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World News Quick Take

■ China
Roof collapse kills 16
Sixteen people were killed and 14 injured when the roof of a new house in western China collapsed as the owner staged a banquet for neighbors who helped him build it, state media reported yesterday. Yang Hongyi was treating about 50 fellow villagers to a lavish meal in his new home when the accident occurred on Tuesday near Tongliao city in the Inner Mongolia region, Xinhua news agency said. More than 40 people were trapped under the collapsed beams of the house, built in a communal effort by the residents of Yang's Wulanji village, it quoted local government sources as saying.

■ Indonesia
Nine sentenced to death
Nine men, including Chinese, French and Dutch nationals, have been sentenced to death by the nation's Supreme Court for producing millions of pills of the illegal recreational drug Ecstasy. The punishment handed down on Tuesday was harsher than that rendered last year by a lower court, which ordered the execution of two alleged Indonesian ringleaders while handing down lesser sentences to the others. A factory in Banten province, 100km west of Jakarta, could produce 300,000 Ecstasy tablets a week, prosecutors said. Some US$142 million in Ecstasy, methamphetamines, ketamine and chemical ingredients were seized at the plan.

■ Thailand
Web site pulls G-strings
A US Web site offering G-string underwear and T-shirts for dogs emblazoned with a picture of Buddha dropped them from its sales list on Wednesday after protests from Thailand. "It is a good thing they understand our sensitivity," Foreign Ministry spokesman Piriya Khempon said a day after saying the products sold on a California-based online store had offended Thais and Buddhists elsewhere. The site sells items ranging from teddy bears to beer pitchers bearing pictures of religious figures and philosophers from the Hindu god Shiva to Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi. Although the site removed ads for Buddha G-strings and dog T-shirts, items depicting Jesus and Shiva remained.

■ China
Docs remove WWII bullet
Doctors have removed a bullet from a woman's skull -- 64 years after it lodged there when Japanese troops shot her, the woman's doctor and a newspaper reported on Tuesday. Jin Guangying, 77, went home on May 3 following the four-hour operation and was in fine condition, said Zhou Hong, the head of surgery at Renci Hospital in Jin's native Jiangsu Province. Jin was 13 years old in 1943 when she was shot while delivering food to her father, a member of a guerrilla unit fighting the Japanese Imperial Army the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported. While she survived under her mother's care, the bullet apparently went undetected, the paper said. It said Jin suffered from periodic headaches and seizures that sometimes left her babbling and foaming at the mouth. Fearing she might have a tumor, her family had arranged for a scan that revealed the presence of the bullet, it said.

■ China
Ban to be expanded
The government has announced a ban on exports of all antiques dating before 1911 in a bid to curb the outflow of priceless art treasures, the China Daily reported on Wednesday. An existing ban affects relics made before 1795 but the date will be pushed forward to 1911, the final year of the Qing Dynasty and the end of imperial China, it said.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Artist eats corgi in protest
Artist Mark McGowan ate a corgi, famous for being Queen Elizabeth's favorite breed of dog, in protest on Tuesday over the alleged killing of a fox in January by a group including the queen's husband Prince Philip. McGowan tucked into the dog alongside Yoko Ono live on a London radio station. "I know some people will find this offensive and tasteless but I am doing this to raise awareness about the RSPCA's [the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] inability to prosecute Prince Philip and his friends shooting a fox earlier this year, letting it struggle for life for five minutes and then beating it to death with a stick," he said. The RSPCA said it found "no evidence" that any offense had taken place in January. McGowan said the dog, which died at a breeding farm, tasted "really, really disgusting," and added that Ono "looked a bit strange" as she tasted the dog.

■ NORWAY
Recidivist driver sentenced
An unrepentant 36-year-old man has been sentenced to three months in prison after he was caught driving his car for the 31st time since his license was suspended for life, media reported on Tuesday. The man was stopped in October for speeding at 153kph in an 80kph zone, the Grimstad Adressetidende reported in its online edition. The man's license was withdrawn in 1997.

■ AUSTRIA
Stradivarius violin stolen
A rare Stradivarius violin worth an estimated US$3.4 million has been stolen in an audacious raid on a safe in Vienna, police said yesterday. A Vuillaume violin, worth US$1.62 million, and three bows estimated at US$16,200 in total, were also stolen from the safe in a 49-year-old violinist's apartment in the center of Vienna. The thieves used a blowtorch to open the safe. The owner discovered the theft when returned from a concert in Germany on Sunday evening. Interpol has issued an arrest warrant for whoever carried out the theft, but police said there were no witnesses.

■ NETHERLANDS
Organ donor show to go on

A broadcaster will air a show this week in which a terminally ill woman selects a recipient for her kidneys from three contestants, despite government calls for the program to be scrapped. De Telegraaf newspaper said BNN would broadcast The Big Donorshow tomorrow during which the 37-year-old woman will choose from three people with kidney problems. She will make her choice based on the contestants' history, profile and conversations with their families and friends. Viewers will be able to send text messages advising her during the 80-minute show. Ruling coalition parties Christian Democrat and the conservative Christian Union have called the show "wretched" and unethical.

■ BOSNIA
Escapee labeled a threat

A Bosnian Serb war criminal who escaped jail and may have fled to Montenegro is a serious threat to the judge and prosecutors who convicted him, the president of Bosnia's top court said on Tuesday. Radovan Stankovic, who has been sentenced to 20 years for serial rape, enslavement and torture of civilians in Foca in the 1992 to 1995 war, broke away from nine prison guards and ran away from the Foca prison on Friday. During his trial he sent death threats to the judges and prosecutors, who are now under the protection of a special guard, a court official said.

■ United States

Bear shows up uptown

Police cornered a rather unusual suspect in Knoxville's entertainment district early on Tuesday — a 59kg black bear. Officials from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency were called in to tranquilize the bear in an alley near the Old City historical district, a hub for shops, restaurants and nightclubs. The bear was spotted on Monday night near the University of Tennessee but eluded police by climbing over a fence. Officials believe the same bear again escaped their grasp after turning up in a rail yard.

■ United States

Baby survives hanging

A baby found hanged in the closet of a Texas mobile home survived as she dangled next to the bodies of her mother and three sisters, authorities said. The bodies were discovered by the mother's sister in a mobile home park outside of Fort Worth, Texas, the local sheriff said. "The only way you could describe the scene would be horrendous," Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said. The bodies were discovered at about 6:30am when the mother's sister went to check on the family after the mother did not show up for work. Fowler said the aunt, who lives nearby, pulled the still-breathing baby off the clothes rod and called police.

■ United States

Man shot over sauce

A manager at a fast-food restaurant in Miami was shot several times in the arm early on Tuesday trying to protect the chili sauce, authorities said. A man in the Wendy's drive-through argued with an employee because he wanted more of the condiment, police said. The worker told the customer that restaurant policy prohibited a customer from getting more than three packets. The man insisted on 10, reports said. The employee complied, but police said the customer wanted even more. The manager came out to speak to the man, said Miami-Dade police spokesman Mary Walter. The customer then shot the manager, who was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.

■ United States

Shoe-sniffer arrested

Police seized more than 1,500 pairs of girls' shoes from the home and storage unit of a man arrested for breaking into a high school, police said on Tuesday. "He liked to smell them," said Lieutenant William Graham. Police said the recovered shoes may be related to the burglaries of three Waukesha public high schools and a middle school over the past two years. The 27-year-old Kenosha man, who was not identified because he had yet to be formally charged, worked for a cable company and collected keys to the schools as he responded to calls, Graham said.

■ United States

Man rescued, arrested

A man who jumped from a cruise ship off Florida's coast and was rescued about eight hours later by the Coast Guard was arrested on Tuesday on sex charges, authorities said. Michael Mankamyer, 35, of Orlando was charged with sexual battery not likely to cause injury and lewd or lascivious molestation on a victim older than 12, said Liz Malavet, of the Orange County jail's inmate records. The charges stem from an FBI investigation into Mankamyer, the Orlando Sentinel reported. The FBI reviewed cruise ship records that revealed Mankamyer had escorted at least four teenage boys on separate cruises, Sergeant Rich Mankewich of the sheriff's sex crimes unit told the newspaper.

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