World Briefs

A pair of Estonians yesterday became the first to swim the Gulf of Finland, a frigid 55-kilometre stretch of Baltic Sea once rumoured to be an escape route from the Soviet Union that them took more than 19 hours to traverse.

Swimming instructor Bruno Nopponen and freelance TV camera operator Priit Vehm set off from Finland on Friday as part of a group of six but were the only members to finish.

Nopponen, a former Estonian swimming champion, reached Estonia early yesterday after more than 19 hours in the water while Vehm made landfall after 22 hours and 22 minutes, according to the group's blog.

Britney Spears to pay $20,000 a month child support

Singer Britney Spears will pay $20,000 a month in child support to ex-husband Kevin Federline for the care of their two children and will make a final payment of $250,000 to his lawyers, according to a final custody agreement filed in court on Friday. The monthly child support payment is a $5,000 increase over what Spears and Federline, a dancer and rap singer, agreed to last year, the court papers showed.

German conservatives plan 'blitz' campaign

After squandering a 23-point lead in opinion polls during a four-month long campaign in 2005 and nearly losing, Germany's conservatives plan a new strategy for the next election in 2009, a magazine reported yesterday.

The Christian Democrats plan to condense the election into what Der Spiegel magazine called a 'blitz' (lightning) campaign starting just four weeks - rather than four months - before parliamentary elections due in September 2009.

Based on studies and polling data that show many voters, especially vital swing voters, are increasingly making their decisions only shortly before elections, the CDU is now planning to concentrate its campaign effort in the final weeks.

Women held after emergency landing

German police detained two British women on a Greece to Manchester flight after one of them tried to open the plane's cabin door at an altitude of 10,000 metres, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing.

Hartmut Scherer, a spokesman for police at Frankfurt International Airport, said the holiday plane flying from Kos to Manchester made the unscheduled landing on Friday after the women, aged 27 and 26, became violent with flight attendants over Austria.

The 26-year-old woman repeatedly tried to strike a flight attendant with a vodka bottle she had carried with her on the plane after the crew refused to serve the two any more alcohol. She then tried unsuccessfully to unlatch a nearby cabin door.

Artificial pancreas just years away

Researchers working on an artificial pancreas believe they are just a few years away from a nearly carefree way for people with diabetes to monitor blood and inject insulin as needed.

They believe they can link two current technologies - continuous glucose monitoring and insulin pumps - into a seamless package.

Such a mechanical pancrease could greatly reduce the need for fingersticks and injections of insulin that diabetics must now endure several times a day, researchers told a meeting this week at the National Institutes of Health.

"I think we are on the brink of a first-generation artificial pancreas," said Dr Roman Hovorka of Britain's University of Cambridge, who is testing some experimental devices with components by Abbott Laboratories and Medtronic, the No. 1 maker of insulin pumps and continuous monitors.

Hovorka's team has been testing devices in patients with type-1 diabetes.

Russia slams Bush for linking Nazi and Soviet evils

Russia said yesterday that US President George W. Bush had insulted veterans of World War II by equating the evils of Soviet communism with Nazi fascism.

The Foreign Ministry said Bush had coupled Nazi fascism and Soviet communism as "a single evil" and thus "hurt the hearts" of World War II veterans in Russia and allied countries, including the United States.

"While condemning the abuse of power and unjustified severity of the Soviet regime's internal policies, we nevertheless can neither treat indifferently attempts to equate Communism and Nazism nor agree that they were inspired by the same ideas and aims," the ministry said in a statement to mark Captive Nations Week, an annual event.

Parents of China quake victims can have their second child

Couples whose only child was killed or seriously injured in the May 12 Sichuan province earthquake may have another, winning an exemption from China's strict family planning rules, the China Daily said yesterday.

The standing committee of the provincial People's Congress passed rules on Friday setting out which couples would be allowed to have more children, the paper reported.

"Both officials and ordinary people said parents whose children died or were crippled in the quake had to be permitted to have another," said Wang Yukun, vice-chairman of the standing committee.

More than 87,000 people were killed or are missing as a result of the 7.9-magnitude earthquake in the mountainous province in southwestern China.