News In Brief

I BELIEVE THIS IS YOURS

It was a youthful indiscretion, but Hal Prieste has been conscience-stricken ever since. It seems he took something that didn't belong to him - an Olympic flag with those famous interlocking rings. So what, you ask? For starters, Prieste's souvenir came from the 1920 Games in Belgium, where he finished third in platform diving for the US. So he traveled all the way to Australia, from his home in Camden, N.J., to return it to International Olympic Commitee officials. By the way, he's 103.

A BOMB WENT OFF? REALLY?

Goeran Persson is what you'd call a sound sleeper. Just 90 feet from the Swedish prime minister's home - the distance from home plate to first base - someone dynamited a food vendor's stall at 3 a.m. Sunday. Persson reportedly didn't so much as roll over.

Net surfers rate politicians' handling of online issues

Internet users give the Democratic Party high marks for efforts to provide all Americans with access to the Web. But it's Republicans who score better on a variety of online security issues. Those are the basic findings of a scientific survey by @plan.inc., an Internet data researcher in Stamford, Conn. In the survey, 1,000 online consumers - 35 percent of whom said they were Republicans and 31 percent Democrats - rated which political party would do a better job of handling the following:

Providing equal access to the Internet, regardless of economic status

D 69% R 25%

Providing access in every high school classroom in the US

D 61% R 34%

Safeguarding children under age 18 on the Web

D 43% R 50%

Protecting the privacy of personal information online

D 41% R 52%

Handling taxation of products and services purchased over the Internet

D 40% R 53%

Protecting intellectual property - music, writing, etc. - from unauthorized distribution

D 40% R 53%

- PR Newswire

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