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■ CHINA
Caution urged for kissers
Beijing couples intent on stealing a kiss in public are being warned they could be caught on closed-circuit television -- and suspected of committing a crime, a state news agency reported yesterday. Xinhua news agency said "intimate acts of lovers may be initially categorized as `kidnapping' or `robbery' by the computers, which are programmed to be sensitive to violations of safe distances." But police officers monitoring the cameras will decide if the situation really is dangerous.

■ INDONESIA
Four foreigners missing
Four foreigners -- an Italian, a Japanese, a Singaporean and an American -- were reported missing after opening a Berlitz language school, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday. "Police do not know yet if they were kidnapped, are missing or on the road," said Kristiarto Legowo, adding that they were last known to have been in Surabaya on Java island on Tuesday. In Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki was quoted as saying that Indonesian police had informed consular officials about the disappearance.

■ INDIA
Chickens tested for bird flu
Authorities were testing chickens at a small poultry farm in India's remote northeast for bird flu after a number of birds died suddenly, a senior official said on yesterday. The "unusual mortality" this month left 133 chickens dead out of 144 at the farm in Manipur State, said Upma Chawdhry, Joint Secretary of the Animal Husbandry Department. "The mortality was sudden, just in the space of a few days," she said. The government expects the test results this week. India has reported no outbreak of bird flu in its multibillion dollar poultry industry or among backyard poultry this year, despite nearly a dozen alerts.

■ INDIA
Child abuse investigated
The Indian federal government has launched an investigation into the case of a 10-year-old boy who was allegedly sexually abused daily for three months by a teacher and two employees at his New Delhi school, a newspaper reported yesterday. The inquiry marks the first time the federal government has overseen a child abuse investigation. It was launched by the Ministry for Women and Child Development. A study in April that found more than 53 percent of children in India are sexually abused. Chowdhury said the boy was sodomized daily for three months last year, the Hindustan Times reported. Two of the men have been arrested, with police searching for the third.

■ FRANCE
Four die on Mont Blanc
Four mountain climbers died of cold and exhaustion after losing their way on snowcapped Mont Blanc in the Alps, French police said on Tuesday. The victims -- women from New Zealand, France and Chile, as well as a man from Britain -- were found at an altitude of approximately 4,000m, police said. "The group had no tent and failed to dig a hole to protect themselves from 120kph winds and falling snow," said Olivier Kim, of the regional police force. The victims' identities were not immediately released.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Four students found guilty
A jury on Tuesday found four British students guilty of collecting extremist material that prosecutors argued was intended to encourage others to die as terrorist martyrs. Three students from Bradford University and London schoolboy Mohammed Irfan Raja were caught after Raja left a note for his parents saying he was going to fight abroad. Raja, 18, had been communicating and exchanging material with the others -- Aitzaz Zafar, 20, Usman Ahmed Malik, 21, and Akbar Butt, 20 -- on the Internet and went to stay with them in northern England in February. He returned home three days later after a tearful conversation with his parents. They took him to the police.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Hacks in fake bomb debacle
Two journalists working for a British tabloid newspaper were arrested on Tuesday after trying to plant a fake bomb on a train, the newspaper said. The Daily Mirror said the men were caught by railway staff at the Stonebridge Park depot on the London Underground's Bakerloo line. The staff called police, and the men were arrested. The newspaper said the men were engaged in a "legitimate and justified journalistic exercise" to test security on the transit system. Last year, the newspaper reported that its reporters had managed to leave a fake bomb on a train carrying nuclear waste.

■ RUSSIA
Harvard bells consecrated
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II on Tuesday consecrated 18 newly cast brass bells destined for Harvard University in the US in a trade that will see the originals returned to Russia nearly 80 years after they were saved from Stalin's religious purges. The originals have hung for decades in the towers at Lowell House and Harvard Business School's Baker Library. US industrialist Charles Crane bought the bells from the Soviet government in 1930, saving them from being melted down in purges that saw thousands of monks executed and churches and monasteries destroyed or turned into prisons and orphanages.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Sacred bull denied new test
Welsh authorities on Tuesday rejected a plea by British Hindus for a new tuberculosis test on a monastery's sacred bull, quashing a last-minute bid to save the animal from slaughter. Monks at the Skanda Vale monastery in southwest Wales hoped that a second test would exonerate Shambo, a six-year-old Friesian bull condemned after testing positive for bovine tuberculosis last spring. The test throws up one false positive in about every 1,000 results. Lawyers for the Hindu Forum of Britain sent a letter asking Elin Jones, the Welsh Assembly minister for rural affairs, to make a "magnanimous gesture."

■ CANADA
Major pipeline bursts
A major pipeline broke near a busy port on Tuesday, spewing thousands of liters of crude oil and causing homes to be evacuated amid environmental fears, local authorities said. The breach sent oil spilling into an ocean inlet near the Port of Vancouver, after a backhoe digging device hit a major pipeline in a residential neighborhood. More than 100 homes were evacuated after crude oil spouted as high as a 10-story building in the city of Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver.

■ UNITED STATES
Compliments abound
People walking by a bright red-and-white striped box on a busy street in the US capital may be surprised to hear a reassuring voice say, "You have nice eyes." The Compliment Machine is the work of Tom Greaves, 46, a Washington artist. It is part of an exhibit of public art called SitesProject DC. He recorded 100 compliments, and an iPod Nano inside the machine plays them at random over a speaker. Greaves tweaks the compliments every night, adding some and removing others. The iPod is removed at night so it does not get stolen.

■ UNITED STATES
Sex change case opens
A woman seeking a tax write-off for her sex-change operation told the opening session of a potentially precedent-setting trial yesterday that the procedure was not just cosmetic but had made her whole. Rhiannon O'Donnabhain is challenging a decision by US tax authorities not to allow the US$25,000 cost of her 2001 sex-change and breast augmentation surgeries as a tax deduction. The Internal Revenue Service calls the procedures elective and cosmetic, and ineligible for a tax break. Attorneys argued that since O'Donnabhain was diagnosed with gender identity disorder by two medical professionals, the treatment was justified and deductible.

■ UNITED STATES
Prisoner executed
A 44 year-old American was executed in the state of Texas late on Tuesday for killing two teenagers and stealing their car, prison officials said. Lonnie Johnson received a lethal injection and was declared dead the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a statement. On the night of August 14, 1990, Johnson killed Gunar Nelson Fulk, 16, and Leroy McCaffrey, 17, near a small town northwest of the city of Houston. Johnson addressed a woman named Carrie in his last statement, saying: "It's been a joy and a blessing. Take care, give everybody my regards. I love you, and I'll see you in eternity." Johnson is the 31st person executed in the US this year.

■ UNITED STATES
Minister faces drug charges
A minister with mail order credentials who faces drug charges for distributing marijuana through his Hollywood, California, church argued unsuccessfully that federal law protects his use of the drug because he believes it is a religious sacrament. The Reverend Craig Rubin, 41, the leader of the 420 Temple who has appeared in episodes of the Showtime drug-dealing comedy Weeds, faces up to seven years in prison if convicted of possessing marijuana for sale. He and some 400 members of his church believe marijuana is a religious sacrament and burn and smoke pot during services. "We feel pot is the tree of life mentioned in the Bible, so it is incorporated into the ceremony," Rubin said before the hearing began on Tuesday.


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