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World News Quick Take

■ Japan
Military mission extended
Japan yesterday extended its historic military mission in Iraq until the end of next year but may pull out sometime earlier, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said. "Today, the government has decided to extend the deployment of the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq by another year," Koizumi told reporters after a Cabinet meeting. "Humanitarian activities by the Self-Defense Forces have so far been highly valued by people in Iraq. We decided to extend their activities while looking at what Japan can do," he said. He said he would make an "appropriate decision" on when to pull out of the relatively safe city of Samawa by looking at moves by Britain and Australia.

■ India
Seer's followers beaten
Police have used canes to beat back hundreds of angry followers of a Hindu seer when they took to the streets of two cities after the guru was barred from carrying his staff on board a commercial flight. Police used canes, or lathis, to break up a protest outside Mumbai airport on Tuesday night and again at the airport in the nearby city of Aurangabad on Wednesday, an official said. At least 30 people, including reporters and other passengers, were hurt in the Mumbai incident, local media reported. TV showed some people with thick red welts on their backs after being hit. Narendra Maharaj, a little-known holy man was barred from taking his staff on a flight from Lucknow to Mumbai on Tuesday because of security rules.

■ Sri Lanka
Oslo worried by violence
Norway is "deeply concerned" about escalating violence in the north and east of the island, a Norwegian Embassy statement said yesterday, after Oslo-led peace monitors warned that a recent spike in attacks could re-ignite the nation's civil war. Norway's ambassador to Sri Lanka, Hans Brattskar, was headed yesterday to the northern city of Jaffna for meetings with military generals and government officials. He was also expected to meet today with S.P. Thamilselvan, chief of the rebels' political wing. The visit follows a spate of attacks in northern Sri Lanka this week that killed 15 soldiers and a civilian and wounded eight others.

■ Philippines
Floods kill two
Floods triggered by heavy rains have killed two and affected more than 100,000 people, relief officials said yesterday as they appealed for food, water and blankets. Water levels were rising after three days of continuous monsoon rain that has burst dykes and forced people in low-lying areas to flee homes and farms in three provinces south of Manila, the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) said. Two people were buried alive in a landslide in Pagbilao town, Quezon Province, disaster officials said. The OCD added about 60,000 people had been evacuated in Quezon, Camarines Norte and Mindoro Oriental provinces.

■ Hong Kong
Reforms to be reviewed
Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) said yesterday the government is studying how to improve a modest democratic reform package that trigged a massive street protest last weekend. But Tsang cautioned that the possible changes, to be announced next week, would be limited. "We will focus on studying how to improve the reform plan," Tsang told reporters. Authorities want to double the size of a 800-member committee that chooses the city's leader.

■ Belarus
Perfume sales restricted
President Aleksander Lukashenko on Wednesday tightened the grip on holiday spending by banning private sales of perfume. The new law, effective Dec. 16, gives monopoly rights to state luxury good stores for the sale of all perfume, hair tonic, aftershave, deodorant, and other personal hygiene products based on alcohol. The change was necessary "to protect the interests of Belarusian consumers," Lukashenko said. The order is the latest in a series of state crackdowns on private traders providing the Belarus market with most of its few decent consumer goods. Lukashenko has called goods imported by traders a threat to domestically produced consumer products.

■ United States
Speeding not a crime
Speeding is not necessarily reckless, even at 206kph, a judge ruled in the case of a motorcyclist who tried to flee from state troopers in Nebraska. With some reluctance, County Judge John Steinheider ruled last Friday that Jacob Carman, 20, was not guilty of reckless driving on Sept. 5. "As much as it pains me to do it, speed and speed alone is not sufficient to establish reckless driving," the judge said. "If you had had a passenger, there would be no question of conviction. If there had been other cars on the roadway, if you would've went [gone] into the wrong lane or anything, I would have convicted you," he said.

■ Canada
Homolka to remain free
Authorities on Wednesday said they will not ask for the reinstatement of restrictions on a woman who had a role in the rape and murder of two teenagers. The Quebec Department of Justice said it won't appeal a court ruling in which a judge said Karla Homolka -- who served 12 years for manslaughter after her conviction in 1993 -- does not have to report regularly to police, can go where she wants and see whom she pleases. Homolka, 35, was convicted for helping her ex-husband rape and murder two teenagers in the early 1990s. In return for her light sentence, Homolka agreed to testify against ex-husband Paul Bernardo, now serving a life term in prison.

■ Canada
Transgender loses appeal
A woman who was born a man and had a sex-change operation does not have the right to counsel female victims in a rape crisis center, a court ruled on Wednesday. Kimberly Nixon was dismissed from a volunteer counseling program at the Vancouver Rape Relief organization when an employee learned that she was transgendered. Court of Appeal Justice Mary Saunders referred to the balance of competing rights, and decided that Nixon had not been discriminated against under provincial human-rights legislation. The rape center believed that counselors of women in crisis had to "share the same experience of being born and raised a female."

■ Netherlands
Nerve gas trader on trial
The Dutch state prosecutor requested a 15-year-jail sentence on Wednesday for chemicals trader Frans van Anraat, 63, who is on trial in Hague on genocide charges for supplying ingredients in 1984-1988 for making nerve gas, which was used by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in poison gas attacks against Kurds in Iran and Iraq. "The accused provided chemical products which allowed acts committed with the intention of destroying a group or a part of that group," special war crimes prosecutor Fred Teeven told the court.

■ France
Patient asks for privacy
The 38-year-old woman who had the world's first partial face transplant last week said on Wednesday she was "very well" but asked the media to leave herself and her family alone. In a short telephone interview from her hospital bed in Lyon, the woman, who has requested anonymity and is officially identified only as Isabelle D, told Le Parisien she wanted to convalesce in peace after the operation to replace her nose, lips and chin. "All is well. But I want to pass on a message. I've just been operated on and it would be good to have some peace and quiet," she said.

■ United States
Bush's approval rating rises
US President George W. Bush's approval rating has improved somewhat though a majority of Americans still express doubts about his handling of the war in Iraq, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. In the survey conducted from last Friday to Tuesday, Bush's approval rating rose to 40 percent, up from an all-time low of 35 percent a month ago. Another poll conducted a week earlier and commissioned by Fox television, also showed Bush's rating climbing back up several points after a steady hemorrhage in recent months.

■ United States
Bush, Clinton collect aid
Former presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton unveiled on Wednesday a US$90 million aid program for universities and other organizations shuttered by Hurricane Katrina three months ago. The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund announced a first grant of US$30 million for 34 higher education institutions, including the University of New Orleans, Tulane University and Loyola University of New Orleans, as well as other universities and colleges across Mississippi and Alabama. An additional US$20 million will support the rebuilding of local churches and other religious organizations, while US$40 million will be divided among state governments in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama for recovery efforts.

■ United Kingdom
Double deckers retired
The Routemaster, London's iconic, double decker buses where passengers jumped on and off via an open back platform, will be taken out of service today despite a last stand from the vehicles' die hard fans. "We believe these characterful and highly efficient vehicles to be a symbol of London on a par with Big Ben, the black cab and Buckingham Palace," said Ben Brook, founder of "Save the Routemasters," who has collected 10,000 signatures on his Web site. But officials for Transport for London, who run the city's public transportation system, say the buses are impractical, inefficient and unsafe.

■ Vatican
Group opposes canonization
A group of prominent Roman Catholic theologians and writers has revealed it is trying to stop the late pope John Paul II being declared a saint. In a document being circulated in Rome, they say the Vatican should take account of decisions reached by the Polish pontiff "that ought to be an obstacle to [his] beatification". Following emotional scenes at the late pope's funeral, his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, set him on a fast track to beatification -- the first step towards sainthood -- last June. Normally, the procedures cannot begin until five years after death. The late pontiff's critics list a series of reasons why he should not be canonized. They include John Paul's failure to check "the devastating plague of abuse by clerics of minor."

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