World News Quick Take

■ Hong Kong
Jet loses part of wing
Part the wing fell off of a jumbo jet flying from Hong Kong to Thailand, but the pilot turned back and landed safely as frightened passengers shot pictures of the hole in the wing, officials said yesterday. Orient Thai Airlines flight OX262 to Chiang Mai had been in the air for 18 minutes Thursday when the crew radioed Hong Kong for permission to return because of an unspecified mechanical problem, said Grace Ng, a spokeswoman for the Civil Aviation Department. Some passengers took pictures through the cabin windows and supplied them to local newspapers that displayed them prominently in yesterday's editions.

■ New Zealand
`Bungy jumper' had no rope
A New Zealand man was recovering in hospital yesterday after surviving a 47m bungy jump without the rope. The 30-year-old plunged the height of a 15-storey building into the Waikato River on Sunday after pushing past staff, jumping a security gate and leaping off the bungy platform. He was knocked unconscious when he hit the water and taken to hospital with serious injuries after being rescued by the crew of a recovery boat standing by to retrieve bungy jumpers. Police said no action would be taken against the man, who had drunk a small amount of alcohol and was "being a bit of a clown".

■ Thailand
Spirit blamed for drownings
Five including two sets of twins, drowned after they capsized a paddle boat by rocking it back and forth in a pond in northeastern Thailand, news reports said yesterday. Residents of Huay Lampanchoo village, 300km northeast of Bangkok, blamed the deaths on the vengeful spirit of an ancient turtle. The Thai-language daily Kom Chat Luek quoted villagers as saying one of the children's father had recently killed and butchered a turtle aged around 100 years and had given some of its meat to the parents of each of the twins. Other villagers had refused to accept the meat because the old turtle had been well-known in the area for generations.

■ New Zealand
Man defrauds Catholic order
A 34-year-old New Zealand man was jailed for a year yesterday for defrauding a Catholic order of about 100,000 New Zealand dollars (about US$64,000) after falsely claiming he had been sexually abused at one of its schools. A court in Christchurch was told Justin Todd Richardson, a foundry worker, was one of more than 50 New Zealand men who received sums of money from the St John of God order for their sex abuse claims. But although he attended the Marylands residential school in Christchurch, he was not abused and had made his claims to get some of the cash.

■ Hong Kong
Cop jailed over sex bribes
A senior policeman was jailed for three years yesterday for accepting bribes of sex with prostitutes from a nightclub operator. Sin Kam-wah, 46, former head of the Hong Kong Narcotics Bureau, is one of the most senior policemen in the former British colony to be convicted of corruption. He was given free sex with prostitutes in hotels on four occasions, one taking two girls at once to his room, by businesswoman Lam Chuen-ip, 43. Sin was arrested carrying a US$200 box of cigars given to him as a gift after having sex in a hotel room with a prostitute provided by Lam, who was also jailed for three years yesterday.

■ Russia
Train bombing toll rises
The death toll from Friday's suicide bombing aboard a commuter train in the North Caucasus rose to 44 yes-terday after two more people succumbed to injuries, Russian officials said. Eight more passengers were described as being in a critical condition in hospi-tal, the Interfax news agency reported. Authori-ties believe Chechen separatists, a group of three women and one man, were responsible for the commuter-train bombing near Yessentuk.

■ China
Internet dissident sentenced
A court in Xian sentenced a dissident to two years in prison yesterday on charges of inciting subversion, a Hong Kong human rights group reported. Yan Jun was convicted of "incitement to subvert state power" over a string of essays published on the Internet critical of the government, the Infor-mation Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. The high school biology teacher's conviction followed the release of three other Internet writers last week.

■ United States
Convicted priest murder
A Catholic priest and con-victed sex offender was beaten to death in Kentucky, a news report said on Sun-day. Joseph Pilger, 78, was found dead in his home with "multiple blunt-force injur-ies," the Fayette County Coroner's office said, according to the daily Leader-Herald. The retired priest, known as Father Joe, eight years ago pleaded guilty to abusing three brothers and their cousin in the late 1960s, the report said. The victims served as altar boys at the time and were younger than 15. Pilger received five years' probation. Police did not say whether they think Pilger's death may be related to the abuse cases.

■ Saudi Arabia
Diving foreigners detained
A Briton and an American who took diving lessons in the Red Sea are under arrest -- apparently as part of a crackdown on terrorism. The detention of the two men, who both teach in Saudi Arabia, is thought to have been prompted by fears of an attack on ship-ping by Islamic militants, though unofficial Saudi sources on Sunday dis-missed the case as ridicu-lous. Briton David Heaton, 24, is a convert to Islam who lives with his parents in Jeddah where his father works for the Saudi airline. The American is Abdullatif Ibrahim Bilal. They have been held for more than a week, though news of their arrests became public only on Saturday. They are said to have attracted attention by diving during Ramadan. Strict Muslims do not swim during daylight hours in Ramadan because of the risk of swallowing water which would break their fast.

■ France
Heart proves to be king's
Historians they have solved one of the country's most enduring mysteries. They claim a pickled and shrunken heart that has roamed Europe for more than two centuries belonged to Louis XVII, son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon said on Sunday that the experts' verdict, based on historical analysis and DNA tests, meant the remains could be buried in the royal crypt at Saint-Denis. The announce-ment ended a long and often bitter debate about the heart. Louis XVII is thought to have died of tuberculosis on June 8, 1795 at age 10 after spending three years in Paris's Temple prison.

■ Germany
Life sentence for kid killers
Two who abducted and killed a brother and sister in a crime which shocked Germany were jailed for life yesterday by a court in Aachen. The court found Markus Lewendel, 33, and Markus Wirtz, 28, guilty of the murder of the 11-year-old boy and his nine-year-old sister, named only as Tom and Sonja, in March. The court ruled that the two men should not be released
from jail after serving the minimum 15 years of their life sentences. The search for the missing children and the subsequent discoveries of their bodies had raised strong emotions in Germany. During their trial, the defendants were protected in court by a glass screen. Tom and Sonja had failed to return home after playing at an abandoned mine.

■ South Africa
Police smash organ ring
Prosecutors Durban have arraigned a South African man on charges of selling human body parts in a trans-Atlantic organ peddling scheme. So far, 14 people have been arrested in South Africa and Brazil in relation to the case. One of those arrested, a 42-year-old Israeli man, was taken into custody in Durban, South Africa, on Wednesday, five days after receiving a new kidney. According to Brazilian police, the ring canvassed poor neighborhoods for people willing to sell one of their kidneys.

■ United States
NYC sued over convictions
Three convicted and later cleared in the 1989 attack on a jogger in Central Park will file a federal lawsuit seeking US$50 million in damages for each of them, their lawyer said. The suit was to be filed yesterday and was to name the city, the New York Police Department, current and former police officers and the Manhattan district attorney's office, attorney Jonathan Moore said. The three men -- Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Antron McCray -- were among five convicted in the near-fatal attack on the 28-year-old.

■ United Kingdom
Fee hike for migrants
UK Home Secretary David Blunkett plans to impose a
?500 (US$860) surcharge on each of the 900,000 migrants who enter Britain each year to work, study or join family members. The surcharge is expected to raise ?450 million (US$775 million) a year, a quarter of the ?1.8 billion (US$3.1 billion) annual cost of Britain's immigration and asylum system. Home Office officials claim the surcharge was justified because migrants would make a "windfall gain through being granted access to the UK labor market." The ?500 is on top of the ?155 (US$267) for work and study permits now being phased in. The Home Office admits that the main motive is "an ongoing need to raise revenue."

■ The Netherlands
Dutch princess has a baby
Princess Maxima, the wife of Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander gave birth to a baby girl on Sunday, the Royal Information Service said. The baby, whose name has not yet been revealed and is in "excellent health," is second in line to the Dutch throne after her father. The popular Dutch couple married in February last year. Their relationship initially sparked controversy because Maxima's father, Jorge Zorreguieta, served as agriculture minister in the notorious military regime of General Jorge Videla in Argentina. The regime is held responsible for the deaths and disappearance of thousands of people during the so-called dirty war.