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World News Quick Take

■ CHINA
Mao Zedong's son dies
Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) last surviving son, Mao Anqing (毛岸青), who suffered from mental illnesses and worked as a Russian translator, has died in Beijing at the age of 84, the official Xinhua news agency reported late on Saturday. Born in southern Hunan Province, he was smuggled to Shanghai by the communist underground in 1930 after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials killed his mother Yang Kaihui (楊開慧), Xinhua said. But together with elder brother Mao Anying (毛岸英), he was often left to fend for himself on the city's streets and was once beaten by a policeman which contributed to later mental problems.

■ MALAYSIA
Elephants chase motorist
Elephants are straying onto one of the country's main highways, prompting the government to warn drivers not to trigger a possible rampage by honking at the animals, a news report said yesterday. The warning came after a motorist claimed to have been chased for about 50m earlier this month by a herd of elephants that had been blocking part of the East-West Highway. No injuries were reported in the incident. Sazmi Miah, parliamentary secretary of the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, said elephants are often spotted crossing the 125km highway, which cuts through forested territory in peninsular Malaysia. "It is safer for motorists to stop their vehicles and wait for the elephants to go into the jungle before continuing their journey," Sazmi said.

■ INDONESIA
Mining caused `mud volcano'
A police probe into the cause of the "mud volcano" that has made 15,000 people homeless in East Java points to negligence by a mining company, reports said yesterday. Mud began to flow out of a gas exploratory drilling well operated by Pt Lapindo Brantas in Sidoarjo, East Java last May. The mud has since flooded some 600 hectares of land and submerged whole villages. "All depositions by experts say that there is a correlation between the mudflow and the activities of the Lapindo exploratory well. Therefore, according to police investigations, there is clearly a link between the Lapindo well and the mud outflow," East Java police chief Herman Suryadi Sumawiredja said.

■ MALAYSIA
Tax evaders' travel stopped
Nearly 40,000 people who have failed to settle their income taxes have been barred from traveling outside the country, a news report said yesterday. The tax defaulters collectively owe the government 1.4 billion ringgit (US$400 million), Hasmah Abdullah, the Inland Revenue Board's chief executive officer, said in an interview published in the New Straits Times newspaper. "Some people are simply incorrigible," Hasmah said.

■ AUSTRALIA
Labor wins state election
Prime Minister John Howard yesterday denied his party's loss in a weekend state election represented a protest vote against his policies ahead of this year's national poll. Voters in New South Wales on Saturday comfortably returned the incumbent Labor government, a vote carefully watched ahead of the Howard's fifth tilt at winning the top job later this year. New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma said the result, which leaves all states under Labor control, sent a strong message to Howard's Liberal/National coalition that its workplace relations laws were deeply unpopular.

■ Armenia
PM dies of heart attack
Prime Minister Andranik Margarian died yesterday of heart failure, government spokeswoman Meri Arutunian said. He was 55. Margarian had been prime minister since May 2000. He was appointed in a politically tense period that followed the October 1999 armed attack on parliament that killed eight politicians, including prime minister Vazgen Sarkisian. The assassinated prime minister was first replaced by his brother, Aram, but President Robert Kocharian fired him and appointed Margarian amid rising discontent over the country's economic troubles. Parliament speaker Tigran Torosian praised Margarian as a unifying figure for the country.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Blair tackles criminals
Prime Minister Tony Blair was this week to take on the country's worst criminals, targeting 500 "Mr Bigs," a newspaper reported yesterday. Blair was to announce today he is going after the country's biggest gangsters, drug barons and robbers, with proposals to curb their freedom for life next time they are caught offending. They could be forced by a judged to undergo drug treatment, be barred from associating with other known criminals and face permanent police surveillance -- with any breach potentially landing them in jail for three years.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Blair gets tough on Sudan
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday it was essential that sanctions against Sudan be extended in a new UN Security Council resolution. "It is essential for the international community to take a new resolution on Darfur in the Security Council," Blair told reporters in Berlin, noting that sanctions should be extended. "We need to consider, in my view, a no-fly zone," he added. Blair has repeatedly called for tough, targeted UN sanctions against the Sudanese government to end the violence that Washington calls genocide in the remote Darfur region.

■ MAURITANIA
Presidential poll held
The nation went to the polls yesterday in an historic presidential election as the country seeks to move beyond years of dictatorship and tainted votes. The run-off featured candidates who have both been imprisoned under previous regimes. The winner will be the nation's first democratically elected leader since the country's independence from France in 1960. The second-round vote will be the final stage in the gradual return to civilian rule after a bloodless coup led by a military junta in August 2005 ended more than two decades of dictatorship. The election pits former Cabinet minister Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi against opposition politician Ahmed Ould Daddah.

■ RUSSIA
Nightclub fire kills 10
Fire broke out in a Moscow nightclub early yesterday, killing 10 people, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman said. The cause of the blaze had not been determined, but some witnesses said it broke out during a "fire show" that was part of the club's nightly entertainment, said Yevgeny Bobylev, a spokesman for the Moscow division of the ministry. The preliminary accounts indicated that a performer in the show inadvertently set his clothing on fire and that in turn ignited a nearby 5 liter container of inflammable liquid, Bobylev said. He said all the deaths were caused by suffocation.

■ UNITED STATES
Judge orders victim display
A Bartow, Florida, judge has ordered a Florida man who pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide to display a large picture of the victim in his home after serving two years in prison. Circuit Judge Robert Doyel said on Friday that the picture must be at least 0.6m wide and displayed prominently. It also must include lettering that says: "I'm sorry I killed you." Arthur Pierce, 31, was racing with his cousin on a busy street when they caused an accident that killed 17-year-old Chelsi Gregory, authorities said.

■ UNITED STATES
Benefits of chocolate found
Chocoholics were given further reason to rejoice on Saturday when a small clinical study showed that dark chocolate improves the function of blood vessels. While the researchers cautioned against bingeing on bon bons, they said the findings of the trial were clear and called for larger such studies to confirm the results. The results, presented at the annual American College of Cardiology scientific meeting in New Orleans, add to mounting evidence of the health benefits of dark chocolate.

■ UNITED STATES
Man sentenced for sex pact
A Muskegon, Michigan, man who pleaded no contest to entering into a sex pact with his girlfriend and her 15-year-old daughter and to having had sex with a 12-year-old relative was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. Michael Fitzgibbon, 37, was sentenced on Friday to up to 15 years for each of four counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct after prosecutors said he, his girlfriend and her daughter signed a contract allowing the teen to be his sex partner for two months. The case arose after Fitzgibbon's girlfriend, afraid of losing him while she was recuperating from surgery, allegedly arranged for the Fitzgibbon, herself and her daughter to sign a contract in June.

■ UNITED STATES
Photographer sues stars
Two freelance photographers are suing Denise Richards and Pamela Anderson, charging Richards physically and verbally assaulted them when they tried to take her picture and that she and Anderson lied to authorities, the media and others about the confrontation. According to the lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Richards and Anderson were at the River Rock Casino Resort in British Columbia, Canada, on Nov. 9 of last year to work on the forthcoming film Blonde and Blonder. When Richards saw Scott Cosman and Rik Fedyck taking her picture, according to the suit, she became enraged, called them "paparazzi scum," assaulted them, seized their laptop computers and threw the laptops over a hotel balcony.

■ UNITED STATES
Psychic-using fireman fired
A Middleton, Wisconsin, fire marshal who admitted consulting online psychics at work did not need a crystal ball to tell him it was time to resign. Tom Weber, a 22-year fire veteran, was put on administrative leave nine months ago after he was accused of asking an online psychic on a department computer whether he and others would be successful in getting rid of Middleton's fire chief. Fire Chief Aaron Harris discovered the query, and said Weber had exchanged e-mails with other people seeking to remove the chief. Weber denied working against Harris, but he does not dispute contacting psychics on department computers. "Everyone is entitled to their spiritual guidance," Weber said.

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