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World News Quick Take

■ India
`Witch' burnt to death
A 65-year-old woman was burnt to death in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand on suspicion of being a witch. The incident took place early this week in a village in the Gumin district of the state, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. The paper reported that the immolation took place a day after two women were burnt to death in the Godda area of the state on suspicion of being witches. The Hindustan Times said while the state had passed a law two years ago to prevent persecution and killing of alleged witches, it is hardly ever implemented.

■ India
Authorities block toiletries
In an attempt to check entry of alcohol, anti-liquor authorities in the western Indian state of Gujarat have ended up driving away toiletries like colognes and aftershaves from the market. The Times of India newspaper reported that while the prohibition officials have failed to stop sale of illegally brewed liquor, they have stopped entry into the state of medicinal products like antiseptics and cosmetics with an alcohol base. Cosmetics, several medicines and hair oils are perennially out of stock in the state as they contain alcohol. Forwarding agents say the shortage is due to the complicated process for acquiring a license to sell the products.

■ Japan
Sub search abandoned
Researchers will abandon the search for the world's deepest diving submarine, which disappeared in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan. The Japan Marine Science and Technology Center gave up looking for the Kaiko, the only submarine that has visited the ocean's deepest point at 10,911m, on the advice of specialists, Kyodo News reported Friday. The experts told the center the only way to look for the probe would be to scour the seabed with sonar, but they added there was no way of narrowing down the area of the search. The probe disappeared on May 29 while it was conducting earthquake research on the sea floor off southern Japan during a typhoon.

■ China
Five priests arrested
Five members of the underground Roman Catholic clergy have been arrested in northern China while trying to visit a priest recently released from a labour camp. Priests Kang Fuliang, Chen Guozhen, Pang Guangzhao, Joseph Yin and deacon Wang Lijun, aged 25 to 32, were arrested in Baoding city in Hebei province on July 1, the Stamford-Connecticut based Cardinal Fung Foundation said. They were on their way to visit Lu Genjun, an underground priest who had just been released after three years in a labour camp, the foundation said in a statement seen yesterday. It gave no further details.

■ Thailand
Police to kill drug dealers
Thai police have been told to shoot and kill drug dealers and traffickers who resist arrest, renewing a government crackdown on narcotics use. "They should be tried and jailed," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said in his weekly radio address. "If they fight, there is nothing we can do. They will have to die prematurely if necessary." Thaksin was responding to a report from the Office of the Narcotics Control Board that said use of amphetamines in Thailand had risen in June and was likely to increase further in July despite a government clampdown.

■ France
Fugitive rushed to prison
Yvan Colonna, France's most-wanted fugitive who was arrested in Corsica, arrived early yesterday at Paris's Sante prison after being flown out from Ajaccio, police said. Elite police had swooped on a shepherd's hut in southern Corsica late Friday, capturing Colonna, 43, sought for the 1998 assassination of the island's governor. Colonna's arrest in Porto-Pollo came as the trial of eight Corsican nationalists accused of complicity in the assassination of the island's prefect, or governor, Claude Erignac was drawing to a close in Paris. Colonna was to appear before an anti-terrorist judge later Saturday. The murder of 60-year-old Erignac in Corsica's main city of Ajaccio was the worst act of separatist violence on the island.

■ Russia
Putin eyes Chechen election
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered that elections for a president of the war-shattered republic of Chechnya be held on Oct. 5, the president's office said. The order that Putin signed on Friday night after a meeting with Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed acting Chechen president, is a further step in pushing Putin's strategy of trying to bring stability to the republic through civil means even as fighting continues. How much power an elected Chechen president would have remains unclear. Kadyrov has pushed for wide autonomy for the republic, including having its own central bank and full control over the natural resources of Chechnya.

■ Colombia
Urbibe aims to restart aid
The Colombian government is searching for ways to reach an agreement with the US to free up military aid suspended after the nation failed to protect Americans from a new international war crimes court, President Alvaro Uribe said on Friday. About US$5 million of the US$600 million promised to Colombia this year was suspended. Yet officials are confident a compromise with Washington will be reached. A preliminary agreement has been drafted, Uribe told RCN Radio, and revolves around an old bilateral accord that Bogota hopes can be used as a shield to safeguard US officials in Colombia from the International Criminal Court.

■ Ivory coast
War declared over
Ivory Coast's army and rebels formally declared the war in the West African country over on Friday, hoping to quell a resurgence of unease in the world's top cocoa grower. The former French colony tumbled into war last September after a failed coup against President Laurent Gbagbo. It remains divided between the rebel-held, largely Muslim north and Gbagbo's more heavily Christian south. Fighting was stopped by a May ceasefire, but tensions have bubbled over again. The two sides said they were making their announcement on Friday because of the serious threat to national reconciliation and to reassure the public.

■ United Kingdom
Women MPs seek male drive
At least five of the 118 women in Britain's parliament have been treated with testosterone implants by a London doctor to boost their competitiveness with their male colleagues, the weekly New Statesman magazine reported on Friday. "I have prescribed testosterone implants for female politicians in Westminster who want to compete better with their male colleagues in committee meetings and parliamentary debates. They claim the hormone boosts their assertiveness and makes them feel more powerful," said gynecologist Malcolm Whitehead.

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