■ China
University head rescued
The president of a Chinese university was abducted for ransom but rescued 13 hours later, after police mobilized 3,500 officers to hunt for his kidnappers, a news report said yesterday. Xu Rigan (旭日干), president of Inner Mongolia University in the northern city of Hohot, was abducted on Tuesday evening as he was returning home, Xinhua news agency said. It said his daughter saw Xu being pushed into a white van and called police with the license number. The kidnappers demanded a 5 million yuan (US$600,000) ransom, the report said. Two suspects were caught on Tuesday evening when they tried to collect the money, Xinhua said. It said that Xu was rescued early yesterday when police intercepted the van on a country road.
■ South Korea
Crew to be repatriated
The government said yesterday that it would repatriate six crew members from a North Korean fishing boat that drifted into South Korean waters after its engine failed. The South's coast guard rescued the crew -- four men and two women -- on Tuesday night after their 3-tonne wooden boat floated across the inter-Korean maritime border off the east coast. The North Koreans arrived at the port of Donghae yesterday and were questioned, the coast guard office said in a statement. South Korea plans to send the crew back to the North as they expressed the desire to go home, the coast guard said. The North Koreans were quoted as saying that they had been adrift since Dec. 11 after their vessel's engine failed just three hours after departing from the North Korean port of Hamhung.
■ China
`Kindergarten killer' executed
China has executed a 31-year-old man dubbed the "kindergarten killer" who murdered a teacher, a five-year-old boy and three other people during a two-year crime spree, news reports said yesterday. Fu Hegong was put to death on Tuesday in Beijing after being convicted in September of murder, rape, molestation and theft, the Beijing Youth Daily reported. In an attack that received prominent coverage in Chinese media, police said Fu smothered a Beijing kindergarten teacher with a quilt and fatally beat the five-year-old boy with a fire extinguisher after being spotted sneaking into a school to rob it in October last year.
■ Vietnam
Rescued pair stay on island
Two men who survived 11 days adrift at sea will spend Christmas on a remote Vietnamese island. Mark Smith of Hobart, Australia, and Steven Freeman of Nelson, New Zealand, are safe and healthy at a clinic on Ly Son Island. They've been on the island since Dec. 17 after a Vietnamese fisherman found them floating on an inflatable lifeboat in the South China Sea. The pair were hired to take a 20m motor yacht from Hong Kong to Australia. They set sail on Dec. 5, but about 24 hours later the boat began experiencing problems. Water quickly inundated the engine room and the boat sank. After losing all their supplies, they clung to the tiny raft. They drank their own urine, collected rain water and prayed someone would find them.
■ Indonesia
Large quake rocks east
An undersea earthquake of magnitude 6.3 rocked parts of eastern Indonesia yesterday but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency said. "We don't have any reports of victims," said an agency official in Jakarta. He said the quake struck in the Moluccas sea between the regions of Sulawesi and the Moluccas islands early yesterday afternoon. He did not have further details. Indonesia is regularly hit by earthquakes.
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