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World News Quick Take

■ SOUTH KOREA
Soldier dies in Iraq
The defense ministry yesterday reported the country's first death from its three-year mission to support US-led allied forces in Iraq. A 27-year-old army lieutenant, identified only by his family name Oh, was found shot and dead inside the South Korean military camp in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil on Saturday, the ministry said in a statement. He sustained a shot under his jaw at an army barber shop, with his own rifle and an empty cartridge found nearby, the ministry said. There were no signs of him being attacked, it added.

■ JAPAN
Stork egg hatches
An endangered white stork egg laid in the wild has hatched naturally for the first time in more than 40 years, the Eco Museum Center for Oriental White Stork announced yesterday. The new chick's parents -- a seven-year-old male Oriental white stork and his nine-year-old partner -- were born through artificial breeding at a public breeding farm and were released into the wild last September. The couple started mating in April and built their nest atop a 13m tall manmade pole in a rice paddy near the farm in the city of Toyooka.

■ SRI LANKA
Army foils rebel plan
Soldiers pre-empted an attempt by Tamil Tiger rebels to infiltrate a defense line in the north, killing three guerrillas, the military said yesterday. Troops manning the defense line in Muhamalai on the northern Jaffna Peninsula, 300km north of the capital Colombo, killed the rebels on Saturday evening, an official from the Defense Ministry's information center said on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy. Muhamalai is between the government-held peninsula and an area controled by the Tigers. There was no immediate comment from the rebels.

■ THAILAND
Rebels kill three
Suspected separatist rebels have shot dead three people in south, police said yesterday. A Buddhist motorcycle mechanic and a Muslim villager were killed in separate drive-by shootings late on Saturday in Yala Province. Yesterday morning in the same province, gunmen opened fire on a Buddhist woman and her 16-year-old son. The teenager died later in hospital, while his 51-year-old mother was in a serious condition. Also yesterday, police said they were investigating whether an Indonesian man arrested for firearms possession in Yala was in the region to train rebels, who are battling for a separate state in the south.

■ MALAYSIA
Former PM recuperating
The health of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad is steadily improving after a heart attack but he will stay in hospital for further care, a statement from the hospital said yesterday. The National Heart Institute said Mahathir has been transferred out of the cardiac care unit to a regular ward after doctors were happy with his progress. "He was trans-ferred ... after doctors were satisfied at his steady rate of positive response to treatment and medication," the institute said. "Mahathir is expected to continue to be warded ... to allow doctors to monitor his condition and to start cardiac rehabili-tation," it said. Mahathir was hospitalized after suffering breathing difficulties, which doctors said on Thursday were the result of lung congestion caused by a heart attack.

■ ALGERIA
Terror network dismantled
Security forces have dismantled a suspected support network linked to twin terror bombings last month in the capital that killed 30 people and were claimed by an alleged al-Qaeda affiliate, the official APS news agency said. Authorities arrested one member of the alleged logistical cell within two weeks of the April 11 bombings in Algiers, and by following the suspect's testimony rounded up 11 others, the agency said on Saturday, citing unidentified security officials. It did not indicate when the 11 others were detained. A group calling itself Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa, built on the remnants of an insurgent Salafist group, claimed responsibility for the attacks on the prime minister's office and a police station.

■ IRAN
Nuclear talks ruled out
Tehran said yesterday its nuclear standoff with the West will be strictly off the agenda when its officials hold rare talks this month with US diplomats in Baghdad over Iraq. "We do not want there to be any connection between the nuclear talks and the discussions on Iraq," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters. "If there is someone who wants to connect the nuclear issue with Iraq then this is something that we do not want," he added. Iranian envoys are to meet their US counterparts in Baghdad next Monday for talks on Iraqi security.

■ SOMALIA
President makes overture
President Abdullahi Yusuf will allow members of his country's ousted Islamic movement to participate in the nation's upcoming reconciliation conference -- as long as they are selected by their clans and renounce violence, an Italian official said on Saturday. Italian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Patrizia Sentinelli called the decision an "important opening" and urged Yusuf to follow through on his promise. She spoke in the Kenyan capital after meeting earlier on Saturday with Yusuf in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Somalia's transitional government has touted next month's reconciliation conference as a chance for the Horn of Africa nation to begin healing after 16 years of violence.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
No pressure: prosecutors
Prosecutors denied a newspaper report yesterday that Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was pressuring them not to charge two Russian suspects in the poisoning of former security agent Alexander Litvinenko. Sir Ken Macdonald, the head of public prosecutions, dismissed as untrue a News of the World report that said Beckett told a meeting of COBRA, the government emergency committee chaired by Prime Minister Tony Blair, that prosecutors must not file charges because Britain can't afford to upset Moscow.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Harry more of a Sally
Prince Harry, who was last week stopped from joining his regiment's deployment to Iraq, could be sent to join troops in Afghanistan, a newspaper said yesterday. News of the World said it had information about plans for the 22-year-old officer, third-in-line to the throne, to join the fight against the Taliban, but was not providing key details. Harry is a second lieutenant in the elite Blues and Royals regiment of the Household Cavalry, in charge of 11 soldiers and four Scmitar reconnaissance vehicles.

■ CHILE
President proves unpopular
President Michelle Bachelet's public approval rating is at its lowest point since she took office a little more than a year ago, according to a nationwide poll published on Saturday. The survey by La Tercera newspaper showed the country's first female president's rating at 40 percent amid wide dissatisfaction with a sputtering new transit system in the capital Santiago, home to one-third of the population. A poll published by La Tercera on March 23 had put her approval rating at 45 percent. The results of the latest survey, conducted May 15 to May 17, came two days before Bachelet was due to give her second state of the nation address today. It showed that for the first time more Chileans disapproved of Bachelet's performance than approved.

■ PERU
Backpack bomb kills six
A backpack containing dynamite and nails exploded during a celebration in a southern market, killing six people and wounding 48, police said on Saturday. The explosion occurred around 10:30pm on Friday in the Andean city of Juliaca, 830km southeast of Lima, Police Colonel Romeo Delgado said. This week marks 27 years since the Maoist Shining Path movement's first armed attack. The insurgency almost brought Peru's government to its knees in the 1980s and early 1990s with massacres and assassinations. Since the 1992 capture of Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman, the group has been reduced to a few hundred guerrillas.

■ UNITED STATES
Eagle egg missing
One of two eggs laid by a bald eagle at a central Illinois zoo is missing and authorities think the culprit is either a raccoon or a human. The discovery was made on Friday afternoon at Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, where an eagle named Beauty laid eggs for the first time in her 13 years at the zoo. Beauty laid the eggs during a brief visit from a wild eagle that perched over the enclosure. If the remaining egg is fertile, it could hatch around the end of this month.

■ UNITED STATES
Two fishermen rescued
Two fishermen whose boat capsized in the Gulf of Mexico survived nearly two days and nights drifting at sea before one of them climbed the leg of an offshore oil platform. The men were rescued early on Friday after drifting more than 32km over the course of about 40 hours, first aboard a small area of the boat's underside and then buoyed by life jackets. Aaron Pilcher, 29, and Michael Prahm, 27, embarked on their trip on Wednesday morning from Freeport, 88km south of Houston, Texas. They motored their 7m-long boat to a popular fishing site about 58km offshore. They noticed the boat was taking on water at about noon.

■ UNITED STATES
Single mom hits jackpot
Kristina Schneider tried to persuade a customer at the BP gas station where she works in Ohio to buy the last ticket on a roll of the Magnificent Millions lottery game. "I always joke that the last ticket is the winning one, but he said he only had enough money for three tickets," Schneider said. This time, her advice was no joke. The single mother -- with nine maxed out credit cards and US$8,500 in school debt -- bought what turned out to be a US$1 million winning ticket with a US$10 bill she found in the store on Friday. "I thought someone was playing a trick on me," she said. After showing a customer that she did indeed have a winning ticket, she locked the store while she took a moment to be sick in the bathroom.


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