BEIJING: CHINA'S Communist Party is to mark its 50th anniversary in power with the forging of the world's biggest bell, official media said Friday.

``The bell will measure 6.8 metres (22.44 feet) high and 3.4 metres (11.22 feet) in diameter, bigger than the famous Yongle Bell, currently the world's largest bell, located in the Big Bell Temple in the northwest of Beijing,'' Xinhua news agency said. On the eve of New Year's Day 2000, more than one thousand couples from across the country would take part in a mass wedding ceremony where the new bell would be hung, it said.

Hijacking for love

BARCELONA: A Moroccan man who hijacked a Tunis-bound plane from Rabat wanted to rejoin his girlfriend in Germany, Royal Air Maroc (Ram) said on Thursday. The 45-year-old farmer, identified so far only by the initials E O M, was mentally unstable, the Chief regional government official of Catalonia said here.

The only demand the man had made was to take on enough fuel to allowthe plane to reach a German airport, the statement said.

`Antique' fraud

LONDON: Four antique ``Georgian'' chairs sold by the respected Sotheby's auction house for 1.3 million pounds ($ 2.1 million) have turned out to be 1990 reproductions, Sotheby's said.

The mahogany armchairs were believed to have been made in 1759. But Canadian scrap-metal millionaire Herbert Black, who bought a pair for 463,500 pounds, discovered they were reproductions.

Experts working for Black stripped off the padded backs and arms and found out the real age of the timber.

The burkha trap

TEHRAN: Iran's morals police arrested a young man who tried to give them the slip by wearing make-up and women's clothing to be with his girlfriend, a newspaper reported.

Kayhan Daily yesterday said Behnam, 18, was picked up at a park in the holy Shi'ite Muslim city of Mashhad, in a flowing overcoat and scarf mandatory wear for women under Iran's strict Islamic laws.

Behnam told police he resorted tocross-dressing to date his 17-year-old girlfriend under the noses of the vice squads that patrol streets and parks.

Buddha bonanza

SHANGHAI: A Shanghai woman has won 500,000 yuan ($60,240) in damages from tourism authorities after falling into a giant Buddha statue and suffering brain damage, the official shanghai star reported today.

During a trip to Wuxi in December 1997, Pan Xiaoming lost her footing and fell into the hollow interior of the Lingshan Buddha, which was then being renovated.

She suffered brain injuries in the accident that have left her permanently disabled, a Shanghai municipal court heard.

Dieting is good!

WASHINGTON: The ageing process can damage cells in ways that look very similar to injury, but a carefully controlled diet can slow the damage, at least in mice, scientists said.

This is bad news for people who hate dieting. They found that by restricting food intake, while keeping the diet nutritious, can slow down the ageing process. Of more than 6,000 genesthey looked at from the cells, just under two per cent of them showed dramatic changes with ageing, they reported in the journal Science.