World News Quick Take

■ Australia
Doubts over dingo case
A forensic expert who investigated the high profile case of a baby's disappearance in the Australian outback 24 years ago demolished yesterday new claims by an elderly man that he had found the infant in the mouth of a dingo he shot in August, 1980. Melbourne pensioner Frank Cole, 78, told a weekend newspaper he shot the native wild dog while hunting near Uluru national park in the Northern Territory and retrieved the body of baby Azaria Chamberlain from its mouth. Forensic scientist Dr Kenneth Brown, who originally examined the bloodstained and torn jumpsuit worn by Azaria, said the claims by Cole could not possibly have been true and his story was probably a fabrication.

■ Singapore
Libel suit dropped
Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew has dropped a libel suit against a former president who claimed Lee ordered government doctors to give him hallucinatory drugs, officials and local media said yeserday. Lee abandoned his suit against Devan Nair after the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail revealed last week that the former president was unfit for trial because he was suffering from dementia, the Straits Times newspaper said. Nair was president from 1981 to 1985. Yeong Yoon Ying, Lee's press secretary, would only confirm the lawsuit has been dropped but declined to elaborate.

■ Japan
New style for white papers
In an effort to increase readership of its annual defense white paper, Japan's Defense Ministry plans to issue a version of it as a "manga" comic book. "We'd like to be able to reach the younger generations, those in their 20s and 30s," a ministry spokeswoman said. She was unable to give further details of what form the comic would take, saying that it was still under production, but added that the ministry hopes to issue it in August.

■ China
Bar encourages weeping
A bar where heartbroken people can come to cry while drowning their sorrows has opened in eastern China, a news report said yesterday. The bar in Nanjing charges 50 yuan (US$6) an hour on top of drinks for customers to cry into their beer as much as they want to. Tissues and menthol drops are provided on the bar as well as onions and red peppers for those who need help bursting into tears, according to the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily. Bar tenders play sad music and there are dolls available for customers to throw around or beat to vent their anger over broken relationships.

■ Cambodia
Jolie saves forest
Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has persuaded Cambodian ministers to cancel a planned hydroelectricity project in a huge forest near her home, Prime Minister Hun Sen said after meeting her Tuesday. The Oscar-winning actress owns a residence in the Samlot district of northwestern Battambang province, often visits the war-torn kingdom and has been campaigning on environmental issues. Hun Sen told reporters that Jolie, who met him along with a team of ministers and diplomats, had asked him about conflicting plans to build hydroelectricity plants as well as to protect Samlot's forests. "We agreed to give up electricity investment plans, even though we have a shortage, and will instead plan for the protection of trees and wildlife, which is better," he said.

■ The Netherlands
Judges mull on Milosevic
Judges at former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial on Monday ordered a "radical review" of the hearing after the defendant's poor health forced a fresh postponement of a case that has already dragged on for more than two-and-a-half years. Determined not to allow the trial to founder, UN judges at the tribunal in The Hague were expected yesterday to rule if Milosevic must be represented by a lawyer -- so far he has defended himself against charges of genocide.
The court may also beam its proceedings live into Milosevic's prison cell so he is not required to be in the dock every day.

■ Germany
Concert far from over
In an abandoned church in the German town of Halberstadt, the world's longest concert moved two notes closer to its end on Monday: Three years down, 636 to go. The E and E-sharp complemented the G-sharp, B and G-sharp that have been playing since February last year in composer John Cage's Organ2/ASLSP -- or Organ squared/As slow as possible. The five notes are the initial sounds played on a specially built organ -- one in which keys are held down by weights, and new organ pipes will be added as needed as the piece, originally written to last 20 minutes, is stretched out to last generations.

■ France
Muslims not blending in
French authorities are worried about the growing division between mainstream society and France's large Muslim minority, according to a report cited Tuesday by Le Monde newspaper. Nearly half of the 630 minority neighborhoods studied by France's domestic intelligence agency DCRG showed signs of what here is called "communautarism," or the inability or refusal to blend in with mainstream society. Authorities have observed traditions and practices in about 300 neighborhoods -- home to 1.8 million people -- that include subjugation of women and the preaching of Islam in daycare centers, the report said.

■ United Kingdom
Smacking bill modified
An unlikely alliance of lawyers, childcare professionals and politicians joined forces on Monday to condemn as unworkable plans to jail parents in Britain who administer punishment anything stronger than a light smack to their children. The change to the children bill, passed by the House of Lords last night by 226 to 91 votes, would see parents facing imprisonment for up to five years if they caused bodily harm to their child. But the compromise would allow parents to lightly smack their children. Labour MP David Hinchliffe, who plans to push for a complete ban, said: "It's a recipe for lawyers to print money because they will still be arguing over whether an assault has been committed or not."

■ Kenya
Corruption hurts president
The integrity of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki's government, elected 18 months ago on an anti-corruption platform, is facing its first real test with investigations launched into two multimillion-
dollar contracts. The investigations by the police anti-corruption unit and a committee of MPs center on plans to buy a passport equipment system from France. The episode is an embarrassment to Kibaki, who pledged to combat the corruption that disfigured the regime of former president Daniel Arap Moi.

■ Iraq
US soldiers kill child in car
U.S. soldiers killed an Iraqi child and wounded another when they fired on a car that failed to stop at a checkpoint in Baghdad, the army said on Tuesday. "Soldiers fired on the vehicle after the driver failed to obey verbal and visual instructions to stop, switched off the vehicle lights, and forced guards out of the way as he attempted to bypass the checkpoint," a US military statement said. It said the incident happened late on Monday.The statement said the mother and the wounded child were taken to hospital while the father, who was driving, was questioned by police. Many Iraqis accuse US soldiers of being too hasty to open fire and of killing many innocent civilians.

■ Guatemala
Government admits guilt
Guatemala formerly recognized the role of its government in the 1993 slaying of journalist and politician Jorge Carpio Nicolle before an international human rights tribunal Monday. More than 30 gunmen, most wearing hoods, ambushed the 60-year-old Carpio Nicolle as he drove in a caravan along a rural highway in the highlands province of Quiche on July 3, 1993. He died at a nearby hospital several hours later. Carpio Nicolle was editor and publisher of the Guatemala City daily newspaper El Grafico and ran for president in 1985 and 1992, finishing second both times.

■ United States
Radio stations hail Elvis
More than 1,250 radio stations across the United States celebrated one of the defining moments in rock 'n' roll on Monday when they simultaneously played That's All Right, a tune recorded exactly 50 years ago by a young truck driver called Elvis Presley. Influential guitarist Scotty Moore, who played with the late "king of rock 'n' roll" on that track along with bass player Bill Black, kicked off the event at 11 am CDT (1600 GMT). Moore flipped a switch on a reel-to-reel tape at the legendary Sun Studio in Presley's adopted home town. The live feed was also broadcast globally by the Sirius satellite radio network.

■ Japan
`Spider-Man 2' in the money
The director of summer blockbuster Spider-Man 2 is "flabbergasted" by the film's record-breaking success at the box office, but Sam Raimi said yesterday that he's too busy writing Part Three to relax and enjoy the victory. The film already has outdone the original Spider-Man, pulling in a record US$180 million in its first six days in North American theaters, opening just ahead of the Fourth of July holiday weekend in the US.

■ United Kingdom
Freedom, Simpsons style
Lisa Simpson, the pointy-haired schoolgirl of the U.S television hit series The Simpsons, is to embrace the cause of Cornish independence. In a Christmas Day special edition of the animated comedy, Lisa will run around the Simpsons' home in Springfield shouting "Rydhsys rag Kernow lemmyn," which translates as "Free Cornwall Now." Matthew Clarke, of the Cornish Language Fellowship, told the Independent newspaper yesterday he was contacted in an e-mail by The Simpsons executive producer Tim Long asking for translation help. Nationalists in Cornwall think the area should be accorded the status Wales and Scotland enjoy, having devolved powers if not outright independence.