Tue, May 11, 2004 - Page 7 News List

World News Quick Take

AGENCIES

A 19-year-old man was killed and three other people were hospitalized Sunday after a night of violence in the central Polish city of Lodz which saw police use live ammunition, apparently by mistake, to quell an attack by football supporters on university students, reports said. A 23-year-old woman earlier reported dead by police and hospital officials was alive but hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the head, police and medical staff in Lodz confirmed. The woman was on a life support system, including a respirator. A 22-year-old woman and a 19-year-old man were also hospitalized with gunshot wounds. The woman was reported to be in stable condition after an operation, but the young man, reported to have suffered a rubber bullet wound to the face, was in critical condition.

■ Egypt

Arab summit rescheduled

A postponed Arab summit will be held in Tunis on May 22 and 23, Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa said Sunday. "The Arab summit will take place on the agreed date, which has not changed," Mussa told reporters after the second day of an Arab foreign ministers meeting here to prepare for the summit. Tunisia had postponed the original annual summit in March after saying Arab countries had rejected essential proposals for democratic reform and women's empowerment. The move angered several Arab capitals, including Cairo.

■ United States

Nancy can't reach Ronnie

Former first lady Nancy Reagan said Alzheimer's disease has taken her husband, former US president Ronald Reagan, "to a distant place place where I can no longer reach him," media reports said Sunday. Her comments were made Saturday night at a fundraiser for stem-cell research in California, where the conservative Republican also came out in support of such research, which current Republican US President George W. Bush has restricted. Nancy Reagan argued at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation fundraiser in Beverly Hills that stem-cell research could lead to cures for illnesses that include Alzheimer's. Bush and anti-abortion groups have opposed the research because some of it uses cells from human embryos.

■ South Africa

Pop star dies

South Africa's pop music queen Brenda Fassie died on Sunday two weeks after she fell into a coma following an asthma attack at her home in Johannesburg, media reports said. Fassie gained fame in 1986 with the hit Weekend Special, which made the Billboard hot black singles chart and went on to sell more records in her two-decade-long career as the country's foremost black pop singer than any other recording artist. The 39-year-old was also one of the most outrageous figures in local entertainment, notorious for her drug binges, tantrums and other highly publicized antics.

■ Great Britain

Eggs explode

Eggs heated in a microwave oven could explode and cause serious injury, doctors have warned. The case of a nine-year-old girl who was left temporarily blind after being hit in the face by an exploding egg has been highlighted by eye experts. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they said warnings about the risks of heating eggs in their shells in the microwave should be made more obvious, perhaps being displayed on the oven itself.

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