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World News Quick Take

■ Hong Kong
Popper spoils Tung's toast
Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) was reportedly bloodied when a party popper hit him on the forehead as he drank a toast to China, a newspaper reported yesterday. Tung, 67, was attending a ceremony on Monday hosted by a pro-China business association to mark China's National Day when the popper struck him as he raised his glass to toast the audience. Witnesses quoted by the South China Morning Post said Tung hid his face from photographers and wiped blood from his forehead with a tissue.

■ Philippines
Organ theft hoax fools media
Grisly newspaper reports about children being killed for their vital organs shot fear through several towns in the northern Philippines, but police said it was all a hoax. The <> set off a media frenzy on Monday with a story that the corpses of young victims had been dumped in Nueva Ecija province after their hearts, livers and kidneys had been cut out for sale on the black market. The "culprit of this hoax" admitted he made up the story and had sent it to a reporter in a mobile phone text message as a joke, the police said. "TV and radio stations in Manila came here in droves," said Enrile Vicente, a police officer in the farming community of Gapan.

■ Thailand
Fake braces fad takes hold
Thai health authorities are investigating Bangkok's latest teen fashion fad -- wearing fake braces -- to determine whether its bad for your teeth, media reports said yesterday. Responding to complaints from the National Institute of Dentistry, public health officials have been ordered to visit shopping malls to collect samples of the braces, sold for about 100 baht (US$2.50), to find out if they are made of metals that could cause poisoning or rusty teeth, the Bangkok Post reported. Fake braces, usually with colors and patterns added to make them more noticeable, have become increasing fashionable among Bangkok teenagers for whom dental wear is generally deemed a sign of affluence.

■ Nepal
Bomb rips through bank
A bomb ripped through a bank in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu and most shops were closed yesterday as Maoist rebels fighting to topple the monarchy called a two-day national strike. The blast shattered windows of the Nepal-Bangladesh Bank branch and of several houses at Lalitpur on the capital's outskirts, but caused no casualties, police said. "Two Maoists in a taxi stopped at an engineering college outside the bank and left a bag of explosives, which the driver threw out, causing the blast. We think the goal was to blow up the taxi," Lalitpur Chief District Officer Thaneswore Devkota said. The rebels in past strikes have destroyed cars whose drivers defied their orders.

■ China
Executions herald holiday
At least 36 people were executed in China a day before yesterday's Mid-Autumn Festival, state media said. China often executes a large number of convicted criminals before festivals or public holidays. National Day on Friday is a holiday. Most of the death sentences were carried out following public sentencing rallies in which prisoners were paraded before the public. In the town of Xingtai in Hebei Province, 17 people convicted of armed assault and murder were executed after their death sentences were read out at a rally, the local Zhaoyan Evening Post reported.

■ Afghanistan
Rights group faults poll
Gun-wielding militia commanders seeking to intimidate voters pose a bigger threat to Afghanistan's first presidential election next month than Taliban-led militants, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. The report titled The Rule of the Gun said disarmament of militia forces had largely failed and warlords would still be able to gain access to their former arsenals. John Sifton of Human Rights Watch said: "You don't need thousands of men to intimidate people; you just need to be ruthless." The figure of 10.5 million registered voters which has been trumpeted by US officials reflected widespread fraud. he said: "The 10 million figure is not just inaccurate but vastly inflated."

■ Israel
Strike on Iran difficult
Israel would not be able to destroy Iran's nuclear installations with a single air strike as it did in Iraq in 1981 because they are scattered or hidden and intelligence is weak, Israeli and foreign analysts say. Israeli leaders have implied they might use force against Iran if international diplomatic efforts or the threat of sanctions fail to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said this month Israel is "taking measures to defend itself" -- a comment that raised concern Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike along the lines of its 1981 bombing of an unfinished Iraqi reactor near Baghdad.

■ France
Qaddafi son escapes justice
French police protested on Monday after Hannibal Qaddafi, 28, son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, was allowed to go free after speeding at more than 140kph on a famous Paris boulevard. "This is a genuine scandal," said Frederic Lagache of the Alliance police union. Qaddafi had not been charged after he presented his diplomatic passport. "The behavior of people who represent their country should be exemplary and above reproach. There is a real problem here: diplomatic immunity should not mean that certain people simply become above the law," said Lagache.

■ Gabon
Lottery ticket washed away
The winner of the biggest-ever jackpot in Gabonese gambling has lost the right to claim his US$171,000 haul after his wife washed the winning ticket. He had almost earned himself 91,045,300 Gabonese francs on Sept. 18, bookmaker Hyppolite Ndong Sima said. "A man came to our offices, saying he had got the right order, which we already knew because we keep duplicates of all bets. Unfortunately, he was unable to present the green part of his ticket, which acts as proof, and explained that his wife had ... washed the trousers he had left it in," Ndong Sima said.

■ South Africa
College holds pillow fight
Thousands of students at a South African university had a mass pillow fight yesterday which organizers hoped would be recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest ever staged. "We are trying to break a record set in March this year at a university in the United States by some 2,400 pillow-fighters," said philosophy student Paul Booth, organizer of the brawl at Johannesburg's Wits University. "We are hoping that thousands of students will take part, which aims to give everybody on the campus -- lecturers too -- a chance to interact," Booth said.

■ United States
Gun deaths rates similar
Small-town residents are as likely to die of gunshot wounds as people in big US cities, but the rural residents are killing themselves while urban dwellers are being murdered, researchers reported on Monday. An analysis of gun deaths shows the rates are similar in both areas, and suicides committed using guns now make up half of all firearm deaths in the US, researchers said. Charles Branas of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues analyzed 580,000 death certificates from 1989 to 1999 in all counties in the US. "The most rural counties exper-ienced 1.54 times the adjusted firearm suicide rate of the most urban," the researchers wrote in their report, published in the American Journal of Public Health. "The most urban counties experienced 1.90 times the adjusted firearm homicide rate of the most rural."

■ United States
Bishop charged with rape
Thomas Dupre, former Roman Catholic bishop of Springfield, Massachusetts, was charged with two counts of child rape in an indict-ment unsealed on Monday, but only hours later District Attorney William Bennett said a statute of limitations would keep him from pro-secuting. Dupre is the first prelate to be indicted in the sexual abuse scandal in the US. He was accused by a grand jury of sexually abusing two boys while a parish priest in the 1970s. Dupre retired on Feb. 11 at age 70, citing health reasons, one day after a newspaper reported accusations that he had abused the two boys.

■ United States
Terror warning confirmed
Al-Qaeda's intention to carry out an election-year attack inside the US has been con-firmed by recent intelligence, but the threat information does not indicate any time, place or method of attack, senior administration offi-cials said on Monday. As a result, counterterrorism agencies will move to a higher state of alert in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 2 election and will remain at an increased state of readiness through the presidential inaugura-tion next year, the officials said. The FBI is re-examining terror cases for fresh leads and is interviewing possible al-Qaeda sympathizers in the US, the officials said.

■ United States
MOMA hikes admission
The Museum of Modern Art in New York, home to some of his most famous works, is increasing admission charges by 67 percent, making it the most expen-sive big museum in America. MOMA will reopen on Nov. 20 after a renovation costing US$425 million. It will charge visitors US$20 to spend the day there, up from US$12. "Hey, we don't wanna BUY the art," said the New York Daily News. Visitors will be able to get in for nothing after 4pm on a Friday, if they are under 16 or if they are univeristy students.

■ United States
California bars prison smoke
Governor Arnold Schwar-zenegger, who set up a tent outside his smoke-free state office to accommodate his taste for a good cigar, signed a bill on Monday barring tobacco from state prisons. The measure amends the state's penal code to bar tobacco products from prisons and youth correc-tional facilities. Supporters say the changes will help save the state money on health care and improve the health of 160,000 inmates. The state earned about US$1.37 million in tobacco and sales taxes by selling tobacco products to inmates last year.

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