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World News Quick Take

■ New Zealand
Doctor opens brothel
A frustrated doctor has closed his medical practice in a small northern seaside settlement and plans to reopen his surgery as a brothel next month. Neil Benson closed his Cooper's Beach practice last year, complaining of a lack of support from health authorities, other doctors and the community. He has since been granted a brothel licence and plans to offer an upmarket service for tourists and locals in the town about 350km north of Auckland. "It's about providing a private service and maintaining confidentiality, which is what my medical practice was about -- so it's not a big leap, really," Benson said.

■ Singapore
Bridge plan prompts queries
Singapore said yesterday it has asked Malaysia to clarify reports that it planned to build a bridge halfway across the waterway separating it from Singapore, which hasn't agreed to build the other half. On Sunday, Malaysia's national news agency, Bernama, quoted Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as saying the project would go ahead to avoid higher construction costs in the future. Singapore says it is still evaluating the project's economic impact, but Malaysian officials have said the bridge's design will allow the city-state to link up later.

■ Singapore
Overeaters fill hospitals
Days of feasting in honor of the Lunar New Year have resulted in overeating and food poisoning with at least one hospital adding more staff, doctors said yesterday. Since the Year of the Dog was ushered in on Saturday, the ritual of reunion dinners at relatives' homes is well under way. Physicians advised consumption in moderation when faced with one huge spread after another. Dr. Wilson Chong, with Tan Tock Seng's Hospital's accident and emergency department, said overeating and food poisoning are the top complaints on the second and third days.

■ Japan
Elderly crime shoots up
Crimes committed by elderly people have risen sharply in the past 15 years, a trend that has officials worried as the population ages rapidly due to longer lifespans and a falling birth rate. Police data shows that people aged 65 and older accounted for more than 10 percent of those arrested or taken into custody for crimes other than traffic violations last year, compared with just 2.2 percent in 1990, the Asahi newspaper said yesterday, citing National Police Agency data. Theft topped the list of crimes committed by the elderly last year, while 141 elderly people were arrested for murder -- more than three times the number in 1990, the newspaper said.

■ Japan
Foreigner's claim rejected
A court yesterday rejected a lawsuit claiming discrim-ination against an African-American resident of Japan, Jiji Press reported. The 41-year-old designer living in Kyoto Prefecture demanded ?1.5 million (US$13,000) as compensation for being discriminated against because of his skin color. "It was inappropriate for the owner to have asked [the man] who was in front of the shop to leave ... but it cannot be recognized that [the owner] made remarks discriminating against black people," the Osaka District Court judge said in his ruling. The plaintiff said after the ruling that he felt like he was living in the US south in the 1950s. "I was treated lower than animals by the Japanese court," the tearful man said at a press conference.

■ Canada
Trapped miners safe
Seventy miners who were trapped deep underground on Sunday after a fire in a Saskatchewan potash mine are safe and sound, a mine spokesman said. All of the trapped miners, who took refuge in special safety rooms inside the mine, should be able to emerge once the smoke has cleared, the Mosaic Company mine's spokesman told Canadian television. Rescue workers who went down found 30 of the miners in one of the refuge stations, he said. "In those refuge stations, the workers can seal themselves in with enough oxygen and food and water to be comfortable for the next 36 hours at least," he said.

■ Nigeria
Oil workers released
Separatist militants freed four Western oil workers yesterday, after holding them hostage in the swamps of the Niger Delta for almost three weeks, officials said. The men -- an American, a Briton, a Bulgarian and a Honduran -- have been handed over to the Bayelsa State government, spokesman Welson Ekiyor said by telephone from the state capital Yenagoa. "They've been released. They're with the governor right now. They're very OK," Ekiyor said. The British embassy and the oil giant Shell said they were checking the report. The men were seized on Jan. 11.

■ Italy
Berlusconi rules out sex
Premier Silvio Berlusconi has promised to lower taxes and raise pensions. Now he has pledged not to have sex until April 9 elections, Il Giornale reported on Sunday. The conservative Milan daily owned by Paolo Berlusconi, the premier's brother, reported that the no-sex vow was made during a campaign rally in Cagliari, Sardinia, on Saturday with a popular TV preacher and his followers. The priest praised the premier for what he described as a defense of family values and promised that his followers would support the conservative leader because "if the left wins it will be the moral end for this country." Berlusconi thanked the priest, and then told him: "I will try to meet your expectations, and I promise from now on, two-and-a half months of absolute sexual abstinence, until April 9,'' Il Giornale reported.

■ United Kingdom
Scientist killed in Oxford
Detectives questioned a man on Sunday over the murder of a scientist who was found stabbed 49 times and strangled with her own sweater at her apartment in Oxford. There was no sign that the apartment of Barbara Waldron-Johnston, an expert in cot death, had been broken into, suggesting she may have opened the door to her killer. Waldron-Johnston, 55, had not been sexually assaulted. She had returned to the UK four months ago after working for 23 years in New Zealand, and settled back in Oxford, where she had studied. Police broke into her apartment last Thursday after her parents said they had not heard from her for several days.

■ Romania
Dog bite kills Japanese
A Japanese man bled to death after being bitten in downtown Bucharest by a stray dog on Sunday, TV reports said on Sunday. The dog bit a vital leg artery in the 68-year-old as he stepped out of his car to enter his home. He managed to ask a guard to call an ambulance before he died. Pathologists found three bite wounds. There are more than 200,000 stray dogs in the Romanian capital, according to official estimates.


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