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World News Quick Take

■ Cambodia
Most city food contaminated
Cambodian government health experts said yesterday up to 80 percent of food sold in Phnom Penh markets and restaurants is contaminated with dangerous chemicals. Spot checks of markets and some restaurants around the city by health inspectors showed only 20 to 30 percent of food sold in the capital was in "OK hygiene," or free of chemical preservatives such as borax, a disinfectant shown to damage internal organs, including the brain. The city health department launched a campaign early last year to educate vendors in Phnom Penh about using dangerous chemicals in their foods, but many continue to use them, Dr. Chhouv Kong Phally, municipal chief of health promotion and hygiene said.

■ Australia
Killer given compensation
Authorities said yesterday they will appeal a court decision awarding A$300,000 (US$195,000) compensation to a man who killed a woman on the day he was released from a psychiatric hospital seven years ago. The compensation, announced Tuesday, sparked outrage among groups supporting victims of crime. Kevin Presland slashed his brother's fiancee's throat on July 4, 1995 -- the same day he was released from a state hospital where he was being treated for a psychotic illness. He was found innocent of murder on grounds he was mentally ill, and detained in a jail psychiatric ward until his release in 1998.

■ Australia
Ships make way for whale
The extraordinary all-white whale making its way up the Great Barrier Reef on Australia's east coast is none the worse for bashing into a boat at the weekend. The rare 12m humpback, dubbed Migaloo, smashed into a 10m trimaran on Saturday, ripping off rigging and part of the rudder. To protect Migaloo, the world's only known white humpback, Queensland authorities plan to fit it with a radio tracking device and warn ships to give it a clear berth. Migaloo has since been spotted and didn't appear to be injured. Migaloo was first sighted in 1991 and has been seen regularly in the last four years journeying from the Antarctic to breed in the tropical waters of north Queensland.

■ China
Beauty secrets sought
Scientists at a university in central China are trying to discover the secret of beauty by collecting DNA samples from 20 flawless woman . Researchers at the school of biology in Hunan University plans to study the DNA samples to see if they can find a common denominator in the women's genetic make-up that might provide the secret to beauty. The research team has contacted a local TV company for help in tracking down 20 of the most beautiful women in the province for its project. The TV company said it had agreed in principle to help the university project, provided the scientists were serious about using the data they collected for research

■ China
Doctor sold female patients
Chinese police arrested the director of a psychiatric hospital for drugging female patients and selling them off as wives. Dr. Wang Chaoying, head of a mental hospital in Huazhou in southern Guangdong, had made more than 20 transactions since 1998 in which he sold patients as wives for "thousands of yuan." Reports said the women had been forced to take medicine before they were sold in order to keep the buyers from realizing they were mental patients. Some of the men later demanded refunds.

■ Nigeria
Stoning execution delayed
An Islamic court on Tuesday suspended what would have been Nigeria's first execution by stoning, ordering the defendant -- convicted of raping a nine-year-old girl -- into a psychiatric hospital instead, government officials said. Family members had sought clemency for Sarimu Mohammed Baranda, 54, saying he was mentally ill. A court earlier ordered that Baranda be buried up to the neck and stoned to death, the penalty for adultery under the strict Islamic legal code adopted by 12 states in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

■ Germany
US Marine faces extradition
Germany will extradite former US Marine Toby Studabaker to Britain today to face abduction charges after he ran away with a 12-year-old British schoolgirl, Shevaun Pennington from Wigan, near Manchester, northern England, Frankfurt prosecutors said on Tuesday. Studabaker, 31, who was arrested in Frankfurt last month after a four-day international manhunt, will be flown out of Germany in a Royal Air Force plane this afternoon.

■ United States
Drunken bride arrested
For Adrienne Samen, marital bliss was short-lived. At her wedding reception, the American bride became intoxicated, yelled "I hate you" to her newly minted husband, threw wedding cake, jumped on a moving car and tried to bite an officer who was attempting to calm her down. The Hartford Courant reported that the trouble began when the 18-year-old began cursing restaurant staff at her reception on Saturday night in South Windsor, Connecticut, and then stormed out of the establishment. When police arrived, they found her walking along a highway, still in her wedding dress.

■ United States
Foie gras chef harassed
Authorities in northern California are hunting a group of radical animal rights activists responsible for a series of attacks against a prominent French chef who specializes in preparing foie gras, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday. Police in Sonoma County north of San Francisco regard the attacks on chef Laurent Manrique as "domestic terrorism" and have called in the FBI to help investigate. The vandals have sabotaged the new store by plugging its plumbing with cement to cause flooding, sprayed graffiti on Manrique's house and used acid to etch slogans into his car finish. The foie gras delicacy, a staple of haute cuisine, is made from the livers of fattened ducks and geese who are force-fed grain through a pipe inserted in their throats.

■ Germany
No clean getaway
German police briefly detained a 36-year-old man after he tried to shower naked in a car wash in the southern town of Fuerth. "The man stripped off and said he wanted to take a shower, but he couldn't start the machine," a Fuerth police spokesman said. "It wasn't a great idea. He could have been coated in car wax, scalded by hot water or rubbed raw by brushes." The car wash owner alerted police after spotting the man gearing up for his shower among the brushes and hoses. Police said the man had been looking for somewhere to wash since losing his home at the start of the month.

■ BelgiumJiang Zemin in court
A top Belgian lawyer was to bring a court case against China's former president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) yesterday, saying his crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement broke Belgium's human rights law. One of the plaintiffs in the case, Matthias Slaats, said on Tuesday a number of Falun Gong members in countries including Belgium, the US and Australia were filing the suit for torture, crimes against humanity and genocide. Their lawyer, Georges-Henri Beauthier, brought the first successful case under the human rights law.

■ Canada
PM urges gay support
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien on Tuesday urged his Liberal Party to support a bill to legalize gay marriage, a proposal that has sparked a rebellion within the governing party. "Believe me, for someone of my generation, born and brought up in Catholic, rural Quebec of my youth, this is a very, very difficult issue. But I've learned over 40 years in public life that society evolves," Chretien told his party's lawmakers, gathered in northern Ontario for a summer retreat. "We have to live up to our responsibilities, and none of these are more essential than the protection of the constitution and the fundamental rights it guarantees to all Canadians," he said.

■ Colombia
Drug flights resume
Drug surveillance flights, suspended two years ago after a missionary plane was mistakenly shot down, will resume over Colombia within days, the American and Colombian defense chiefs said. At a joint news conference with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Minister Marta Lucia Ramirez said on Tuesday that she expected the surveillance flights to resume within three days. Rumsfeld said some details with regard to notifying civilian aviators would be worked out in meetings yesterday. The White House announced that US President George W. Bush had approved the plan.

■ United States
Famous tree topples
One of the most photographed trees in the world has fallen from its lonely perch above Yosemite National Park, 25 years after it died in the severe drought of 1977, according to news reports on Tuesday. The gnarled Jeffrey pine had stood alone for hundreds of years on the dramatic granite outcrop of Sentinel Dome -- where its wind-twisted branches and breathtaking backdrop made it a favorite subject of master photographers like Ansel Adams. Park rangers said that the tree, which was up to 400 years old and stood nearly 4m tall, probably grew there after a seed managed to take root through a crack in the granite.

■ Nigeria
Troops to quell violence
Army reinforcements moved into the southern port city of Warri on Tuesday, trying to quell fighting between rival ethnic militias that witnesses say has killed at least 45 people. Residents of Warri reported sporadic shooting on Tuesday even as days of intense gun battles between rival ethnic Ijaw and Itsekiri militias began to subside. Colonel Ganiyu Adewale, Nigeria's defense spokesman, said a fresh battalion of troops was to reinforce troops already in the important oil town. Adewale said the casualties included civilians and members of the security forces.

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