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World Business Quick Take

■ INDIA

Border forces end alert

A high alert for forces along the Pakistan border has been ended and some transport links have been restored, officials said yesterday, following disruption in the wake of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination. The killing of the opposition leader in a suicide attack on Thursday unleashed a wave of violence in Pakistan. India had feared chaos could spill across the border and ordered a "high state of vigil" on Friday. But with cities in Pakistan beginning to emerge from several days of unrest, India's border is no longer on "red alert," a home ministry official said.



■ THAILAND

Elephants trample men

A herd of wild elephants killed one man and injured another in southern Thailand, local press reported yesterday. The Bangkok Post said that two men from Myanmar's Karen ethnic group were riding a motorcycle near the southern beach resort of Hua Hin on Sunday when they came across the elephants blocking the road. They tried to go around the herd, the English-language daily said, but an elephant charged the motorcycle and they crashed into a ditch. The pachyderms then trampled the two men. The 19-year-old driver escaped with injuries, while the passenger, named only as Bird, died of head injuries and broken bones.



■ BANGLADESH

Thousands of birds culled

More than 2,500 chickens were culled after the H5N1 bird flu virus infected more farms in the northern part of the country, officials said yesterday. The latest infection was detected in two villages in Gaibandha district, about 350km from the capital Dhaka, an official at the government's livestock department said. Bird flu was first detected near the capital in March and has since spread mainly to northern districts and forced authorities to cull around 278,000 chickens. Bird flu has killed 213 people in 12 countries since 2003, the WHO says.



■ VIETNAM

Factory safe, officials say

Vietnamese nuclear safety officials said yesterday there was no radiation leak when an incident forced the evacuation of hundreds of workers from an industrial plant in the country's south late last week. The plant, which manufactures oil rigs in the southern port of Vung Tau, had raised the alarm on Friday after a device that uses a radioactive substance to test for cracks in welding joints was misplaced for more than an hour. More than 380 workers were sent for testing at a local hospital, some complaining of headaches and vomiting, said Phan Thanh Tung, director of the M and C Petroleum Technical Services Company. Tung said five workers who had complained of dizziness remained in a hospital for treatment yesterday, while the others had returned to work.



■ CAMBODIA

ngkor Wat monk arrested

A monk has been arrested and defrocked for molesting an eight-year-old French girl while she was touring the country's Angkor temples with her family, police said yesterday. Ouk Ratha, the 16-year-old monk, confessed to touching the girl's genitals on Friday after luring her into a quiet corner of the Bayon temple, one of the Angkor complex's most famous monuments, police official Sun Bunthong said. The monk also said he forced the girl to fondle him, Sun Bunthong said. The girl's parents first became aware of the incident after noticing that she appeared frightened to have her picture taken with the monk.



■ SOMALIA

Seven civilians killed

Seven Somali civilians were killed on Sunday as fierce fighting erupted between Ethiopian-backed government forces and insurgents in the Somali capital, witnesses said. Five members of the same family died when a mortar shell struck a populated area in northern Mogadishu, witnesses said. Two other Mogadishu residents were killed in the southern Shirkole neighborhood, one by a stray bullet and another by the explosion of a mortar shell, witnesses said.



■ EGYPT

Woman dies of bird flu

A 25-year-old Egyptian woman has died of bird flu after apparently contracting the disease from poultry, the Health Ministry said on Sunday. Fatima Fathi Mohammed was the second fatality and the third case of the lethal virus announced by Egypt in less than a week. The fatal strain first appeared in the country last year, causing 17 deaths. On Friday, the WHO said two women in Egypt tested positive for a lethal strain of bird flu.



■ UNITED KINGDOM

Art `immune from seizure'

Britain said on Sunday it hoped a landmark exhibition of Russian art would go ahead in London after the government provided "immunity from seizure" so the works would not be confiscated. Roskultura, Russia's culture agency, had said it was concerned the art could be seized by courts acting for descendants of people who owned the paintings before they were confiscated after the 1917 Russian Revolution. And Russia said this month it was scrapping plans to loan the pieces by Van Gogh and Matisse to Britain for the exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts, adding a new irritant in frayed diplomatic relations between Moscow and London.



■ UNITED KINGDOM

Police barter for pay raise

The Police Federation has offered an "olive branch" to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, asking her to reconsider a decision over pay that has angered hundreds of thousands of officers, media reported yesterday. In an open letter, the Federation's chairman Jan Berry asked Smith to reconsider her decision not to backdate a 2.5 percent rise agreed by an independent arbitration panel as they had expected. Police say this effectively cut the rise to 1.9 percent. The federation, which represents 140,000 officers in England and Wales, called on Smith to resign and said it would ballot its members on whether they should overturn a ban preventing them from taking strike action.



■ EGYPT

Abortion clause cleared

Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning, on Sunday declared that any woman pregnant by rape must abort the baby immediately in order to maintain "social stability." According to the independent Egyptian Center for Women's Rights, two women are raped every hour in this country of 76 million. Many factors contribute to the increase in sexual harassment including rising unemployment, the huge cost of marriage and the fact that sex outside marriage is forbidden, experts say. Egyptian law bans abortion except on the grounds of "necessity," which includes instances when a woman's life or health is in danger or in cases of fetal abnormality.



■ BRAZIL

Jellyfish cause uproar

Swarms of jellyfish stung nearly 300 swimmers looking to cool off from a heat wave in a southeastern beach city, media reported on Sunday. At least 15 people including children and teenagers were treated in Praia Grande for severe stings, doctor Adriano Bechara told the Tribuna newspaper, though their lives were not in danger. Fire captain Atila Gregorio Ribeiro Pereira said the jellyfish were Portuguese man-of-war, which have long tentacles but are not dangerous unless the victim has an allergic reaction, the Folha online news service said. Many of the injured arrived at medical centers on Friday and Saturday crying from the pain of the stings.



■ CANADA

Soldier killed in Afghanistan

A NATO soldier killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Sunday was Canadian, the Department of National Defense said, identifying the victim as Jonathan Dion, 27. The incident occurred when Dion's car struck an explosive device while he was on patrol and en route to his base at Kandahar, the ministry said in a statement. Four other soldiers were wounded in the blast and are in stable condition, it said. This year, nearly 220 soldiers in the stabilization force or a separate US-led coalition have been killed in Afghanistan, official reports said. Most have died in hostile action.



■ UNITED STATES

Trash man makes a point

Ari Derfel leads a trashy life. He just wants to remind everyone else that they do, too. The 35-year-old Berkeley, California, caterer said he has saved every piece of trash he has generated over the past year to see how much garbage one person creates, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Sunday. In his case, it was about 2.7m3. The experiment began as a way to examine his own consumption habits, Derfel said, but grew into a statement about consumerism and the environment. "When we throw something away, what does `away' mean?" Derfel said. "There's no such thing as `away.'"



■ UNITED STATES

`Kid reporter' stiffed

It's one thing for Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign to turn down interview requests for the candidate's daughter, Chelsea. But can't a nine-year-old reporter catch a break? Sydney Rieckoff, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, fourth grader and "kid reporter" for Scholastic News, has posed questions to seven presidential hopefuls this year. But when she approached the 27-year-old Chelsea after a campaign event on Sunday, she got a different response. "Do you think your dad would be a good `first man' in the White House?" Rieckoff asked, but Chelsea brushed her question aside. "I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," Chelsea said.



■ UNITED STATES

Old orangutan dies

A 55-year-old Sumatran orangutan, believed to be the world's oldest, choked to death at the Miami Metro Zoo, necropsy results said. The orangutan named Nonja suffered a brain hemorrhage that made her pass out and vomit. She choked on her vomit and was found dead on Saturday, Miami Metro Zoo spokesman Ron Magill said on Sunday. Nonja was born on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and had lived in Miami since 1983. Despite her age, Nonja was in good health, Magill said. A typical life span for Sumatran orangutans is 40 to 50 years.
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