AUSTRALIA BANS TOYS OVER GHB FEARS !

Australia has issued a nationwide ban on a Chinese-made toy after it was found to contain a substance linked to the date-rape drug GHB. Three children have been taken to hospital after swallowing tiny beads from the Bindeez game - one of the best-selling toys in Australia. The beads were coated in chemicals which transformed into the banned drug when swallowed. It is the latest in a series of safety scares over products made in China.

US toy maker Mattel has recalled more than 20 million Chinese-made toys this year. Two children in New South Wales and one child in Queensland have been hospitalised over the past two weeks. All three have now recovered, but all of Australia's states and territories have now banned the toy.

Moose Enterprise, the firm which imported the Bindeez, confirmed it had recalled one-million toys. The Bindeez toy consists of hundreds of brightly-coloured beads that can be arranged into a piece of art and sprayed with water to set. The beads are meant to be coated in a non-toxic glue, but a batch in Australia was found to be covered with a substance that did not match the approved formula. A spokesman for Moose Enterprise said the infected batch was likely to be confined to Australia.

The firm said Bindeez beads would in future be covered with a "foul-tasting ingredient" to try to ensure children would not eat them. The fair trading minister in New South Wales, Linda Burney, said an investigation was under way to determine how batches of the China-made beads failed to match the approved formula. She added that customers who bought the toys would have their money refunded, at a cost of millions of dollars.

BBC NEWS REPORT.