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World News Quick Take

■ INDIA
Toilet trauma ends
Dozens of bananas failed to do the trick, but a thief has finally produced a gold necklace he had snatched and then swallowed after police fed him a hearty meal of chicken, rice and local bread. Sheikh Mohsin, 35, grabbed the 45,000 rupee (US$1,115) necklace from a woman in Calcutta on Friday and popped it into his mouth when cornered by police. Officers then fed him 40 bananas over a few hours believing they would act as a purgative. Mohsin passed an uncomfortable night in jail, but not the piece of jewelry. Police then gave him more substantial fare on Sunday. Mohsin is looking at three years in jail if convicted, police said.

■ SOUTH KOREA
Pet shop sparks incident
A pet shop owner has sparked a minor diplomatic incident with a signboard depicting a dog's head in place of Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) on Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, officials said yesterday. The shop at Yongin, 45km south of Seoul, has changed its sign after complaints from Chinese citizens and the foreign ministry in Beijing, a local official said. Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted the shop owner as saying he had no intention of insulting China but simply thought the signboard would look cute.

■ THAILAND
Hello Kitty to discipline cops
Sloppy Bangkok policemen are being ordered to wear bright pink "Hello Kitty" armbands in a uniquely Thai twist to zero tolerance anti-crime initiatives used in New York. Crime Suppression Division officers caught dropping litter, parking illegally or reporting late for work will get several days wearing the armbands. "This is to help build discipline. We should not let small offenses go unnoticed," police Colonel Pongpat Chayapan said yesterday. Pongpat said the idea was based on the "broken windows" policing theory used in New York in the 1980s and 1990s. The theory argues that getting tough on petty crime leads to a decline in serious offenses.

■ CHINA
Panda attacks zookeeper
A zookeeper needed more than 100 stitches after a three-year-old panda viciously bit and scratched him during feeding time at a zoo in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, the Lanzhu Morning Post reported yesterday. The zookeeper, surnamed Zhang, was hospitalized after the attack on Saturday, but his life was not in danger, it reported. Zhang was feeding the panda from outside the enclosure, sticking his arms through the wire, when the panda, Lan Zai, grabbed his arms and began biting them and then scratched his legs, the newspaper said.

■ SOLOMON ISLANDS
Lawmaker arrested
Political tension rose yesterday after the arrest of a senior opposition legislator ahead of an expected no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare's government. The legislator was charged with conspiracy to an unlawful purpose when he appeared in court in Honiara yesterday. The press was instructed not to name him following a defense counsel request to suppress his identity. A businessman and a political supporter appeared in court with the legislator on a similar charge, which Magistrate Chris Vass said was too vague. The case follows allegations by Sogavare that a minister was paid a 50,000 Solomon Island dollars (US$6,650) bribe to defect to the opposition. However, the opposition claimed the money was given in good faith after the minister requested help for his son's education.

■ FRANCE
Armed gang robs museum
Hooded and armed men staged a brazen heist at a museum in Nice on Sunday afternoon, making off with four priceless paintings: two Bruegels, a Sisley and a Monet. Between four and five men entered the Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret museum when there were only about six visitors in the building. The robbers threatened staff members and then took the four paintings, put them in bags and then escaped. Two of the works by Impressionists Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley stolen on Sunday had been taken during a 1998 robbery but were recovered a week later, a curator said.

■ AUSTRIA
Nuclear arms ban urged
Chancellor Alfred Gusen-bauer called on Sunday for the world's nations to rid themselves of nuclear weapons, speaking on the eve of the 62nd anniversary of the bombing that devastated Hiroshima. In a statement, Gusenbauer said total global disarmament was the only way to respond to the threat posed by nuclear proliferation. "The central question can't be who should be allowed to possess the atomic bomb," he said. "The only genuine protection from nuclear disaster is the complete elimination of all nuclear weapons." He also called on nations to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and praised efforts by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency to minimize the threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons know-how.

■ GERMANY
Surgeons remove pencil
A 59-year-old woman has had most of a pencil removed from inside her head after suffering nearly her whole life with the headaches and nosebleeds it caused, Bild reported yesterday. Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil in her hand when she was four. "The pencil went right through my skin -- and disappeared into my head," Wegner told the newspaper. It narrowly missed vital parts of her brain. At the time no one dared operate, but now technology has improved sufficiently for doctors to be able to remove it. The majority of the pencil, some 8cm long, was taken out in an operation at a private Berlin clinic, but the 2cm tip had grown in so firmly that it was impossible to remove.

■ ITALY
Luggage handlers slammed
Civil aviation chief Vito Riggio has accused lazy handling staff at Rome's Fiumicino airport of sabotaging luggage belts up to 10 times a day to ease the fast pace of their working day and to win overtime. Riggio said he would demand a police investigation on the strength of video evidence which La Repubblica said showed chewing gum stuck on bar code readers and conveyor belts immobilized with suitcases, nails or plastic bags. "How is it possible that at an international airport like Rome there are delinquents who ... send the whole airport into crisis?" the paper quoted Riggio as asking.

■ MALAWI
Banda adoption hits snag
Madonna's attempts to adopt David Banda have hit a snag. The Malawi News reported on Sunday that Minister of Women and Child Development Kate Kainja refused to allow a court-appointed official to travel to the UK to assess the suitability of Madonna and her husband, Guy Ritchie. The weekly said Kainja had accused the official of obtaining an air ticket and money from the singer without government approval.

■ IRAN
`Satanist' rave raided
The drive to enforce Islamic morals netted revellers from Britain and Sweden after police swooped on a "satanic" concert organized over the Internet. Police arrested 230 people and seized drugs, alcohol and 800 illicit CDs after raiding the event in Karaj, 19km west of Tehran. Those arrested included young women in skimpy and "inappropriate" clothing, officers said. Reza Zarei, Tehran's provincial police chief, said the operation also resulted in the confiscation of 20 video cameras, with which organizers allegedly planned to shoot "obscene" films and then blackmail female participants. The event included rock and rap performers as well as female singers, who are banned under Islamic laws.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Police continue search
Police continued their search yesterday for 14 foreign convicted criminals who are still on the run after a break-out at an immigration detention center in Oxfordshire. The men, who had served their sentences and were awaiting deportation, have been on the run since Saturday evening. "Our priority is to recapture those who have escaped," a Home Office spokesman said in a statement. A total of 26 people broke out from Campsfield House Immigration Detention Center, five miles north of Oxford, after a fire was started, causing minor damage. Ten were quickly recaptured, while two more were caught later on Sunday.

■ UNITED STATES
Teens shot in parking lot
Three teenagers in Newark, New Jersey, died and another was injured after they were lined up against a wall in a school parking lot and shot in the head, authorities said on Sunday. A woman, Ofemi Hightower, and two men, Terrance Aeriel and Deshawn Harvey, were killed, said prosecutor's office spokesman Paul Loriquet, who did not know their ages. Aeriel's 19-year-old sister, Natasha, was in fair condition at a hospital on Sunday afternoon. "All four were good kids," Loriquet said. He said three of them had student identification from Delaware State University.

■ UNITED STATES
City asked to pay for mistake
The Army Corps of Engineers, which accidentally dumped sand filled with old military ordinance on the beach in Surf City, New Jersey, now wants the town to help pay to remove it. Local officials are angered by the suggestion that they should help foot the bill for a federal government goof that already has cost the town an unknown amount of tourism business. "If they're talking about getting any money out of Surf City to pay for their mistakes, they can forget about it," Mayor Leonard Connors told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

■ UNITED STATES
Eavesdropping law signed
President George W. Bush at Camp David, Maryland, has signed into law an expansion of the government's power to eavesdrop on foreign terror suspects without the need for warrants. The law, approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives just before Congress adjourned for its summer break, was deemed a priority by Bush and his chief intelligence officials. "When our intelligence professionals have the legal tools to gather information about the intentions of our enemies, America is safer," Bush said. "And when these same legal tools also protect the civil liberties of Americans, then we can have the confidence to know that we can preserve our freedoms while making America safer."


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