World News Quick Take

■ Japan
Support for Abe plummets
Support the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe fell with respondents criticizing his lack of leadership, a newspaper poll said yesterday. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun said that the support rate for Abe's Cabinet fell to 51 percent, down 8 percentage points from a similar poll taken late last month. The disapproval rate for Abe rose to 40 percent, up 11 percentage points from last month. Among those who do not support Abe's Cabinet, 54 percent of respondents said Abe lacks leadership, up 19 percentage points from the previous poll, while 39 percent said his policies were bad. Respondents were allowed to pick as many answers as they liked.

■ China
Climbers' luggage found
Rescuers found the luggage of two missing veteran US climbers in a remote part of Sichuan Province, the Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Charlie Fowler and Christine Boskoff have not been heard from since last month, and did not show up for their return flights home on Dec. 7, the report said. Ten rescuers found the luggage at the home of a resident in Lamaya while conducting a door-to-door search, Xinhua said. The town is in a mountainous region close to Tibet, and has no telephones or mobile phone coverage, the report said. "The villager told the rescuers that the two climbers had hired him as a driver and left the luggage at his home on Nov. 11 for mountain climbing, saying they would be back on Nov. 24," it added.

■ China
Six jailed over toxic salt
Six were jailed for their roles in producing and distributing 500 tonnes of toxic salt in a coffin factory, Chinese media reported yesterday, the latest in a series of food health scares to hit the country. The six were part of a group in the southwestern city of Chongqing that made the salt from fishery or industrial materials, which included lead and barium but lacked essential iodine, the Beijing News said. The salt had been sold to counties around Chongqing and also to the neighboring provinces of Sichuan and Guizhou, it said. It did not say if anyone had fallen ill from the salt.

■ China
Thousands flee gas leak
Authorities yesterday to cap a leaking gas well in Sichuan Province that prompted 12,000 people to flee their homes, state media reported. The leak began on Thursday at the Qingxi Number 1 Gas Well in Xuanhan county, prompting emergency workers to set fire to four sites around the well to burn off the gas. But a first attempt to plug the leak was unsuccessful, the Xinhua news agency reported. "About 300m3 of mud was infused into the well in the first capping, but no effect was achieved," the deputy chief of the emergency headquarters at the site said.

■ India
Girl's fingers chopped off
A hungry 10-year-old girl from the lowest Hindu caste had all the fingers of her right hand chopped off by an upper-caste landowner for taking a few spinach leaves from his field, the Hindustan Times reported yesterday. The attack took place in a village in Bhagalpur district last week in impoverished Bihar state in the east where caste prejudice against dalits -- formerly called "untouchables" -- is widespread and sometimes results in violence against them. Police in Bhagalpur in eastern Bihar said they would soon arrest the upper-caste landowner who used a sickle to wound the girl whose name was given as "Khushboo."

■ Italy
Litvinenko friend arrested
Police arrested a man who met with the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London the day the ex-KGB agent fell ill from poisoning, the man's father said. Mario Scaramella was arrested on Sunday in Naples after returning from London. Rome prosecutors have accused him of international arms trafficking and slander, and he was being taken to Rome, according to his father, Amedeo Scaramella. Scaramella's lawyer, Sergio Rastrelli, told TV news that he was scheduled to be questioned on Wednesday. Rastrelli said he expected Scaramella to tell investigators that all his actions were "legitimate and rightful."

■ Spain
Surgeon flown to aid Castro
A renowned surgeon has been rushed to Cuba to try to stop a steady deterioration in Cuban President Fidel Castro's health, El Periodico de Catalunya reported on Sunday. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, an intestinal specialist, flew to Havana on Thursday on an aircraft chartered by the Cuban government, the newspaper said. The doctor's plane was carrying advanced medical equipment not available in Cuba, the paper reported. Cuban officials say Castro is not dying and will return to public life. But he has skipped recent public appearances and appeared to be frail and walking with difficulty in video images released in October.

■ United States
Toddler killed in stabbing
A two-year-old girl left with a dozen other children in a Texas home without adult supervision was stabbed to death, and police suspect a nine-year-old boy was responsible. No charges have been filed so far in the death of Damya Jefferson and police were still trying to piece together what happened when the girl was stabbed on Friday night, said Janice Crowther of the Dallas Police Department on Sunday. The children were left with a 15-year-old baby sitter, police said. The sitter called an emergency operator to report the stabbing around 10pm.

■ France
Kidnapped man home safe
A man grabbed a year ago from his farm in Venezuela has been released and is back in France, the Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. Christophe Beck was seized on Dec. 13, last year near Caracas by a group of five men. The ministry declined to say whether a ransom was paid or whether Beck was kidnapped by members of the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's second-largest rebel group, as reported by some French media. After he was kidnapped, Beck's daughter said the assailants tied up her mother and stole jewellery, money and other items before taking her father away in his own car.

■ Norway
Furore over Viking ships
The University of Oslo has decided to move three grand Viking ships to a new museum across town despite claims that the 1,000-year-old oak vessels could fall apart en route. A former curator of Oslo's Viking Ship Museum said the ships, two of which are nearly 23.4m long, were almost equal in importance to the Pyramids. "Even if I have to live until I am 100, I will go on fighting this move," 70-year old Arne Emil Christensen said. "The best way to stop it is still through diplomacy, but, if necessary, I will be in front of the ships, chained to the floor," he said. The school's board of directors voted to move the vessels despite the objections of many curators and academics.

■ Chile
Pinochet letter published
Late Augusto Pinochet, in a posthumous letter published in Sunday's newspapers, said he was "proud" of preventing a communist regime from taking root. "Quite honestly I tell you I'm proud of the great effort that was made to prevent Marxism-Leninism from reaching total power," the letter released two weeks after Pinochet died from heart attack complications said. However, he said he would have wished for "greater wisdom" during his 17-year military regime that took over in 1973 after overthrowing socialist president Salvador Allende. Pinochet's regime is blamed for some 3,000 deaths and disappearances.

■ Egypt
Woman dies of bird flu
A woman died of bird flu on Sunday, bringing to eight the number of people in the country who have succumbed to the disease since it was first detected here in February. Intisar Fareed, 30, died on Sunday after she and two members of members of an extended family living in a single dwelling in Gharbiya Province, to the north of Cairo, tested positive for the deadly strain of avian flu. Hassan el-Bushra, a regional adviser of the WHO announced earlier on Sunday that three people had tested positive for the H5N1 virus, identifying the cases as a sister, 15, a brother, 26, and a 30-year-old cousin.

■ Russia
Police battle possible rebels
Security battled a group of suspected separatist rebels yesterday who were holed up in an apartment building in a troubled southern province, officials and witnesses said. The early morning siege on a house in the city of Cherkessk was the latest in a string of similar police operations across the nation's south, where violence has been rising, some of it having spilled over from fighting in Chechnya. Authorities surrounded the apartment building where the four alleged militants were believed to be hiding and used heavy gunfire and grenades in a bid to force their surrender, regional police said.

■ Canada
Minister to work for peace
Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said he will head to the Middle East next year to try to revive peace talks in the region. "I would love to, in some fashion, be able to facilitate a coming together and a discussion," Peter MacKay told CTV in a report broadcast on Sunday. MacKay said he was not trying to "set unreal expectations, but I think we have to constantly try." His announcement comes at a time when a roughly month-old ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians is holding, albeit tenuously, as Gaza militants have fired more than 50 homemade rockets into Israel since the agreement was reached.

■ United States
Gunman kills one in mall
A gunman fatally shot a man in a fight at a crowded mall, then sent hundreds of Christmas shoppers running for cover as he fired at police chasing him, authorities said. Two men were taken into custody after the shooting. Police commando team members arrested Jesse Ceaser on Sunday after he barricaded himself in a department store at the Boynton Beach Mall, north of Miami, Police Lieutenant Jeffrey Katz said. Ceaser, 21, was charged with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder of a police officer. Fregens Daniel, 20, of Boynton Beach, also was arrested and was charged with acting as principal accessory in the case, Katz said.