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World News Quick Take

■ South Korea
Elephants terrorize Seoul
Six circus elephants escaped from a zoo in Seoul yesterday, panicking residents and snarling traffic, police said. The jumbos fled from their cage at a circus arena set up in Children's Park in northeastern Seoul, where they performed five times a day. One was immediately recaptured and chained at a nearby police station. Three others were being herded back into their cages when they turned tail and fled again. They turned up at a nearby restaurant, destroying chairs and tables, Yonhap news agency said. There was no reports of casualties.

■ Pakistan
Five bombs explode
Five bombs exploded in two towns in southwestern Pakistan, shattering windows and injuring a 14-year-old boy, police said yesterday. Two of the explosions were in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan Province, said Qazi Abdul Wahid, a city police official. The three others were in Kalat, a town south of the provincial capital. All were on Tuesday night. The boy was injured by one of the bombs in Kalat, which went off in a compound housing a court. The boy lived nearby and was hurt by flying glass, police officer Ghulam Sarwar said. No one claimed responsibility for the explosions. Baluchistan has been the scene of numerous small-scale bombings and rocket attacks in recent months.

■ Hong Kong
Trio nabbed for pangolins
Police said yesterday they had caught wildlife smugglers trying to ship around 1,800 rare pangolins, also called scaly anteaters, to China. Around 150 boxes containing skinned, vacuum-packed pangolins -- a protected species -- were unloaded from trucks in the New Territories on Monday ready to be put onto a China-bound boat. Villagers alerted police, who arrived to find the boxes were full of pangolin carcasses. Three men aged 28 to 36 were arrested on suspicion on possessing a protected wildlife species without a license. They face jail terms of up to two years and fines of up to US$600,000. Police sources said they believed the seized shipment was imported from Taiwan.

■ New Zealand
Pedophile told to sell house
A New Zealand judge yesterday ordered a 51-year-old man on welfare to sell his house if he could not pay court fines for possession of of child pornography. Donald Trevor Callesen had pictures of men sexually abusing baby girls as young as two when his house was raided after a tip off from Canadian police, the Whangarei District Court was told. Callesen was spared prison time because a law change providing a five-year maximum sentence for possessing child sex abuse images did not come into effect until February, a year after his offenses. But Judge Barbara Morris said he should face an appropriate penalty and start paying fines of NZ$10,450 (US$7,525) in installments, while making arrangements to sell his house.

■ Japan
Nuclear waste ship arrives
A ship carrying radioactive waste reprocessed in France returned to Japan on Wednesday, an official said. The ship carrying 124 containers of waste for storage arrived at a port in Rokkasho village in northern Japan, said Masahiro Nakajima, spokesman of Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. The cargo was the tenth such shipment to Japan, whose utility companies are under contract with either French and British firms to reprocess their waste, Nakajima said.

■ United States
Pelican slasher attacks
US authorities are offering a US$6,000 reward for information about a mysterious pelican slasher who has used a knife to gash the pouches of several of the large sea birds in recent weeks, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday. Five birds with torn pouches have been found between Dana Point and Huntington Beach in southern California, most with long cuts parallel to their bills. One of the birds died, one recovered and has been released, and the other three are being treated at wildlife rescue centers. Pelicans are unable to eat without their pouches and can starve in about a week. The dead bird's pouch was ripped from top to bottom, and its bill was sliced. The unusual case of animal cruelty is the second time that the endangered birds have been subject to attack. In late 2002 and early 2003, about 20 dead and injured pelicans were found in Los Angeles harbor, and sporadic cases are seen in Orange County every year. And in 1982, about two dozen pelicans were found off Dana Point with their upper beaks severed.

■ Russia
Red rain falls
Red rain fell in the Voronezh region of southern Russia, colored by pollutants from a local paint factory, Itar-Tass news agency reported yesterday. It quoted local Emergencies Ministry officials as saying the rusty-red rain, which fell on agricultural land, was colored by ochre, a natural pigment containing clay and iron oxide. The pollutant came from a paint factory in the nearby town of Zhuravka, an investigation found, but it presented no danger to people or animals, Tass said. Officials in Voronezh could not be reached for comment.

■ Greece
EU constitution approved
The Greek parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favor of the EU's constitution, making Greece the fifth EU member to approve the 25-nation bloc's landmark document. The constitution was approved Tuesday by 268 deputies who voted in favor and 17 against in the 300-member unicameral parliament. Lawmakers from both the governing conservative party and the opposition socialists voted in favor. Another 15 deputies were absent. But opposition parties, including the socialists who had just voted in favor and the Communists who voted against, demanded a referendum on the newly approved document. Under Greek law, such a request could be submitted until parliament's decision is published in the government gazette -- a process which often takes several weeks.

■ Sweden
Reindeer fall to their deaths
Sami reindeer herders in northern Sweden found about 140 of their prized animals dead in a bloody heap after the herd apparently was chased off a 700m high cliff by a predator, a Sami spokesman said on Tuesday. The reindeer had been grazing on a mountain near Kvikkjokk, a small town just north of the Arctic Circle, when a lynx or other predator made them panic and run straight down the cliff, said Nils Petter Pavval, a spokesman for the Sami village of Tourpon. "Reindeer do not normally run off cliffs when they are grazing on the top of the mountain," Pavval said, adding that fresh tracks of lynx had been found in the area. The reindeer were found last week after crows and eagles were seen circling the mountainside, Pavval said. Pavval said most of the reindeer fell about 200m down the cliff, before rolling and bouncing another 500m down the mountain side. Some had been chewed up by scavengers, he said.

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