Stones show. Watching from the wings was former US president Bill Clinton -- dubbed "rent-a-guest" by drummer Charlie Watts in the band's new DVD.

■ Singapore
Shock over oral jailing
The jailing of a police officer for having oral sex with a consenting 16-year-old girl has sparked calls for the repeal of a law punishing such act, the Straits Times reported yesterday. Several of the 20 readers who had e-mailed the newspaper expressed shock that oral sex remained an offence under the penal code in the modern city-state. Four sexual health experts interviewed said oral sex is now common and should be decriminalized, and 11 lawyers polled said the case for the law to be repealed is now stronger than before. They were commenting on a two-year jail sentence imposed on police sergeant Annis Abdullah, 27, for having oral sex last year with a girl who he had known through an Internet chatroom.

■ Russia
Subway passion cooled
Couples kissing on Moscow's underground rail system could be fined under new regulations being considered by city authorities while those going too far could face jail, a Russian newspaper reported. The kissing ban could even extend to a husband embracing his wife, Stolichnaya Vechernyaya Gazeta said on its Web site. The newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said city authorities were thinking of introducing the ban to raise levels of public morality. "From the New Year citizens kissing and embracing publicly will be fined," it said. "Particularly blatant cases could even lead to a spell of temporary detention in jail."

■Iraq
Boxing hopefuls
Iraqi assembled at Hilla, near ancient Babylon, for a crash training course they hope will turn them from ragtag hopefuls to qualifiers when Iraq makes its appearance at the first post-war Olympics next year. "The most important thing is to raise the Iraqi flag," said Dargham Naji, 23, one of 22 boxers starting a two-month programme, funded by Iraq's US-led administration, ahead of a qualifying tournament in the Philippines in January. Iraq's tarnished Olympic Committee, led by Saddam Hussein's brutal son Uday until the former dictator's fall in April, is suspended until it can regain recognition after new elections.

■Germany
`Best Germans' chosen
Millions German television viewers picked Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Willy Brandt, and Johann Sebastian Bach among the top 10 "best Germans" of all time in a national call-in contest. More than 1,300 Germans were nominated for the competition to identify the 10 most important Germans, and a "top 100" list contained a number of surprises. A winner will be selected from the 10 finalists in three weeks' time. While sports heroes like Formula One champion Michael Schumacher, Wimbledon title winner Boris Becker, tennis queen Steffi Graf and football World Cup winner Franz Beckenbauer made it into the top 40, top model Claudia Schiffer and Nobel prize winning author Guenter Grass weren't even among the first 100.

■United Kingdom
Naked road hazard
A man attempting to walk the length of Britain naked to promote the right to go without clothes in public was convicted Friday of breaching the peace. Stephen Gough, 44, was found guilty of walking naked in the presence of the public in circumstances likely to produce a road safety hazard. Gough set out on his 1,363km trek on June 16 wearing only a hat, knapsack, socks and walking boots, but was arrested almost immediately and charged with breach of the peace. That charge was dropped, but Gough was arrested several more times along his route from Land's End in southwest England to John O'Groats in the far north of Scotland. He has appeared in courts across the country and spent more than a month in prison. On Oct. 3 he was convicted of disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace. There is no law in Britain against public nudity. However, there are laws against indecent exposure -- which requires proof of intent to insult a woman -- or any behavior likely to cause "harassment, alarm or distress."

■ Iraq
ICRC exits Baghdad, Basra
The Red Cross is temporarily closing its offices in Baghdad and the southern Iraqi city of Basra following the bomb attack on its headquarters in the capital last month, a spokesman said yesterday. "We did decide that we will temporarily close offices in Baghdad and Basra but remain present in the north of Iraq," International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesman Florian Westphal said. "We do want to make it clear that part of the reason we are doing this is because we are deciding against military protection, the two things are connected," he said.

■ Gaza
Boy and militants killed
Israeli killed a 10-year-old Palestinian boy and three militants in the Gaza Strip on Friday, but eased a West Bank blockade to bolster Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie and encourage peace moves. Palestinians said the removal of the Ein Arik checkpoint, linking several Palestinian villages to the city of Ramallah, was the first real sign that Israel was implementing a pledge it made on Wednesday to ease a blockade around West Bank cities. The boy, Mahmoud al-Qayed, was killed by a shell fired by an Israeli tank in the Gaza Strip near the Israeli agricultural community of Nahal Oz while hunting for birds, a witness and medics said.

■ United States
Jihad conspirators jailed
Three accused of practicing military tactics at a paintball field outside Washington were sentenced to prison on Friday for their roles in a Virginia jihad network that trained members to support a Pakistani militant group. Yong Ki Kwon, Khwaja Mahmood Hasan and Donald T. Surratt pleaded guilty to conspiracy and gun charges in August. They were part of a group of 11 men accused of training at the paintball field to support Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Muslim extremist group trying to oust India from the disputed region of Kashmir.

■ Mauritania
President re-elected
Outgoing Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Taya was re-elected in the first round of elections with around 60 percent of the vote, the interior ministry said yesterday after a quarter of the results were in. Ould Taya was well ahead of the five other candidates in Friday's election. Next came former president Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla with 21.47 percent, according to the partial figures. Turnout was initially put at 53.83 percent of the 1.1 million electors. From the start of voting on Friday the main opposition candidates had claimed fraud and intimidation of voters.

■ Cambodia
Child abuser set free
A Cambodian court ordered the release of a 73-year-old Austrian national whom authorities arrested after allegedly discovering him with a naked 13-year-old Cambodian girl in a Phnom Penh hotel room, a media report said yesterday. "I did not detain him because he is 73," Investigating Judge Kim Sophorn told reporters. "The victim's family also demanded his release." During a police raid on the hotel on Thursday, Ernst Ivankowitsch was arrested and videotaped as he hastily pulled on his trousers and confessed that he had a sexual relationship with the young girl. Court officials told reporters that they released him on Friday because the girl had volunteered to be his "girlfriend," and parents claimed the girl to be 16.