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World News Quick Take

■ China
Robbers get away in crane
A subway station in southern China has been forced to delay its opening after an armed gang broke in and stole the escalator, a news report said yesterday. A gang of 24 men held up builders and looted the construction site at Gouwugongyuan station in Shenzhen, stealing an entire escalator and six steel pillars. Terrified security guards stood by as the robbers went back and forth, carrying materials to trucks waiting outside, the South China Morning Post reported. "A few days ago they robbed another site a few kilometers from here," the paper said. "They even sent in a crane to lift their loot onto trucks."

■ Vietnam
Farmer fined for bird flu
Authorities have fined a farmer for selling chickens infected with a strain of bird flu that has killed 20 people in Vietnam this year, state-controlled media reported yesterday. Tran Van Dung was fined 3 million dong (US$190) for selling the sick chickens at a market in Bac Lieu province, some 300km southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper said. In June, local authorities discovered at a market 200 slaughtered chickens that tested positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain, the report said. Suspecting the chickens came from Dung's farm, authorities raided his property and found 65 chickens that had been slaughtered for sale, it said.

■ China
Landslide death toll rises
The death toll in a landslide that buried a mountain village in southern China rose to 23 yesterday as rescuers used earth-moving equipment to search for missing villagers, state television reported. The landslide hit Zuojiaying, a village in mountainous Guizhou province, at about 3am on Friday, destroying 25 houses as villagers slept. The bodies found so far included five children, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said the search involved more than 1,000 people using excavators and other equipment. Earlier reports said 16 people were dead and 49 missing.

■ Cambodia
Revenge attack scars family
A Cambodian family was doused in acid in an apparent revenge attack, Kompong Chhnang district police said yesterday. They said that Chhoeu Lakena, 30, was watching television with her daughter Chhoeu On, four, her son Ratanak, seven, and her mother, Um Borung, 57, when a woman walked into their home and doused them with acid, causing severe injuries. "The attacker apparently acted in revenge after accusations in the village that Lakena had persuaded one villager's daughter to fall in love with a man her mother did not approve of. Lakena and her daughter On were seriously burned on the face, back and hands. The others received less serious burns but are probably scarred for life," police said.

■ Malaysia
Terror suspects longer in jail
Three suspected members of Jemaah Islamiyah who have been detained in Malaysia without charge since 2002 will be held for another two years, a security official said yesterday. Nik Abdul Rahman Mustapha, Bakkery Mahmud and Abdul Murad Sudin were arrested in October 2002 under the Internal Security Act, which allows for the indefinite imprisonment of terror suspects without trial. Detention orders for the three suspected members expired on Thursday and Friday and, following a standard review, the Internal Security Ministry served fresh orders for them to spend another two years in jail.

■ Russia
Fire leaves 15 people dead
Fifteen people were killed when a fire broke out in a furniture factory warehouse in the Moscow region, the Interfax news agency reported yesterday. The fire Friday in the village of Perkhushkovo burned for five hours, completely destroying the building, Interfax said. It was extinguished after dark, and investigators began combing through the site only after dawn yesterday, when they found 15 bodies. Police speculated that the fire resulted from work safety violations. About 19,000 people died last year in fires in Russia, most of them blamed on negligence.

■ United Kingdom
Recruits `bullied to death'
A former soldier at Britain's Deepcut army base said in published remarks yesterday young recruits were "bullied to death" by instructors and circumstances leading to their deaths were covered up. Scott Knowles was quoted by the Sun newspaper as saying the barracks in Surrey, southern England, had been rife with drug taking, bullying and sex in his time there from 1992 to 1997. "I saw recruits bullied to death. It was disgusting and I'll tell that to the inquiry," Knowles was quoted as saying. The government has so far rejected calls for a public inquiry into the deaths of four young recruits at the base between 1995 and 2002, though Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said last week he would launch an independent review into the cases.

■ United Kingdom
Politician covered in slurry
A prominent British politician who lost his television show after making controversial remarks about Arabs was showered in slurry by a protester who said he was acting in the name of Islam, the BBC reported yesterday. The attack occurred when Robert Kilroy-Silk, a European parliament member representing Britain's minority UK Independence Party, arrived on Friday night for a BBC radio show in Manchester, northern England. A transcript of the radio program quoted Kilroy-Silk as saying the attacker, who disappeared, had said he was "doing it in the name of Islam."

■ Ireland
Plane lands after threat
A Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to New Jersey resumed its journey yesterday after an unscheduled landing in Dublin prompted by a telephoned threat. The Boeing 747-400 bound for Newark Liberty International Airport landed at 3:30pm and its 373 passengers and 18 crew members disembarked safely, said Michael Goentgens, a Lufthansa spokesman in Frankfurt. He said the airline had received a "security threat" on Flight 402 at 1430 GMT but declined to give further details. A spokeswoman for the Dublin Airport Authority said a caller told Lufthansa there was a "suspect device" on board. Nothing suspicious was found in a search.

■ Germany
Ban on charity upheld
A German high court Friday upheld a government ban on an Muslim charity group which was said to have collected money for the radical Palestinian movement Hamas. Within hours of the ruling by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, German authorities searched the offices of the al-Aqsa organization in Aachen. The German Interior Ministry confirmed a report published at the Web site Focus-Online that the offices had been searched.

■ United States
Oldest person dies
America's oldest person, the daughter of a Civil War veteran who graduated from college in 1912, has died at age 114, news reports said. Verona Calhoun Johnston, a native of Iowa, died Wednesday at her daughter's home in Worthington, Ohio. She had lived from 1928 to 1988 in Ames, Iowa, the Ames Tribune said at its website Friday. The eighth of nine children, Verona taught Latin in high schools across Iowa after earning her degree at Iowa's Drake University. She moved in with her daughter and son-in-law several years ago after discovering she had breast cancer at age 98. Julie Johnson, 82, said her mother was strong and active until just before her death, according to the Tribune. She always planned her birthday parties, knitted and wrote a lot of letters, Johnson said.

■ United States
911 vigils press for reform
With time running out in the 108th session of the US Congress, lawmakers have been gathering at ground zero this week with a handful of relatives of Sept. 11 victims to urge the passage of a bill restructuring the national intelligence system. "It's time to move. It's time to vote," said US Senator Jon S. Corzine. The bill would carry out recommendations of the 9/11 commission and create a national intelligence director at the cabinet level. It has stalled in Congress, despite the support of President Bush and lawmakers' assertions that, if put to a vote, it will pass both houses. Simultaneous gatherings were held in Boston and Los Angeles, with a final one planned for Monday on the steps of the White House.

■ Guatemala
21 evangelicals killed
Two buses collided head-on along a mountain highway in western Guatemala late Friday and one toppled into a nearby ravine, killing 21 people and injuring at least 20 others, authorities said. A former US school bus converted for long-distance travel and loaded down with Protestant evangelicals left San Pedro, 200km southeast of Guatemala City, the capital, in the afternoon and was headed to the city of Retalhuleu when it slammed into another converted school bus along a two-lane highway, said Ottoniel Rivera, a spokesman for the fire department in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala's second-largest city. Rivera said the bus carrying the evangelicals lost control while heading down a hill and smashed into a bus running from the community of Mazatenango to Quetzaltenango that was climbing the incline.

■ Nicaragua
Missing hikers likely found
Nicaraguan police found two bodies on Friday on a volcanic island and said they were likely the remains of an American and a Briton who went missing last month. The police and US volunteers, aided by dozens of civilians, had been searching for Briton Nicholas Roth, 28, of north London and American Jordan Ressler, 23, from San Diego, on the slopes of the Maderas volcano in Lake Nicaragua after they disappeared on Nov. 17. "Near the volcano two bodies were found in a state of decomposition. We cannot confirm they are the bodies of the two disappeared foreigners, we only presume so," said police spokeswoman Geraldine Gonzalez. The alarm was raised when the two failed to return to their hotel after heading off to climb the 1,394m volcano. Police combing the area found the bodies in a ravine.

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