● UN. Ban Ki-moon takes oath as secretary-general. South Korean Ban Ki-moon took the oath of office as the eighth UN. secretary-general at a ceremony in the UN General Assembly on Thursday, less than three weeks before he assumes the post from Kofi Annan. Both Ban, 62, and Annan, a 68-year-old Ghanaian who has been in office for 10 years, are being honored by the 192-member body with speeches and a resolution. Ban takes over as secretary-general on January 1.

● ■ Baghdad.Gunmen kidnap about 30 Iraqis. Gunmen in camouflage uniforms kidnapped about 30 Iraqis from an industrial area in central Baghdad yesterday, police sources said. The sources said the gunmen arrived in 10 police cars and three pickup trucks in the Sinak area and kidnapped around 30 shopkeepers who sell spare car parts. Baghdad is plagued by daily kidnappings, both political and criminal.

● ■ Egypt. Police crack down on Muslim opposition. Egyptian police detained the deputy leader of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, about 10 other prominent members and scores of Brotherhood students in dawn raids yesterday, Brotherhood and police sources said. Khairat el-Shatir, one of two deputies to Brotherhood General Guide Mohamed Mahdi Akef, was taken from his home in a northeastern suburb of Cairo, they said. He is the most senior member of the Islamist group detained since Mahmoud Ezzat, the secretary-general of its Guidance Office, was released in August last year after three months in jail without trial. The two men are about equal in rank.

Italian composer Morricone to get honorary Oscar.

Italian movie composer Ennio Morricone, famed for his work on such spaghetti westerns as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars, will receive an honorary Oscar during the Academy Awards ceremony next February, organizers said. Morricone, 78, has composed more than 300 motion picture scores during his 45-year career, but had never won an Oscar. He was nominated five times, for Days of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991) and Malena (2000). The honorary Oscar, determined by the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, went this year to director Robert Altman, who died last month. ?The board was responding not just to the remarkable number of scores that Morricone has produced,? said Academy president Sid Ganis, ?but to the fact that so many of them are beloved and popular masterpieces.? Morricone?s other credits include the scores for Once upon a Time in America, Cinema Paradiso, Bulworth, In the Line of Fire, La Cage aux Folles and the 2008 release Leningrad. The 79th annual Academy Awards will be held in Hollywood on February 25.