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World News Quick Take

■ China
Traffic incident fuels riot
Two policemen were killed and six others injured when up to 200 construction workers attacked a police station in Wanrong County, Shanxi Province on Sunday, following an altercation over a traffic incident, state press reported yesterday. Nine trucks loaded with the workers attacked the county traffic-police station with clubs and bricks, the Shanxi News Web site said. The workers were retaliat-ing for the arrest of nine colleagues earlier in the day on suspicion of being involved in a hit and run accident, it said. After arriving at the police station, the workers began attacking any policeman in sight while raining bricks down on the police station.

■ Japan
Trio dies in group suicide
Three people were found dead inside a car parked outside a remote forest yesterday in what police suspected was the country's latest group suicide. The two women and a man, whose identities were not immediately known, were found in Yayoi, Oita prefect-ure, local police spokesman Hideo Sugano said. The three are believed to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning, Sugano said. Three portable stoves containing solid charcoal fuel sat on the floor and the windows were sealed with vinyl tape from the inside. Japan has uncovered a series of recent suicide pacts, many plotted by people who met over the Internet.

■ Japan
Hokkaido rocked by quake
Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido was jolted late Monday by a powerful earthquake registering 6.9 on the Richter scale, lightly injuring four people, days after a tremor of similar magnitude. The quake struck a relatively deep 46km below sea level in the ocean just east of the island's tip, the Japan Meteorological Agency said in revised measurements. The agency issued a warning for tsunami tidal waves which it called off 40 minutes later at 11:55pm. Two men, a nine-year-old boy and a 77-year-old woman suffered minor injuries from the impact felt in towns in Hokkaido, Kyodo News agency reported.

■ Hong Kong
Store selling dog meat
A top supermarket chain admitted yesterday some of its stores in mainland China had sold dog meat two years after the company vowed under public pressure to halt the practice. ParknShop, part of the Hutchison Whampoa conglomerate, said six of its stores had sold dog meat. "We sold it for around two weeks in only six stores in Shenzhen and Dongguan and stopped selling already on Dec. 2," ParknShop spokeswoman Teresa Pang said in a statement. She said new managers at the stores were unaware the company had a policy of not selling dog meat.

■ China
Crisis hotline too busy
Nine out of 10 people calling into a suicide-prevention hotline in Beijing are getting the busy tone, a newspaper said yesterday, adding that nationwide four people were killing themselves every minute. So far, more than 110,000 people had dialed in to the Beijing Suicide Research and Prevention Center hotline since it was set up in Beijing last year, the China Daily said. But a lack of funds meant that not everyone who needed the hotline was getting through, said Michael Phillips, executive director of the suicide prevention center. "Nine of every 10 persons only hear a busy tone," he told the newspaper. "It's very dangerous because they may be at high risk of committing suicide."

■ United States
WTC claim pays double
A New York developer hoping to rebuild the destroyed World Trade Center on Monday won a major victory against his insurers, when a jury decided the hijacked airline attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were two separate events. The verdict in US District Court in Manhattan means the site's leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, could get twice as much money from his policies with the nine insurers of the twin towers to finance new construction. Silverstein, who signed his lease just six weeks before the towers were destroyed, said he was "thrilled" by the decision.

■ Gaza Strip
Militants booby-trap coop
Islamic militants set off a blast in a booby-trapped chicken coop yesterday as Israeli soldiers approached, killing one and wounding four, the military and the militants said. Hamas claimed responsibility, saying it had planted landmines and roadside bombs in the area. When the soldiers approached, Hamas members lying in wait set off the explosives, Hamas said. After the blast, a gunbattle erupted between the soldiers and Pales-tinians militants, military officials said. The four wounded soldiers were evacuated when the fighting ended. The incident took place east of Gaza City, near the Karni cargo crossing between Gaza and Israel.

■ Denmark
Writer's room reconstructed
The attic room of the "poor poet" Hans Christian Andersen has been reconstructed in Copen-hagen to mark the 200th birthday of the fairytale writer next year, the Danish tourism authority said. The room features, at Vingard 6 on the western end of the Stroeget shopping mall, has reconstructed furniture and some of Andersen's works. A film can be seen with episodes from the life of the writer. Formerly known as the Hotel du Nord it was the building in which Andersen lived between 1837 and 1848. For more information, see www.visitdenmark.com.

■ Zimbabwe
Hikers forced to steal coffin
A group of late-night hitchhikers had a shock when they were driven to a cemetery and forced to dig up a coffin at gunpoint. The three men in a truck who offered the 20 hitchhikers a lift to Chitungwiza, a township outside Harare, instead sped to a graveyard, gave them picks and shovels and forced them to open a grave, the Herald newspaper reported on Saturday. The reluctant grave robbers then had to tip the human remains back into the pit and hand the coffin to the gangsters, who left them stranded. Stealing coffins from graves for resale is on the increase in Zimbabwe because the AIDS pandemic has increased demand, and the economic crisis means many people cannot afford to buy them legally.

■ Italy
Christmas song sparks row
A teacher's efforts to make a Christmas carol more acceptable to young Muslim students by removing the word "Jesus" has rekindled the debate over religious symbols in the Roman Catholic country. A middle-school teacher in the northern town of Como set off a storm when she told Muslims in her class that if they preferred they could replace the line "this is the day of Jesus" with "this is the day of virtue." "Jesus banned in Christmas songs" the daily Il Giornale, run by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's brother, said in a front-page headline on Sunday.

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