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World News Quick Take

■ South Korea
North to hand over sailor
North Korea said yesterday it will hand over a South Korean sailor who accidentally navigated his boat into North Korean waters last month, according to South Korean officials. North Korean authorities said they would return Lee Jong-soo and his boat yesterday ``out of brotherly love and humanitarian concerns,'' South Korea's Red Cross said in a statement. While it is unclear how Lee crossed the maritime border off the country's east coast on Dec. 25, South Korean officials said the incident was believed to be accidental.

■ China
`Panda of rivers' killed
Illegal fishermen have killed a highly endangered freshwater fish, state press reported yesterday. The 3.6m, 250kg Chinese paddlefish was the largest of its kind seen in six years, with very few sightings of the species in its native habitats of the Yangtze and Qiantang rivers recorded recently, Xinhua news agency said. The species is dubbed the "giant panda of the rivers" due to its similarities with China's favorite animal in size and the fact that it is close to extinction in the wild, according to the report.

■ Australia
Birds fall from sky
Wildlife authorities investigating why thousands of birds fell from the sky over a town in the southwest of the country have ruled out infectious diseases, including bird flu, but are no closer to working out what killed them, a state official said yesterday. Around 5,000 birds have been found dead in Esperance, Western Australia, since the middle of last month, according to Nigel Higgs, spokesman for the state's Department of Environment and Conservation.

■ India
Gandhi video in `bad taste'
Two TV channels were facing government action yesterday after they reportedly aired a video clip depicting a man dressed up as Mahatma Gandhi performing a pole dance. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said the clip, apparently pulled from a video sharing Web site, was in "bad taste" and called on the two private channels to apologize to the entire country. Media sources have identified the channels as Hindi-language news stations IBN-7 and Sahara Samay Rashtriya.

■ Singapore
Oil tankers collide
Two Singapore-registered tankers collided in the country's southern waters, spilling about 200 tonnes of oil from one of the vessels, the government said yesterday. There were no reports of injuries. The incident between the 1,187-tonne Seafalcon and the 2,836-tonne Frontek, both bunker tankers, occurred on Thursday 500m from St. John's Island, one of Singapore's southern offshore islands, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said in a statement. The collision damaged one of Seafalcon's tanks and resulted in the spill, while the Frontek sustained minor damage to its bow and stem, the statement said. The spill had been cleaned up by yesterday.

■ Nepal
Airline apologizes to Peru
Royal Nepal Airlines has apologized to Peru after mistakenly using a photo of the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu to promote tourism in Nepal. Peru's foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday the flagship carrier of the Himalayan kingdom, about half way around the world from the Andean country, had put the picture of Peru's tourism icon, Machu Picchu, on a poster under a slogan "Have you seen Nepal?"

■ Australia
Cleric in ancestry jibe
Leaders yesterday laughed off remarks by a top Islamic cleric who mocked the convict ancestry of many white Australians and said Muslims had a greater claim to the country. "I think it will bring a wry smile to the face of Australians who don't actually feel the least bit offended that many of our ancestors came here as convicts," Prime Minister John Howard told reporters. "It's almost a badge of honor for many Australians," he said. The cleric, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, made the comments in an interview on Egyptian television. "The Anglo-Saxons arrived in Australia in shackles. We [Muslims] came as free people. We bought our own tickets. We are entitled to Australia more than they are," he said. Egyptian-born Al-Hilali holds the title Mufti of Australia.

■ Germany
Man electrocuted in garden
A retiree who wired up a high-voltage cable to try to wipe out moles digging up his garden killed himself instead, police said on Thursday. Uwe Werner, a police spokesman in Stralsund, north of Berlin, said the 63-year-old retired construction foreman was found dead in the garden of his weekend house in Zingst next to a 380-volt cable and metal spikes rammed into the ground. "The moles survived," Werner said, noting the voltage was enough to run a cement mixer or heavy-duty power saw. "It was in any event an unorthodox method to try to get rid of moles."

■ Russia
New arrest in bank murder
Police have detained a new suspect in the killing of a senior Central Bank official, Russian news agencies reported yesterday, citing the suspect's lawyer. The reports quoted lawyer Yevgeny Martynov as saying his client Ilana Askerova was detained on Wednesday as a suspect in the September killing of Andrei Kozlov, the Central Bank's first deputy chairman. Askerova "has connections to finance but is not officially the employee of any baking structure," Martynov was quoted as saying by the RIA-Novosti news agency.

■ United States
Soldier jailed for murder
A US soldier was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to murdering three Iraqi detainees, the US military said. Specialist William Hunsaker was condemned to 18 years behind bars, demoted to the lowest military rank and given a dishonorable discharge from the US Army. The three Iraqi detainees were killed on May 9 last year during a raid against a suspected al-Qaeda base. The four US soldiers initially said the detainees had tried to flee. But a member of the same unit said the detainees were murdered. A nurse also testified seeing one victim receiving a bullet to the head.

■ France
Sarkozy says crime dropped
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy hailed a 10 percent fall in crime under the conservative government, rejecting attacks on his record just days before he is anointed as his party's presidential candidate. Sarkozy told a news conference crime had dropped by 9.4 percent from 2002 to last year across the country, compared with a 17.8 percent rise under the previous Socialist government. The Socialists have attacked Sarkozy's record, saying an almost 30 percent rise in physical assaults during his time in office proves his tough law-and-order policies on which he built his reputation have failed. Sarkozy said violence had risen partly because he had ordered police to return to tough neighborhoods that he said had been abandoned by the left, pointing to the fact that 13,313 officers had been injured on duty as proof.

■ Italy
Cabinet sits outside Rome
The Italian Cabinet was to meet outside Rome for the first time since World War II yesterday, as Prime Minister Romano Prodi wraps up a two-day retreat aimed at drafting economic reforms and showing unity within his squabbling coalition. How to spur economic growth is the main theme of the gathering, held in the 18th-century Royal Palace complex in the southern Italian city of Caserta. Prodi said that the government was looking at reforms that would cut red tape for businesses and introduce liberalization in sectors of the economy as ways to achieve that goal.

■ United States
`Trich' genome mapped
An international team of scientists has mapped the genes of the parasite that causes trichomoniasis, the world's most common non-viral sexually transmitted infections, a study said on Thursday. The research, directed by The Institute for Genomic Research, traced the genome sequence of Trichomonas vaginalis, which causes the infection popularly known as "trich." The findings were published in yesterday's issue of the US journal Science. Worldwide, there are an estimated 170 million new cases of "trich" a year, most of them vaginal infections, which often are accompanied by other sexually transmitted infections.

■ United States
Pandas closed for mating
The Memphis Zoo closed its panda exhibit for 72 hours beginning Thursday to give two giant pandas -- Ya Ya and Le Le -- some privacy to try to mate. A female panda has only three days a year to conceive, said Matt Thompson, the curator of the zoo's mammal wing. The zoo will try artificial insemination if the mating is not successful, but the bears are sending signals that this could be the year for romance, he said. Ya Ya is registering high estrogen levels and is restless, while Le Le has higher than usual levels of testosterone and has been spreading his scent around to let Ya Ya know he's around," he added.

■ United States
Cows resist disease
By genetically removing a particular protein, scientists have developed cattle that seem to be resistant to mad cow disease, according to a report in the journal Nature Biotechnology. Juergen Richt of the US Department of Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, generated cattle lacking the prion protein and monitored them for growth and general health status from birth to 20 months of age. The prion protein in its normal formation does not cause disease in cattle, but when it takes on a configuration containing misfolds, it results in mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The authors note, however, that full testing will take at least three years.

■ Mexico
Murders shake ruling party
A murder scandal shook President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party as federal police announced that a legislator's husband conspired with a state party leader in the killing of a local congressman. Jose Bajos, a congressman for the state of Guerrero, was fatally shot on Jan. 4 outside the offices of the state government's radio and TV station, where he was scheduled to be interviewed. Federal police said they arrested Aldi Gonzalez, the husband of legislator Jacqueline Orta, early on Thursday in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco, Guerrero's largest city. Police allege Gonzalez joined with National Action's state leader, Ramiro Arteaga, in paying a hit man 20,000 pesos (US$1,800) to kill Bajos.

■ Guatemala
Fix adoption process: US
Guatemala must improve its procedure for foreign adoptions before the US ratifies the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions later this year, or the US will no longer give American parents visas for the babies they are seeking to adopt from Guatemala, US Assistant Secretary of Consular Affairs Maura Harty told reporters in Guatemala City on Thursday. More than 4,000 Guatemalan babies were adopted by US parents last year, making the nation the second highest source of US adoptions after China.


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