World News Quick Take

■ New Zealand
Clark denounces sex bill
A government bill that would have legalized sex for 12- to 16-year-olds in New Zealand now appears doomed after Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday spoke out against it. "I certainly don't support decriminalizing sex below the age of 16," she told a national radio station. "I happen to think 16 is quite young enough, and really too young to be entering into those sorts of relationships." Parliament is considering a bill that would keep New Zealand's age of consent at the current age of 16, but allow a defense for consensual sex involving under 16 year olds if the age difference involved is two years or less.

■ India
Girl dies in SMS mix-up
A 17-year-old girl in the central city of Indore killed herself after receiving an incorrect message on her cellphone saying she had failed her board examination. Aditi Jeena, a student at the Standard XII level, hanged herself in her room on Sunday after she received a text phone message with the wrong information, the Hindustan Times reported yesterday. Two cellular companies are offering results of the Central Board of Secondary Education final examination for students in Indore. The police would not say whether Aditi may have made a mistake in typing her roll number.

■ Hong Kong
Sex pledge divorce rejected
A wife in western China has filed for divorce from her husband of 18 years after he broke a pledge to have sex with her at least once every 15 days, a news report said yesterday. The woman, from Pengzhou, Sichuan province, told a judge she and her husband had agreed years ago to make love at least once every 15 days to revitalize their sex life. Her application for a divorce was rejected by the judge, who said a verbal contract did not represent adequate grounds for divorce, according to the South China Morning Post.

■ Philippines
Britons implicated in murder
Philippine have named two Britons among seven suspects in the murder of a prominent Hong Kong art dealer and three other people on the tropical island resort of Boracay, officials said yesterday. Keith Redfern and Patrick Higgs, along with a German suspect earlier named by police as Uwe Friesl, are all barred from leaving the country while state prosecutors study the evidence against them, immigration chief Alipio Fernandez said. Police earlier asked state prosecutors to indict Friesl and four Filipinos for the murders of Swiss-born Hong Kong art dealer Manfred Schoeni, German property developer Anton Faustenhauser, Hong Kong-based British architect John Cowperthwaite and Faustenhauser's Filipina maid. The four were found stabbed to death on May 2 in the developer's villa on Boracay island, one of the Philippines' top tourist draws.

■ South Korea
Court convicts general
A South Korean military court convicted a high-ranking general who works closely with US forces of embezzlement yesterday and fined him 20 million won (US$17,000), an official said. Shin Il-soon, deputy chief of the combined South Korea-US forces, was also ordered to reimburse the 107 million won (US$91,570) in military funds he misappropriated over the past several years, a Defense Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. The court cleared Shin on separate bribery charges. He was allowed to return to his residence following yesterday's sentencing.

■ United States
Jackson `could flee trial'
Michael Jackson's prosecutor is opposing a move by the pop singer to reduce his US$3 million bail, arguing that he may be planning to flee the country. According to a motion obtained by media lawyers on Sunday, District Attorney Tom Sneddon's office said Jackson's immense wealth requires at least US$3 million bail to ensure he will appear for trial on child molestation charges and, if convicted, would be prepared to serve a lengthy prison sentence. "The temptation to flee must surely be strong for an individual in defendant's circumstances," said the motion. "To suppose otherwise would be to blink reality."

■ United States
Brother runs over sister
A two-year-old Florida girl was run over and killed when she chased after her father who was letting a 12-year-old boy drive a car in a parking lot. The boy was getting his first chance to drive in Largo, 32km west of Tampa, on Saturday. Summer Wolfe was knocked down by the passenger door when the car in which her father sat lurched backward, and she fell under the front wheel. She was pronounced dead after being taken by helicopter with her mother to a medical center.

■ Zimbabwe
Mugabe lashes out
Zimbabwean Robert Mugabe has angrily denied that his country needs food aid and rejected charges that his government inflicts human-rights abuses in an interview with Sky News released yesterday. In the interview, the first Mugabe has given to British media for several years, the leader clung to his position that the British government is responsible for whatever problems his country is facing. He also attacked Bishop Desmond Tutu and Bulawayo's Archbishop Pius Ncube as "unholy men." Mugabe also said his government would not accept international food aid in the coming year.

■ Colombia
Bomb kills four
A bomb attack in northwestern Colombia killed four people, bringing to 33 the number of deaths since Friday when leftist rebels began a wave of assaults and bombings, police said on Sunday. The latest bombing occurred late on Saturday night in a bar in the city of Apartado, Mayor Fidel Banguero said. Police said the explosives were brought into the bar hidden in a suitcase. Ninety-two people were injured. Banguero said he suspected leftists belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were responsible. An earlier assault by FARC insurgents on the southern town of Vistahermosa in the province of Caqueta killed 25 Marxist fighters and two soldiers, General Javier Arias said.

■ France
Four died at airport
Four were killed in a structural collapse at a terminal at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport, the commander of rescue operations said early yesterday, revising the death toll downward from at least five. Colonel Frederic Monard, flanked by French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin at the scene of Sunday's disaster, said another three people were slightly injured. On Sunday, authorities said five and possibly six people were killed when several tonnes of concrete, metal bars and glass paneling came crashing down on an arrival and departure passageway at the main Paris airport's showcase Terminal 2E.

■ Sudan
Sudan may rival Rwanda
Starvation disease may kill 350,000 Sudanese if the world fails to quell violence stirring a refugee crisis in the Darfur area of Africa's largest country, an influential think tank said on Sunday. "Urgent international action is required on several fronts if `Darfur 2004' is not to join `Rwanda 1994' as shorthand for international shame," the International Crisis Group said in a report, referring to the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Rwandans. "What UN officials have already called the worst humanitarian situation in the world today could claim an additional 350,000 in the next nine months, mainly from starvation and disease," it added. The UN has said an estimated 1 million people have been displaced by the conflict in Darfur.

■ Sudan
`Janjaweed' kill 56
Arab killed at least 56 people in a raid in western Sudan, villagers said on Sunday, just days after the government declared the troubled region was stable. The militiamen, known as janjaweed, raided Abga Rajil village 50 km south of Nyala town on Saturday, witnesses said. Abdel-Rahman Rizk, 29, speaking from a Nyala hospital bed where he was recovering from a bullet wound to the thigh, said the militiamen arrived on horses, camels and a car and surrounded the village. "They were firing and people were scattering and they set fire to the houses and then they started picking off people as they ran out of their houses," he said. Ibrahim Adam, also from the village, said: "The tally of those we buried was 56. Forty of them we buried in one grave."

■ Germany
Nazi judge mars election
Former IMF head Horst Koehler was elected Germany's ninth post-war president by a special federal assembly on Sunday in a ballot marred by a row over a Nazi-era judge who sentenced World War II deserters to death. Koehler, who quit as managing director of the IMF in March to run for the largely ceremonial office, won narrowly with 604 votes from the 1,204-member assembly. The vote was tarnished by controversy over the participation of Christian Democrat delegate Hans Filbinger, a Third Reich naval judge who ordered the 1945 execution of a German sailor who tried to flee from German-occupied Norway. He also issued death sentences in absentia for two others who fled to Sweden.

■ Germany
Germans sort their trash
Three-quarters all Germans are convinced they are the world's leaders -- when it comes to sorting garbage, according to a new survey. And a whopping 91 percent say they dutifully sort their own rubbish at home, separating paper, glass and cans from food scraps. Most respondents (61 percent) believe recycling is vital to saving the environment, according to the survey by the Allensbach Institute.

■ Germany
Alcohol keeps you awake
Possibly the sight of snoring drunks, many people wrongly believe a little alcohol in the evening helps one relax and get to sleep quickly. Not so, warns German health insurer Techniker Krankenkasse in a health bulletin. In fact, alcohol, even a small amount, is a stimulant that interferes with sleep. Insomniacs should steer clear of the drinks cabinet for the last six hours before bedtime. The same advice applies to those with the common misconception that a mug of tea or coffee helps them sleep.