■ POLICE PROBE TOURISTS' DEATHS
Toxicology tests are being carried out on two middle-aged Americans found dead in the Grand Hyatt, police said yesterday, in what reports say may have been a date-rape drugging gone wrong. Police said the tests were being carried out on the bodies of the men, aged 45 and 51, who were found dead in a room by hotel staff on Friday. The Sunday Morning Post cited a police source as saying the investigation was looking at the possibility the two were drugged, possibly using flunitrazepam (Rohypnol).
■ INDONESIA
Village quarantined
A village on the island of Flores has been sealed off after about 20 people fell ill after consuming anthrax-infected beef, a health official said yesterday. Health officials quarantined the village and rushed medical teams to treat ill villagers and vaccinate their livestock after six water buffaloes died of the disease. "Twenty people fell ill after eating an infected water buffalo on Friday. Wolotou village is now quarantined and no meat products from the village are allowed to be transferred out," veterinary official Maria Geong said. Anthrax is an acute infection that usually only afflicts livestock, but it can be transmitted to humans.
■ AUSTRALIA
Pub doubles as church
Jesus Christ may have turned water into wine, but for a group of churchgoers the ideal place to worship on a Sunday is a pub. Devoid of a church in the docklands entertainment area of Melbourne, a group of Christians have created the "Docklands Church" inside the James Squire Brewhouse. "Jesus did turn water into wine, he was kind of radical, he was connected with his culture and yet he had a great message for our world," Docklands Church minister Guy Mason said after his first service on Sunday. Worshippers can have a pint before or after the church service.
■ JAPAN
Group suicide suspected
Four bodies were found in a car filled with carbon monoxide in what was suspected to be a group suicide, police said yesterday. A group of woodcutters found the bodies inside the vehicle parked on a small path on a hillside deep in the forests of Tochigi prefecture northeast of Tokyo, a police spokesman said. Police said the three men, aged 20, 22 and 38, and one woman, 30, were all from Tokyo and nearby areas. "The families of all of them except the 22-year-old man had filed missing person reports with respective local police," the police officer said. "Police believe it was a group suicide."
■ SOUTH KOREA
Group opposes repatriation
A South Korean group pleaded yesterday for international help to stop China from repatriating two North Korean refugees arrested this month. Chinese border guards arrested Lee Sang-hyuk and his fellow refugee at Yanji near the frontier on Wednesday, the Committee for Democratization of North Korea said. Lee, 33, had previously been arrested by North Korean security officers for using a mobile phone to contact a relative in South Korea. But he fled to China with a fellow refugee on Oct. 12, the committee said. He is suspected of revealing information on human rights violations and other matters to the outside world.
■ Chessboard killer gets life
A Moscow court yesterday sentenced a man convicted of 48 murders, which he recorded on a chessboard, to life imprisonment, ending one of Russia's worst serial killing cases. The sentence for Alexander Pichushkin, who claimed to have killed 60 people in an effort to fill all 64 squares of the board, was the severest possible under Russian law and met the prosecutors' request. Pichushkin stood in a reinforced glass cage with his hands cuffed behind his back while the judge read the sentence for 45 minutes. Pichushkin will also have to undergo psychiatric treatment at the prison.
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