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World News Quick Take

■ Cambodia
Expat stabbed to death
A British bar owner was stabbed to death by an 18-year-old youth during an apparent botched robbery in the Cambodian capital, police and neighbors said yesterday. The youth, a street kid called Tong Chen, was arrested in a park as he cleaned blood off his knife after stabbing David Mitchell, from Walsall in central England, five times in the chest, police investigator Neang Sopheap said. New Zealand journalist Jane Nye, who worked as managing editor of Cambodian Scene magazine and who had been staying in the same house, sustained injuries to her neck, hands and head.

■ South Korea
Youth side with Pyongyang
About half of new South Korean voters say Seoul should side with Pyongyang if the US attacks the North's nuclear plants without Seoul's consent, according to a poll published yesterday. In addition, they said the country with which South Korea should try to keep the closest relations is China and not its long-time ally, the US. The survey by two newspapers, the Hankook Ilbo and Korea Times, was conducted among 1,000 young men and women aged between 18 and 23.

■ Australia
Sydney stunned by deaths
The realization that someone can die in their Sydney home unnoticed for months has shocked Australia's biggest city. In the past 10 days, the bodies of five elderly Australians have been found in their loungeroom or bedroom -- one a mere skeleton after dying an estimated eight months ago. The latest two, an elderly couple in their 80s, were found in their apartment on Tuesday on Sydney's affluent north shore, police said yesterday.

■ Thailand
New coral reef discovered
A previously unknown and healthy coral reef has been discovered off the coast of Thailand, a rare piece of good news for the planet's beleaguered oceans, a top global environmental group said on Tuesday. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said a team of its divers using information from local fishermen made the discovery in January off Thailand's Phang-nga Province. The announcement comes as experts from around the world meet in Thailand to discuss coral reef restoration and management.

■ China
Vice premier has cancer
Vice-Premier Huang Ju (黃菊) has been diagnosed with cancer, two Chinese sources with close ties to the leadership and a Hong Kong newspaper said yesterday. The South China Morning Post said Huang, 67, an ally of former party boss Jiang Zemin (江澤民), was "expected soon to quit politics" because the disease, though very common, was difficult to treat. The sources said how President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) handles Huang's illness could be a barometer of whether he has the political clout to sideline the protege of Jiang's. Huang was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer during a routine medical check-up before the Lunar New Year holidays and has been in hospital since, the Post said.

■ Singapore
Guitarist falls to his death
A teenage guitarist got so carried away while bouncing up and down on his bed mimicking a rock star that he flew out of a third floor window to his death, the Straits Times reported yesterday. The report said Li Xiao Meng, a 16-year-old from China who was studying at Hua Business School, was a keen musician who liked to jump up and down while playing his guitar in his hostel room. "But on Nov. 17 he took things a bit too far," the newspaper said, reporting on a coroner's court findings.

■ New Zealand
Obesity inquiry to be held
The parliament's health committee announced yesterday that it will hold an inquiry into obesity, saying the country was in the grip of an epidemic which threatens to collapse the public health system. "Obesity is arguably the most serious public health crisis confronting New Zealand," said Sue Kedgley, a Green Party politician who chairs the committee, citing surveys indicating that 1.5 million of the nation's 4.2 million population are overweight. "Everyone recognizes that if we don't cure the obesity epidemic, it will overwhelm our health system," she said. Official figures say that one-third of children aged five to 14 are either overweight or obese and one-in-five adults are medically defined as obese.

■ China
Tainted food killing cats
Contaminated fish used in a popular brand of cat food is a prime suspect in the sudden deaths of dozens of felines in China, state press reported yesterday. In one case, a woman who cared for 50 homeless cats in Beijing saw 38 of them die last month after she fed them the cat food, the China Daily said. The woman, Yu Zhi, said she was heartbroken by the deaths but was currently focused on trying to save five others that are still sick. "They are now suffering serious oral ulcers and look very helpless," Yu told the daily. The Beijing Municipal Industrial and Commercial Bureau said it had received complaints from dozens of pet-owners whose cats had also died or become seriously ill after eating the suspect brand of cat food.

■ United States
Paper row ends in death
A Florida man has confessed to bludgeoning his roommate to death with a sledgehammer handle and a claw hammer after an argument that started over an empty roll of toilet paper, authorities said on Tuesday. Franklin Paul Crow, 56, was arrested early on Monday and later charged with murder in the beating death of 58-year-old Kenneth Matthews in the small town of Moss Bluff, according to the Marion County Sheriff's Office. Captain Jimmy Pogue said that Crow told investigators he grabbed the handle and claw hammer after Matthews, who rented the mobile home where the two lived, armed himself with a rifle during their altercation. Matthews was so badly beaten he had to be identified through fingerprints, Pogue said.

■ Netherlands
Dutch dotty over darts
A recent darts craze has led to a rise in the number of people skewered by the tiny missiles, a Dutch consumer safety organization said on Tuesday. "The most important causes of accidents are throwing too quickly before an opponent has finished clearing his darts from the board, and the dangerous hanging of a board in a place where bystanders can be hit by a bad throw," the Consumer Safety Board said. Around 120 people are taken to emergency rooms with serious dart injuries each year since 2000, it said.

■ Canada
Killer admits more crimes
One of Canada's most notorious killers has confessed to committing a number of sexual assaults prior to his arrest and eventual conviction for torturing and killing two teenage girls in the 1990s, Toronto police said on Tuesday. Paul Bernardo, now 41, was convicted in 1995 of killing Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, whom he kidnapped and tortured along with then wife Karla Homolka. He also confessed to a string of rapes in the Toronto area. But the Toronto Star on Tuesday said Bernardo has also confessed to sexually assaulting at least 10 more women.

■ United States
Coma survivor dies
A 44-year-old brain-injured firefighter who suddenly spoke after nearly a decade in a stupor, giving hope to families of countless other patients, died on Tuesday in Buffalo, New York. Donald Herbert was injured in December 1995, when the roof of a burning home collapsed on him. Deprived of oxygen for several minutes, he ended up blind, was largely mute and showed little awareness of his surroundings for years. But on April 30 last year, he shocked his family by talking for 14 hours. Since then, he spoke only sporadically, his progress hampered by a fall out of bed that caused bleeding on his brain, his doctor said.

■ Uae
Misled runners get cash
Three women in the Dubai marathon had their prize money increased after running 4km further than anyone else because they were given wrong directions. Luminita Talpos of Romania and Ethiopians Hirut Abera and Diribe Hunde complained they were led off course when in third, fourth and fifth place respectively in Friday's race. The trio eventually finished fourth, fifth and sixth. A review of the race tapes backed up their complaints and the race director agreed to pay them for the positions they were in when they went off course. Accordingly, the athletes received US$8,000, US$6,000 and US$4,000 respectively.

■ Germany
`Political lies day' planned
Writers from around the world plan to mark March 20, the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, as the "Day of Political Lies." The Berlin-based Peter Weiss Foundation for Art and Politics, which organizes the annual Berlin Literature Festival, said yesterday that public readings will be held on March 20 in dozens of cities in Europe, the US, Asia and Australia to raise awareness of the substance and form of political lies. The events are to include a reading of Eliot Weinberger's What I Heard About Iraq in 2005, which was first published in the London Review of Books.

■ United States
Sex selection unpopular
Most individuals are not interested in choosing the sex of their child if given the opportunity, according to the results of a new nationwide survey reflecting the general population. Sex selection is currently available through invasive and expensive in-vitro fertilization techniques. However, another technology using sperm selection should make the selection process much easier and affordable, although less reliable (75 percent chance of successfully choosing a boy and 90 percent chance of choosing a girl). The technique, currently under investigation for FDA approval, has triggered moral, legal and social concerns, and is a topic of concern of the President's Council on Bioethics.

■ United States
Las Vegas siege ends
Police in the gambling hub of Las Vegas, Nevada, arrested a suspected murderer on Tuesday after a tense seven-hour siege in a hotel-casino during which he fired at police and paramedics, officers said. The suspect was taken into custody in the early hours of the morning after holing up in his room in the Harrah's hotel and casino after allegedly shooting another man to death, said Officer Eric Roberson of the Las Vegas police. Police and paramedics were called to the high-rise, city-center hotel around midnight and found a mortally wounded man lying outside one of the rooms. Police SWAT teams and hostage negotiators rushed to the scene and began trying to talk the suspect out of his room.

■ United States
CIA secretly sifting files
The CIA has spent the last seven years covertly sifting through millions of pages of decades-old public archives and removing documents that the agency deems sensitive or embarrassing. Matthew Aid, a historian and a visiting fellow at the National Archives and Records Administration stumbled on the secret reclassification program in the course of his research. He published his findings on the Web site of a watchdog group, the National Security Archive, saying that the CIA and military intelligence had reviewed millions of pages "at an unknown cost to taxpayers" and withdrawn more than 55,000 pages that had been in the public domain for years.

■ Jordan
Kidnapped driver released
A Jordanian embassy driver kidnapped two months ago by Iraqi militants demanding the release of a failed woman suicide bomber has been freed, Jordanian officials said on Tuesday. The release of the Jordanian driver, Mahmoud Saedat, may raise hopes that other hostages may be freed, including US journalist Jill Carroll, who was abducted on Jan. 17. The most recent video released by her abductors reiterated she would be killed if their demands are not met. Carroll's high-profile abduction was followed by the kidnapping of two German engineers.

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