Defuse

Dutch army explosives experts Saturday defused a bomb found in a bicycle saddle bag at the Flemish Cultural Center, police said.

Two bombs were safely defused here Tuesday, and Israeli police warned residents to be on the alert for more explosives. One bomb was found near the Jaffa Gate of the walled Old City in East Jerusalem, and the other was found in a public park by the Jerusalem towm hall, a police announcement said.

Peruvian police today defused a powerful bomb planted near the presidential palace by presumed left-wing guerrillas. Police sources said the cannonball-shaped bomb had been planted on the banks of the river Rimac about two blocks from the presidential palace in central Lima. The bomb would have caused damage in a 50-yard radius but it was not immediately clear whether its fragments would have reached the palace, they said.

Re "Mr. Nunez, who are you wining and dining?" Column, Oct. 10 There is a way to control politicians' misuse of power and money: term limits. The logic of term limits is to prevent politicians from becoming entrenched and amassing inordinate power, which inevitably leads to corruption. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) will be termed out next year, ending his reign of lavish boondoggle trips on gift money.

The Heaven-Can't-Wait preseason predictions shoveled on the UCLA football team have certainly been noted, though Coach Karl Dorrell has tried to blunt the effect. "I told the team when I was [coaching] at Colorado, we were ranked No. 1 in one poll and top five in most polls and that team finished 5-6," said Dorrell, a Buffaloes assistant from 1995 to '98. "What happened? You can get a little caught up in what you're reading.

Two rockets rigged with cellphones and primed to fire toward Pakistan's parliament were discovered by a construction worker and defused by experts, a security official said. The security scare in Islamabad, the capital, came hours after a homemade bomb exploded in a park in the neighboring city of Rawalpindi, not far from a residence of President Pervez Musharraf.

Californians have bad memories of the rolling blackouts of 2001, which were triggered in part by pipeline companies' manipulation of natural gas supplies and prices. New warnings about a nationwide natural gas shortage naturally raise hackles on the West Coast: Is this simply a ploy to raise prices again? If only it were that simple. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says he worries that static domestic production and inadequate natural gas imports could impede economic recovery.

A member of the Church of Scientology found and defused a bomb in a church in the western city of Angers, police sources said. They said the device, concealed in a bag, was found in the entry hall shortly after the church opened in the morning. The church member who found it carried it to a nearby park and defused it himself. Witnesses said it had been rigged to explode minutes later. "The explosive device was made to kill and was very powerful," one investigator said.

A bomb squad from the Ventura County Sheriff's Department defused an explosive device discovered Thursday behind a Thousand Oaks gas station, authorities said. Deputies were called to Bob's Mobil gas station on the 2100 block of North Moorpark Road at about 10 a.m. after two employees discovered the device near a wall behind the gas station, police and service station employees said.