People: Drugs dilemma for Elders

SOME people can't wait for politics to catch them up. Kevin Elders, the 28- year-old son of Jocelyn Elders, the US Surgeon General, who this month suggested that drugs be legalised, has been charged with selling cocaine.

If convicted, Kevin could serve 40 years to life in prison. He speculated at the weekend that police were seeking his arrest to embarrass his mother politically - they denied this. 'He sold cocaine to an undercover officer who did not know who he was. He received dollars 275 (pounds 186) for that drug. It had nothing to do with politics,' Little Rock police department said.

Ms Elders said: 'We've told our son that we stand by him as family.' Recently she told the National Press Club: 'It would markedly reduce our crime rate if drugs were legalised.' Quite.

RESEARCHERS hoping to solve a 49-old mystery have found the remains of what they believe is a plane flown by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of The Little Prince, who disappeared on a reconnaissance mission during the Second World War. He left Corsica on a solo photographic mission over southern France on 31 July 1944, but never returned. Experts assumed his plane crashed into the Mediterranean after being hit by German fire or developing engine trouble, but no wreckage was found.

Jean Roux, an expert in undersea research, said efforts to find the plane were revived this year after new testimony was received from a French woman who saw a plane crash in the Gulf of Giens, south-east of Toulon, on 31 July 1944. Her account tallied with that of a German officer based near Toulon who saw a twin-engine plane flying 'in a bizarre fashion', then crashing into the sea.

FOREIGNERS can win in Germany: Ravindra Gujjula, an Indian doctor who moved to East Germany 20 years ago, has been elected mayor of Altlandsberg, a small town east of Berlin. The doctor, an independent, beat his Christian Democrat opponent hands down, winning 617 votes of the 948 ballots cast. Married to a German, he took German citizenship, solely to become eligible for office.