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World News Quick Take

■ The Philippines
Art dealer among 4 slain
Philippine police have launched a major murder investigation after four people, including one of Asia's best-known art dealers, were found hacked to death at a luxury villa on the resort island of Boracay. Police yesterday identified Swiss-born Manfred Schoeni, who owns two art galleries in Hong Kong, and German property developer Anton Faustenhauser among the dead. The other victims were a British national and a Filipina maid. The victims had been stabbed repeatedly and were found on Sunday morning at the German's house, a three-story villa.

■ Nepal
Ban on rallies lifted
Nepal lifted its ban on public rallies yesterday following clashes between police and pro-democracy activists that left dozens injured and hundreds arrested. The violence was sparked when the government briefly detained leaders of Nepal's two largest opposition parties, which demand that King Gyanendra restore democracy. Thousands marched to demand the immediate release of Girija Prasad Koirala, president of the Nepali Congress, and Madhav Kumar Nepal, general secretary of the United Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Nepal. The two have led almost daily protests.

■ China
Satellite to aid Olympics
China is to take its Olympic preparations into space next year by launching a satellite to monitor the construction of venues and Beijing's traffic, which is seen as the greatest threat to the success of the 2008 Games. The satellite is part of China's huge infrastructure investment for the games, and will be launched next May. The craft orbit the earth at a distance of about 600km providing information officials say will be used for urban planning, environ-mental impact assessments, traffic control and disaster planning. It is part of the government's attempt to to use the Olympics to demonstrate the country's advanced technology.

■ New Zealand
Frog found in airline meal
A passenger on a recent Qantas flight from Melbourne to Wellington was not sampling the delights of first-class cuisine when she was served frog legs. The passenger had ordered salad, and the legs were still attached to the body of the live frog, the New Zealand Herald reported yesterday. The woman slappped the lid back on her meal, preventing the 4cm whistling tree frog from escaping. Cyril Evans of New Zealand's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, said the Qantas crew notified his ministry while the plane was still in the air, and Quarantine Service staff were waiting when it landed.

■ China
9 SARS cases confirmed
Three suspected SARS patients have the disease, the government said Tuesday, raising to nine the number of people known to be infected in China's latest outbreak. The cases are limited to people who worked at Beijing's Institute of Virology and others who had contact with them and those who cared for these patients. One person has died. The latest confirmed cases are the father of a nurse who treated an infected lab worker, the nurse's hospital roommate and a person who helped care for the roommate. The World Health Organization (WHO) is probing what went wrong with lab safety, and a WHO team in Beijing has interviewed people at the SARS lab and the hospital where patients were treated.

■ Brazil
Bee attack kills two
Firefighters recovered the bodies of two men on Monday who had been killed in a rare bee attack. They were among a group of nine people who were hiking on Sunday in the Serra Do Caraca state park about 600km west of Rio de Janeiro when they were attacked by a swarm of bees, said Sergeant Wellington Horta of the Minas Gerais fire department. The bodies of the two, 26 and 31 years old, were found at the bottom of a waterfall. "Their bodies were full of bee stings which suggests they died from the bee attack and didn't drown, but we'll only know after an autopsy can be conducted,'' Horta said.

■ Chile
Coffins to get alarms
An evangelical cemetery in Chile has begun to construct coffins with a built-in alarm in case a person was actually buried alive. "The idea was born because of what happens, and what can be seen in some exhumations, coffins having been hit from inside," said Humberto Becerra, the deputy manager at the Way to Canaan cemetery, in remarks printed by Las Ultimas Noticias. Becerra said the special caskets will have buttons that will easily be activated if the deceased should wake up and press them. He said the buttons would set off an alarm bell somewhere in the cemetery and would work even if the coffin is buried 1.2m deep.

■ United States
Hybrid cars vex rescuers
The growing popularity of hybrid vehicles poses a new danger for rescuers at accident scenes: a network of high-voltage circuitry that may require some precise cutting to save a trapped victim. "You don't want to go crushing anything with hydraulic tools," said Samuel Caroluzzi, an assistant chief with the Norristown Fire Department outside Philadelphia. "It's enough to kill you from what they're telling us in training." Hybrids draw power from two sources, typically a gas or diesel engine combined with an electric motor. The battery powering the electric motor carries as much as 500 volts, more than 40 times the strength of a standard battery.

■ United Nations
Sudan retains seat
African nations have ensured that Sudan will keep its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission, a decision that angered the US and human rights advocates who cited reports of widespread rights abuses by the Khartoum government. A coalition of 10 organizations concerned with human-rights issues complained that too few democracies were being nominated for seats on the commission. In elections yesterday for 14 seats, the coalition said three out of four African seats will be filled by non-democratic regimes -- Sudan, Guinea and Togo.

■ United Kingdom
Cockatiel boasts rare skill
Customers at a tailor's store in western England have been left in stitches after Baggio, the owner's pet cockatiel, showed he had picked up the knack of sewing by watching his master. "I have never heard of a bird that can stitch but Baggio has a great sewing action," said Jack Territo, 60, from Westbury-on-Trym near Bristol, owner of the nine-year-old bird. Baggio, who can now pick up a pin and thread it through the material with his beak, will test his skills against other pets on a TV talent show next week. "When people see what he can do, I think he will be top billing. I think he must be one of the cleverest pets."

■ United State
Priest in ritual murder
A Roman Catholic priest was indicted on Monday in the 1980 murder of an elderly nun in a hospital chapel in Toledo, Ohio, a crime that authorities have described as "ritualistic." A Lucas County grand jury jailed the Reverend Gerald Robinson, 66, on April 23, accusing him of stabbing and strangling Sister Margaret Ann Pahl on the Saturday before Easter, 24 years ago. The murder case was reopened in December after a woman told police that as a child she was subjected to ritual abuse by priests including Robinson, the Toledo Blade newspaper reported. At least three people have reportedly made claims to Toledo's Roman Catholic diocese of satanic-style sex abuse during the same era as the Pahl slaying.

■ Peru
Coca growers march
Thousands of Peruvian coca growers marched to Congress on Monday at the culmination of a march to demand more aid and less eradication for their crop, the raw material for cocaine. "We're here to talk," coca leader Nancy Obregon told reporters after the banner-waving marchers arrived in central Lima. "They told us that if we wanted to talk, we'd have to come here, so we peasants have no option but to ask for an audience through our sacrifice," she added. The growers left Peru's central jungle region on April 20. An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 growers, guarded by some 300 police, presented a list of demands to Congress.

■ Georgia
Rebel region gives warning
Georgia's stand-off with its renegade region of Adjara may escalate into full-blown violence, Adjara's chief Aslan Abashidze warned overnight. "Unless Georgian President [Mikhail Saakashvili] heeds recommendations on avoiding bloodshed voiced by the European Union, the United States and our neighbor Russia, another conflict zone will appear on the world map," Abashidze said in comments broadcast live on local television. Abashidze also defended his order to his security forces to destroy bridges and roads leading into the region. Abashidze's troops also dismantled the rail link and used excavators to make minor roads impassable.

■ Kuwait
Al-Qaeda fingered in attack
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz said yesterday he believed al-Qaeda was behind Saturday's deadly attack in the Saudi oil city Yanbu. Asked by reporters at Kuwait airport if he thought Osama bin Laden's militant network was behind the shooting spree that killed five Westerners, Nayef said: "Yes. But we need time to be sure of this matter." There was no claim of responsibility for Saturday's shootings, which killed two Americans, two Britons and an Australian.

■ United States
Anti-Muslim prejudice rises
Discrimination against Muslims in the US soared last year by 69 percent over the previous year, a US Muslim organization reported on Monday. The Council on American-Islamic Relations logged 1,019 complaints from Muslims last year, compared to 602 in 2002. Most complaints related to employment discrimination and refusals to accommodate Muslims who wanted to practice their religion, which requires five daily prayers. Incidents of physical violence against Muslims doubled to 93 last year from 42 in 2002, according to the council's report. It attributed the rise in discrimination to "a lingering atmosphere of fear" since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, tensions over the war in Iraq and anti-Muslim rhetoric in conservative radio shows.

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