At a glance

CULT OF KIDNAPPING: Disciples of Japan8217;s Aleph cult, formerly aUM Supreme Truth, have kidnapped the seven-year-old son of former guru Shoko Asahara, the police said. 8220;Six members of the sect took the eldest son away,8221; said a police official responsible for Asahi village, 100 km northeast of Tokyo, where the boy was snatched. 8220;We don8217;t know where the boy is now. He is not back there,8221; said the police official after Friday8217;s dawn kidnap. The bizarre case came just three days after the doomsday cult declared it had changed its name and deposed 44-year-old Asahara as its leader, five years after gassing Tokyo8217;s subway. Japanese newspapers said the kidnappers included Asahara8217;s third daughter, aged 16, who has a strong influence within the cult.

sCHOOL VIOLENCE, FRENCH STYLE: The attempted murder of an 11-year-old BY fellow students and the ordeal of a 17-year-old terrorised by classmates has drawn into stark relief the problem of violence in French schools. In the first incident, in Mantes-la-Jolie, west of Paris, three boys aged between 16 and 18 allegedly tried to murder an 11-year-old Spanish schoolmate after he refused to continue doing their Spanish homework. To punish the boy, the trio threw him down a school staircase. The second incident took place in the northeast town of Longwy, where three students were arrested last week for terrorising a fellow classmate for months. The boy, identified only as Sebastien, who was too scared to tell his parents or teachers of his ordeal, was beaten on the knuckles with a hammer, punched and burned with a hot iron rod.

JEWISH UNDERTAKING: Syria announced that it would not resume peace talks with Israel until the Jewish state provided a 8220;written undertaking8221; accepting the principle of a full withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights. 8220;Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak must provide a written undertaking accepting the principle of a withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines which existed before Israel8217;s occupation of the Golan and the demarcation of that frontier in order to pave the way for a third round of talks,8221; the government daily Ath-Thawrah said.