Daily Staff Writer

Europe

Agence France-Presse

* French customers have stopped several trucks in the last few weeks that contained radioactive mushrooms from Bulgaria.

Tests on the mushrooms have revealed they contain six times as much radiation as allowed by European Union regulations.

The radioactive fungi apparently are part of the aftermath from the 1986 accident at the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Expressen

* Hackers broke into two prostitutes’ Hotmail e-mail accounts last week in Sweden and published their messages on an anonymous Web site.

Several of the pair’s customers were identified with both name and phone number, and many of their clients also were married.

Africa

Cairo Times

* Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was attacked by a man with a sharp instrument during a parade Monday.

Mubarak escaped with no injuries except minor cuts on his hands. His attacker, Said Hassan Suleiman, 40, has been described by friends as a religious conservative who wanted to “die a martyr.” He was shot dead immediately after the attempted assassination.

Asia

South China Morning Post

* The victims of a fire that killed 40 people and injured 80 in 1996 have agreed to a compensation deal with the companies they blame for the fire.

The fire was the worst in Hong Kong within the past 78 years.

The victims’ lawyers were not willing to reveal any of the specifics of the agreement, but experts speculate the total sum to run into the tens of millions of dollars.

Japan Times Online

* Heavy rain showers Tuesday led to flooded rivers in Japan that swept away nearly 500 homes in the Hyogo Perfecture region of the island nation. Between 50 and 60 millimeters of rain fell between 10 and 11 a.m.

The flooding also washed away several railroad lines, but there have not been any reports of casualties.

Central America

BBC

* Nicaragua has declared a state of alert as a rat plague is threatening the health of nearly 300,000 natives.

The rats have devastated crops in the north eastern part of the country, but aid agencies are more concerned about diseases carried by the rodents.

A representative of the Ministry of Agriculture speculated that the sudden increase in the rat population is a result of Hurricane Mitch, which swept through the region last year and killed many of the rats’ natural predators.

South America

BBC

* Brazil has imposed a ban on crop burning after several fires have swept through the country.

Smoke from the fires is making life difficult in several cities, which already are heavily polluted.

Any farmer who is found setting his fields ablaze could be arrested after the new law comes into effect.