NEW YORK: Philip Bondy's devotion to apotemnophilia, a sexual fetish he shared with a handful of people in the world, cost him his life. The 79-year-old New Yorker died of gangrene after he had his healthy right leg amputated below the knee. Bondy paid a former doctor, John Brown, œ6,250 to cut off his leg.

Apotemnophiliacs get sexual gratification from removing limbs. But the operation went wrong and two days later Bondy died. Brown, 77, has been found guilty of second-degree murder and faces a life sentence.

Chernobyl baby provokes furore

CHERNOBYL: Maria, a baby girl barely two months old, is snuggled in her cradle blissfully unaware of the commotion whirling around her as the first baby born in the highly radioactive zone around the devastated nuclear reactor of Chernobyl. Her parents kept the pregnancy a secret for fear of being forced to move from there and local authorities were furious when they learnt of Maria's birth on August 25.

Maria'sonly crime was to be born in the 30-km exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl plant, which caused the world's worst civilian nuclear accident in 1986 when a reactor exploded. People are forbidden from living in the zone, which has been cordoned off by barbed wire.

Radioactivity in the area can reach up to 5,000 micro-RAD (radiation absorbed dose) per hour -- 200 times more than the maximum permitted dose.

I'll appoint `dirt commissioner', promises Archer

LONDON: Jeffery Archer, the millionaire novelist bidding to be London's mayor, pledged on Wednesday to appoint a commissioner for dirt if elected.

``Yes, dirt,'' he told an enraptured Tory party conference here. ``I will not use fancy phrases like effluent pollution or environmental waste -- dirt.''

Archer, a flamboyant ex-MP and former party deputy chairman who has never strayed far from the headlines, is a favourite of Conservative audiences. His mix of bravado, choice soundbites and air of local-boy-made-good reach out to the partyfaithful and his speech -- just days after winning the Tory nomination for the mayoral battle -- was no different.

The election takes place on May 4, but his biggest rival is not yet known, as the ruling Labour party has not decided who to select from a list of candidates.