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World News Quick Take

■ NEPAL
Ex-rebels issue warning
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala summoned the leaders of the eight parties in the ruling coalition to emergency talks yesterday to discuss election dates after former rebels warned they would have no reason to stay in the government if elections are not held by the deadline set in a peace deal. On Friday, the Election Commission said it would not be ready to hold polls by the deadline. "The basis for the eight-party coalition government was to conduct the election in June, and if we don't conduct the election on schedule that would end the basis for this unity," former rebel leader Prachanda told supporters.

■ VIETNAM
Tornado injures 21
A strong tornado swept through three mountainous villages in the center of the country on Saturday, injuring 21 people and damaging hundreds of homes, an official said yesterday. The tornado collapsed 13 houses and left 400 others without roofs. It also knocked down scores of trees and electrical poles, the vice chairman of Dai Loc District in Quang Nam Province said. "This area is prone to natural disasters including tornadoes, but this was the strongest one we have ever seen," the official said. Hundreds of soldiers have been mobilized to help clean up the area and rebuild homes for the villagers.

■ PHILIPPINES
Marines attack rebels
Hundreds of Marines yesterday attacked a camp on belonging to a Muslim rebel group accused of firing mortars at a military camp and detachment on southern Jolo island, officials said. The assault was aimed at capturing Muslim rebel commander Habier Malik.

■ AUSTRALIA
Sea lion attacks girl
A sea lion leaped out of the sea and attacked a 13-year-old girl as she surfed behind a speedboat off the west coast, a witness told a newspaper. A marine scientist said the attack was bizarre and unheard of. Sea lions can grow to more than 400kg in weight but usually stay away from humans. Ella Murphy had her jaw broken and lost three teeth after the attack on Friday as she was being towed on a surfboard behind a speedboat near Lancelin, 125km north of Perth, the Sunday Times reported.

■ AUSTRALIA
Cave-in survivors get song
Two miners who captured world attention by surviving for 14 days deep underground after a cave-in at a gold mine will commemorate their rescue in a rock song. Todd Russell and Brant Webb and their wives will sing with an Australian rock band in a song called 321 Hours -- the length of time the men were trapped almost a kilometer underground at the Beaconsfield mine in Tasmania. They will perform the song as part of an event marking the first anniversary of their rescue on May 9. "It should be a great night and will give us a chance to thank the people for all their support over the last 12 months," Webb said.

■ MALAYSIA
Military fights bear problem
The military has a new enemy: sun bears, who are attacking the camps in search of food. At night soldiers at a camp in the northern part of the country keep a vigil for the intruders, who driven from their habitats, come in groups and feast on rice, sugar, biscuits and bread, the New Sunday Times said. Sun bears, who live in the rain forests of Southeast Asia, are getting displaced from their habitat because of logging. A wildlife official said the animals were also tempted by the easy availability of food at the camps. Sun bears, who have orange-yellow markings on their chests, are hunted for their gall bladders and paws which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

■ THAILAND
Boys break out of detention
About 60 teenage boys have broken out of a juvenile detention center to join Buddhist New Year festivities, police said yesterday. The youngsters at the Ban Metta facility in a Bangkok suburb escaped on Saturday night to join the Songkran festival, which is celebrated with five days of parties and water fights across the country. Police Lieutenant Colonel Veerapong Chaowaphol said 52 of the boys had been arrested and returned to the facility, while the rest remained at large. He said that most of the youths were aged about 16 or 17 and were serving sentences for robbery.

■ UNITED STATES
Pope car on eBay
A 1999 metallic gray Volkswagen Golf believed to once belong to the Pope Benedict XVI went up for sale on eBay, but the auction ended without a winner. For the second time in two years, eBay hosted an auction for a car said to be the pope's old hatchback. Though bids surpassed US$204,000, a reserve price was not met by the end of the auction on Saturday. The car's owner, a Texas-based online casino, GoldenPalace.com, bought the car in 2005 on eBay from a German man. The casino posted two registration documents that list "Josef Kardinal Ratzinger" as the vehicle's previous owner.

■ CZECH REPUBLIC
Freud statue rejected
Residents of a Prague neighborhood voted down a proposal to erect a monument to famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, district mayor Petr Hejma announced on Saturday. Some voters said they would prefer a goat statue instead because it was to be located at Goat Square. About 75 percent of voters said no to the proposed sculpture, which was to portray Freud seated at a table. Freud was born in the town of Priborborn and later moved to Austria. "First, the statue is hideous, and second, Freud surely never heard of Kozi Placek," a woman said after voting. "We should put a goat statue there instead."

■ RUSSIA
Putin hosts fight fest
President Vladimir Putin rolled out the red carpet for Belgian actor Jean-Claude Van Damme and a score of grizzled martial arts fighters in St Petersburg, state-run television said yesterday. Putin treated the fighters to tea and cakes at the chandelier-lined hall of the Konstantinovsky palace following a mixed martial arts contest. Saturday's contest was won by Russian champion Fedor Yemelyanenko, who defeated US rival Matt Lindland. Television footage showed judo enthusiast Putin greeting Van Damme. Ultra-violent fights were interspersed with dancing by scantily clad women.

■ UNITED STATES
Ethiopia denies CIA report
The Ethiopian government has denied that it violated UN sanctions by secretly purchasing military equipment from North Korea earlier this year. The CIA reported in January that an Ethiopian-flagged ship left a North Korean port, probably with tank parts and other military cargo. The purchase of tank parts would violate restrictions on dealings with North Korea imposed by the UN Security Council in a resolution adopted last October. The Security Council acted after North Korea tested a nuclear device. In a statement on Friday, Ethiopia's Foreign Ministry said it had received a shipment from North Korea, but said it did not include prohibited items.

■ ITALY
Group asks pope to drop fur
An animal rights group is asking Pope Benedict XVI to stop wearing fur. "It would be a praiseworthy example of Christian charity," Roberto Bennati, the deputy chairman of the Anti-Vivisection League, said in a statement on Friday. The pope sometimes wears a fur-trimmed hat popular with pontiffs in the 17th century. He has also donned a red velvet ermine-trimmed cape. The Anti-Vivisection League made its appeal ahead of a papal trip later this month to Pavia, a city that is home to some of the country's fur-makers.

■ IRAN
Bids requested for plants
The government yesterday asked for bids to build two new nuclear power stations alongside a still unfinished facility in the south of the country, despite increasing Western pressure over its atomic drive. "Iran is launching two tenders for the construction of two nuclear power stations of between 1,000 and 1,600 megawatts capacity in Bushehr," the director of production of nuclear energy, Ahmad Fayaz Bakhsh, told reporters. The tender literature put the closing date for bids at Aug. 8. The announcement of the tenders shows that Tehran has no intention of surrendering its nuclear intentions.

■ MEXICO
Bush crash kills 24
Twenty-four people were killed when a bus and tractor-trailer crashed and burst into flames on Saturday in the state of Chihuahua close to the US border, authorities said. Eduardo Esparza, spokesman for the state attorney general's office, said 18 others were treated in hospitals for burns after the fire reduced the two vehicles to ashes. Authorities said the victims were take to a morgue in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. A police official said most of the dead were passengers on the bus, which slammed into the truck before both vehicles were engulfed by flames. The official, who asked not to be identified, said the crash may have been caused by excess speed, or possibly because the bus driver fell asleep.

■ UNITED STATES
Singer Don Ho dies
Don Ho, Hawaii's most popular entertainer who achieved fame far beyond his home state with the song Tiny Bubbles, died on Saturday at age 76, an official said. The "King of Waikiki" died at a Honolulu medical center, said Michael Lynch, investigator at the office of the Honolulu medical examiner, without giving the reason for death. Ho had a history of heart problems and the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper said he suffered a heart attack at his home in Waikiki early on Saturday.

■ UNITED STATES
Organizers defend expulsion
Lawyers in Denver, Colorado, for two men charged with illegally ejecting two people from a speech by President George W. Bush in 2005 are arguing that the president's staff can lawfully remove anyone who expresses points of view different from his. Lawyers for the two, Michael Casper and Jay Klinkerman, said the men were working as organizers for a public presidential forum on Social Security at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver on March 21, 2005, when they were involved in ejecting two audience members, Alex Young and Leslie Weise. Young and Weise filed a lawsuit in US District Court, saying they were ejected shortly after they had arrived in a car that had an antiwar bumper sticker, although they had done nothing disruptive.

■ UNITED STATES
Boy burned by slide
A two-year-old boy in Middle River, Maryland, was severely burned after he went down a slide that had been splashed with industrial-strength drain cleaner by vandals at an elementary school playground. Peyton Duschl was scheduled for surgery yesterday morning and likely will be hospitalized for several weeks, said Carol Duschl, the boy's mother. "I just don't understand what would draw somebody to do something like that," Duschl told WMAR-TV. Someone had broken into the school, stolen several bottles of the drain cleaner and splashed it all over the playground equipment, authorities said.


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