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World News Quick Take

■ BANGLADESH

Fire destroys slum

A fire raced through an overcrowded slum in Dhaka, killing five people and destroying more than 1,000 huts, a fire official said yesterday. The blaze broke out at Balur Math slum in the suburb of Rayer Bazar just before midnight on Saturday, leaving about 5,000 people homeless, said Nilufar Yasmin, a Dhaka Fire Brigade official. Three children were among the dead, she said. It took firefighters several hours to bring the fire under control. The fire destroyed most of the slum, Yasmin said. It was not clear what caused the fire, and the official said they were investigating.



■ CHINA

Court suspends execution

A court handed down a suspended death sentence to a Canadian at the center of the country's biggest car smuggling ring, state press reported on Saturday. The gang smuggled 2,043 cars into the country, mostly via Vietnam, over 18 months, avoiding US$29.8 million in import taxes, the Beijing Morning Post said. Canadian Chen Naizhi, 32, of Chinese origin, had his death sentence suspended for two years, after which it would likely be commuted to life imprisonment. Another 22 people in the smuggling network were sentenced on Thursday to between three months and 15 years in jail.



■ INDONESIA

Earthquake jolts Sumatra

A strong earthquake jolted the west of the country early yesterday, sending panicked residents fleeing from their homes, officials and witnesses said. The power of the tremor shook telephone and electricity poles and forced the evacuation of at least one hospital. The 6.1-magnitude quake was centered 175km from Sumatra, which has been hit by a series of tremors in recent months, the US Geological Survey said. It had a depth of just 10km beneath the ocean floor, the agency said, but did not trigger a tsunami and there were no immediate reports of injuries. "It was very strong ... even utility poles were shaking," said Dina Ramadani of Bengkulu, Sumatra.



■ JAPAN

Missile drills planned

The military plans to conduct anti-ballistic missile drills in the Tokyo area next month as it steps up its defense against North Korea's nuclear threat, a news report said yesterday. The Defense Ministry will bring Patriot PAC-3 missiles -- currently deployed at the Iruma base in Saitama -- to Tokyo for the drills at about 10 locations in Tokyo, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. The drills are aimed at testing the locations to see if there are any communications obstacles in the surrounding areas so that the ministry can determine the best locations for future deployment, the newspaper reported without citing a source.



■ JAPAN

WHO calls for change

The WHO called yesterday for Asia to revamp medical care to tailor it to individual needs, saying health services were insufficient despite rising spending. Asia's health system too often treats patients as a set of symptoms without assessing cultural, environmental and other factors, said Shigeru Omi, the UN health body's Western-Pacific regional director. While the world spent US$4.1 trillion on health in 2004, 50 percent of people globally say they are dissatisfied with their medical care, he said. "What I'm calling for is a concerted effort to put the heart back into medical practice," Omi told a WHO conference in Tokyo.



■ GERMANY

Thief returns car, baby

A thief returned the car he had stolen after finding an 18-month old baby on the back seat, police said on Friday. "The mum was at the solarium and the father had nipped away to get money from the bank leaving the keys in. When he returned the car had vanished," Aachen police spokesman Walter Frantzen said. Police in the spa town, worried the incident could be a possible abduction, scrambled a team of 40 to 50 officers as well as a helicopter to track down the missing vehicle and child. However, following a tip-off from a member of the public, the car was found nearby an hour later with the baby boy inside, still fast asleep, Frantzen said.



■ France

Group claims responsibility

A Corsican separatist group claimed responsibility on Saturday for 16 attacks on official buildings and vacation homes on the island, saying it was protesting "repression" by the central government. No one was injured in the attacks between mid-September and the middle of this month claimed by the FLNC-Union des Combattants, the militant offshoot of the FLNC Corsican nationalist movement. The group announced responsibility in a statement sent to regional television France-3 Corse. Rocket-launchers were fired in two of the attacks, on police facilities in Bastia in the north and near Ajaccio.



■ Bulgaria

Nuclear plant shuts down

A unit at Kozlodui nuclear power station underwent an emergency shutdown on Saturday as a result of a steam leak in its non-radioactive part, facility operators said. A statement from the power plant said that the malfunction was not related to nuclear safety and that the reactor would be turned back on yesterday. "There were no changes in the radioactivity level at the plant," the statement said. The plant on the Danube River has two 1,000-megawatt units of the Russian VVER type. It was the second emergency shutdown of a unit at Kozlodui in the past three months. The other reactor underwent an automated shutdown on Sept. 1, without causing any radioactive leak.



■ United Kingdom

Thousands attend sex fair

London whipped the "No sex please, we're British" attitude into submission on Friday as leather and PVC-clad punters squeezed into the world's largest adult lifestyle fair. Erotica 2007, an annual three-day fest at the giant Kensington Olympia exhibition venue, is expecting to attract more than 80,000 sexually curious visitors for its 10th anniversary event. "Romance, seduction, divine torture -- whatever you desire we can provide," program editor Carol Milligan promised.



■ Saudi Arabia

iyadh defends sentence

The government defended on Saturday a court's decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes, saying she was having an extramarital affair in violation of Islamic laws. The case of the 19-year-old Shiite woman who was abducted and raped along with a male companion by seven men has drawn international attention. Even the US, a close ally of the conservative kingdom, offered mild criticism of the verdict. "The woman in the case is married and has confessed to establishing a relationship in violation of [Islamic] Shariah law," the Justice Ministry said.



■ UNITED STATES

Shriver hospitalized

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the 86-year-old sister of former president John F. Kennedy who founded the Special Olympics and championed the rights of the mentally retarded, has been hospitalized. Shriver was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital on Nov. 18 and was in fair condition on Saturday, said a hospital spokeswoman. Shriver is credited with changing the view of the mentally disabled from institutionalized patients to that of friends, neighbors and athletes. Shriver founded the Special Olympics in 1968.



■ UNITED STATES

US revising `no match' rules

The federal government says it will rewrite rules for penalizing employers of illegal immigrants to try to satisfy a federal judge in San Francisco who put the crackdown on hold. US District Judge Charles Breyer stopped the Bush administration last month from going ahead with enforcement of regulations requiring employers to fire workers if their Social Security identification numbers did not match records and the discrepancies could not be addressed in 90 days. Late on Friday, Breyer agreed to a request from the administration to put the case on hold while it reworks the regulations -- a process bound to put off enforcement until the spring.



■ UNITED STATES

Afghanistan goals not met

The White House concluded in a recent secret report that the war effort in Afghanistan has not met strategic goals set this year, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The report was prepared earlier this month by the National Security Council. Its main conclusion was that while individual military battles have been successful, other areas remain wanting, the report said. "One can point to a lot of indicators that are positive," a senior US intelligence official was quoted as saying. "We go out there and achieve our objectives and kill bad guys." But the extremists, he said, seem to have little trouble finding replacements. "There doesn't seem to be a lot of progress being made ... I would think that from [the Taliban] standpoint, things are looking decent," he said.



■ UNITED STATES

Wild turkeys on parade

Fifteen wild turkeys strutted into the suburban hamlet of Greenlawn, New York, on Thanksgiving Day and then left just in time to avoid becoming the traditional holiday dinner. The turkeys showed up on Thursday morning, drawing crowds of spectators, but left -- marching in single file -- at about 1pm. The birds kept walking and had not been seen or heard from since. Resident Joyce Logan said there was no practical joke involved and the turkeys could have wandered from a nearby wooded area, where she had been hearing gobbles since summer. Unlike some neighbors, Logan said, she never had thoughts of catching one of the turkeys in her yard and turning it into dinner. "I can't eat something that I've met," she said.



■ CHILE

Aftershock rattles north

A 5.7 magnitude earthquake rattled northern Chile, which has been rocked by a series of aftershocks over the last 10 days, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said on Saturday. The quake was centered 145km south of Calama, and was 93km deep, the USGS said. There were no initial reports of deaths or damage. On Nov. 14, a 7.7 magnitude quake near Antofagasta collapsed homes and buildings, killing two people and injuring 115, and there have been a number of aftershocks since then.
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