World News Quick Take

■ Japan
Teen arrested in class holdup
Police in Japan said yesterday they had arrested a 16-year-old high school student armed with a sword-like bladed object who held 37 classmates hostage in a school for around an hour and a half. The student released all the pupils unharmed after he was persuaded by a teacher at the school in Fukushima Prefecture to give up. The motive was unclear.

■ China
Gunman attacks school
A man wielding as many as five homemade handguns opened fire in a primary school in Anhui Province, injuring 16 children and two adults. The man entered the Niutoushan primary school in Liudong township on Wednesday morning and began firing his at children doing morning exercises in the school yard. He then fled the scene and remains at large. "One student was shot through the lung, some were hit in the head and others in the hands," a teacher said. Police are hunting for the suspect, identified as Liu Shibing, a 33-year old with a history of mental illness.

■ China
`Underground' bishop dies
An "underground" Roman Catholic bishop who was jailed in China for 24 years for his beliefs and allegiance to the Vatican, has died from heart failure at 90. Bishop Peter Chang Bai Ren died on Wednesday in Hanyang, Hubei Province -- a diocese where he had served since 1953, the US-based Cardinal Kung Foundation said. Chang studied at Pontificio Collegio Urbano in Rome from 1937 to 1945, awarded a doctorate in theology and ordained a priest in 1942. After returning to China, he was jailed in 1955 in prisons and labor camps for refusing to renounce the Pope before China's atheist government, and released in 1979. He was named a bishop by the Vatican in 1986; "underground" bishops refer to those named by the Vatican.

■ China
Space food getting better
Talk about a Chinese take-away. Astronauts Fei Junlong (費俊龍) and Nie Haisheng (聶海勝) blasted into outer space on Wednesday with a full larder of Chinese specialities including cuttlefish and meat balls, and beef with orange peel. But the pair will have to do without chopsticks, considered too difficult to maneuver in the weightlessness of space. They'll use forks and spoons instead. The menu for China's second manned space flight is much more extensive than the first manned mission in October 2003, offering 50 varieties of food instead of the previous 20. Two years ago, the first Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei (楊利偉) declared his space food, such as chicken cooked with dates, was "great." He ate only cold meals because the last spacecraft did not have a food heater. Fei and Nie will dine on heated food including rice, dehydrated vegetables and a wide assortment of fruit -- strawberries, bananas and the sweet Chinese "Hami" melon.

■ Hong Kong
Ties with Vatican urged
China should end its rift with the Vatican and re-establish ties because most Beijing-appointed bishops recognize the moral authority of the Pope, a Catholic bishop from Hong Kong said. Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-Kuin (陳日君) told a synod at the Vatican that the Catholic Church in China was "much less divided" than it appeared to be from the outside world. China, on paper at least, has two Catholic Churches -- ? one loyal to the Pope and one which is regulated by the government. But Zen said the once clear line dividing them had blurred over the years and that most Catholics "want to be united with the Pope."

■ United Kingdom
Random killers jailed
Two men were jailed for life on Wednesday for the drive-by murder of teen Danielle Beccan. The 14-year old was fatally wounded by shots fired indiscriminately from a car in Nottingham in October last year. The killing shocked a city already reeling from a spate of gang-related gun crimes. Mark Kelly, 20, and Junior Andrews, 24, were told they would serve a minimum of 32 years each. Both had denied murder but a jury found them guilty. Andrews fired the shots that kill Beccan as she returned home from an annual fair, while Kelly drove the car.

■ Colombia
Attack thwarted by accident
President Alvaro Uribe publicly criticized his military after his key ally in Congress narrowly survived a bomb attack and police discovered a cluster of rockets aimed at the presidential palace. "The security forces need to be more effective to defeat these terrorists," Uribe said. On Tuesday, police discovered nine rockets inside a home about 1km from Uribe's office in Bogota. Police said they became aware of the rockets only after an ``accidental grenade explosion'' inside the house on Tuesday night.

■ United States
Chilling saves babies
Researchers said on Wednesday that chilling certain newborn babies within the first six hours after birth could lower their risk of disability and death. Doctors at the National Institutes of Health said a cooling treatment would be better for infants who failed to receive enough oxygen or blood to the brain during birth. "The experimental cooling of newborns to prevent death and injury from oxygen deprivation during birth is extremely promising," said Duane Alexander, director of the Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

■ France
Minister to sue media
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and his new partner, a political journalist, said on Wednesday they planned to sue news media who had revealed her identity. Until recently, French journalists have avoided reporting politicians' amorous adventures. Sarkozy himself has done much to break the taboo, promoting his marital bliss with his wife Cecilia over the past three years. The tables were turned this summer when Paris Match published pictures of his wife Cecilia, 47, with her lover, Richard Attias.

■ United States
Suspect framed in-law
Melanie McGuire, accused of dismembering her husband and dumping the body in suitcases off the Virginia coast recently tried to frame her sister-in law by sending authorities a package containing her husband's wedding ring and keys, prosecutors said. McGuire was indicted this week for murder. Authorities believe she shot her 39-year-old husband in their New Jersey apartment sometime between late April and early May of last year.

■ Bosnia
NATO troops raid business
NATO troops raided a business owned by the son-in-law of Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic yesterday,looking for information about people who have helped him evade arrest for a decade. The Pales electronics store of Branislav Jovicevic, husband of Karadzic's daughter Sonja, was searched by a few dozen soldiers. Over the last two years, NATO peacekeepers have conducted several raids looking for Karadzic.

■ United States
Poll shows Bush unpopular
Support for the majority Republican party is sagging as President George W. Bush's popularity continues to slide, according to a poll released on Wednesday. A plurality of Americans, 48 percent, said they would prefer the Democrats to control Congress, said the poll commissioned by US television channel NBC and the Wall Street Journal. The gap between the two parties was the largest recorded since the poll began 11 years ago. The Republicans hold a majority in both houses of Congress and face mid-term elections next year amid growing public concern over Iraq and high energy prices.

■ Germany
Schroeder flings mud
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder ruled out serving in Germany's next government during a speech in which he took swipes at British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush. "I will not belong to the next government," Schroeder told a conference on Wednesday. Sniping at Blair's policies, he said "I say to my British friend that people in Germany don't want complete denationalization." Schroeder also took a jab at the U.S. president over the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, which he said showed the need for a strong and effective state.

■ United Kingdom
Priest angers Protestants
A prominent Roman Catholic priest has angered the province's pro-British Protestants by likening their past treatment of Catholics to that of the Jews under the Nazis. Father Alec Reid made his comments at a public meeting in Belfast on Wednesday night. Reid was heckled by some of the 200-strong crowd at the meeting after he said Protestant unionists had persecuted minority pro-Irish Catholics. "The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community," he said. "They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews."

■ United states
Fuel prices challenged
The nation's attorney generals are asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate "possible unlawful conduct by the petroleum industry" in causing record high fuel prices, Hawaii Attorney General Mark Bennett said. More than 45 states are already investigating the cause of the escalating fuel costs since late August, when Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast. They noted that the average price nationally for regular unleaded gas was above US$3 a gallon, and said the cost of home heating oil would likely rise as temperatures begin to drop across the mainland.

■ Zimbabwe
Anger over Senate vote
The main opposition leader on Wednesday said his party would boycott next month's elections for a newly created Senate despite a vote by the party's national council approving participation in the ballot. Morgan Tsvangirai stormed out of a meeting of his Movement for Democratic Change's 66-member executive, claiming he could nullify a 33-31 vote approving participation in the Nov. 26 poll. Tsvangirai later told journalists: "Under current conditions, [Senate] elections are a farce." President Robert Mugabe, who has lead Zimbabwe since 1980, introduced the Senate through a recent constitutional amendment. Critics say the move is aimed at increasing his powers.