The 3G iPhone, slated to go on sale Friday for $299 in the U. S. , will cost Belgians $1,000, thanks to a peculiarity in that country's laws. The law regulating how much companies can price items will result in the 8GB iPhone 3G being sold by Belgian carrier Mobistar for $825 and the 16GB version for $966.

An 11-year-old Romanian girl who was raped by her uncle when she was 10 and is now 21 weeks pregnant will have an abortion in the United Kingdom. The family of the girl accepted an offer from a London-based Romanian woman to sponsor the abortion even though a government committee in Romania decided Thursday to allow the abortion in the country.

A new law will go into effect on July 1 banning smoking tobacco indoors throughout the Netherlands. What this means for Amsterdam's historic coffee shops, where smoking tobacco laced with marijuana is more of the main draw, remains up for debate. According to reports, coffee shop owners say the new ban should not effect them because 'coffee shops' are a place where people go to smoke. They say it is preposterous for the ban to extend to their shops, just as it would be for food to be banned from restaurants, or alcohol from a bar.

Police official said on Monday that a 64-year-old Australian man was charged with drunk driving while on his motorized wheelchair in a northern Australian highway. Officials said the old man fell asleep at 10 a. m. on Friday in an exit lane near the tourist city of Cairns along the Captain Cook Highway in northern Queensland.

A sudden baby boom among students at Gloucester High School here has taken town officials by surprise. An investigation has revealed that the 17 high school girls expecting babies are part of an apparent teenage "pregnancy pact. "School officials became suspicious in early October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. After questioning, nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.