The exhibit must represent the winner's
life in the capital.

"You can give us a case history, a
family heirloom,
or a found
treasure, your grandparents' wedding photographs," the Museum of London
said in a statement.

"It's your place and your
case." The winning exhibit will be put on display until February following
the 10-day eBay auction.

Sixteen-year-old Ang Chuang Yang typed
the SMS (short message service) message in 41.52 seconds, beating the previous
record of 42.22 seconds set by American Ben Cook in July, according to Singapore
Telecommunications, organizers of the competition.

"I'll try for 39 seconds next
year," said Ang, adding that the trick to speedy text messaging was to use
a mobile phone with larger keys on the dial pad.

SMS messaging competitions around the
world use the same SMS text provided by the Guinness organization -- "The
razor-toothed piranhas
of the genera
Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious
freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human."

Higher Education Minister Abed Dhiab
al-Ujaili, a Sunni Arab member of the Shiite-led unity
government, said some 75 hostages remained in captivity
after the raid by militiamen
wearing police-style uniforms, 40 of them his ministry's staff.

The minister's comments came as the sectarian
violence in the capital showed no let-up.

Gunmen stormed a bakery
in the mixed Zayuniyah neighbourhood and killed nine Shiite
workers in the latest in a spate
of attacks by Sunni insurgents
on a trade
that has traditionally been carried out by the majority community.

Five other civilians were killed in
attacks around Baghdad, including two in a car bomb attack near a court in the restive
Palestine Street neighbourhood.

Ujaili said he was stepping
down from the government until the government secures
the release of all hostages and takes action against militias
suspected of carrying out kidnappings.

"Those who were set free told us
that a few of the hostages have been killed, while most of them were tortured,"
he told AFP.

"I'm very much concerned about
their welfare,"
he said of the remaining hostages.

Ujaili said effective action was needed
against the militias
before he could resume
his ministerial
duties.

"I'm stepping down until something
has been taken actively, there's not just talking," the minister told the
BBC. "The police force should be investigated and should put the right
people in the right place."

When asked if he felt there was
currently no effective government in Iraq, the minister replied: "That's
right, I feel, yeah, there is no effective government."

He also told state television Al-Iraqiya
he had asked for 800 guards for all universities across Iraq prior
to Tuesday's abductions.

"But it was not approved," he
said.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh on
Wednesday had played down the mass abduction of higher education ministry staff
and visitors, insisting that only 39 people had been abducted, of whom just two
were still held captive.

The blow to the hard-won Sunni
representation in Iraq's national unity government came as the United States too
piled on the pressure for more effective action against the militias.

A freed hostage and an eyewitness said
that the carloads of militiamen who carried out the audicious daylight raid on a
normally peaceful neighbourhood of Baghdad were wearing police uniforms.

A university professor who was briefly
kidnapped said the gunmen first seized their captives' mobile telephones.

"They also stripped the
(building's) guards of their weapons. After that they put us all in one place
and started blindfolding us," before leading the hostages at gunpoint to a
number of waiting cars.

"We were all huddled together and
after 20 minutes or so of driving we went over a bridge but not very far away
from where we were picked up," said the professor.

He said the hostages were later bundled
into a hall and questioned for a long time, being he was set free in Palestine
Street with a warning not to talk about his experience.

An eyewitness, a woman, told AFP that a
man dressed in a yellow business suit was directing the raid from inside a black
car parked outside the building.

She said she saw the gunmen in police
commando uniforms handcuff the hostages. "They brought all the men in the
parking lot, took their car keys and loaded them in the cars and drove
off."

The top US commander in the Middle
East, General John Abizaid, revealed that he had pressed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
to disband the militias "very soon", only a day before the mass
kidnapping.

"He must disband the Shia
militia," Abizaid told a Senate committee Wednesday, referring to the Iraqi
prime minister.

Abizaid warned that US and Iraqi forces
have four to six months to bring the levels of sectarian violence down before
the conflict tips into all-out civil war.

Maliki has slammed the kidnappers as
"worse than extremists" for targeting scientific professionals and
demanded their swift arrest.

But in the past the premier has refused
permission for proposed US-backed operations against militia bastions, like the
Sadr City neighbourhood of Baghdad.

The US commander said he believed the
144,000 troops Washington currently had in Iraq was the right number.

But his steady-as-you-go message was
belied by other US officials.

US National Security Advisor

The US military announced it had lost
four more troops in Iraq since Tuesday, bringing its losses since the 2003
invasion to 2,858, according to an AFP count based on

The military also said its forces have
killed nine members of the group Al-Qaeda in Iraq in a raid near the town of
Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad.

Yu Hagino, 23, a Doshisha University senior and a part-time teacher at the Ujishinmei branch of the Kyoshin chain of cram schools, was arrested for allegedly killing Sayano Horimoto, a sixth-grader.

Hagino has admitted to stabbing the girl, police said. Investigators quoted him as saying, "I stabbed her with a kitchen knife in the course of a dispute." He was also quoted as saying Horimoto previously "poked fun at him."

It was the third slaying of a schoolgirl nationwide since Nov. 22.

Hagino was recruited by the cram school in November 2003 and taught Japanese and English.

The cram school was scheduled to hold an examination on Japanese for 13 students from 9 a.m. to noon, skipping regular classes.

But Hagino separated Horimoto from the other 12 students, telling them he would conduct a questionnaire over his Japanese class and ordered the others to go to another classroom, investigative sources said.

After they left, Hagino locked the classroom door and stabbed Horimoto in the face and neck with a 29-cm-long knife, the sources said.

The classroom is equipped with a security camera, but a monitor in another room was not on. Police suspect Hagino had turned it off.

After stabbing the girl, Hagino used his cell phone to make an emergency call to police shortly after 9 a.m., they said.

When another teacher finally persuaded Hagino to unlock the door and come out, he was still holding his cell phone and there was blood on his hands, they said.

Horimoto was rushed to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Police confiscated two kitchen knives and a hammer from Hagino.

Kyoshin said Hagino was not scheduled to work Saturday and that the questionnaire he said he would conduct also had not been scheduled.

Sadaaki Tachiki, the president of Kyoshin Co., which operates the Kyoshin chain of some 200 cram school branches in Kyoto and surrounding prefectures, said in a hastily arranged news conference that the girl had developed an aversion to Hagino.

At the beginning of December, Tachiki said, she began to refuse to take classes from Hagino, who had taught her Japanese.

The prestigious Doshisha University said Hagino enrolled there in April 2001. He is a law student majoring in criminology, it said.

But in June 2003, he was arrested on suspicion of stealing a purse from an unattended bag in the university library and injuring a security guard. The university suspended him for a year and a half.

Kyoshin officials said Saturday they were unaware of Hagino's criminal record when the cram school hired him on a part-time basis in November 2003 -- while he was suspended from Doshisha.

One official said it is Kyoshin's policy to ask applicants to submit their resume and closely check its content. But the official added that it is difficult to know whether applicants have a criminal record because universities often refuse to disclose such information, citing students' privacy.

One student at the cram school said after the slaying, "Mr. Hagino was a nice teacher who sometimes entertained us by telling jokes."

But the same student cited an incident two weeks ago in which Hagino scolded Horimoto in front of other students because she forgot to bring an exercise book to class.

According to people who know Hagino, he has no brothers or sisters and earned top grades at his junior high school. But they added he had been bullied and often quarreled with her mother in those days.

Kyoshin is a large cram school chain based in the city of Kyoto. It generally has a good reputation and is noted for closely following up on its students.

The Uji school is on the second floor of a three-story building, and many elementary school students stay in class until 11 p.m.

Kyoshin recruits young and enthusiastic teachers, many of them college students, to compete with other cram schools.

The Japan Times: Dec. 11, 2005

One possible step is to set a certain price for a J-Com share that is higher than the investors' purchasing price and to forcibly settle the deal by paying investors in cash, according to bourse sources.

The exchange fears there are about 100,000 shares that Mizuho Securities will be unable to hand over to purchasers to settle the transaction, and is considering the forcible settlement measure -- the first such action in 55 years -- to preserve trust in the stock market.

Mizuho Securities President Makoto Fukuda announced earlier in the day that his company expects to incur a loss of at least 27 billion yen from Thursday's error trading J-Com Co. stock. But industry sources believe the loss could exceed 30 billion yen. That would wipe out its 28 billion yen first-quarter net profit.

Mizuho Securities would shoulder the full cost of the forcible settlement plan, in which case its losses could mount further, industry insiders said.

Due to a data entry mistake, Mizuho Securities placed an erroneous order Thursday morning to sell 610,000 shares of J-Com for 1 yen, instead of one share for 610,000 yen, during the human resource recruitment firm's(人材派遣会社の） debut on the TSE's Mothers startup market.

Since the size of the order is 42 times larger than J-Com's 14,500 outstanding shares, it was effectively a massive short-sell order and must be settled by delivery of the shares on the fourth market day from the order's placement. The order remained valid as of Friday.

Mizuho has been trying to buy back shares of J-Com shares to settle the order, but it is still far short of 610,000, TSE Managing Director Tomio Amano said at a news conference Friday.

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley Japan reported to the Finance Ministry the same day that it acquired a 31.19 percent stake in J-Com Co.

According to its report to the ministry's Kanto Local Finance Bureau, the U.S.-affiliated brokerage bought 4,522 J-Com shares Thursday when the recruitment agency went public on the Mothers market.

It is also believed that many individual investors, including day traders, jumped on the bandwagon and bought J-Com shares after the erroneous order was placed.

The forcible settlement would be handled by Japan Securities Clearing Corp., a public entity that guarantees settlements on stock transactions, sources said, adding that it would also set the purchasing price.

Market sources have estimated that Mizuho may come up 100,000 shares short.

Amano said the TSE suspended trading in J-Com shares Friday in view of （～を考慮して）the possibility of speculative trading breaking out over the share shortage. The bourse sources later said the suspension would remain in place until Monday, with the order being forcibly settled as early as Tuesday.

On Thursday, J-Com's stock price started gyrating wildly after the order hit shortly before 9:30 a.m. Although the mistake was discovered within minutes, attempts to cancel the order failed.

In addition, because it was such a large order, J-Com's share price fell by its daily permitted maximum to 572,000 yen, where enthusiastic buyers piled in and completed the transaction in less than 10 minutes.

The Japan Times: Dec. 10, 2005