■ Hong Kong
Sick children monitored
Ten preschoolers have shown symptoms of hand-foot-and-mouth disease and the government is monitoring the situation to prevent its spread, officials said yesterday. Authorities were checking whether the children are infected with the virus which killed 30 children in Malaysia in 1997 and more than 50 in Taiwan the following year. The children at a Hong Kong preschool developed symptoms of the disease between May 11-18, including fever, mouth ulcers and rashes on their hands and feet. The infectious disease is not usually life-threatening but can cause potentially fatal inflammation of the heart muscles, spinal cord or brain.
■ New Zealand
Scientists find pink dinosaur
Scientists using a camera to monitor a remote New Zealand volcano over the Internet have struck an odd problem -- a pink dinosaur. New Zealand's Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) have installed a digital camera in the crater of the often active volcano which makes up most of White Island in the Bay of Plenty, east of Auckland. The camera posts a shot every hour on their site www.geonet.org.nz. But suddenly a pink dinosaur has appeared in the shot. "Some wag has glued a pink dinosaur in front of our digital camera," GNS' John Callan said. They are not planning on removing it, counting on the sulphur and high acid environment to deal with the creature.
■ South Korea
No charges against Roh
Prosecutors said yesterday that they will not seek criminal charges against President Roh Moo-hyun and his 2002 presidential rival, Lee Hoi-chang, over illegal campaign funds. During the presidential polls, former aides of Roh and Lee, former chief of the main opposition Grand National Party, had allegedly collected millions of dollars in illegal campaign funds from the nation's major businesses. But Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office spokesman Kook Min-soo said investigators found no evidence that Roh or Lee had been directly involved in the scandals.
■ Bangladesh
Storms leave 8,000 homeless
Raging tropical storms sweeping Bangladesh have left nine people dead and more than 120 injured, local police and rescue workers said yesterday. The overnight storms uprooted trees, cut off roads and pummelled the landscape leaving more than 8,000 people homeless in five districts. At least five people, including two children, were killed in the worst affected Jessore district, 290km west of Dhaka. The other fatalities and injuries were reported in northern Nilphamari district, southern Khulna district and the eastern district of Sherpur.
■ France
Police find weapons cache
An Iranian national was arrested after police discovered explosives and handguns in his apartment in France's southern port city of Marseille, judicial officials said yesterday. Police could not immediately say whether the arms cache was part of a suspected criminal plot or terrorist activity, judicial and police officials said. The man, who was not identified, was arrested in an overnight raid of his apartment in the center of Marseille. Police found about 5kg of weapons that also included detonators, grenades and documents in Spanish and Arabic that were in the process of being translated, the officials said.
■ Germany
Nazi links blasted
Germany's ruling party joined Jewish leaders yesterday to protest the selection of a veteran conservative with Nazi links for an assembly that will elect the country's next president. Hans Filbinger, a former state premier, was a navy judge accused of having condemned deserters to death in the dying months of World War II. He insists he never himself actively sentenced anyone to death and that in fact he saved lives with mild verdicts. He also denies justifying Nazi law. However, he was forced to resign as the premier of Baden-Wuerttemberg state in 1978 after seeming to justify death sentences imposed by Nazi-era military courts.
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