<B>JAPAN. Mad cow pull-back won?t affect Japan beef move. </B> Japan?s decision on reopening its market to US beef will not be affected by the US decision to reduce its mad cow testing program, although Tokyo still wants Washington not to do so, Agriculture Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said on Friday. US Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said on Thursday the United States would scale down its mad cow surveillance program by 90 percent to reflect a smaller presence of the disease in the country. The move came despite a warning from Japan that Japanese consumers, already wary of eating US beef due to mad cow fears, will become even more concerned if the United States goes ahead with a plan to cut back on its mad cow testing.

<B>USA. Ex-mayor at center of sex scandal dies at 55. </B> The former mayor of Spokane, Washington, who was booted out of office last year after a sex scandal, died on Saturday of cancer, his family said in a statement released by a Seattle hospital. James West, 55, died at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle with his family and pastor by his side, his family said, according to a medical center spokesman. In December Spokane residents voted to recall the conservative politician following reports that he had offered city jobs to young men in hopes of having sex with them. The former Boy Scout leader had been a prominent Republican political figure and leading state legislator until 2003, when he resigned to run for mayor of Washington?s second-largest city. While a legislator, West had co-sponsored a bill that would have made it a crime for unmarried teenagers to have sex, and often opposed gay rights proposals. The Spokesman-Review said West trawled gay Web sites, and the newspaper quoted three young men who said they had communicated over the Internet with West and had been offered city jobs or positions by him. Confronted with the reports, West acknowledged he had led a double life but denied offering anything in exchange for sex. He also denied misusing his city-owned computer during the Internet exchanges or for downloading pornography.

<B>BRAZIL. Daughter sentenced for killing rich parents. </B>A former law student from a wealthy family has been sentenced to 39 years in prison for killing her parents in Brazil?s most publicized murder trial in recent years. The jury in a Sao Paulo court found Suzane von Richthofen, her boyfriend Daniel Cravinhos and his brother Cristian guilty of murdering her parents in October 2002. All three have confessed to the crime. In a city with one of the highest homicide rates in the world, this drama in a well-to-do family repeatedly grabbed media headlines for nearly four years.

<B>GREAT BRITAIN. Box office success of UK films draw in cinema goers. </B> One in four Britons went to the cinema at least once a week last year, making British film fans amongst the keenest in the world and defying a global decline in ticket sales, the UK Film Council said on Saturday. A raft of successful home-grown films like ?Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire? (photo), ?Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit? and ?Batman Begins? helped draw in audiences. Admissions around the world fell in 2005, by nine percent in the United States, 10 percent in France and 19 percent in Germany. British films accounted for a third of cinema receipts in Britain and brought in over $3 billion worldwide while the three most successful foreign films were ?Downfall? (German), ?A Very Long Engagement? (French) and ?Kung Fu Hustle? (Cantonese).