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World News Quick Take

PHOTO: EPA

■ Macedonia
President buried
Macedonia's late President Boris Trajkovski, killed in a plane crash last week, was laid to rest Friday as dozens of world leaders gathered for a state funeral and a top European Union official pledged to help the Balkan country eventually join the bloc. Trajkovski, 47, was en route to an international conference on Feb. 26 when his turboprop plane crashed in heavy fog in southern Bosnia, just hours before his country was to submit its application for EU membership in Ireland. An estimated 100,000 people, many of them sobbing, lined the streets of Skopje as the somber funeral procession slowly made its way to a cemetery.

■ United States
Unusual garnish
An Ohio woman was served a salad containing part of a restaurant worker's thumb sliced off while chopping lettuce, a health official said on Friday. The woman "thought it was gristle or something like that" when she tried to chew the unexpected garnish, said William Franks, health commissioner for Stark County, where the incident occurred earlier this week. "Physically I think she's OK, other than hysteria," Franks added. Stark County officials did not release the woman's name. The restaurant worker accidentally sliced off the tip of his thumb while chopping the ingredients on Monday night at the Red Robin restaurant near Canton, Ohio, he said.

■ United States
Politically overcorrect
This might not end 'til the plus-sized lady sings. A Los Angeles Times music critic who wrote that a Richard Strauss opera was "pro-life" -- meaning a celebration of life -- was stunned to pick up the paper and find his review changed by a literal-minded copy editor to read "anti-abortion." Music critic Mark Swed said the copy editor was adhering to a strict Times policy banning the phrase "pro-life" as offensive to people who support abortion, and didn't seem to realize that the epic Strauss opera Die Frau Ohne Schatten had nothing to do with that politically charged issue. "It's about children who aren't born yet screaming to be born -- not abortion," Swed said. "Somebody who didn't quite get it got a little bit too politically correct ... and we had a little breakdown in communications."
■ Germany
State won't pay for porn
A German court rejected a legal bid on Friday by an unemployed man who wanted the state to provide him with free pornography and trips to brothels because his wife is in Thailand. The court in the southern town of Ansbach ruled that social services did not extend to satisfying the 43-year-old's sexual needs after he attempted to sue his local welfare office because it had refused to finance his appetite for prostitutes and porn. "He wanted them to pay for four trips to the brothel a month, eight porn films a month, plus condoms," said court spokesman Peter Burgdorf. The man had earlier asked the Foreign Ministry to fly his wife back from her native Thailand, to which she had returned in 2002, saying that he could not afford the ticket.

■ India
Try, try and try again
A 64-year-old Indian man has vowed not to marry until he passes his class 10 examination, it was reported yesterday. Shayodan Yadav, a resident of Alwar district in the northwestern desert state of Rajasthan, made his first attempt in 1965, but failed. Since then he has tried 37 times, the Statesman newspaper reported. Only this exam would "qualify" him for marriage, Yadav said in a classroom full of his friends' grandchildren. Nothing will deter him from trying repeatedly, he said, not even his relatives' taunts that he is over-aged for both school and marriage.

■ Cambodia
Slingshot attacks a concern
The son of a high-ranking Cambodian official is the prime suspect for a spate of slingshot attacks on westerners in Phnom Penh, local media reported yesterday. The English language Cambodia Daily said that police thought the son was taking revenge on random westerners because of a previous personal incident with a foreigner, but did not have enough evidence to make an arrest. The Daily said a shooter has used a high-powered slingshot known as a wrist rocket to launch projectiles such as marbles or ball bearings at a number of unsuspecting foreigners. One victim reportedly lost an eye.

■ china
Police beat church leader
Police beat a leader of an underground Christian church and his wife in a campaign to stifle dissent during the annual meeting of China's legislature, a human rights group alleged yesterday. Beijing police deployed 1,000 officers to control dissidents as the National People's Congress opened its session on Friday, New York-based Human Rights in China (HRIC) said. It cited unidentified sources in Beijing. Hua Huiqi, a church leader and housing activist, was taken to a police station on Friday and badly beaten after he complained that he was being illegally held under "effective house arrest," HRIC said in a statement.

■ Hong Kong
Democracy `looking good'
A top Hong Kong pro-democracy leader said Friday after a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell that prospects for the territory are bright because Chinese leaders will realize democracy is good for Hong Kong. Martin Lee, leader of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, said that Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) "will know ultimately that democracy is not something they should fear." He acknowledged that the province is under "strong attack" from Beijing at present but predicted these difficulties will die down. Lee said it was his impression that Powell was "extremely concerned" about Chinese pressure on Hong Kong.

■ Japan
Teen killer to be paroled
A youth who decapitated a boy and bludgeoned a girl to death in one of Japan's most notorious juvenile crimes is set to be paroled after spending more than six years in a reformatory. Authorities are "making final arrangements" for the provisional release of the 21-year-old offender, who was a 14-year-old middle school student at the time of the killings in the western city of Kobe in 1997, the Yomiuri newspaper reported. The perpetrator of the Kobe killings, whose name has never been made public, has been receiving psychiatric counseling and vocational training since October, 1997 at two reformatories for juvenile offenders.

■ Zimbabwe
Torture reports denied
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government on Friday denied forcing young people into camps and teaching them to beat and kill opposition activists. A BBC documentary screened last Sunday said young people had been brutalized in camps and made to attack Mugabe's opponents, and that around half the girls interviewed said they had been raped regularly in the camps. "What unfounded rubbish ... there are no cases of rape in the training centers and the centers are free and open for any form of investigation," Zimbabwe's Youth and Gender Minister Ambrose Mutiviri said on Friday. "No youth, not even one, has ever been coerced to join the National Youth Service program," Mutiviri said.

■ Libya
Chemical weapons declared
Libya on Friday declared its stockpile of chemical weapons to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at The Hague. OPCW issued a statement calling the declaration "in full and a timely compliance" with a convention Libya signed banning those weapons. The declared stockpile consisted of 23 tonnes of mustard gas in addition to an inactivated chemical weapons production facility and two chemical weapons storage facilities. OPCW inspectors earlier this week monitored and verified the destruction in Libya of the stockpile. "By voluntarily submitting a full and accurate declaration... Libya is fully complying with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention," said OPCW director Rogelio Pfirter.

■ Iraq
Russian missile link found
Weapons-hunters have found evidence that experts from Russia and other countries helped with Iraq's missile programs, but it is unclear whether those countries' governments played any role, US officials said. The officials, who spoke on Friday on condition of anonymity, said the Bush administration will compile information it has obtained and eventually present it to those countries. Officials also found signs that experts from Ukraine, Serbia and Belarus may have been involved. It may be that the alleged assistance came from companies or individuals who came to Iraq without the knowledge or sanction of their home governments, the officials said.

■ Morocco
Refugee families reunited
Twenty-one refugees flew to Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara on Friday to visit families that many have not seen for almost 30 years, as part of a UN initiative to end the decades-old conflict. The refugees, living in camps in Tindouf, Algeria, arrived in the Western Saharan capital Laayoune aboard a UN plane. Another group of 19 Western Sahara-based people flew to Tindouf to see their families. The UN is trying to settle the fate of the disputed desert territory in northwestern Africa, which Morocco seized after colonial power Spain withdrew in 1975.

■ United States
Dog inspires gift to shelter
A dog adopted years ago from an animal shelter has inspired her owner to donate US$1 million to an animal protection organization. Link Piazzo, of the Nevada city of Reno, said Punkin, a black cocker spaniel mix, has been such a good dog, it prompted him to make the gift to the Nevada Human Society. "She is very simply the greatest dog on earth, the smartest dog on earth," Piazzo, 85, said. He said when he saw Punkin in a big kennel all by herself, he had to take her home. "I think Punkin realized that somebody saved her life," Piazzo said.

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