■ Israel
British journalist arrested
Israeli police arrested on Wednesday a British journalist who in 1986 exposed the Jewish state's top nuclear secrets in an interview with whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu. Witnesses said plainclothes policemen escorted Peter Hounam, who had been preparing a new documentary about Vanunu, to his Jerusalem hotel. They searched his room and bundled him off in a car. A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's Office, which oversees Israel's security services, confirmed the journalist had been arrested. A government gag order prevented release of further details in the case, she said.
■ Great Britain
Cleric arrested
Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri has been arrested on an extradition warrant issued by the US government, police sources said yesterday. London's Metropolitan Police press office refused to confirm the detention, saying only that officers from the Extradition and International Assistance Unit arrested a "British citizen, aged 47" yesterday following a US request for his extradition. Anti-terrorist officers escorted the man to a central London police station and conducted a search of his west London home under the Extradition Act 2003, police said.
■ Great Britain
Love can conquer poverty
Love and genes can overcome even the most abject poverty, according to a study into the effects of environmental factors on child development. The study of 1,116 mothers and their five-year-old same-sex twins in poor households in England and Wales found that poverty did not have to be a life sentence and the right combination of parental care and genetics could triumph over adversity. The study differentiated between twins sharing all the same genes and those sharing only half. "The warmth ... that parents pay toward their young children can make a big difference," Julia Kim-Cohen of King's College wrote in the May issue of the journal Child Development.
■ European Union
Shorter documents wanted
European commission officials are being ordered to cut the waffle because translators cannot handle a huge linguistic workload worsened by the enlargement of the union. Brussels was a tower of Babel even before 10 new countries joined on May 1, but dealing with 20 official languages is now causing intolerable strain. Neil Kinnock, the vice president for administration reform, warned commission colleagues Wednesday that since it will take years to recruit enough translators, habits must change. "We need to control this," said spokesman Eric Mamer. "We want to encourage absolutely everybody to produce shorter documents. We are using enlargement to say that they need to shape up."
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