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World News Quick Take

■ 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.

■ Malaysia
Ship may have been hijacked
Regional marine police and navies were hunting yesterday for a Singapore-owned ship and its crew, feared to have been hijacked by pirates in the South China Sea, a maritime official said. The Steadfast, a chemical tanker carrying a cargo of vegetable oil, departed Palembang in Indonesia on Dec. 18 and had been due in Singapore the following day, said Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Center of the London-based International Maritime Bureau.

■ Malaysia
Sex education to start
The conservative mainly-Muslim Malaysia will next year introduce sex education in schools, as part of efforts to combat sex crimes and Internet porn, reports said yesterday. Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said sex education would start from pre-school level, where children are aged between four to six, and would extend to university level and community programs for adults. Children from the age of four would likely be taught how to protect themselves from sexual predators while older kids will learn about topics from reproduction to safe sex. The move to introduce sex education into schools and the community marks a radical shift, as sex remains a taboo subject despite it being one of the Islamic world's most developed countries.

■ South Africa
Mugger slain by tigers
A mugger was mauled to death by tigers after he fled the scene of his crime and took refuge in what turned out to be a tiger enclosure at a nearby zoo, police said on Tuesday. The incident took place on Sunday in Bloemfontein, about 400km southwest of Johannesburg. "The guy who was found in the tiger enclosure had been trying to escape after he had robbed a couple with a knife early on Sunday morning," police spokesman Sam Makhele said. "There were security guards nearby and they gave chase to this man and he jumped the fence into the zoo and he ended up in the tiger enclosure," he said. He said the man had been mauled to death and had bite marks on his neck.

■ United Kingdom
Sir Elton `marries' boyfriend
Rock star Elton John tied the knot with longtime partner David Furnish yesterday, in a civil union ceremony seen as a watershed in the struggle for gay rights -- and as the party of the season by celebrity-spotters. Some fans turned up before sunrise in the cobbled streets around Windsor's town hall, the Guildhall, where Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles wed in April. "It's a special day for Elton. I want to be a part of it really, it's good fun and it's interesting to see what's going on," said Andrea Lever, who traveled 320km from Torquay in southwest England for the event.

■ Nigeria
Pipeline attack kills eight
A suspected dynamite attack on a major Nigerian oil pipeline killed eight people and cut output from the world's eighth largest exporter by 7 percent, authorities said on Tuesday. The sabotage by unidentified gunmen on the pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell also caused a major oil spill and fire in the remote southern Niger Delta, the company said. "The attack was very devastating ... the whole community has been razed down by the explosion. Eight corpses have been recovered so far and many more are still missing," Monwan Etete, chairman of Andoni local government area, told journalists in the Rivers state capital Port Harcourt. Shell closed two oilfields to help curb the fire.

■ Israel
Army locks Bethlehem in
Pilgrims traveling the ancient route from Jerusalem to Bethlehem this Christmas will find themselves hitting a dead end -- a towering concrete wall and metal gate under the lock and key of the Israeli army. The dusty road to the town of Jesus' birth has been the gateway to Bethlehem since biblical times and would have been the likely path taken by Mary and Joseph. But today it leads to what the mayor of Bethlehem calls "the world's largest prison." At the entrance is a brand-new high-tech military crossing where visitors pass through X-ray machines and have their passports scanned before emerging into Bethlehem from behind 8m-high graffiti-covered concrete walls.

■ Gaza Strip
Gunmen kidnap teachers
Palestinian gunmen kidnapped two foreign teachers in the Gaza Strip yesterday, pulling them from their car as they headed for work, witnesses said. The kidnapping of the Dutchman and the Australian was a sign of growing disorder that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is struggling to contain in Gaza. Witnesses said gunmen snatched the two teachers as they drove to an English-speaking private school for the last day of term before Christmas holidays.

■ United States
Burglar goes to trial
A Superior Court judge ruled there is enough evidence to put a man on trial for allegedly robbing Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis and forcing him to partially disrobe and pose for a demeaning videotape. Judge Bernard Kemper ruled that Darnell Riley, 28, must stand trial on charges of burglary, robbery, kidnapping for ransom and attempted extortion. Francis testified that he was "scared to death" in January last year when a man broke into his Bel-Air mansion and videotaped him, on his bed with his pants down, making sexually humiliating comments about himself. He then threatened to distribute the video unless paid US$300,000 to US$500,000, Francis said.

■ Pakistan
Rummy doubts Osama's role
It appears unlikely that Osama bin Laden, if still alive, is in full command of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. He said the US does not know his whereabouts but it's a "reasonable assumption" that the Saudi exile is hiding in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. Rumsfeld flew in on Tuesday for an unannounced visit to the areas hardest hit by the Oct. 8 earthquake, which led to the deployment of hundreds of US troops to provide medical, logistical and other assistance. He said he wanted to see the humanitarian operations and demonstrate US support.

■ Cuba
Castro asks for papal visit
President Fidel Castro wants Pope Benedict to make a visit to his country, an Italian cardinal has said. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, who visited Cuba in October and met Castro, told the Italian Catholic business magazine Il Consulente Re that Castro told him he was impressed by Benedict, who was elected last April. "I recognized in him the face of an angel. I would like to invite him to Cuba," Bertone quoted Castro as telling him. Benedict's predecessor John Paul made a historic visit to communist Cuba in 1998 and held mass in Havana's Revolution Square.

■ United states
Two shot at Wal-Mart
An employee and a 6-year old girl were shot and wounded inside a Wal-Mart store in southern New Mexico, and police were questioning two men who were arrested. The store's produce manager, was being treated at an area hospital for a chest wound. The girl suffered a wound to her hip. Both were in stable condition late on Tuesday, according to police Lieutenant James Wycoff. A motive was unclear, Wycoff said. "There's not this band of armed robbers running around," he said. Police Chief Michael Carillo said the suspects were inside the store when at least one of them opened fire.

■ United States
Lobbyist may cooperate
Lawyers for Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff are in discussions with the Justice Department about possible cooperation in a corruption probe, a source said. The probe involves a number of members of Congress and staff. Abramoff would plead guilty under a deal that would settle a criminal case against him in Florida as well as potential corruption charges in Washington, said the anonymous source. Abramoff and his partner, Michael Scanlon, collected over US$80 million from Indian tribes to lobby Congress on gambling and other issues. The Justice Department is investigating whether trips, gifts and donations arranged by Abramoff were in exchange for official acts by members of Congress, and whether the tribes were defrauded.

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