> BANGKOK. I?d like a car loan and 20 condoms, please

A Thai bank is pitching into the battle against HIV/AIDS and handing out condoms to customers too shy to get them at the shop. Despite Bangkok?s reputation as one of the world?s sex industry centers, Thailand is a generally conservative country. Kasikorn Bank launched the ?Condoms for Confidence? campaign at 600 branches nationwide and said it would start giving out the sheaths, branded K-Condom and K-Excellence, later this month. ?HIV/AIDS is returning to Thailand since the government awareness campaign started 20 years ago has fizzled out,? said a bank spokesman who declined to be identified. ?We want the teenagers to be aware of the problem.?

> JAKARTA. Court rejects bid to make polygamy easier

An Indonesian businessman?s bid to make polygamy easier was rejected by the country?s constitutional court yesterday. Indonesia allows polygamy, but according to the marriage law, a man can only get court approval to take a second wife if his first wife agrees, or if she is disabled or cannot have children. Businessman Muhammad Insa, the petitioner in the court case, argued that those conditions effectively prevent polygamy, and this has meant that many men avoid registering their second marriages. As a result, children from unregistered marriages often lose their inheritance rights and other benefits. The court said in its ruling that the articles were not against the constitution or against the tenets of Islam, which allows multiple marriages on condition that wives are treated fairly. ?These articles ... are intended to protect the basic rights of wives and prospective wives of men who engage in polygamy,? court chief Jimly Asshiddiqie said.

> BOGOTA. Casket sales tip off police to murders

Colombian police were tipped off recently to the early morning murders of eight cocaine laboratory workers when relatives of the victims showed up at an undertaker in a southern town asking for coffins. ?We did not find out about this until they came to a funeral home and asked for eight caskets. That drew our attention,? Putumayo province police commander Harold Lara told ?Reuters?. The province, near Ecuador, is a key cocaine production area where leftist rebels and a mosaic of drug gangs fight over lucrative smuggling routes. The gunshot murders in the town of Puerto Asis appeared to be part of a robbery in which one trafficking group stole coca base, used to make cocaine, from another, Lara said. ?It was Monday morning and they had been in production all weekend. So there was a lot of base there to be taken,? Lara said.

> AMSTERDAM. ?Burglar? turns out to be drunk neighbor

A man in an eastern Dutch town went home recently to find his lights on and his inebriated neighbor welcoming him at the front door with a drink. The drunken 53-year old, who lives two doors down in the small town of Gasselternijveen, had broken into the wrong house after finding that his key didn?t work, according to a police report. His furniture looked different, his dog was missing. The drunken neighbor was arrested for trespass, but has since offered to pay for damages.

> WASHINGTON. Plant-eating dinosaur a ?Cretaceous weed whacker?

Scientists have found in southern Utah a nicely preserved skull with jaws containing 800 teeth, scaly skin impressions and other fossil remains of a new species of duck-billed dinosaur from 75 million years ago. The bipedal herbivorous dinosaur, named Gryposaurus monumentensis, was about 30 feet long and pigged out on plenty of plants.

> WASHINGTON. Anesthesia method offers no pain, big gain

A new approach to anesthesia using the chemical that gives chili peppers their kick promises an improved way to treat pain in surgery, dentistry and childbirth, researchers said yesterday. Current local anesthetics deaden all nerve cells and not just the pain-sensing ones, causing temporary paralysis and numbness. That?s why dental patients after a root canal, for example, may leave their dentist?s office drooling, with a numb mouth and some muscles temporarily paralyzed.