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World News Quick Take

■ Singapore
Polar bears turn green
Life in the balmy tropics has made polar bears Inuka and Sheba go green with algae. The usually white coats of Sheba and her 13-year-old son Inuka, Singapore Zoo's two polar bears, turned green a few weeks ago from algae growing in their hollow hair shafts, said Vincent Tan, a spokesman for the zoo. "The harmless algae is the result of Singapore's warm and humid tropical conditions," Tan said. Polar bears have clear hair shafts which appear white because they reflect light. Sheba's coat was successfully bleached with hydrogen peroxide two-and-a-half weeks ago and Inuka will be given a similar treatment in three weeks time, Tan said. The zoo wanted to observe Sheba's reaction to the treatment before bleaching Inuka, he said. For now, Inuka remains mottled with bright grass-colored splotches behind his ears, on his back and legs.

■ China
Protestant leaders indicted
China has indicted two leaders of the unofficial Protestant church for allegedly obtaining state secrets amid a deepening crackdown on worship outside government controls, an overseas monitoring group said yesterday. Church historian Liu Fenggang and psychiatrist Xu Yonghai were indicted on Monday in the eastern city of Hangzhou, Human Rights in China reported. Authorities in the city have demolished unofficial church halls and reportedly detained 300 preachers and worshippers. The charges under China's sweeping state security laws carry prison terms of five years to life. Human Rights in China said they appeared to be related to efforts by the two men to document the Hangzhou crackdown.

■ Hong Kong
Fewer new HIV cases
The number of positive HIV tests fell by 12 percent last year in Hong Kong, but health officials said yesterday the drop was caused by people who stayed away from clinics after being spooked by SARS. Health Department spokeswoman Diana Kam said the number of HIV cases in Hong Kong has been gradually increasing over the past 20 years and officials believe the trend will continue. Last year's decline in testing may have meant a short-term rise in HIV-positive people who were unaware they were infected, but Kam said officials are not worried it will cause a big jump in cases later. The number of people being tested for the virus that causes AIDS has now returned to pre-SARS level, Kam said.

■ China
Shoplifter goofs
A woman unhappy with the trousers she had stolen from a shop may have erred when she took them back to be shortened. "The woman found the pair of trousers too long for her, and hearing from others that the store alters any clothes they sell free of charge, she went there," the China Daily said on Tuesday, quoting the Yangtze Evening Post. "But the store discovered the trousers were a missing pair and held her until she confessed to her theft."

■ Hong Kong
Pilot fined for groping
An off-duty Cathay Pacific Airways pilot who groped a flight attendant aboard a Hong Kong-London flight has been convicted of indecent assault and fined, a newspaper reported yesterday. Magistrate Thomas Tsang ordered Robin Cameron Taylor to pay HK$1,000 (US$128) on Tuesday, the South China Morning Post reported. Taylor had pleaded innocent, the newspaper said.

■ United Kingdom
Blix blitzes Bush
Former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Tuesday that Saddam Hussein had not been an immediate danger and the justification for the war against Iraq was unfounded. The US-led invasion nearly a year ago damaged the authority of the UN Security Council and the credibility of the nations that went to war, Blix told an audience of 1,000 at the University of Edinburgh."Saddam was dangerous to his own people but not a great, and certainly not an immediate, danger to his neighbors and the world," he said. Again on Tuesday he criticized the US and Britain for trusting their own intelligence more than that of the weapons inspectors, who had not found "a smoking gun."

■ United States
Eminem sues Apple
Rap superstar Eminem, who says he could earn more than US$10 million for endorsing a product, is suing Apple Computer Inc on grounds it used one of his hit songs in a TV advertisement without permission. Eight Mile Style, music publisher of the artist whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, filed the copyright infringement lawsuit last Friday in US District Court in Detroit. The lawsuit claims Apple, in a television ad for its iTunes pay-per-download music store aired on MTV last year, featured a young boy with an iPod portable music player singing the lyrics to Lose Yourself, the theme song for his hit movie 8 Mile.

■ Italy
Fake gays skip army
Exploiting a provision which bars gays from military service, more than 150 men are thought to have paid two doctors for certificates diagnosing them as suffering from "sexual anxieties" and being "incompatible" with the stress of living together in dormitories and using communal bathrooms. Doctors at Padua military hospital rumbled the scam when they noticed the unusual number of gay men coming from a small area near the Austrian border. Investigators fear that it may be one of many scams used by men who, despite deep prejudice against gays, are pretending to come out rather than spend the obligatory 10 months in the army, the carabinieri or the civil police.

■ Germany
Social worker steals funds
A German social worker pocketed more than US$163,800 in public funds intended for homeless people and war refugees and bought himself a brand new BMW with the money, a court said Tuesday. The 39-year-old Berlin man was convicted of embezzlement and received a two-year suspended jail sentence. He was also told to repay the money. "He wasn't exactly adhering to the Robin Hood principle," said a court spokesman, referring to the medieval legend who robbed the rich to give to the poor.

■ United Kingdom
Your parking lot, your castle
A car parking space is for sale in central London for US$187,500. The space in an underground car park near luxury store Harrods in Knightsbridge is thought to be one of the most expensive in Britain. Prices of parking spaces and individual garages have risen steadily in recent years as motorists seek ways to avoid parking costs of up to ?4 an hour and tickets from zealous traffic wardens. One parking bay in the same Knightsbridge underground car park is understood to have sold last July for US$177,000 while another was bought by a mother for her 3-year-old son for when he can drive.

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