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World News Quick Take

■ NORTH KOREA
Army needs recreation
The government is to import solar power from the West so that its soldiers can watch TV and use computers for recreation, a Japanese press report said yesterday. The nation acted after leader Kim Jong-il toured a military unit last year and found that power shortages were stopping soldiers from watching programs, Japan's Mainichi Shimbun said. Pyongyang ordered the People's Army to "install recreational facilities at military units without fail," the daily said. The authorities decided to buy solar power systems from Western countries, it said.

■ PHILIPPINES
Radio airs abductee's plea
Eight Filipinos and three South Koreans seized by armed men in Nigeria's oil-rich southern region said in a telephone message aired yesterday that they were being beaten up and deprived of food. "We are in the forest, there is no tent, no shade, no food, no water," one of the Filipino hostages said in the message aired on radio DZBB in Manila. The South Korean executives and Filipino laborers with Daewoo Engineering and Construction were kidnapped on Thursday. "They asked us to call for help. Why? Because our management Daewoo is not doing anything good to release us," the hostage said.

■ CHINA
Fifteen die in mine
An explosion in a coal mine killed 15 miners and rescuers fought through thick smoke yesterday trying to reach 15 others trapped in the mine shaft, state media reported. About 95 miners escaped after the explosion tore through the Pudeng coal mine on Saturday afternoon, but 30 were trapped inside, Xinhua news agency reported. Rescuers confirmed that 15 had died and smoke from still-burning fires was slowing efforts to reach the remaining 15. Xinhua said the mine, outside of Linfen, Shanxi Province, had previously received an order to suspend production, but operators resumed mining without a permit.

■ MALAYSIA
Bloggers may be labeled
The information minister has suggested labeling some bloggers as amateurs to prevent them from misleading readers with lies and rumors, the national news agency reported. The proposal comes after the National Union of Journalists urged authorities last week to recognize blogging as a new medium of information, following calls by government officials to impose curbs on bloggers. Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin said the government "feared that [Web logs] will be misused by those who have an agenda to spread slander," Bernama news agency reported on Saturday. "By right, there should be a mechanism to control this phenomenon, including by classifying Web bloggers as professionals and nonprofessionals," Zainuddin was quoted as saying.

■ VIETNAM
Bird flu outbreak confirmed
Officials yesterday reported a bird flu outbreak on a farm in central Nghe An Province and said its entire flock had been culled as a precaution. Test results at a regional animal health laboratory showed that young ducks that started dying last Tuesday were positive for the broad H5 strain of the virus. Bird flu officials say they consider poultry to have been infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus if test positive for H5 and also show bird flu symptoms. The farm's 610 ducks were culled on Friday and authorities applied measures to isolate the local environment, officials said.

■ AUSTRALIA
Longest table record broken
An Austrian group declared on Saturday that it had set a record for the world's longest restaurant table with place settings for 1,800 in Vienna. The table, set up along a shopping street, stretched 1.2km, organizers said. It actually included 600 tables, with 30 culture specialists setting up 1,800 place settings with decorations. The total weight was five tonnes. Organizers said their table was long enough to beat the previous Guinness world record of 1.036km set in the Austrian city of Scharding last year.

■ IRAN
Israeli made to stay
It was the gift of a wooden music box that assured the Israeli that the Iranian security men would not harm him. The Israeli passenger of a Turkish Airlines flight that took off from Istanbul was forced to spend several hours in Tehran on Saturday when the airplane made two emergency landings due to mechanical problems, Israeli media reported. The passenger, identified only as "Benny," said he tried initially to tell the Iranians on the ground that he was British, afraid that they would mistreat him, the Haaretz newspaper reported. But the Iranians said they knew he was Israeli.

■ ISRAEL
Group alleges torture
The Shin Bet security service uses torture in its interrogation of Palestinian prisoners, violating a 1999 court ruling outlawing such practices, two Israeli human-rights groups charged in a report yesterday. The physical abuse includes "beating, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation," according to the report. These methods constitute torture under international law, according to the report by B'Tselem and The Center for the Defense of the Individual. Israel's Supreme Court in 1999 outlawed what the Shin Bet called ``moderate physical pressure," such as sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures and tying up detainees in painful positions. Despite the ruling, prisoners are shackled to chairs in painful positions for protracted periods of time and subjected to humiliation, the report said.

■ ITALY
Woman dies from switch
A 73-year-old woman died in a hospital in southern Italy apparently because the tubes carrying oxygen and anesthesia were switched, and authorities were investigating whether the switch was responsible for as many as seven other recent deaths, officials and news reports said on Saturday. The coronary intensive care unit at the hospital in Taranto had only been inaugurated on April 20, and since then some 21 people have been treated. But eight of them died, and questions are now being raised about whether the faulty tubing may have been to blame.

■ NIGERIA
UK oil worker abducted
Gunmen abducted a British oil worker from a US-owned drilling rig off the coast near Port Harcourt on Saturday, triggering a security alert at a nearby oil export terminal. The Briton was taken from the Trident 8 rig operated by US-based Transocean off the coast of the state of Bayelsa, in the latest in a string of abductions that have disrupted oil supplies from the world's eighth-largest exporter. The attack triggered a security lockdown at the nearby Brass crude oil export terminal, which exports 200,000 barrels per day.

■ BRAZIL
Wife ad ordered removed
The government has ordered an Internet auction site to remove an advertisement in which a Brazilian man offered to sell his wife for 100 reals, or US$50. The Secretariat of Public Policies for Women announced late on Friday it had ordered Mercado Livre, partially owned by eBay, to remove the ad and warned it was violating a law banning the offer or sale of "human organs, people, blood, bones or skin." The advertisement was no longer visible on the site on Saturday. It was posted by a man who gave his name as Breno and said: "I sell my wife for reasons I prefer to keep short ... I really need the money."

■ CANADA
C$1 million coin minted
Got change for a million? Canada does: the world's biggest pure gold coin at 100k. Already, three buyers have shelled out for one of the C$1 million (US$ 900,000) coins introduced last week. The Royal Canadian mint made the coins -- 50cm in diameter and 3cm thick -- mostly to seize the bragging rights from Austria, which had the record with a 31.75kg, 38cm wide 100,000 euro coin (US$135,000). Listed as 99.999 percent pure gold bullion, the new coin features Queen Elizabeth II on one side and Canada's national symbol -- the maple leaf -- on the other.

■ COLOMBIA
Quake rattles Bogota
An earthquake deep below the Andean ridge shook central Colombia just before midnight on Saturday. Buildings in Bogota rattled for several seconds but no damage or injuries were reported. The temblor measured magnitude 5.5 and was centered some 250km northeast of Bogota and approximately 176km deep, said Dale Grant of the US Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. "It's deep so there shouldn't be any major damage but it should be widely felt," he said. Colombia's disaster prevention agency director, Luz Amalda Pulida, placed the magnitude at 6.0, adding in a radio interview that the quake was centered below the town of Betulia.

■ COSTA RICA
Crocodile attacks boy
A crocodile attacked and made off with a 13-year-old boy on Friday as he bathed with his brother in a lagoon. Breydi Escorcia was bathing in San Francisco de Tortuguero, on the Atlantic coast, when a crocodile attacked him and dragged him into deeper water, police said. Witnesses said the boy screamed that the crocodile had bitten his leg before the reptile dragged him underwater. The teenager emerged once more, just long enough to yell goodbye to his older brother, police official Victor Cervantes said, citing witnesses. "He shouted, `Adios, Pablito,' before he was dragged under a second time and he hasn't been seen since," Cervantes said.

■ UNITED STATES
Boy accused of murder
A 13-year-old is accused of killing a five-year-old in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the home where they both lived, a death the teen said happened while he was practicing wrestling moves on the boy. The teenager told investigators he was practicing wrestling moves on Tyeir Bruce on Thursday when the boy became unresponsive, police said. He initially said Bruce had fallen down stairs, authorities said. The boy died at a hospital, and a medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. A man who was baby-sitting the boys was in a different part of the house, the police said. The teenager, whose name was not released because of his age, has been charged with criminal homicide.


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