World Notes TRAVEL

Most of the fare in London's tabloids is designed to titillate and tickle. Officials in Dublin, however, were not amused by one story appearing last week in the Sunday People, a racy Fleet Street rag. The paper charged that for more than four years the passport officer at the Irish embassy in London had sold false Irish passports to foreigners. The price: as much as $24,000 apiece. The story further alleged, although it provided no evidence, that the official, Kevin McDonald, 37, may have sold some of the bogus documents to "Libyans, Iranians, Lebanese and others" from states associated with terrorism. Irish authorities reportedly relieved McDonald of his embassy duties and then ordered him back to Dublin.