World News Quick Take

■ Vietnam
Defense heads hold talks
The defense minister of Vietnam visited the Pentagon and US Department of State on Monday for the first time since the Vietnam war ended in 1975. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld greeted his Vietnamese counterpart, Pham Van Tra, on the Pentagon steps, and the two had a working lunch. They discussed "ways to promote security cooperation between the two countries and to build on successes in de-mining, disaster relief, search and rescue and medical assistance," according to a Pentagon statement.

■ Japan
Rumsfeld to travel east
US of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday he will depart this week on a trip to Japan and South Korea for security talks with those key allies, including possible changes in the US military presence in the region. He declined to predict whether any of the 37,000 US troops in South Korea will be withdrawn or to say how the presence of the 50,000 now in Japan might be changed, including whether Marines would be removed from Okinawa. Rumsfeld stressed Washington's commitment to long-standing alliances with Tokyo and Seoul.

■ Australia
Minister probed over Hanson
A senior federal government minister will be investigated for his role in the discredited corruption prosecution of former anti-immigration lawmaker Pauline Hanson, a state political leader said yesterday. But as Queensland state's parliament prepared to vote today to launch a probe into the events that led to Hanson's jailing, the former politician made headlines for reportedly befriending a child killer during her stint behind bars. Both Hanson and David Ettridge, co-founder of the One Nation party, were freed last week after serving 11 weeks of a three-year prison sentence for electoral fraud after an appeals court overturned their convictions. Hanson was reprimanded yesterday for reportedly sending words of support to her friends in jail, including Valmae Beck, who was jailed for life in 1998 for the murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl.

■ Hong Kong
Croc hunter on the way
Australian hunter John Lever will fly to Hong Kong to try to catch a slippery reptile that has given officers the slip for nine days, an official said yesterday. Repeated efforts to trap or tranquilize the 1.2m-long crocodile in the swampland on the Hong Kong-China border have failed. The crocodile is believed to be an escaped pet or from a crocodile farm in China that swam over the border. "I have seen what happens when inexperienced people try to catch a crocodile and I am very concerned that either the animal or someone who tries to catch it may get hurt," Lever told the South China Morning Post newspaper.

■ Hong Kong
No sex please, we're police
Undercover are allowed to accept sexual services from prostitutes but not have full intercourse, a news report said yesterday. A police official quoted by the South China Morning Post said officers could receive masturbation services from prostitutes before arresting them in brothels. Chief Superintendent Tang How-kong insisted however: "It is not enjoyable [for them]. I'm sure if you ask my colleagues they won't use this term. It is actually repulsive." Tang's comments came after a prostitutes' trade union said it had received 76 complaints of police harassment from its members between March and last month.

■ United States
Gulf war payouts blocked
The Bush administration has blocked compensation for US soldiers captured and tortured during the first Gulf war, arguing that the money was now needed for Iraq's reconstruction, veterans' lawyers said on Monday. Seventeen former American prisoners of war were awarded nearly US$1 billion in compensatory and punitive damages by a federal court in July. The awards were supposed to have been paid out of US$1.7 billion in seized Iraqi assets, but the administration stepped in to prevent them receiving the money on the grounds that it had been confiscated from the Iraqi government in March and was therefore the property of the US government.

■ France
Ministers caught speeding
A French motoring magazine caught the transport and interior ministers speeding on their way to a press conference to launch the first automatic radar traps on French highways. Auto-Plus magazine said it had used a portable radar to clock the official cars of the transport minister, Gilles de Robien, and the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, at 98kph and 103kph respectively on a section of the RN20 freeway south of Paris where the limit is 70kph.

■ Georgia
President vows to stay on
Embattled Eduard Shevardnadze, who has been under virtual siege in his capital by thousands of protesters calling for his resignation, said on Monday that the protests were futile and warned he would not give in to threats from his opponents. For a third straight day, some 7,000 protesters, angered by a Nov. 2 parliamentary election that they allege the government rigged, gathered outside the parliament building in the capital, Tbilisi, saying they would not move until Shevardnadze quit. But the 75-year old president said in an interview on state television: "I do not work with threats. I am, after all, an elderly man and they [the opposition] do not need to talk to me in those tones."

■ United States
Game blamed for shootings
The creators of the video game series Grand Theft Auto want a federal judge to dismiss a US$246 million lawsuit filed by the families of two people shot by teenagers. Aaron Hamel, 45, was killed and Kimberly Bede, 19, seriously wounded when their cars were hit by .22-caliber bullets while driving along Interstate 40. Stepbrothers William Buckner, 16, and Joshua Buckner, 14, were sentenced in August to an indefinite term after pleading guilty in juvenile court. The boys told investigators they decided to randomly shoot at tractor-trailer rigs, just like in the game Grand Theft Auto III.

■ United States
Four sue over condom soup
Four have sued a Southern California restaurant after one of them said she gagged on a condom that had found its way into her bowl of clam chowder. Laila Sultan, 48, said she was eating at McCormick and Schmick's Seafood Restaurant in February last year when she bit into something rubbery. Initially, the woman thought it was a particularly tough clam, but when she spat it out, she discovered it was a rolled-up condom. She claims to have spent the next 15 minutes vomiting and said she has since seen a psychiatrist and taken medication for depression and anxiety. Together with her three dining partners, Sultan filed suit, claiming negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress.