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World News Quick Take

■ Japan
Beijing apologizes for sub
China has told Japan it regrets the intrusion of a submarine last week into Japanese waters, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said yesterday. "[The sub] entered the area because of a technical error and the Chinese side said it regretted the intrusion," Machimura was quoted as saying by a foreign ministry official in Tokyo. He said the message was relayed to Japan's ambassador in Beijing. The submarine intruded into Japanese waters last Wednesday near a disputed gas field, setting off a two-day chase on the high seas.

■ Malaysia
Briton held in deadly row
A 32-year old British researcher and his female companion have been arrested for the death of a storekeeper, the New Straits Times reported yesterday. The 26-year old storekeeper had used a snooker cue to smash the windscreen of the car in which the Briton and his female companion were in at a gas station in the southern state of Johor. He proceeded to pull the woman out of the car and assault her. The Briton jumped out of the car and a fight ensued. The storekeeper later died of suspected internal injuries. Police said that the store-keeper and the woman had been seeing each other for more than a year.

■ China
Satellites to survey nation
China plans to launch more than 100 satellites before 2020 to watch every corner of the country, state-run China Central Television quoted a government official as saying yesterday. A "large surveying network" would be set up to monitor water reserves, forests, farmland, city construction and "various activities of society," a government official said without elaborating. "The aim is that, at any time and any place, we can obtain necessary data on any event through watching the Earth from space," Shao Liqin, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology, said. China regularly sends research satellites into orbit and in October last year became the third nation successfully to put a man in space when a single astronaut orbited Earth 14 times.

■ New Zealand
Man dies in drunken binge
A 19-year-old student died from head injuries received in a barroom game after he and three friends had drunk nearly 100 double bourbon and cokes in four hours, the Dominion Post reported yesterday. The death was the subject of a trial of the bar manager, who faces four charges under the Sale of Liquor Act. The trial of Jared Bradley Wallace, 27, began on Monday in Palmerston North, 140km north of Wellington. The court was told Willy Cranswick died on Sept. 22 last year, two days after being knocked unconscious in a tackling game known as bullrush after his group of four had drunk 96 bourbon and cokes while celebrating his last assignment.

■ Singapore
Skin bank needs donors
Singapore's Skin Bank appealed yesterday for people to donate their skin when they die and warned that the available supply is at a critically low level. Donated skin is used as a temporary dressing for severe burns to reduce the growth of bacteria and the patient's loss of vital fluids, said Dr. Colin Song, head of plastic surgery at Singapore General Hospital. It is usually rejected about three weeks after it is attached. By that time new skin cultivated in a laboratory from the patient's own cells has grown and is used instead.

■ Cuba
Dance troupe defects
Members of a theatrical production staged the largest mass defection of Cuban performers to date Monday as 43 cast members of Havana Night Club applied for political asylum at a US federal court in Las Vegas. "Art should have no boundaries," Nicole "ND" Durr, the company's founder, told reporters. "My artists stood up in one voice and said they want to go. We want to dance. We want to continue to dance." Durr said seven additional cast members, currently in Germany, also are seeking asylum and expected in the US within the week. Another three members have decided to return to Cuba. "The only thing we regret is that our families in Cuba may suffer," Puro Hernandez, 31, the musical director, told the New York Times. "But the Cuban government left us no choice -- they put us between the sword and a wall."

■ Bosnia
Police arrest suspects
Bosnian Serb police on Monday detained eight suspects wanted by the UN war crimes court, the first such arrests since the end of the 1992 to 1995 conflict, police and court sources said. "Republika Srpska police detained eight people who figure on the UN war crimes court's wanted list, for whom the tribunal has given a green light to be processed by local courts," an interior ministry statement said.

■ Netherlands
Fortuyn is No. 1 Dutchman
Slain anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn was named in a poll as the ``greatest'' person in Dutch history, beating out teenage diarist Anne Frank and painters Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh. The results of the monthlong contest were revealed Monday, less than two weeks after the Nov. 2 slaying of filmmaker Theo van Gogh -- great-grand nephew of the painter -- by an alleged Islamic radical, which raised a new storm of anti-immigrant sentiment in the Netherlands. The telephone vote was announced at the end of a live program on Dutch television broadcaster KRO, with viewers choosing from among 10 possible winners -- narrowed down from a longer list in earlier rounds.

■ United Kingdom
Monkeys up for adoption
An animal rights group is offering monkey-lovers the chance to adopt 50 macaques recently released from a laboratory in Thailand. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection is selling custody rights to the animals for 24 each, although proud parents will not be able to bring their new pets home. The monkeys will be cared for at a sanctuary outside Ranong, in a Thai rainforest, where they were originally captured.

■ United States
Beavers in casino heist
Beavers found a bag of bills stolen from a casino, tore it open and wove the money into the sticks and brush of their dam on a creek near Baton Rouge. The money was part of at least US$70,000 taken last week from the Lucky Dollar Casino in Greensburg, about 50km northeast of Baton Rouge. Deputies had searched for the money for days before an attorney called with a tip: the money had been thrown into the creek. The attorney's client hopes to make a deal with prosecutors, Greensburg Police Chief Ronald Harrell said. They found one money bag right away. The second was downstream, against the beaver dam. That was when they saw the dam's expensive decoration.

■ West Bank
Arafat records requested
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia has formally requested that France publish the medical records of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat following his death last week, Quriea said yesterday. Arafat died at the age of 75 Thursday in a French hospital, where he was taken Oct. 29 for treatment after his health deteriorated. Neither Palestinian officials nor Arafat's French medical team have announced the cause of death. The Palestinians have sent a letter asking the hospital to release all Arafat's health records, Qureia told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. Arafat's Jordanian physician, Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, has called for an autopsy, citing poisoning as a possible cause for Arafat's death.

■ Spain
Famous spy back from dead
Spain's most infamous spy returned from the dead Monday, five years after his sister published a death notice. Francisco Paesa, an arms dealer and freelance spy, died of a heart attack in Thailand in 1998, according to a death notice placed in a Madrid newspaper and a death certificate lodged by his family at a Spanish court. Paesa became a multi-millionaire while also arranging a successful sting operation against Basque terrorist group ETA. But yesterday a smudgy snatched photo of a man alleged to be Paesa, taken in the last few days in southern France, was published by the newspaper El Mundo. Paesa had been tracked down by a firm of private detectives acting for a client who claimed he was defrauded by him.

■ United States
Safire to bow out
William Safire, whose op-ed columns in The New York Times have provided provocative and insightful discourse for 31 years, said Monday he has decided to "hang up his hatchet." The 74-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning writer's last op-ed column will be published on Jan. 24 next year. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said Safire's commentary has captivated readers since his first op-ed piece appeared in 1973. "Reaching for his column became a critical and enjoyable part of the day for our readers across the country and around the world," Sulzberger said in a statement.

■ United States
US military sued by soldiers
An attorney representing three British soldiers and a Kuwaiti injured in an accident in Iraq has brought a US$2.3 million claim that he says is the first filed against the US military by coalition soldiers in the war. The four were injured when an Army tank transporter -- a large tractor-trailer -- struck their vehicle and forced it off the road just after the end of major combat operations in May last year, attorney Michael Doyle said. The claim, in a letter dated Nov. 8, was filed at the US Army's tort claims division at Fort Meade, Maryland.

■ Poland
Mayor weighs in on war
Warsaw's influential mayor Lech Kaczynski said on Monday that Germany should pay US$45 billion for the destruction of Warsaw during World War II, if Poland is hit by threatened war-related German property lawsuits. Kaczynski has been the most vocal critic of plans by some Germans to sue for compensation for being expelled from land awarded to Poland from Germany after the war. After the war, the victorious Allies awarded Poland a large swathe of German land as compensation for Polish territory annexed by the Soviet Union in the east.

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