Bangkok

MAD COWS AND ENGLISHMEN, A NEW MODEST PROPOSAL While much of the world shuns British cows, a Cambodian newspaper suggests that the animals be shipped to Cambodia and allowed to roam free to detonate the millions of land mines littering the country. "The English have 11 million mad cows and Cambodia has roughly the same number of equally mad land mines. Surely the solution to Cambodia's mine problem is here before our very eyes in black and white," the Cambodia Daily said yesterday.

AYUTTHAYA, Thailand - The lucky ones traverse this flood-submerged Thai city in navy boats and motorized canoes. The rest float on whatever they can find - inner tubes, swan-shaped pedal boats, huge chunks of muddied white plastic foam. With large sections of Ayutthaya buried under a sea of one-story high water, rescue workers and volunteers are still crisscrossing town to pluck stranded residents from the ruins. Others are staying to protect what's left. One boy donned a snorkeling mask to inspect his house, its corrugated roof faintly visible below the murky brown waves.

The hibiscus blooms into trumpets of floral beauty. "But it's also stubborn as hell," says Nongyao "Moon" Krapugthong. "Just like me. " "The flower is so delicate it won't live if you cut it," the Bangkok-born chef says. "But the plant itself is a survivor. Take just one stick and put it in the ground, and it will grow in the sand or mud. " After two surgeries for breast cancer in 2001 and 2002, Krapugthong knows a few things about surviving a cruel cut. So it's little wonder the Bangkok-born chef gave her Manayunk restaurant the Thai name for hibiscus: Chabaa.

IT'S NOT DIFFICULT to believe that Madonna may again take the adoption route to motherhood, but it is a little difficult to believe that she wants to try parenthood with boy toy Jesus Luz. He's 22. She's 50. Why doesn't she just adopt him? Britain's News of the World reports that Madonna has switched her adoption efforts from Malawi to Nigeria, and that she hopes that proving that Jesus can act like a responsible father will help her get her girl. It's not hard for a man to act like a responsible father - especially if he can act. But can he be a responsible father?

Syria hunts foes in city's suburbs BEIRUT, Lebanon - Thousands of Syrian security forces fanned out Saturday through suburbs of the capital, Damascus, in search of opponents of the regime, while five other foes were killed in raids across the country, activists said. The raids came as the Arab League's secretary-general announced that the 22-nation organization would dispatch a delegation to Syria this week to try to persuade it to stop firing on protesters. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that about 5,000 soldiers and police officers set up checkpoints and conducted house-to-house searches in the Damascus suburbs of Zamalka, Hammouriyeh, Irbin, and Saqba.

He dipped and shimmied around the stage, a bearded bundle of saxophone-blowing energy that ignited the audience in June at the Valley Forge Music Fair. It was the "Just the Sax" tour, a contemporary jazz concert featuring four saxophone players. Art Porter stole the show that night. Porter, 35, whose song "Lake Shore Drive" is getting heavy play on "smooth jazz" stations across the country, drowned Saturday in a boating accident in Thailand, according to a statement from the record company Verve.

Twenty miles up-river from here, at a campus carved out of the jungle, Burma's best and brightest now attend what may be the ultimate school of hard knocks. On the untamed border between Burma and Thailand, there is no escaping the mosquitoes, or the malaria, or the hunger, or the loneliness, or the uncertainty. And for those who survive the jungle's challenge, the fight against the hated Burmese army often ends in death. There once were 7,500 Burmese students in the border camps, where they fled two years ago after Burma's military dictatorship brutally snuffed the nation's tempestuous democracy movement.

Lou Diamond Phillips has been charged with domestic battery stemming from an Aug. 11 incident during which the La Bamba star allegedly assaulted his live-in girlfriend during an argument. Authorities say the victim "was pushed and dragged across the house, resulting in scrapes to both knees. " If convicted, the 44-year-old Courage Under Fire actor could get one year in jail and a $2,000 fine. He's scheduled for arraignment Oct. 18. Preemptive suit Sandra Bullock's production company, Fortis Films, filed a lawsuit against Tennessee's Department of Mental Health, not for something it did but something she wants it to do - notify the Speed star when her alleged stalker is released from a state mental health hospital.

My plane had just landed at Don Muong airport in Bangkok after a flight from Hong Kong. As the passengers were disembarking to board the buses that would take them to immigration and customs, I walked by two carts of baggage being loaded onto the twice-weekly afternoon Aeroflot flight between Bangkok and Moscow. However, as the luggage was being loaded into the belly of the Soviet Ilyushin 62 jet aircraft, I noticed that, instead of being tagged for Moscow, most of the bags had been tagged LHR for London's Heathrow airport.