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World News Quick Take

■ China
Anti-corruption book adopted
The school where Chinese Communist Party trains its top officials is adopting an anti-corruption textbook for the first time, state media reported yesterday. Chronic corruption has fed public anger that top leaders say could undermine their grip on power. "This will be the first systematic, formal and exclusive textbook on anti-corruption in the history of the Central Party School," Hou Shaohua, a deputy director at the school, was quoted as saying by the China Daily newspaper. The school is the training center for high-ranking members of the party. The newspaper did not say what was in the book.

■ China
HK to get pandas as gift
Beijing announced the selection of a pair of pandas yesterday to be sent to Hong Kong to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the former British colony's handover to Chinese rule. The pair, a male and female both born in 2005, weigh about 60km each and will move to their new home in Ocean Park before May 1, the official Xinhua news agency said. There, they will join another pair of pandas who were given to Hong Kong in 1999, it said. China has been building anticipation over the July 1 handover commemorations as part of efforts to instill patriotism and faith in the Chinese Communist Party's leadership.

■ China
New centers to open abroad
The government plans to open 60 new language and cultural centers abroad to help meet "surging demand" for thousands of Chinese language teachers each year, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday. The additional Confucius Institutes will join the more than 40 that have opened in nearly two dozen countries since the first was established in Seoul, South Korea, in late 2004. Patterned on the British Council and Germany's Goethe Institutes, the rapid spread of the institutes has been hailed as a sign of China's rising global influence. Analysts say the institutes serve an additional function of spreading Beijing's official positions on human rights and claims to Taiwan and Tibet.

■ Hong Kong
`Post' editor-in-chief resigns
The editor-in-chief at the South China Morning Post, the territory's leading English-language newspaper, has resigned after a tumultuous year on the job. Mark Clifford, a respected magazine journalist and author, will leave the paper on April 1 "to pursue another opportunity," the Post said on Monday in a statement on its Web site. Clifford will be replaced by C.K. Lau, a veteran Post journalist and editor, the paper said. The statement said Clifford's relations with the editorial staff were often rocky. After several editors were dismissed, staffers circulated a petition telling the newspaper's ownership they lost confidence in his leadership.

■ Malaysia
Machete robber stopped
A machete-wielding Indonesian robber died when his victims turned on him and fought back during a break-in, newspapers yesterday. After looking for valuables, four robbers -- one armed with a large knife -- began attacking a family of five, including a four-year-old girl, the Star said. In an ensuing scuffle, one of the robbers, an Indonesian identified as Mohamad Nor of Riau, was stabbed in the stomach and died. Four residents of the home were hospitalized with stab wounds. Police launched a manhunt for three assailants after they escaped.

■ United Kingdom
Corpse flies first class
A passenger in first class woke up to a shock last week when he found himself sitting near a corpse on a British Airways flight, newspapers reported on Monday. Paul Trinder, 54, said cabin crew moved the body of the elderly woman from the economy section where she had died after take-off, the Mirror and Sun tabloids said. "The corpse was strapped into the seat, but because of turbulence it kept slipping down on to the floor," Trinder, a businessman, was quoted as saying. "It was horrific. The body had to be wedged in place with lots of pillows." The woman's daughter was also upgraded and spent the rest of the nine-hour flight from New Delhi to London grieving next to her dead mother, the Sun reported.

■ United Kingdom
Refugee kills himself
Police said on Monday an asylum seeker died after setting himself on fire outside a tribunal that would have decided whether he would be sent back to Nepal. Uddhav Bhandari, 40, who had been living in Edinburgh, Scotland, for the past six years, doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire last Wednesday. The father of two was facing a second immigration hearing which could have seen him sent back to Nepal, where he said his life was at risk.

■ Ukraine
Famine denial ban proposed
President Viktor Yushchenko asked parliament on Monday to criminalize the denial of the Soviet-era forced famine that killed 10 million Ukrainians. "This will be our contribution to the global cause of fighting disrespect for human life, totalitarianism and national intolerance," Yushchenko told a committee created to plan the 75th anniversary commemorations of the famine, known in Ukraine as Holodomor, or Death by Hunger. Sparked by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and the collectivization of private farms and agricultural land, the 1932-1933 famine killed almost one-third of Ukraine's population. During its height, an estimated 25,000 people died daily.

■ South Africa
Russian PM holds talks
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka held bilateral talks in Pretoria on Monday that focused on cooperation in nuclear and space technology. Fradkov, who is leading a high-level business delegation aiming to increase trade and investment with southern Africa, arrived in Cape Town on Saturday after visits to Angola and Namibia. Fradkov and Mlambo-Ngcuka signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of water and also identified opportunities for increasing ties in the defense and mining industries. The South Africa-Russia Business Council was also launched. South African imports from Russia amounted to US$264.4 million last year, while exports only amounted to US$155.5 million.

■ Northern Ireland
Catholics attack guards
Catholic men and youths threw more than 70 Molotov cocktails at British security forces guarding the site of a crashed army helicopter, police said yesterday. The overnight attacks near Crossmaglen, an Irish Republican Army stronghold in the South Armagh border region, damaged two police armored vehicles but caused no serious injuries, police said. The officers were guarding the wreck of a helicopter which crashed on Sunday night in stormy weather.

■ Mom, boyfriend convicted
A mother and her boyfriend who had sex in front of the woman's nine-year-old daughter to teach the girl about the act were sentenced to three years probation in Rhode Island on Monday. During an investigation by the state child welfare authorities, David Prata, 33, said he and Rebecca Arnold, 36, had sex "all the time" in front of the child and that "we don't believe in hiding anything." He told an investigator they did not force the girl to watch. They had pleaded no contest to a felony child neglect charge. The judge said he wanted to spare the girl, now 11, from testifying, a spokesman for the state atttorney said.

■ United States
Frito-Lay says school at fault
A dead mouse that a student found inside a bag of potato chips he bought at lunch likely chewed its way into the bag after the chips were delivered to the school, a Frito-Lay spokeswoman said on Monday. An eighth-grader found the mouse last Wednesday. At the time, school officials said his claim appeared credible. The bag and the mouse were sent to Frito-Lay headquarters in Texas, where employees found a "chew hole" they believe the mouse made to get into the bag, company spokeswoman Aurora Gonzalez said. An independent veterinary pathologist concluded the mouse had been dead from one to three days before the student found it, Gonzalez said. The bag had been delivered to the school six days earlier.

■ United States
Court blocks execution
The day before his scheduled execution, a US appeals court ruled to block Ohio from putting to death a man who killed a woman, cut her up and scattered her remains across two states. Prison workers still prepared for the execution of Kenneth Biros, 48, because the state appealed to the US Supreme Court seeking a ruling to allow the lethal injection. The appeals court said Biros should be able to continue appealing a lawsuit with other inmates arguing that Ohio's method of lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. Other executions have been delayed in the past year because of the lethal injection lawsuit.

■ United States
Baby's death a mystery
A partially mummified baby, apparently born in the 1950s and found by a woman cleaning out her dead parents' storage unit in Florida died of an "undetermined" cause, a coroner said. The unidentified boy was found in January, wrapped in a Jan. 9, 1957, edition of the New York Daily News and stuffed inside a small suitcase that was inside a larger suitcase. "We don't know what the cause and the manner of death is with the child," Palm Beach County Medical Examiner Michael Bell said on Monday. "We have no way of knowing whether the child was stillborn or born alive."

■ United States
Group protests donation
An anti-smoking group has called on the US National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to return a donation from tobacco giant Philip Morris USA, saying the firm targets children "for another form of slavery." Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, sent a letter to the museum's executive director last week, saying association with the nation's largest cigarette manufacturer would counter the museum's goal to become an educational tool for children. The museum, which is pursuing a US$165 million capital campaign, does not plan to return the donation, spokesman Matt Langan said.

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