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World News Quick Take

■ China
Bridge to HK greenlighted
The government has given the go-ahead for a multi-billion dollar 29km-long bridge linking Zhuhai with Hong Kong and Macau, state media reported yesterday. Ma Kai (馬凱), head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said the decision was made during recent talks with Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華), the China Daily reported. "We are going to make a big breakthrough in infrastructure co-operation between Hong Kong and the mainland," Ma said. A senior Hong Kong official said the private sector would play a primary role in constructing the road bridge, which will cost some 31.5 billion yuan (US$3.8 billion). Ma said the feasibility report on the bridge had been finished. But he did not say when the project would start.

■ China
Jiang's retirement approved
The National People's Congress (NPC) yesterday approved former president Jiang Zemin's (江澤民) resignation from his last official post as chairman of a figurehead government military body, bringing a symbolic end to a transfer of power to a new generation of leaders. Jiang's resignation from the government Central Military Commission was approved 2,853-to-8 by NPC delegates. Jiang, 78, wasn't on the stage at the Great Hall for the vote. Jiang was expected to be replaced by President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), his successor as Communist Party leader. Hu already has replaced Jiang as chairman of a parallel party body that runs the military.

■ China
Alleged drug kingpin nabbed
Police have arrested a drug kingpin on the country's most wanted list for trafficking methamphetamine worth some US$5 billion in street value, police and state press said yesterday. Liu Zhaohua, 40, was arrested Saturday in a house he rented in Fuan city, Fujian Province, the Shanghai Morning Post reported, citing the local Strait News. As ringleader of a widespread drug trafficking network, Liu allegedly manufactured in northwest China up to 14 tonnes of the super strong amphetamine known on the street as "ice." Police said that the Strait News report had foiled their plan to bring others in the gang to justice by leaking word of Liu's arrest.

■ Australia
Crowe mystified by Osama
Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe has spoken of his surprise at being told that he was targeted by al-Qaeda terrorists hoping to kidnap and hurt US film icons. Crowe said that the FBI had approached him before the 2001 Oscars and warned him that the network headed by Osama bin Laden wanted to kidnap him. "That was the first conversation in my life that I'd ever heard the phrase al-Qaeda," Crowe told this month's edition of GQ magazine. "And it was something to do with some recording picked up by a French policewoman, I think, in either Libya or Algiers. "I don't think that I was the only person. But ... it was about taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as a sort of cultural-destabilization plan."

■ Australia
Women getting bigger
Women are fatter and less interested in sex than a decade ago with many more single and childless, according to a government report released to mark International Women's Day yesterday. The Women in Australia 2004 report also showed that almost three quarters of the nation's women did little or no exercise and continued to earn less than males.

■ Germany
Boy opens fire in class
A 14-year-old student opened fire in a German classroom Monday in a struggle with his teacher but was overpowered before he could shoot anyone. "No one was injured," police spokesman Manfred Schiegl in the southern town of Roetz said. The boy had had an argument with his 35-year-old teacher over an unfinished homework assignment and was sent out of the classroom. He returned 20 minutes later with a Magnum handgun stolen from his father's hunting cabinet that he had apparently hidden somewhere on the school campus.

■ United States
Implant sold for US$16,766
A former stripper once cleared of battering a customer with her enormous breasts sold one of her silicone implants on eBay to the same company that recently bought a grilled cheese sandwich said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary. Internet casino company GoldenPalace.com won the bid for the infamous implant at US$16,766 on Saturday, according to the eBay Web site and the seller, known professionally as Tawny Peaks. She advertised a 69-HH bra size before her implants were removed in 1999. There was no word yet on what the online gambling company planned to do with the implant.

■ Dominican Rep.
Drinking contest goes bad
The 21-year-old winner of a competition to drink the most tequila died yesterday and three other contestants were gravely ill in the hospital, officials said. Ricardo Ivan Garcia drank more than 50 shots of tequila Sunday night at Santo Domingo's Blanc, Dance and Lounge discotheque to win the prize of 10,000 pesos (US$330) at a Mexican night celebration. But he was taken ill, hospitalized and died within hours, apparently from heart failure brought on by alcohol poisoning, said public prosecutor Jose Hernandez Peguero. Three other contestants remained in serious condition in the hospital, family members said.

■ United States
Thompson memorial held
Johnny Depp and Bill Murray, who both portrayed Hunter S. Thompson in films, joined Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson and others over the weekend to remember the gonzo journalist at a private memorial. Depp, who played the part of Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, read a passage from the book in which Thompson rues the end of the '60s, according to a Rocky Mountain News reporter. The reporter was given permission by Thompson's family after Saturday's memorial to report on the event. The eccentric Thompson, 67, shot himself at his home near Aspen on Feb. 20.

■ Norway
Tank makes wake-up call
Odin Viken woke with a start on Monday, fearing his house was being shaken by an earthquake. But it was actually a 23-tonne tank that had slammed into Viken's house at about 5:30am, the military said. The Norwegian tank, a CV-90 armored fighting vehicle, was part of the 15-nation Battle Griffin military exercise in western and northern Norway, a statement said. There were no injuries but the tank went through a wall and part way into the bathroom, Viken said. The military said the cause of the accident was being investigated. Viken said the driver told him that he lost control after the vehicle struck an ice patch.

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