World News Quick Take

■ India
British pedophiles jailed
Two British men were jailed for six-years in India after they were found guilty of sexually abusing boys at a children's shelter that one of them had set up for street children in Mumbai, but some residents said the sentences were too lenient. Duncan Grant, a charity worker, and Allan Waters had been charged with child sex abuse and engaging in unnatural acts with children. The court ordered Grant and Waters to serve six years in prison and fined them £20,000 (US$34,700) each.

■ Malaysia
Lawyers oppose death
The official association of lawyers has called on the government to abolish the death penalty and impose an immediate freeze on all executions, news reports said yesterday. Top lawyers in the Malaysian Bar Council, which held its annual general meeting on Saturday, also urged that current death-row sentences be reduced to life sentences, the New Straits Times reported. Lawyer Amer Hamzah Arshad said although the abolition of the death penalty was often discussed by lawyers, this was the first time such a motion had been proposed by the council.

■ Hong Kong
New party formed
Lawmakers, lawyers and academics yesterday formed a new political party that aims to push for full democracy in the territory. The new Civic Party evolved from the loosely organized Article 45 Concern Group, which won four seats in the 2004 legislative election. The party said one of its main goals is to campaign for universal suffrage. Voters can now only elect half of the 60-seat legislature. The territory's chief executive is picked by an 800-member committee loaded with Beijing loyalists.

■ South Korea
Five defect to south
A group of five North Koreans, including a family with two young children, have defected to South Korea after crossing the tense sea border in a wooden boat, military officials said yesterday. The group -- a couple in their 30s, two children aged two and eight, and a friend -- crossed the border late on Saturday and were spotted by South Korean coastguards, they said. Yonhap news agency quoted the 37-year-old husband as telling interrogators he "had longed for the southern society" since he began listening to South Korean radio broadcasts in the late 1980s.

■ Japan
PM concerned about weapons
Japanese Minister Junichiro Koizumi yesterday expressed concern over countries which were building up their armed forces in secret, in an apparent reference to China. Koizumi said the practice was contributing to the spread of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. "In recent years, we see some countries expanding their military force without transparency," Koizumi said at a National Defense Academy graduation ceremony. "It's notable in a tendency reflecting those nations' intentions that technologies concerning weapons of mass-destruction and ballistic missiles are spreading without control," he said. The remarks came a day after Japan, the US and Australia urged China to increase military transparency at trilateral security talks in Sydney.

■ Japan
Deployment protested
Hundreds demonstrators marched through central Tokyo yesterday, calling for the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Iraq three years after the start of the US-led war in Iraq. The protest, the second in two days, came as the government puzzles over when to bring home its 600 or so noncombat troops, who have been engaged in reconstruction activities in the southern town of Samawa since January 2004. "Bring the troops back from Iraq," read banners carried by some of the Tokyo demonstrators, who chanted and played drums as they marched. "It has been three years since the war started and the American troops are still there, as well as the Japanese," said 43-year-old office worker Kumiko Shimizu.

■ China
Gold theme park planned
Gold-hungry China plans to open what it has billed the world's first theme park dedicated entirely to the precious metal, state media reported yesterday. Construction of the theme park began on Saturday near a working mine at Rushan City, Shandong Province, the Xinhua news agency said. When the 3.6km2, 200 million yuan (US$25 million) park is completed, it will allow visitors to watch gold being mined and processed. It will also include a DIY area where the visitors themselves can be gold miners for a day, according to the agency.

■ Hong Kong
Shootout linked to gambling
A shoot-out between three police officers that left two dead on Friday is believed to have been linked to an illegal football betting syndicate, a media report said yesterday. A police source was quoted in the Sunday Morning Post as saying one of the dead officers, Tsui Po-ko, had long been linked with illegal gambling. "This guy had long-term connections to a soccer gambling syndicate in which other officers participated," the source was quoted as saying. Police would not comment on the report.

■ Lebanon
Lahoud rejects resignation
Pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud, under heavy pressure from anti-Syrian groups to step down, vowed on Saturday to stay in office until the end of his extended term but proposed early parliamentary elections as a way out of the presidential stalemate. Lahoud also rejected calls for Hezbollah to disarm in line with a 2004 UN resolution, stressing that the militant group should keep its weapons until a peace settlement is reached for the Arab-Israeli conflict. The anti-Syrian coalition, which controls the majority in parliament, is pushing for Lahoud to step down, accusing him of being the top enforcer of Syria's policy in Lebanon.

■ Netherlands
Dutch angry over Nazi gibe
The government is furious after an Italian minister this week branded the country's euthanasia laws as akin to the policies the Nazis, according to Dutch news agency ANP. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende is expected to raise the matter with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi next week, ANP said. Italian Parliamentary Relations Minister Carlo Giovanardi said on Thursday that Nazi thinking was re-emerging in Europe through Dutch euthanasia laws and a debate on the killing of children with deformities. He has refused to apologize.

■ United States
Judge okays donation
A judge has agreed to allow New Jersey's worst serial killer to donate one of his kidneys to be transplanted into the relative of a friend, but the donor and his doctors have to meet conditions. Charles Cullen has admitted killing 29 patients with drug overdoses at nursing homes and hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He was sentenced to 18 life terms, escaping the death penalty by agreeing to help prosecutors identify his victims. The judge ordered that all operation costs must be paid by the recipient's insurer and the surgery must take place in New Jersey.

■ Chile
First lady appointed
President Michelle Bachelet has resolved a dilemma facing the nation's first female president, who is also not married: Who will serve as the nation's first lady? Bachelet on Friday appointed a former minister to take over several government institutions and programs that had been led by former first lady Luisa Duran de Lagos. Bachelet named Adriana Delpiano, the women's affairs minister in former president Ricardo Lago's government, as the new director of the socio-cultural office of the presidency. Delpiano will oversee several government agencies and programs, but will not fulfill the traditional functions of a president's wife.

■ France
Hookers take to the streets
Prostitutes to the streets of Paris on Saturday not to ply their trade but to defend it in a demonstration of "hooker pride" and calls for recognizing their human rights. The prostitutes are asking for the repeal of a 2003 law which makes soliciting subject to a fine of 3,750 euros (US$4,600) and two months in prison, as well as revoking the residency card of any foreigner. The prostitute protest drew about 100 marchers, according to police, while organizers put the turnout at several hundred. The hookers shouted slogans such as "You sleep with us, you vote against us" and "Not guilty, not victims, proud to be prostitutes."