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World News Quick Take

■ India
Mother raped, boy dies
An ailing two-year old boy died as his mother was raped while on her way to a hospital in northeast India to buy medicine, a news report said yesterday. The 25-year-old mother said she was nabbed by five drunk men in Danapur, Bihar state. She told police the men dragged her to a mosque at gunpoint and took turns repeatedly raping her, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. They let her go two hours later. By the time she returned home with the medication she obtained after the incident, her son had died. The report didn't say what the boy was suffering from. Police said one person had been arrested.

■ Hong Kong
Cop dies after fitness test
A 30-year-old Hong Kong policeman collapsed and died minutes after completing an annual fitness test. Married Ng Chun-shan, a policeman for 11 years, died after completing a 4.8km walk on Tuesday morning, a police spokesman said. He was among more than 30 officers taking part in an annual fitness test during which they can choose between a 4.8km walk or a 2.4km run. Ng collapsed 10 minutes after completing the walk. Training instructors were unable to resuscitate him, and he was declared dead at hospital. The incident is the second of its kind in recent years in Hong Kong.

■ Thailand
`Fertility' clinic raided
Thai police have raided an unauthorized "fertility clinic" in Bangkok where women wanting to be artificially inseminated were instead given injections that made them so fat they appeared to be pregnant, news reports said yesterday. The raid on Monday was prompted by complaints to the Thai Medical Council after more than 40 women were alleged to have been conned at the clinic. One of the duped women, Karuna Piswong, said she paid the clinic US$2,750 to be inseminated but instead was injected 76 times with a substance that made her put on weight. She only learnt she was not pregnant when she visited a hospital and asked why she was not feeling labor pains, despite having reached her due date.

■ Australia
Santa pants a giveaway
An absent-minded bank robber dressed as Santa Claus will spend Christmas in an Australian jail, after he forgot about his pants. Gregory Harland-White, 40, planned to rob a bank in a small town in Tasmania dressed as Santa Claus, dump the suit in a horse trailer and get away on a bicycle, The Mercury newspaper in Tasmania reported. After using two pieces of pipe taped together to look like a gun to rob the bank of A$13,451 (US$9,963), Harland-White headed for his getaway bicycle, parked some distance away. But he forgot to take off his Santa pants and was caught before he reached the bicycle.

■ The Philippines
Ransom paid to kidnappers
Germany, Libya and the Philippines paid US$11 million in ransoms to al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf guerrillas who kidnapped a group of western tourists in Malaysia in April 2000, the Filipino official who won their freedom has claimed.
Roberto Aventajado, an aide to then Filipino president Joseph Estrada, recounted controversial details of his three-month effort to secure the release of 21 hostages held by the Abu Sayyaf group in his book, 140 Days of Terror. German embassy press attache Henning Hansen said that mission officials had not read the book.

■ Germany
Ear not a good cache
Police in Kassel charged a man with drugs possession after officers spotted a small quantity of heroin concealed in his ear when he entered a police station to check if he was on their wanted list. "I suppose he may have heard he was wanted for some offence and just wanted to see if the police had anything on him," said a spokesman for police said. "It didn't go quite as he had planned." As the 33-year-old man, a known drug abuser, questioned police, an officer noticed a suspicious lump stuck in his ear which turned out to be a gram of heroin, the spokesman said.

■ United Kingdom
Bush cost London US$7m
Policing US President George W. Bush's state visit to London cost ?4.1 million (US$7 million), the head of London's police force said on Tuesday. Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens said that over half the money went on officers' salaries, while ?1.7 million was spent on overtime, catering, transport and equipment. The Metropolitan Police -- mindful both of protests and the potential for a terrorist attack -- canceled all leave and scheduled 14,000 officer shifts to cover the four-day state visit.

■ United States
Three charged in blaze
Three people were charged with involuntary manslaughter on Tuesday in the first criminal counts over a Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people and injured some 200 in February. Capping a nine-month investigation into the blaze at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a grand jury returned felony indictments against two of the club's owners and a tour manager for the rock band Great White. In what became the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in US history, The Station went up in flames on Feb. 20 when sparks from a pyrotechnic display at the start of a Great White concert spread to flammable foam on the club's walls.

■ United States
Tree crushes woman
A Florida woman on her morning jog was killed Tuesday after being crushed by a 12m magnolia tree that fell on her. Amber Farrell, 27, was about 7.5m from the tree on a residential street when it fell and struck her from behind, trapping her under its 60cm-thick trunk, said police spokesman Todd Hutchinson. Farrell's husband reported her missing when she didn't return from her jog, but her body wasn't found until city workers began cutting up the tree to clear the street. "I was standing over her and didn't know it," said Eddie Floyd, a tree cutter.

■ United States
Gore move downplayed
Contenders for the Democratic candidacy in the November elections played down the surprise endorsement of Howard Dean by ex-vice president Al Gore, during a debate in New Hampshire late Tuesday. Democratic hopefuls were critical of Gore's decision, but spared former Vermont governor Dean, 55, from their usual attacks aimed at slowing his imposing lead in the race for the nomination. Gore, who narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election, might have been expected to support his former running mate Joe Lieberman, one of Dean's eight rivals who had promised to skip the presidential race if Gore threw his hat in. "I can tell you that our phones have been ringing off the hook at campaign headquarters. I've been stopped in airports by people angry about what happened," Lieberman said.

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