* Pet Peeve: Brigitte Bardot thinks France’s...

* Pet Peeve: Brigitte Bardot thinks France’s animal population is out of control, so the film star-turned-animal-rights-campaigner is urging “all cat and dog owners to have their pets sterilized,” she said in Paris. Bardot, who owns about 60 cats and 10 dogs, said they have all gone under the knife: “They are my family, my joy and also my sorrow when they die.”

* No. 1 With a Bullet: Book Author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. says the United States is ignoring problems at home as it glorifies the Persian Gulf War. “President Bush tells us it was a fight against naked aggression and we’re still No. 1,” Vonnegut said at a recent book fair in Chicago. “Among the Western industrialized nations, we’re No. 1 in children living below the poverty line, we’re No. 1 in teen-age pregnancies, we’re No. 1 in murders of those under the age of 24.” . . . Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike won Italy’s prestigious, $42,000 Scanno Prize Saturday in Scanno, Italy, for his book “Trust Me.”

* Beam Me Up: Astronaut Guion (Guy) Bluford predicts the next millennium will be marked by “a period in which (humans) will permanently step off the planet and begin the migration to distant worlds.” But the space shuttle veteran, speaking at Drexel University in his native Philadelphia, also called for more attention closer to home, praising the students for building a solar-powered car.

* No Party Line: Youngsters competing recently for the title of “outstanding student” in Shanghai have earned marks sure to enrage China’s hard-line leaders--half failed a test on the Communist Party. “Questions were based on general knowledge which the examiners believed should have been at most students’ fingertips: the first birthday of the Chinese Communist Party, names of the main party and state leaders and outlines of party history,” said a newspaper report from Beijing.